I move—

I move this in view of the fact that the time will be altered or put back from summer time to normal time, which would mean that we would have to commence an hour earlier in the morning and adjourn an hour earlier in the evening, as far as the normal time of the country is concerned. We propose, however, to begin half an hour earlier in the morning and to adjourn half an hour earlier in the evening.

I move—

1. (1) Reference of Estimates to Committee of Supply.—All Estimates of Expenditure for the financial year 1943—’44 which may be laid upon the Table and recommended by the Governor General, shall stand referred to the Committee.
2. (2) Conclusion of proceedings.—At the conclusion of the period of hours allotted, any amendments (other than amendments proposed by a Minister) which have been moved but not disposed of, shall drop. The Chairman shall thereupon proceed to put forthwith, without debate, any amendments which have been moved or may be moved by a Minister and thereafter only such further amendments as may be moved by a Minister and such questions, including votes, items or heads, as amended or as printed, as may be necessary to dispose of the Estimates under consideration.
   The Committee shall then proceed to consider any Estimates of Expenditure which have been referred to it but have not been considered, and the Chairman shall forthwith put the votes, items or heads in such Estimates without amendment (unless amendments are moved by a Minister) and without debate.
3. (3) Expedition of Report Stage.—The Committee shall have leave to bring up its report or reports forthwith, instead of on a future day, and such report or reports shall be considered forthwith without amendment or debate.
4. (4) Time for adjournment of House.—When business is interrupted at the conclusion of the period of hours allotted the application of Sessional orders fixing the time for the adjournment of the House shall be postponed until the proceedings on the business interrupted have been completed.
5. (5) Dilatory motions.—At no time while the House is in Committee shall the Chairman receive a motion that the Chairman report progress or do leave the Chair, or a motion to postpone a vote, item or head unless moved by a Minister and the Question on such motion shall be put forthwith without debate.

The most important point in this motion is the provision that the time for the discussion of the Estimates is limited to 110 hours in the Committee stage. I understand that that is an agreement which was reached after consultation between the parties. That is the basis on which we are working, and if it has to be given effect to, it may possibly be necessary in connection with certain Votes under the Estimates, to apply the guillotine in order to prevent unnecessary and lengthy discussions, so that it will not be possible, because the debate is limited to 110 hours, to reach other portions of the Estimates. This is a precautionary measure. It is not the intention that the guillotine will be accepted as a matter of principle or that it will necessarily be applied. It is a precautionary measure to ensure that there will not be unduly prolonged debates at certain stages which will have the effect of leaving too little time for the discussion of the remaining points in the Estimates. That is the only object. There is no ulterior purpose. It is only with a view to assisting in giving effect to this measure that the total debate will be limited to 110 hours.

I second.

I just want to enlarge a little on what the Prime Minister said with reference to the agreement between the two sides of the House in regard to this matter. The agreement is that the debate will be limited to 110 hours, but it does not concern any agreement in reference to the principle. We accept the position without committing ourselves as far as the principle is concerned. I notice that the Minister of Finance is smiling. Perhaps he is not altogether satisfied that he will be precluded from using this against us at a later date. Our opposition to the principle is only formal. It is only formal because, when the Prime Minister asked that Tuesdays should be made private members’ day, I asked that the debate should not be unduly limited by using the guillotine during the budget debate. To this extent he met us in that we are now getting 110 hours, an increase of one-tenth, whilst during previous Sessions we did not get more than 100 hours. In view of that we will only protest formally against the principle. To be quite on the safe side, we shall ask for a division on the principle. If the Prime Minister feels perhaps that our attitude with regard to this principle is weakening, and if he thinks that hon. members on his side are weakening, I can only say that, if that is the case, it is quite understandable. When there is a change of Government, which is in prospect, then it is not an unusual phenomenon for the Opposition to take into account the fact that it may be necessary for it impose restrictions on the debate; the Government’s side on the other hand takes into account the fact that it is a very good thing to make concessions at these times, because they may soon be sitting on the Opposition benches. For that reason we are prepared to leave it at that, and we shall ask for a division only for the sake of the principle.

In connection with the economising of the time of the House, which I entirely support, would it be possible for the Prime Minister to indicate whether the private Bills which are on the Order Paper, for example, the City of Durban Savings Bank Bill and others are likely to be reached? Or is the economising of time on public Bills also going to be applied to them?

I want to say a few words in regard to this motion of the Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister. In the first place, I want to direct attention to the fact that it has struck me in connection with this motion, at least in the Afrikaans text, that there is a certain amount of uncertainty. In the first place I want to say that during the past few years there has been a considerable improvement in the terminology which is used in Afrikaans in connection with Bills. I observe in the list that Bills are now described as follows: “Wysigingswetsontwerp op nedersettings,” “Wysigingswetsontwerp op wissels,” etc. This terminology is now used and it is a considerable improvement on the terminology which was previously used. Take, for example, “Wetsontwerp tot wysiging van die wet op regsbevoegdheid en matrimoniële sake.” Previously it would have been described as: “Regsbevoegdheid en matrimoniële sake Wet Wysigingswetsontwerp.” We protested against this previously, and I must say that those protests have been fruitful. In this motion there are a few expressions which are capable of improvement. I do not want to play the role of school master, but we should like to keep our language on as high a level as possible. It is something which we should jealously guard. It is said here: “By verstryking van die vasgestelde tydperk ure verval alle amendemente” (at the conclusion of the period of hours allotted, any amendment shall drop). In English the word “of” is used, and surely it must read “vasgestelde tydperk van ure.” At the beginning we find “alle begrotings van uitgawe … staan na die Komitee verwys” (all Estimates shall stand referred to the Committee). The use of the word “staan” is, in my opinion, not grammatically correct. I can “staan en wag” (stand and wait) and so on, but nothing can “staan na die Komitee verwys te word nie” (stand referred to the Committee). This is a remark which I hope will not be held against me. We are all jealous of our language. As far as the contents of the motion are concerned, I want to point out to the Prime Minister that, in my opinion, it contains a provision which is most unfair. It was stated that 100 hours were allowed during the previous years and that 110 hours are being now allowed. I understand from the Leader of the Opposition that this was an agreement between the Whips, and I do not want to say anything against it. As far as the general principle is concerned, I want to make this remark, that we have again noticed during the four day debate which has just been concluded, that many members did not get an opportunity to take part in the debate, but even those who did get an opportunity, always felt that they had to keep their eye on the clock when talking.

It was impossible for us to do our duty.

The hon. member correctly says that. In the Committee of Supply on the Estimates we now get an opportunity to make good that neglect, under the different Votes, but this motion on the part of the Prime Minister now deprives us of that opportunity as well, because at a given moment the Minister may say that the discussion must come to an end, and then all our amendments will fall away. I must say that our experience in this sphere was not too favourable in the past. I remember a Bill which was introduced by the hon. Minister of Labour to which the same thing was applied. The result of that was that the people in the country are today saddled with an Act which cannot be carried out, and which operates very badly as far as our labourers are concerned. We know that the Estimates of our country are continually expanding in scope. The Estimates of this year have increased by millions of pounds compared with previous years, and it makes our duty in respect of the discussion of the Estimates all the more difficult. That is not taken into account at all. Then the argument is advanced that the 100 hours were not used during the previous year. If that is so, why this limitation? Generally speaking it is tantamount to this, that we always feel—I feel it very strongly—but I think everyone in Parliament feels that Parliament is restricted and tied down more and more. And especially at the present time in view of the political opinion which some of us hold that Parliament must still represent the people and that it must be the highest authority in the country—which it is not always—I say that in view of this, this motion will operate as an obstruction. The result of it will be that the authority of Parliament, which of recent years has suffered very much, will be undermined to an even greater extent. The Prime Minister said that he did not want to have an unnecessary and unreasonable extension of the debate. Not one of us wants that. We are not out to drag politics into such a debate. We want to avail ourselves of such a debate to carry out our duties in accordance with the mandate given to us by our voters, and I hope that the Prime Minister will take into consideration that aspect of the matter and that he will assist us, so that we can assist him, not to undermine the authority and influence of Parliament, but to build it up and to strengthen it, which is urgently needed.

