THE WESTMINSTER IMPROVEMENT SCHEME. T HE House of Commons is not
without its moments of relaxation. Question time, indeed, gives no particu- lar pleasure to any one but the Member who has for the moment the ear—not of the House, but of the Minister who has to answer him. And as for public business, the state of the benches while it is being transacted makes it needless to inquire how much interest is taken in it. But occasionally there is some really exciting private business, and then it is that we see what a Legis- lature can be like when it really cares about what it is doing. For three hours on Tuesday the House of Commons enjoyed itself in this fashion, and in the end more than four hundred Members trooped into the lobbies. The object of all this attention was the Victoria Embank- ment Extension Bill. There is no need to describe a measure which was defeated on the second reading by 336 votes against 84. It is enough to say that it was a Bill giving large powers to a private company to carry out a vast scheme of improvement in the district lying between the Houses of Parliament and Lambeth Bridge. It had most respectable backers in Sir John Lubbock and Mr. W. F. Smith. It had the vocal support of an ex-First Commissioner of Works and the silent goodwill of the actual holder of that office. It proposed to satisfy what no one can deny to be a great public want. Portions of the surroundings of the Houses of Parliament and of West- minster Abbey are of a singularly unworthy type. They have the squalor of age without its picturesqueness, a crowded population without the sense of vigorous life that crowds sometimes give. The reason for which some of the streets and houses seem chiefly to exist is to break up the Victoria Embankment into two parts. All these unattractive features would have been removed if the proposals embodied in the Bill had been allowed to be carried out. But though a great deal that is objection- able would thus have been got rid of, the House had an uneasy sense that it was to be got rid of for a consideration, and that this consideration might entail a fresh set of evils, not so bad, it may be, as those removed, but endowed with a much longer lease of life. Mr. Burdett-Coutts, who moved the rejection of the Bill, laid great stress upon the proposed erection of a great block of buildings between the main road and the river. The Embankment would no doubt have been prolonged beyond the Victoria Tower Gardens, where it now stops, but it would not have been an embankment in the sense commonly attached to the word. Instead of being, as it is between Blackfriars and Westminster Bridges, a roadway abutting on the river, it would have been a roadway running indeed parallel with the river, but having a huge block of buildings interposed between it and the river. This apparently was an inherent and irremediable fault in the scheme. The promoters of the Bill had made, according to Mr. Burdett-Coutts, many modifications in their original plan. They had consented not to touch " the little eighteenth-century quarter against the Abbey," and to leave " the side of Abingdon Street which faced the House of Lords alone." But in every modification this great river block remained unchanged.
The reason why it remained unchanged is easy to see. The scheme was to be carried out by a private company, and a private company cannot be expected to make improve- ments which shall bring in no return. We do not question for a moment the good faith of the authors of the scheme. We are quite sure that one of the motives which led them to conceive it was a desire to make that part of West- minster—" the most valuable and interesting," as Mr. Burdett-Coutts rightly calls it, " that remains to be dealt with in London "—worthy of its character and history. But as this object was to be attained by private enter- prise it had necessarily to be attained in a way which should yield an adequate return on the capital outlay. Here came in the difficulty. You cannot earn a dividend simply by making public improvements. Something must be created over and above the improvements which people will consent to buy, and so enable the vendors to earn a fair percentage on the money they have spent. In this case this something that needed creation was "the river block." A private company which proposes to buy or lease a large tract of land, to clear away a great many insanitary tenements and rehouse their inmates, to carry a, broad road for a considerable distance through a crowded neighbourhood, must needs make money in some way other than these. All these improvements may be excellent from the point of view of the public, but they are none of them really remunerative from the point of view of their authors. They may confer a benefit on Westminster, or on London, but it is not a benefit for which Westminster or London can be made to pay. Consequently, the only thing that remains to be done is to use part of the site for the erection of houses which will yield an adequate rent. In this way alone can public and private interests be recon- ciled. But the neighbourhood of the Houses of Parliament does not contain many sites of this kind. The Horseferry Road might be lined on each side with magnificent flats, but they would either remain untenanted or be let very much below their cost. The same thing might be said of almost every square yard of the land the company pro- posed to buy, with the single exception of the site which overlooks the river. Here there is room for a block of really handsome houses, separated only by a garden from the Palace of Westminster, and commanding a noble pro- spect up and down the river. Thus the " river block " was an inseparable accident of the scheme because it alone could bring a money return to its promoters. But then, unfortunately, 'this inseparable accident was also an inseparable weakness. The chief public recommendation of the scheme was the extension of the Victoria Embank- ment from the Victoria Tower to Lambeth Bridge, and by the extension of the Victoria Embankment the world in general understands the carrying of the roadway along that bank of the river, not merely past the backs of a long row of houses overlooking the river.
We have dwelt on this feature of the scheme because it explains and justifies the objection to committing the execution of public improvements to private companies. A private company must earn a dividend, or at least show a possibility of earning one, and in order to do this its action must sometimes be determined by other than merely public considerations. And this constitutes, to our mind, an insuperable objection to carrying out public improvements in this way. At the same time, it must be admitted that the obstacles in the way of carrying out this particular improvement in any other way are very great. Now that this company has been refused leave to take the work in hand, it must be done, if done at all, either by the Government or by the local authorities. To which of these can we look for help with any confidence of getting it ? Not to the Government, for they have their hands full of public offices waiting to be built. Not to the Westminster Vestry, partly because the cost of the scheme would probably exceed its available means, and Partly because the benefit of the improvement would not be confined to the inhabitants of Westminster, and so ought. not to be wholly paid for by them. There remains the London County Council, which is obviously the right autho- rity to take the work in hand. But, unfortunately, the chances of its doing so are remote. What is it that prevents the County Council from making the improve- ments in London which are so urgently demanded ? Not poverty, for it has the rates to fall back on when- ever it finds its means insufficient. Not parsimony, for upon things in which it is really interested it can spend lavishly. The real reason why it does so little in the way of improving London is that it has theories as to the source whence the money spent on the improvements- ought to come which do not square with the existing law. The result is that every improvement Bill promoted by the Council comes before Parliament weighted with pro- posals for raising the money in some novel way, and as Parliament is not at present disposed to accept these proposals, the Bill falls to the ground. As the law stands, the London County Council can make a rate for any purpose that is not outside its statutory powers. But- this is all that it can do. It cannot transfer the burden from the ratepayers to somebody else, or levy rates upon those who have contracted themselves out of the obliga- tion to pay them. Any change in these respects must be made by Parliament, and because Parliament will not make it, the County Council punishes not Parliament, _ but its own constituents, by allowing London to go un-. improved. But as Sir Henry Fowler very truly said, neglect on the part of those to whom the work properly belongs is not an adequate reason for entrusting that work to those to whom it does not belong. It is better to wait until the right people come to a better mind.
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