26 DECEMBER 1925, Page 4

THE PASSING OF THE OVERSEER

THE new Rating and Valuation Act seems on the whole a useful measure. Whether the present system is quite so " obsolete, cumbersome, illogical and unjust " as Mr. Neville Chamberlain, the Minister for Health, declared it to be in his speech on the Second Reading is perhaps doubtful. Whether the new Act will make for economy and justice, as its author promised, has yet to be seen. There is at first sight something attractive in the state- ment that the number of separate rating authorities is to be reduced from 12,882 to 648, and that each of these 648 areas will have a single general rate in place of two, three or even four distinct rates. The suggestion that this administrative reform may result in a saving equivalent to the proceeds of a penny rate is still more interesting, though it has been received somewhat sceptically by many experts in local government. The Act is now admitted to be a preliminary to a sweeping reform of the Poor Law, under which County and Borough Councils will assume all the powers and duties of the Boards of Guardians, and it can hardly be judged on its own merits alone. We may admit that the growing complexity of local services has made larger administrative areas necessary, for education, water supply, sanitation and many other necessaries can be provided more efficiently by the county or the district than by the parish. Yet we cannot but regret that the parish, for long ages the unit of the national system, is to be superseded and that the overseers of the poor, for three centuries the parish rating officials, are to be abolished. For, whatever benefits accrue from the new centralization, there is bound to be a loss of active citizenship. The larger the area chosen as the adminis- trative unit, the less likely is there to be that participation in local affairs by unpaid ratepayers which has been a most valuable feature of English life. Every resident in a parish can find time to interest himself in all that concerns the parish. The overseers, in the country at least, pro- bably know every ratepayer and his circumstances. Local self-government based on the parish, whether for rating and valuation or for other purposes, is a reality. But now that the rating area is to be a large district of a county or a county borough, the tendency will be to divorce the ratepayers from the administration. Repre- sentatives of every parish in an area will sit on the assess- ment committee for that area, but the actual work will probably be done by the .committee's expert staff. The experts may succeed in attaining greater uniformity in valuations than the overseers have done when acting more or less independently in their several parishes. But we must not forget that this will entail: a loss of local initiative, and a diminution of those opportunities for voluntary public service which so many Englishmen, both rich and poor, have welcomed in the past. Such objections apply, of course, to the rural parishes. In the towns, large and small, the overseers will not-be greatly missed, as their functions have in most cases been performed by paid officials. Many large boroughs have gone to the trouble of obtaining private Acts to secure the uniform valuation which the new Act gives to all county boroughs, so that the towns will presumably, approve of the change. Birmingham is said to have saved the equivalent of a fourpenny rate by treating its several parishes as one area for valuation purposes.' London has done this since 1869. As in London, the gross value of a tenement or holding as assessed for rates will also hold good for the purposes of Schedule A of the Income Tax. The new assessment committees will be able to adjust differences between county authori- ties and the small boroughs within their respective spheres, as all local authorities will be represented on the com- `mittees. Moreover, the ratepayers' delegates will not be hampered by the presence of Commissioners of Income Tax, as the Government originally desired. It was widely -felt that the assessment committees ought to be free to decide on their valuations without official interference, and Mr. Chamberlain very sensibly withdrew the pro- posal. We may note also that each set of rural parishes stands to gain in one respect by the uniform valuation which they all co-operate in making. As Mr. Peto said in the House, some parishes at present are undervalued and get more than their share of county benefits at the expense of their less adroit neighbours. We doubt whether such abuses are common, but at any rate every parish will henceforth be uniformly valued and assessed.

The Act has also at long last remedied an ancient grievance in regard to the rating of machinery. In Scot- land the law makes a clear distinction between machinery which is firmly attached to the hereditament and cannot be removed without causing damage and machinery which is not fixed or is easily removable ; the first class is rate- able and the second is not. But in England it has been left to the union assessment committees to say whether or not machinery should be rated, and on what terms. Thus, on the North-east coast machinery is usually rated, while in Lancashire most of the costly machinery in the cotton mills is free of rates. Manufacturers have for many years besought Parliament to deal with this vexatious problem. They have justly contended that to impose heavy rates on machinery penalizes the energetic manufacturer who instals new plant in order to increase his business and give more employment. The English manufacturer is often blamed for his reluctance to scrap obsolete machines and buy new ones, as his American competitor is said to do at the least provocation, but he may in some cases have been influenced by the knowledge that he would be rated in proportion to his enterprise. The new Act goes far to remove such hesitation. The kinds of machinery which are to be regarded as forming part of the hereditament and therefore as rateable arc scheduled ; all other machinery is to be exempt from rates: The members for the mining and ship-building districts complained, not unreasonably, that the heavy machinery employed in these industries will continue to be rated in England, as it is in Scotland. But it is impos- sible, for financial reasons, to carry the doctrine to its logiCal conclusion and free all machinery from local taxation. - - The agricultural interest demanded and obtained a like concession for the farmer. While his land is already assessed at only one-fourth of its net annual value, for purposes of rating, he has now secured a similar abatement in the net annual value of his farm buildings, such as cow- sheds, silos and Dutch barns. Mr. Chamberlain estimated that this reduction would save the farmers about £600,000 a year, which other rural ratepayers will have to find. We do not say that this concession to the agri- cultural industry is inexpedient or unduly great. On the contrary, we welcome it. When coupled with the further reduction of the rates on agricultural land from a .half to a quarter of the net value it is, however, such a substantial concession that we think the farmers will be well advised to make no further demands for the present. The exemption of a particular class from the general burden of taxation tends to excite jealousies which, as in the case of the .French noblesse and clergy before the Revolution, may even become dangerous to the commonwealth.