I just want to say this in answer to a question by my hon. friend, the member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick), that with regard to private bills on the Order Paper, the Government has given no undertaking to afford time for their further consideration. No time has been asked and no time has been given, and we have a completely free hand and we shall be guided by the work before the House and the time at our disposal as to whether there will be an opportunity available for their consideration.

*The hon. member for Pretoria, District (Mr. Oost) has again reverted to the objection against the guillotine, as an encroachment on the rights of democracy. Well, I am afraid, without going into the principle, that even with the dark picture of the future which the Leader of the Opposition painted, we must accept it as a restriction which will be perpetuated to some extent in the future. We shall probably have to accept the guillotine to a certain extent as a normal measure in the procedure of the House. I hope that it will be applied as little as possible. Even in the British Parliament which must be regarded as a model of a democratic institution the guillotine has become a regular process, and it is for the protection of democracy. Nothing has a more detrimental effect on the influence of Parliament or the good work of Parliament than lengthy, senseless and drawn-out debates, which we sometimes find even in this almost perfect House of ours. Debates are extended, without rhyme or reason, beyond any useful purpose, and I am afraid that in the future the position will be the same as it was during the past few years, even perhaps under another Government, not, that I believe that the expectation of the Leader of the Opposition will suddenly be realised. I can only say, as far as this motion is concerned, and its application as far as the guillotine is concerned, that it is only intended to keep us within the limit of 110 hours and to ensure that there will be no unnecessary discussions on one point so that there will be time left for the other points which remain to be dealt with.

Motion put and the House divided:

Ayes—68:

Abbott, C. B. M.

Abrahamson, H.

Acutt, F. H.

Alexander, M.

Allen, F. B.

Ballinger, V. M. L.

Bawden, W.

Bell, R. E.

Blackwell, L.

Botha, H. N. W.

Bowen, R. W.

Bowker, T. B.

Burnside, D. C.

Carinus, J. G.

Christopher, R. M.

Clark, C. W.

Collins, W. R.

Conradie, J. M.

Davis, A.

Deane, W. A.

De Wet, H. C.

Du Toit, R. J.

Egeland, L.

Fourie, J. P.

Friedlander, A.

Gluckman, H.

Goldberg, A.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Henderson, R. H.

Hirsch, J. G.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Hooper, E. C.

Johnson, H. A.

Kentridge, M.

Klopper, L. B.

Lawrence, H. G.

Lindhorst, B. H.

Long, B. K.

Madeley, W. B.

Moll, A. M.

Molteno, D. B.

Mushet, J. W.

Neate, C.

Pocock, P. V.

Quinlan, S. C.

Raubenheimer, L. J.

Reitz, L. A. B.

Robertson, R. B.

Smuts, J. C.

Solomon, B.

Solomon, V. G. F.

Sonnenberg, M.

Stallard, C. F.

Steyn, C. F.

Steytler, L. J.

Sturrock, F. C.

Tothill, H. A.

Trollip, A. E.

Van Coller, C. M.

Van den Berg, M. J.

Van der Merwe, H.

Wallach, I.

Wares, A. P. J.

Warren, C. M.

Waterson, S. F.

Tellers: J. W. Higgerty and W. B. Humphreys.

Noes—46:

Badenhorst, C. C. E.

Bekker, G.

Bekker, S.

Bezuidenhout, J. T.

Bosman, P. J.

Conradie, J. H.

Conroy, E. A.

De Bruyn, D. A. S.

Dönges, T. E.

Du Plessis, P. J.

Erasmus, F. C.

Fouche, J. J.

Grobler, J. H.

Haywood, J. J.

Hugo, P. J.

Labuschagne, J. S.

Le Roux, S. P.

Liebenberg, J. L. V.

Loubser, S. M.

Louw, E. H.

Malan, D. F.

Olivier, P. J.

Oost, H.

Pieterse, P. W. A.

Schoeman, B. J.

Schoeman, N. J.

Steyn, G. P.

Strauss, E. R.

Strydom, G. H. F.

Strydom, J. G.

Swart, A. P.

Van den Berg, C. J.

Van der Merwe, R. A. T.

Van Nierop, P. J.

Van Zyl, J. J. M.

Verster, J. D. H.

Viljoen, D. T. du P.

Viljoen, J. H.

Vosloo, L. J.

Warren, S. E.

Wentzel, J. J.

Werth, A. J.

Wilkens, Jacob.

Wolfaard, G. v. Z.

Tellers: J. F. T. Naudé and P. O. Sauer.

I move—

I object.

Since 1941 I have followed the procedure of replying to the Budget Debate in one language only, that being the language other than the language in which I introduced the Budget; I shall therefore speak only in English, as last year I spoke only in Afrikaans in my reply to this debate. In another respect I shall also follow precedent, in this case a precedent going rather further back. I shall deal only with financial matters raised in the Budget Debate in my reply. I shall therefore, for instance, not deal with the speech of the hon. member for Gezina (Mr. Pirow), who went down to the cesspool and the gutter for some of his material.

I regret I must ask the hon. the Minister to withdraw that.

Very well, I shall withdraw that. May I say that the hon. member for Gezina brought the debate down to a lower level than has ever yet been attained in a Budget Debate?

You are doing yourself an injustice.

I shall therefore commence with the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth) as the chief financial critic of the Opposition. But before I come to his financial criticism I want to voice my own resentment, and I think the resentment of every decent-minded member of this House, at the attack which he made on my colleagues. He made a statement which carried the innuendo that the sons of Ministers were being kept out of the fighting line because they are the sons of Ministers. That statement is not warranted by the facts, and that being so it reflects no discredit on those against whom it was directed, it reflects discredit only on the person who made it. It was an entirely unworthy statement. I have never heard anything like that from the hon. member for George. I now come to a pleasanter subject, and that is the subject of the hon. member for George as a financial critic. I know, of course, that the hon. member for George never hesitates to make objectionable remarks about his opponents.

Like yourself.

He is however very sensitive about anything which might be regarded as derogatory to himself, and therefore I am going to apologise in advance for saying to him that in his contribution to this debate he was more Gladstonian than ever. When I say that. I am not referring to the hon. member’s financial ability. Because he is so sensitive that I shall not speak about that, I merely have in mind the remarks which Disraeli once made about Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons, where he described him as a sophisticated rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.

Mildewed with age.

Let me apply to the exuberance of the hon. member’s verbosity this test of hard facts. Let us take some of his characteristic errors. He told us that all items of current expenditure must appear on Revenue Account and all items of capital expenditure on Loan Account, and that up till I became Minister of Finance we had always kept our books in that way.

Your predecessor did.

The hon. member has forgotten that during the last war practically every penny of war expenditure was found on Loan Account.

You are going back to the war again.

But now he says that my predecessors always did it. Oh yes, my hon. friend in his speech made the same remark, and he went out of his way to pay tribute to my predecessor, and then he paid a second tribute to him, and the hon. member for Vredefort (Mr. Conroy) accepted those tributes almost with tears in his eyes.

Does that worry you?

The hon. member was so moved with these tributes that he said he agreed altogether with the amendments proposed by the hon. member for George and then he went on to move another amendment, not supplementing it but replacing it. It became quite obvious that a marriage has been arranged—and we could almost hear the sounding of wedding bells.

Yes, and you are very jealous.

And we heard them again when the hon. member for Gezina was speaking. But is this correct? Did my predecessor never put Defence expenditure on Loan Account? This, again, is one of my hon. friend’s characteristic errors. He might perhaps have been excused for his mistake if that had happened while he was out of the House but he seems to have forgotten that in 1939—’40 my predecessor put on Loan Account a substantial amount of Defence expenditure and I never heard him protest against that. Then, my hon. friend in another of his characteristic errors, told us that our public debt had increased by £138,000,000 during the war. All of it “dooie skuld”. The hon. member for Fauresmith (Dr. Dönges) quoted the net figure of £131,000,000, and he said that the whole of the increase in the national debt was attributable to the war. The hon. member for Pietersburg (Mr. Tom Naudé) was a little more careful and said: “Practically all that debt was dut to the war”. Have these hon. members forgotten that only a few weeks ago we voted £4,500,000 for Iscor. Is that “dooie skuld?” Have they forgotten that year after year we have voted money for Railways and Harbour development, national roads, irrigation, land settlement and for the capital works of the Provinces. Is that all “dooie skuld”? To some extent one might regard these moneys as having been found out of Loan recoveries.

Exactly!

But they are not all—

The difference between the two.

I allowed for that and then I find that the hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Blackwell) is more correct when he states that the amount of war expenditure is not £138,000,000 but somewhere between £100,000,000 and £110,000,000.

Is not that enough?

Another of my hon. friend’s little errors. And then he went on to say this: He said that this year we voted £96,000,000 for Defence. I had told him in an answer to a question that we had received £5,500,000 from other Governments and therefore we were spending £101,500,000 on Defence, but I also told him that £3,500,000 was spent on behalf of other Governments this year. The other £2,500,000 was paid by other Governments in respect of this year’s expenditure, and my hon. friends may take it from me that other Governments will be owing us still at least £2,500,000 at the end of this year—so that point falls to the ground.

It certainly does not.

Then the hon. member gave us a number of comparisons in regard to taxes paid by various people. I am coming back to that later, I am only now drawing attention to the little inaccuracies of my hon. friend. He said, “The salaried man with an income of £2,500 pays £292. The idle rich man who gets all his income from dividends pays £97.” But as I pointed out immediately in an interruption, the £292 includes normal and super tax on the one side. The £97 is super tax only. Why did not the hon. member say that? Of course, the man who gets money from dividends does not pay normal tax directly, but he pays it none the less through the company. The taxation on these dividends is collected at the source. If those companies, from which the dividends are collected are not liable for excess profits duty then that man will have paid in addition to the £97 £298 and £41, making a total of £410. If those companies are liable to excess profits duty, that man will have paid another £967 making a total of £1,377. And if those companies are gold mining companies, that man will have paid even more at the source by way of taxation. My hon. friend told us that he went to two firms of accountants so as to get these figures. Well, if those two firms did not tell him what I have told him now then he had better change his firms of accountants, but if they did tell him, then I wonder why he did not tell the House. Now, these are typical little inaccuracies of the hon. member for George. I think I have said just about enough to show how difficult it is for us to take his financial criticism seriously. Surely if you start with an unsound foundation of facts—and I think my hon. friend pretty well always starts on an unsound foundation of facts, then you cannot build a sound super-structure on that unsound foundation. But I want to deal seriously with one or two of the points which occurred from the farago which the hon. member dished up to us.

The farago?

Yes, it was a farago. The main line of attack was that I had, by placing part of the Defence expenditure on Loan Account, concealed the true position from the country, that I had claimed a surplus for 1942—’43, when there was not a surplus, but when there was a deficit of £45,000,000, and that I had misinterpreted the position for 1943—’44 by claiming that we only faced a deficit of £500,000 when there was a deficit of £48,000,000 a figure which the hon. member for Pretoria, District (Mr. Oost), promptly increased to £98,000,000 as a result of a complete misrepresentation of the position in regard to Lend Lease. Those were the charges against me and I have made a note of some of the choice phrases which were used in the elaboration of these charges. The hon. member for George talked about a “verbloemde voorstelling van die landsfinansies.” On two occasions he used the words “eerlik en opreg,” implying that I was not honest and straightforward. Of course, it is just pretty Fanny’s way as far as the hon. member for George is concerned. We are accustomed to that. But then the hon. member for Fauresmith took up the chorus. He was not going to be outdone by the hon. member for George. He talked about “misleidende balansstate” and the hon. member for Pietersburg talked about “valse balansstate.” He talked about “die uitbuiting van die sielkunde van die volk,” and he spoke about “’n klugspel” and “ver-doeseling” and “willekeurige manipulasie.” Like the hon. member for George, the hon. member for Fauresmith has a gift for language, and in the use of that gift he is a young member of this House following in father’s footsteps, following the dear old dad. By the time the hon. member for Fauresmith was finished with me I thought I must be rather a scoundrel, but then I looked at what I had said in my Budget speech and I came to the conclusion that these hon. members had prepared their speeches before they heard my Budget speech. What about the alleged surplus for 1942—’43 which I was alleged to have claimed—I never claimed a surplus for 1942—’43.

I said that you were estimating …

Then why did you accuse me of claiming a surplus? I stated that we had originally estimated that we would wind up the year with a favourable balance of £3,500,000. This is what I said—

I said—

Why did the hon. member make that accusation against me? And what about 1943—’44? There, I said—that is for next year—I said that our expenditure, apart from Defence, would be £52,000,000 odd. In the clearest possible language I said that Defence expenditure would be provided for partly on Revenue and partly on Loan Account, and would amount to £96,000,000, of which I proposed to put £48,000,000 on Revenue and the rest on Loan Account. And then, after dealing separately with Revenue and Loan Account, I summed up the position as a whole and I said clearly that our expenditure was going to be £164,000,000 and our Revenue £108,500,000. So what remains of these accusations? There was no attempt at concealment whatsoever. I made the position perfectly clear, I made it clear last year, too. Why these attacks? What right have these hon. gentlemen to use such language? No, if they want us to take them seriously as financial critics they must make sure of their facts before coming along here. I am not referring to the hon. member for Fauresmith now, I think he does try to make sure of his facts, but my hon. friend over there does not, and I say also that hon. members over there must abstain from making accusations involving the honour of their opponents when they have no basis whatever for their accusations. Now, let me try and find some substance in their criticism. It boils down to this, that we are charging war expenditure in part to Loan Account. That is the point. The hon. member for George appeals to financial principle in regard to this matter, he invokes my predecessors as having acted differently. I am afraid once again it is a case of our Jock—everyone is out of step except our Jock, because what we are doing is exactly what has been done ever since Union. It has been done by all my predecessors, including my immediate predecessor, Mr. Havenga. We have always had a Revenue Account and a Loan Account. We have squared the Revenue Account by the proceeds of taxation. We have squared the Loan Account by Loan receipts and borrowing. We have always charged to Loan Account expenditure which does not bring financial returns—expenditure which in other countries is paid for out of Revenue. We have never since Union had that “gesonde balansstaat” for which the hon. member for Fauresmith pleads. Every one is out of step but our Jock. Now, just to make that clear, I turned up the Loan Estimates for 1932-33. What did I find there? I found items like this: Repairs to Irrigation Works—current expenditure; Unemployment Expenditure—not loans but grants; Relief of Distress for Natives—current expenditure; Repairs to Defence Buildings; current expenditure, it is not? All these under Loan Account. Then, not to be unfair to my hon. friend, I looked up the Loan Estimates which were presented after he came back to this House, and there I found—and I do not recall having protested against the flouting of these financial canons—repair to irrigation works—recreation for employees, grants and general assistance to needy farmers. Grants under rural housing schemes—for which we don’t get any money back—unemployment expenditure, and the purchase of land for natives—on which we get nothing back either—not even a penny by way of interest. No, the only difference is now that we have in war-time a larger amount of such expenditure to put on Loan Account. During the last war, as I have already said, we put the whole of our expenditure on Loan Account and even before this war my predecessor put Defence expenditure on Loan Account. And the difference between the present situation and that in the last war is that we are setting ourselves to place on Revenue Account as much as we possibly can expect in our opinion to find by way of taxation. The hon. member for Gordonia said that I had announced a policy of pay as you go. When did I use those words and where?

In August, 1940.

No, I did not.

That was the interpretation.

What did I say? In the 1940—’41 Budget speech I said that out of £14,000,000 for Defence, £2,000,000 were put on Loan Account, but I said “that does not mean that we shall be borrowing for Defence purposes at this stage.” Does that mean a policy of pay as you go for the whole war? I think I should also say just for the sake of clarity that I have never laid down the fifty-fifty principle as a fixed rule. It is true that in 1941-42 as a matter of fact we came pretty well out on the fifty-fifty basis. Then, for 1942—’43 I said that I aimed at that. As a matter of fact we have not been able to maintain it. In our Additional Estimates we have not gone on the fifty-fifty basis but this year, again, I have taken that as my aim in my Budget. It is a good aim. It is a fair deal between posterity and ourselves, but I have never announced it as a principle which must be adhered to at all costs. To sum up the position it comes to this, the Revenue Account can only be financed under our system out of taxation. That means that you can only put on your Revenue Account such items as you can in fact pay for out of taxation. The Loan Account is financed out of loan receipts and borrowing. You must therefore put on Loan Account all amounts which you cannot finance out of Revenue. To put on Revenue Account moneys which you could not finance out of taxation would be merely silly, and as long as the position is made clear, as I made it, there is no ground for any criticism. Then I come to another point of some substance, which the hon. member made—it is a very interesting point. He talked about the increase in our unproductive debt, and he said that we are still only paying over to the sinking fund the same amount as we paid in the past when our debt was much less, namely £900,000. And then he went on to say that under the 1927 Act all surpluses had to go to debt redemption. Again, one of the hon. members’ little inaccuracies. There is nothing like that in the Act. Then he said that my predecessor when the unproductive debt was fifty-five million pounds paid into sinking funds a surplus of £3,600,000. We, with an unproductive debt of £138,000,000, are only paying £900,000. Another of his little inaccuracies. The amount is £970,000 and this year we have also paid £7,500,000 to Loan Account for debt redemption, and may I remind my hon. friend that last year when we did that speakers on his side—the hon. member for Prieska (Mr. Geldenhuys) and the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) took strong exception to our using surplus funds for debt redemption. So much for the inconsistencies of my hon. friends opposite. But let that pass. Let me come back to the solid point. If the history of public debt teaches anything, it teaches this, that it is wrong to pay into a sinking fund for debt redemption when you have no surplus to pay it out of, because it simply means that you are borrowing money in order to decrease your loans; you are increasing your borrowings, and therefore you tend to increase the rate of interest. We have that old Act of 1927 on the Statute Book, under which we pay not our surplus, but an amount fixed in terms of that Act, into the sinking fund. That, sir, was quite a good thing when it was passed; it is of doubtful value now, because we are really, in effect, borrowing that money which we are paying into that sinking fund. I am prepared to retain that Act in the hope of circumstances changing later, but I am certainly not prepared to commit the financial fallacy of increasing the amount we pay into the sinking fund. Then there was another point which was mentioned by the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth) and expanded by the hon. member for Fauresmith (Dr. Dönges). They both made the point that we shall probably be liable, after the war—indeed, we have already made payments—in respect of losses incurred by people who have paid us excess profits duty, and they suggested that we should have a reserve fund against those payments for which we may be liable. Yes, we have got those commitments, but may I just make two points? In the first place, I do not anticipate that those commitments will be very heavy. There are two reasons for that. In the first place, because of price control; and, in the second place, because of the difficulty of obtaining stocks today, with the result that there are small stockholdings, and the danger of losses incurred because of the marking-down of high-priced stocks, is relatively small. Today it is almost impossible for traders to build up large stocks on which they will incur losses after the war, and in respect of which they will be able to come back on us. But the second point is this, that in any case it would be folly for us to set aside such a reserve fund, when it simply means borrowing, more money to put into that reserve fund That, sir, is not business, and it does seem to me rather odd that the hon. gentlemen opposite should now press me to create a reserve fund. I remember the days when my predecessor, who is now the pillar of financial, orthodoxy, as far as they are concerned, but whom they used to attack just as much, used to resist exactly the same pressure on him to put aside reserve funds. It is those gentlemen, sir, who have changed. Then, my hon. friend made a great point about the Budget in relation to the big man and the little man. Incidentally, he referred to a man of whom he knew who had made £36,000 profit in ten months. I do not think we should get the wrong perspective. How much did that man keep of his £36,000 by the time I was finished with him? If he was liable to excess profits duty, assuming that he had a profit of £3,000 before the war, we would have taken from him just under £30,000, 16s. 8d. in the £. If he was not liable to excess profits duty, we would have taken from him over £26,000, that is, 14s. 6d. in the £. Let us bear in mind how much is taken from the taxpayer.

That profit was made by a company, not an individual.

I did not so understand my hon. friend. He then went on to say that the gold mines are paying £2,000,000 less. Why are the gold mines paying £2,000,000 less? Because the profit on which they are taxed is less, not because of any action on my part. They are paying less on lower profits. Then my hon. friend compared the rate of increase on income tax and super tax—15 per cent. surcharge; personal and savings fund levy—50 per cent. increase, and 66 2/3 per cent. increase. That kind of comparison, sir, is merely childish. When you start low enough, a small increase means a big percentage. Add £1 to £1, and you get an increase of 100 per cent. Add £1 to £10 and you get an increase of only 10 per cent. It is already possible under our system today, under the excess profits duty, for the tax on an individual to go as high as 15s. in the £. Obviously, therefore, you cannot impose a 50 per cent. surcharge on him. But apart from that, may I point out to my hon. friends that while we are increasing the amount payable under the personal savings and levy fund, only half of that represents taxation, and if my hon. friend is comparing the rates of taxation, he should not talk in terms of 50 per cent. and 66 per cent., but half of these figures. Moreover, the reason why we have done that was to avoid the necessity of bringing lower down still the starting point for our direct taxation. I do not think my hon. friends would have liked that. Then the hon. member talked about the inequity of taxation. I mentioned that point before. I will leave out the idle rich man. The salaried man earning £2,500, pays £292. The doctor who started since the 4th September, 1939, pays £798; the private company pays £1,087; the public company pays £1,247. I do not think these figures are quite correct, but in the main they more or less represent the position. What is the reason for the difference. It is simply that excess profits duty is payable in certain cases and not in other cases.

Quite right.

Excess profits duty is not payable by the salaried man. My hon. friend apparently assumes that there are salaried men who are today receiving salaries of £2,500, who had no income at all before the war. And with rather bad taste he referred to one of my colleagues in this connection—very bad taste—it is quite a wrong assumption to make that you could have a man with a salary of £2,500 now, who had no income before the war. Perfectly true, excess profits duty is not payable on salaries. Excess profits duty is payable on income from trade. Why? Because it is income from trade which is particularly receptive to the effect of war conditions. Salaries do not go up in war time. The lower grades do; the salaries at the top do not go up because of war conditions. Income from investments does not go up because of war conditions, but income from trade does go up because of war conditions, and that is why it is fair to tax income derived from trade. If there is a doctor who is earning £2,500 today, who started practice since 1939, I can only say that he is earning £2,500 today because of war conditions, that he is earning £2,500 because some of his professional colleagues have gone to the front. What about the company? The company, as the hon. member pointed out, pays more than the individual in excess profits duty. Why? Because there is a different rate of abatement in the two cases. The rate of abatement is higher in the case of the individual. Why? Because in the case of the company, the company can always pay remuneration to its managers, and an individual cannot. That remuneration of the company’s managers is taken off before you arrive at the amount of profits that you are going to tax. It is a perfectly good reason, and is done everywhere where you have the excess profits duty. And so, sir, when you come to analyse my hon. friend’s figures, there is nothing in them. Finally, my hon. friend played the role of Cassandra. Our revenue, he said, has now reached its peak; our revenue is now going down fast. But I would remind the hon. member that two years ago he said exactly the same thing. He then also played the role of Cassandra. He then also told us that our revenue had reached its peak, and that it was fast declining. Well, sir, we did not do so ‘badly in 1941—’42. We did not do so badly in 1942—’43, despite my hon. friend’s forebodings. It is true that some sources of revenue are going down, but, on the other hand, others are going up. There is a serious decline only in gold mining taxation, because of labour shortage and difficulties in regard to supply. But that will go up again when these factors are removed.

When?

Our Customs revenue is also declining; that is true; but I expect a rise as soon as shipping conditions improve.

When will that be?

I am not so concerned about it. Apart from that, so long as you have as much money in circulation in the country as you have today, revenue is going to continue buoyant. There is reason for caution in regard to our revenue, but there is certainly no reason for the gloom which my Cassandra-like friend over there tried to distil. What, then, remains of my hon. friend as our chief financial critic on the other side? Almost exactly nothing, except one thing, namely, that our expenditure has increased. Yes, our expenditure has increased.

That is the war.

Yes, the war. The hon. member for Fauresmith, I think, told us by how much our expenditure has increased since the days of Union. Of course, it has increased, but the country has not stood still since the days of Union. Our financial capacity has increased tremendously since then. During the last war we spent hardly a penny on the war out of revenue, and now we are meeting roughly half of the very much larger expenditure out of revenue. What does this point really come to? What is the difference between our opponents and ourselves? Of course, we are fundamentally divided on the question of the war. Whenever my hon. friends on the other side criticise the increased expenditure, they are really criticising our participation in the war, and not our expenditure on the war. They are concerned about the fact that we are spending money on the war. As far as the amount of the expenditure on the war is concerned, I recognise that it is very difficult to make comparisons with other countries. You cannot always take into account all the relevant factors, but I am just going to give one figure. It came from a Budget speech delivered by the Minister of Finance in Canada, a week after my own Budget speech. I give it because there are some resemblances between Canada’s position and our own. Canada is far away from the scene of fighting, and Canada has not got a homogeneous population. Canada next year will be spending £95 per head of the population on the war. We in South Africa, leaving out the non-European population—which is quite wrong statistically, because they contribute to our income—but leaving them out, we shall be spending £45 per year per head of the population. I said my hon. friends are not really concerned about the amount of the expenditure on the war; they are concerned about the fact that we are spending money on the war at all. The hon. member for George, speaking presumably for his party, made their position quite clear. At first, he said, they were neutral in spirit. They wanted neither side to win. Now, my hon. friend admits that their attitude has changed. Russia has entered the war; if Germany loses, Russia will win, and then there will be a world revolution and a black revolution in South Africa. Obviously, they now want Germany to win. That inference is inescapable. They have espoused the Nazi cause; they have prayed for a Nazi victory, because they thought it would be to their political advantage. That is their attitude today. My hon. friend over there, on behalf of the Afrikaner Party, has associated himself with that attitude, and while that is so, there can be no common ground between us and them in discussing this war expenditure. So much for the Gladstonian member for George. The hon. the Leader of the Afrikaner Party, will forgive me if I do not deal in detail with his speech. After all, I am only dealing with financial points, and he only made really one incursion into finance. This is what he said: That I would soon discover that I have incurred so much debt that the country’s credit will be gone, that there is no credit left. Well, Sir, our credit is already so bad that this year we are borrowing in South Africa alone not only £45,000,000 to balance the loan account, but £32,000,000 to repay debt, and further we are reducing our Treasury Bill indebtedness, by more than £3,500,000. We can borrow close on £80,000,000 in South Africa. That is how bad our credit is. I should be glad to know whether even in the golden days, when the leader of my hon. friends over there presided over the Treasury, it was possible to do that. I seem to remember that in those piping days of surpluses, Mr. Havenga’s last effort to raise a loan in the Union failed, and he had to go, cap in hand, to London. All he could raise here was a matter of £3,500,000 at substantially higher rates than we pay today. The hon. member for George said that I was a spendthrift, that everybody knows me to be such. The odd thing is that the people who have the money and who know my spendthrift proclivities, are none the less prepared to lend me something like £80,000,000. Only recently, in a period during which this disastrous Budget of mine was presented, we had a loan on the market. We only had it on the market for a fortnight, at 2¼ per cent., and we raised over £13,500,000 in a fortnight, and we could have got more if we wanted to take it. Never in all financial history has there been a case of an acknowledged spendthrift whose financial credit stood so high. And now I want to come to a few points of a general nature. The hon. member for Waterberg (Mr. J. G. Strydom) raised a point which might have appeared to the House to be of some importance, but I think he did so as a result of a misunderstanding. I wish to explain the position, however. He asked why the Loan Estimates had not been laid on the Table before the Budget debate, implying that usually they are. As a matter of fact (I have here an article written by our Clerk in the South African Law Journal) that is not the procedure, and as is pointed out in this article, the usual thing is for the Loan Estimates to be laid on the Table after the House has gone into Committee. In the last fifteen years there have only been three cases where the converse procedure was adopted and in those cases the circumstances were special. I think my hon. friend will agree with me that that point falls away. Then a good deal was said about the growth of our national debt; that indeed was one of the leit-motivs of the debate as far as the Opposition was concerned, and a good deal of exaggeration appeared in the references made to the question of our national debt. It is, however, correct that our debt will stand, at the end of this financial year at £416,000,000 net, and that the increase of our debt, due to the war expenditure, will be not far short of £110,000,000. Those figures are correct. They are considerable figures. Of course they are, Sir. But, after all, the magnitude of these figures is due to the magnitude of the present threat to the freedom of humanity and the freedom of our own South Africa. This is a time when, in Abraham Lincoln’s phrase, we are called upon “to meanly lose or nobly save the last best hope on earth.” My hon. friends opposite are prepared “to meanly lose” their freedom. We wish to play our part in nobly saving it, and we are prepared to make the necessary financial contributions to that end. I have spoken of the magnitude of the issues at stake, and having regard to the magnitude of those issues, these figures are not excessive. They are also not excessive in relation to the carrying capacity of the country. Let us view these figures in their correct perspective. We heard a great deal about the figures of interest payments that have to be made. But do not forget that these figures are gross figures that were quoted, not net figures. On our estimates for next year provision is made for interest payments amounting to something over £14,000,000. We often hear of that figure, but of that amount £6,090,000 comes back to us from the Railways, leaving us with £8,000,00 odd to find. Of that figure again, £3,500,000 approximately comes to us as interest payment from people to whom we have advanced money, so the actual figure is approximately £4,500,000.

Less dividends at Iscor.

I have allowed for that. Again it is true that we have borrowed close on £110,000,000 for the war, but do not forget that every penny of that has been borrowed in South Africa, and every penny of the interest will be paid in South Africa, and at the same time we have also repatriated £80,000,000 to £90,000,000 of overseas debt. Every penny of interest which used to be paid overseas, will now be paid in South Africa; all those interest payments will now fall within the net of our own South African tax gatherer. There is another point, sir, in regard to the debt with which I must deal. The hon. member for Waterberg asked me why I had not in the budget dealt fully with the question of debt repatriation. It is true, I made only a passing reference to that in my budget speech, but I did deal fully with it last year, and I thought the principle was generally endorsed. I do not think it necessary to do so again. Of course, it was quite clear what the hon. member was trying to get at. He wanted to make the point that we have now repatriated from London debts which we did not need to repay until periods of 20 to 30 years hence; and he suggested: Why did we not keep these debts alive in London, so that we might have repudiated them later. I do not think the full significance of his speech was appreciated in the House. This was the hon. gentleman’s argument: We have now repaid loans held in Great Britain, maturing finally in 20 or 30 years time, but after the last war Great Britain defaulted in respect of its debt to the United Nations; in this war Great Britain is piling up a bigger debt to the United States—that, of course, is quite wrong—no doubt Great Britain will default again; why then should we repay our debt and so lose an opportunity of also defaulting? This is an important matter. A leading member of the Opposition—and the hon. member for Pietersburg (Mr. Tom Naudé) supported him—comes along and virtually puts forward a policy of default in regard to our external debt. May I remind the House of what happened some 8 or 10 years ago? Great Britain had defaulted on its interest payments to America. A Union war loan of about £8,000,000 became repayable in London. What did my predecessor do? He promptly repaid it. My predecessor, as I have indicated several times, did many excellent things, but nothing which he did brought greater credit to South Africa than that. He is now held up as the exemplar of financial rectitude by the hon. member for George, and his colleague here advocates exactly the opposite of his policy; and the hon. member for Pietersburg, who supported Mr. Havenga’s action eight or ten years ago, now wants us to act in conflict with that policy. I say again that this is an important matter. Must we take it that the Opposition is accepting this policy of default? I am going to put that question to the hon. member for George and to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. Does the Opposition endorse a policy of default? If they are not prepared to disclaim these statements of the hon. member for Waterberg and the hon. member for Pietersburg, then the House will know, and the country will know, that the repudiation of South Africa’s financial obligations is one of the planks of the Nationalist Party. The hon. member for Pietersburg asked me what the reason for this debt repatriation was. I have stated it often before, but I will repeat it in a few words. It is in the interests of the United Kingdom to buy gold from us. It is in our interests to sell gold, which as a result of reduced importation and other factors, is surplus to our requirements in the financing of our trade. At the same time, it is worth our while, as a result of selling that gold, to repatriate overseas debt, and so to repay interest to our own people instead of paying interest overseas. Moreover, the policy of raising funds locally, so that we can cancel that repatriated debt, is one of the most important planks in our anti-inflation programme. And that, sir, now brings me to a point raised by the hon. member for Fauresmith; indeed, I should say the two points which he raised. I am sorry my hon. friend is not here at the moment, but I shall deal with those points none the less. He touched on two important matters as matters with which I had not dealt in the Budget speech. The first was the question of inflation. May I remind the House, sir, that I dealt pretty fully with the question of inflation in my previous Budget speech? I did not think it was necessary to repeat what I said a year ago. I said then that the danger of inflation was more a potential one than one that had been actualised. May I just say here in passing, that a rise in prices is, after all, not necessarily an index of inflation? It may be caused by other factors; but I said then that the rise in the price level at that time was 13.5 per cent., a figure which I said was remarkably low, especially when we considered that the wholesale price index of goods imported to the Union had gone up by no less than, 40 per cent. Substantially, that is still the position. During last year two new factors came into operation, which had a big effect on the price level. The one was the disastrous drought. The other was the closing to us of supplies from the East, which, again, affected our prices. At the same time, the increase in the wholesale price index, has gone up from 40 per cent. to 60 per cent. But, despite these factors, the cost of living index in the last year went up by less, not only relatively, but absolutely, than it had gone up in the previous year. Between January, 1941, and January, 1942, it went up from 1,050 to 1,135 i.e., by 85 points. Between January, 1942, and 1943, it went up from 1,135 to 1,211, a rise of 76 points. The hon. member for Fauresmith suggested that the situation had got out of hand. I do not think the facts bear him out. And I may say, in this connection, that we do owe a very deep debt of gratitude to the work that has been done by the Price Controller, and also by the Food Controller, in dealing with these matters. The hon. member further suggested that if we are to control inflation we must either reduce expenditure or increase taxation. Of course, he wants us to reduce expenditure by getting out of the war. We are not prepared to reduce expenditure in that way, but we are increasing taxation. That is one of the things we are doing in this Budget, and one of the reasons for doing it is to fight inflation. But, after all, the position is not quite as simple as my hon. friend suggested. It is not just a matter of decreasing expenditure or increasing taxation. Increasing taxation is not the only weapon in our armoury if we cannot reduce expenditure. The inflation problem can be stated simply as one which is caused by the pressure of the increasing purchasing power on a decreasing volume of goods. That means that you can approach it from two points of view. You can either deal with it from the side of the goods by rationing, by price control, or by stimulating production. All of which we are doing—rationing not to any great extent. On the other hand, you can deal with the purchasing power aspect not only by increased taxation, but you can also reduce the purchasing power by taking some of it off the market by way of borrowing, by way of borrowing in excess of requirements, and by cancelling external debt obligations—and that also we have been doing with considerable success. In connection with this matter, the hon. member for Fauresmith asked for the national income figure for 1942—’43. Last year we had available the calculations made by Prof. Frankel. Unfortunately these did not become available as early this year as last year. I only got them yesterday, but I shall supply my hon. friend with a copy. I hope my hon. friend will not draw incorrect inferences from these figures, as he did in his speech on the Budget. Last year the figures showed a slight decrease in the net national income recalculated on the 1938 price index. The figure this year shows a further slight decrease. The hon. member regarded this as proof that the inflationary process has got out of hand. It is nothing of the kind. It is true that rising prices do tend to reduce the net national income, but that in itself would not have brought the 1940—’41 figure below the basic figure. What did do that is the increase in war expenditure. It is the result of the increased war expenditure, but it is not the result of inflation. I now come to another complaint of the hon. member for Fauresmith, and that is that I did not refer to the transience of our present prosperity, and that I did not say anything about the difficulties of the post-war position. Well, I dealt with those matters at great length last year, and I must assume that hon. members will remember things which I have said in my Budget speeches, I do not think I am called upon to repeat these statements every year. I did, however, this year refer to the destruction by war of consumers’ goods, and the dangers therein implied. I am not oblivious to the difficulties which will have to be faced by us after the war. I have not hesitated to tell the public time and again what the position is, but I do not believe in painting an unnecessarily gloomy picture. I am not going to be a dismal Jimmy, like my hon. friend over there. Of course, the post-war position is going to be difficult, but, relatively speaking, it will not be as difficult as it was after the last war, and I say that for two reasons. The one is that the country’s resources generally are far greater than they were 25 years ago. The development of wartime industries is an important factor in that regard, and if we pursue a wise policy in transferring those war time industries on to a peace time basis, it will be a very important factor indeed. The other reason why I say that our post-war difficulties will not be so serious as after the last war is that our technique of control is far better developed than it was 25 years ago. We shall have to continue much of that control into the post war period. Let me give one instance of the effect of our control measures. During the last war our interest rates went up sky high. From 3 per cent. they went up to 6 per cent. This time, however, they have gone down and we are paying 3 per cent. instead of 3¾ per cent. We have many weapons at our disposal now to deal with the position which had not been thought of 25 years ago. Of course, false optimism in relation to the post-war position is a mistake, but false pessimism is no less of a mistake. Now, I want to refer to another matter, and that is the budget in relation to the natives. The hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein) called my budget a coffee coloured budget for two reasons, the one because we are giving the Native Trust the remaining one-sixth of the native tax, and the other because we do not propose to apply the Railway passengers’ tax to third class passengers, who, after all, are the poorest element in the community, very few of whom ever travel over long distances—they only travel short distances except when they have to. I would have expected a budget described in that way to have been received with enthusiastic approval by my hon. friends over there. As a matter of fact I did not even get a word of thanks from them for the increased amount available for native education. I did not expect it, and frankly I don’t think it was necessary, but it might perhaps have been appropriate if they had shown some signs of gratitude in the form of a lively sense of favours to come. The hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno) however, apparently thought it better to ask for those favours less delicately but more directly. He asked me to say what we are going to do about native education in 1944—’45. Well, it is bad enough to have to deal with a budget for 1943—’44 and I am really not prepared to start discussing the budget for 1944—’45. I think it is enough for me to say, as my colleague over here said, that this whole question of the financing of native education will receive full and serious consideration during the recess. But there is one statement by the hon. member for Cape Western which I cannot allow to pass without qualification. He said that since 1937 every step in the improvement of native education had been paid for by the natives themselves out of taxation on themselves. Well, that is only half the truth. Each one of these steps has not been paid for by increased taxation on the natives, but it has been paid for at the cost of decreased revenue to the Treasury and therefore of an increased burden on the community as a whole. Let us be fair in stating this position. The hon. member for Cape Western further complained that there is no provision on the Loan Estimates for the purchase of land. He has not seen the Loan Estimates, nor have I. But if it should be so, that there is no such provision made, I may point out that the Native Trust has for these purposes £1,000,000 on deposit with the Public Debt Commissioners, and surely that amount will have to be used first before other money is voted. The hon. member’s difficulties in regard to the question whether that money should be used now—well, that is a matter between him and the Minister of Native Affairs. Now, let me say a word to the hon. member for Boshof. The hon. member complained of the additional £230,000 for native education. According to the 1942 figures we spent on European education £9,500,000. I have to go back to the 1936 Census figures of population in regard to natives because we have not got figures for 1941. I take the European population therefore at 2,000,000. That means that we spent on European education £4 15s. per head of the whole European population. In that same year we spent on native education £1,400,000. That is on a population of 6,600,000. We spent on native education in that year 4s. 2d. per head of the whole native population. Let it not be forgotten that my friends opposite endorsed and acclaim the policy of trusteeship. Surely education is one of the essential things which a trustee has to give to his ward. I notice that the Leader of the Opposition listened very carefully to the hon. member for Boshof. In the light of what I have just said about the principle of trusteeship, which he accepts, in the light also of those comparative figures, which I have given, I want him to tell us at the first possible opportunity—does he on behalf of his Party also protest against this additional amount for native education. Does he, like the hon. member for Boshof, object to the school feeding scheme being applied to native and coloured schools because it will induce native and coloured children to go to school and so attract them from their natural role as cheap and hungry labourers for farmers.

Why hungry?

You know that he never said that?

That is what the hon. member for Boshof said. I am glad my hon. friends repudiate it now. What a commentary.

Did he use the word “hungry” labourers?

That was the implication—the native children on the farms are so badly fed that the prospect of a free meal will induce them to go to school when otherwise they would not, and it is in the interest of the farmers to keep them uneducated and underfed to provide cheap labour. That is the implication. I cannot believe that the hon. member for Piquetberg will accept that. It will be a grave reflection on himself and his Party. It will be a reflection also on our farmers in general whose attitude I am sure it does not represent. That is not the attitude of the farmer to the natives. There is one other question of a general nature with which I can deal before we adjourn for lunch. The hon. member for South Peninsula (Mr. Sonnenberg) in a most interesting and thoughtful speech raised the question of the price of our gold. He drew attention to the fact that we are paying high prices for goods in South America and he said: “Why should we not ask more for our gold?” At the risk of undue simplification, I shall try and answer that question in one sentence. We are buying goods in South America in a sellers’ market, we are selling gold to the United States, the ultimate purchaser, in a buyer’s market. I think the hon. member appreciates the significance of that. I now come to some points of greater detail. In regard to our proposals for increased expenditure very little need be said. We had one or two complaints from over the way about the £ for £ contribution to the Governor General’s Fund, and that in spite of the words of comfort which the Leader of the Opposition spoke to our soldiers in September last. We also had one or two murmurs that more had not been done for the Oudstryders. That did not come very appropriately from hon. members opposite who today plead so very fervently for the Oudstryders—when they are in opposition they plead very fervently, but when they are in office they do nothing. And they did nothing in spite of the favourable financial position which prevailed in those days. The school feeding scheme attracted a great deal of attention. It represents a great step forward. My hon. friends over there feel that they would like to vote against it but they do not dare to. So they are doing their best to crab it. They tell us that the people they represent do not want these meals for school children—they are too independent for that.

Exactly, give them better wages.

Let hon. members vote against the scheme if they dare. They won’t do that, but they do go out of their way to try and crab it.

When the House suspended its business, I was speaking about our proposals in regard to the school feeding scheme, and I referred to the fact that hon. members opposite had obviously tried to crab that scheme. They have suggested that it will cost us an amount far in excess of our resources. To that end they have either overstated the number of school children to be fed—the hon. member for Gordonia (Mr. J. H. Conradie) gave the figure of 2,000,000, which is about twice the correct figure, or …

You will very soon get 2,000,000.

We will no doubt in time have 2,000,000; but we are dealing with the present position now—or they have overstated the cost of the scheme. The hon. member for Gordonia talked in terms of 5d. a day; the hon. member for Victoria West (Mr. D. T. du P. Viljoen) in terms of 6d. a day, and the hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein), in trying to exaggerate as usual, put the figure at 1s. a day. After all, sir, we have got some figures to work on. There are Provincial schemes which have been in operation for some time, and we, in regard to our estimates of costs, know what we are talking about. Those hon. gentlemen do not. For the rest, in this Budget debate, we have had the experience which one always has in a Budget, a great deal of extra expenditure has been asked for, sometimes by the same people who asked us for less taxation. Several hon. members followed the lead of the hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Blackwell), in expressing regret at our failure to provide for increased old age pensions. I gather that they must, by virtue of the fact that when they were using the word “increase”, they referred only to European and coloured old age pensions. The hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno), on the other hand, expressed his regret that we had not done anything in the matter of old age pensions for natives in this Budget. I take it the hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Blackwell) will admit that we can hardly do more than we are doing now for the Europeans and coloureds than we are doing now, without taking some account of the native population. And by the same token I am sure the hon. member for Cape Western would admit that he is not only anxious that we should do something for the natives, but he would like us to do more than we are doing now for the Europeans and coloureds. So say all of us. I have said so in my Budget speech. But if you touch this question of old age pensions at one point you start a process which raises a number of questions, and you could not contemplate expenditure of anything less than £3,000,000 or £3,000,000 a year. I repeat what I said in my Budget speech. The order of magnitude of this particular matter is not such that you can detach it from social security schemes generally. Social security schemes must inevitably, as I also said, involve considerable modifications in our fiscal and social structure. We have not yet got the full position before us in regard to social security. We hope to have it before very long. In the meantime, however much we may regret it, we have had to leave this matter alone for the present. The hon. member for Kensington raised another point involving expenditure. He welcomed what we proposed to do in regard to the Governor General’s Fund. He asked us to do the same in respect of the Prisoners’ of War Fund of the Red Cross, and he implied that the British Government is paying the British Red Cross for food at the rate of £40,000 a month.

Forty thousand pounds a year.

No, the hon. member said a month. He said that the British Government paid the British Red Cross £40,000 a month in respect of food parcels. As far as I have been able to ascertain, that is not the case. The British Government is not paying the Red Cross at all for food supplied to prisoners of war. It is paying the Red Cross £40,000, not per month, but per annum, for general expenses. I think I should say that I regard the raising of this matter by the hon. member as premature in the present circumstances. Then the hon. member for Cape, Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger) raised the question of food subsidisation. She has asked what we are doing about the recommendation of the Planning Council, that we should set up a special committee to go into food subsidisation plans. That recommendation is still being considered by the Department which is primarily concerned therewith, the Department of Public Health. At the same time, however, the Planning Council itself has not allowed this matter to lapse as far as its activities are concerned. In the meantime, as Minister of Finance, I can only say that we cannot be expected to go forward with a full scheme of food subsidisation at this stage until a further stage has been reached in the investigation. But I would point out to the House that as far as the Treasury is concerned, we have already indicated that we are not opposed to the principle of food subsidisation. We did that when we accepted the subsidy in relation to the price of bread. I come now to our taxation proposals. There I shall not attempt to reply in detail to the criticisms to which I have had to listen. It would take me too long to do so, but quite apart from that we shall have a further debate on taxation proposals, and then we shall probably have to listen to the same points again. I therefore want to confine myself, Sir, to a relatively small number of points. First of all, let me deal with a general criticism. We have had a general criticism levelled at our present taxation system, on the two-fold grounds of inequity and complexity. On the question of inequity I shall not dwell, partly because I dealt with it in a previous debate during this Session, but partly because these complaints of inequity were not put forward in such detail that I can reply to them. The hon. member for George did make a detailed complaint, and with that I have dealt. The hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. Bell) also made a fairly detailed complaint, but the limited time at his disposal prevented him from enlarging upon it to such an extent that I am able to deal with it. The other side of the complaint, is the complaint in regard to complexity. Some hon. members, like the hon. member for Pretoria, City (Mr. Pocock), complained of the complexities of our income tax act. I would like the hon. member or any other hon. member to produce an income tax act which is less complex than is our income tax act in South Africa. As I have explained before, when you have to fit your taxation system to the complexities of any modern economic structure, you cannot at the same time be simple and equitable. As soon as you try to be equitable, the complexities start mounting up. The other aspect of that complaint of complexity is connected rather with the suggestion of multiplicity; we have too many taxes. Well, Sir, I do not think there is really any point in talking as the hon. member for Kensington did, of the normal tax, the super-tax and surcharge as if they were three taxes. They are only one tax, just as the flat rate tax and the formula tax on the gold mines are not two taxes but one tax. There is no point in talking of the Provincial Poll Tax and the Provincial Income Tax as if they were separate taxes. It is one tax. I do not think therefore that we get any further by arguing in this way. I do not see how in the circumstances of South Africa any substantial simplification in the number of our taxes can be effected today. Then I come to the suggestions made and the questions asked as to possible taxes not on our list. Needless to say, I have gratefully noted the willingness of hon. members to submit to further taxation, and I shall bear in mind their desire in subsequent budgets. I have been asked: “Why not a tax on cigars?” It is argued that the rich man smokes cigars, the poor man smokes cigarettes. The answer is simply this. Today the importation of cigars has ceased to all intents and purposes. A tax on cigars therefore will merely mean a tax on the local product and in fact all that we have in the way of local products in cigars—and that is not the case with regard to spirits—are a few factories producing a low-priced article for which there is little demand. At the present moment, all we collect by way of taxes on local cigars, is £300 a month. It is not worth it. All you would do by a tax on cigars would be to put the local industry out of business. Then I have been asked: “Why not a tax on wine?” In this Budget we are taxing spirits to the extent of £1,400,000. It is true that that is a tax on the consumer, but we could hardly have used the same industry as the instrument for a tax on wine as well. I have also been asked: “Why not a tax on racing and entertainments?” Those are Provincial sources of taxes. It is perfectly true that Parliament can tax these things over and above the Provincial taxes, but it would not be wise to do so, and I do not think it would be fair at the present time. Let us not forget that the Provinces today are being hard hit in respect of one of their main sources of revenue—I mean motoring—and the interference of the Union Government in the Provincial field of taxation would be bitterly and rightly resented. I have been asked: “Why not increase death duties?” Last year death duties were increased, and the full effect is not yet showing itself. That, however, is one of the points that might be borne in mind for the future. And then I have been asked why not have a sales tax on land or an increased transfer duty? Quite true. We could get a fair amount of money that way, but do let us remember that a tax of that kind would be a tax on every transfer of land. At a time when the price of land is already inflated, it would mean that the unfortunate person, who, for instance, is compelled to buy a house at an inflated price, would be forced to pay even more through his having to pay the State so much more in transfer duty. We have today our property tax, but that applies only to a small portion of transactions. The increased transfer duty would apply to all transactions. The proposal, of course, for an increased transfer duty is usually put forward as an alternative to the fixed property tax, but for reasons very well given by the hon. member for Pretoria East, there can be no idea of our abandoning the fixed property tax. We are not prepared to hasten to the assistance of land speculators and intending land speculators by abandoning that tax. It has been said that there is a good deal of evasion of the tax. Well, in the circumstances so far as I can see, that tax can only be evaded as a result of collusion between the purchaser and the seller, which means that a price lower than that paid is recorded. We are told that it is done by introducing into the transaction some other asset, such as furniture. Now, what does that mean? To evade the tax, the seller X and the purchaser Y have to have recorded a selling price lower than the purchaser pays. Let us say £500 lower. But that selling price is now recorded against Y, and the time will come when Y sells the property in turn, and he will have to pay tax on that extra £500. He may make no profit at all.

If you still have the duty.

He will have to pay that.

They are gambling on the duty being abolished.

Yes, I know that. It is quite possible that this tax will in time be repealed. But if it is, then just as in the case of the old increment duty in the Transvaal, it will still be made payable, if I have anything to do with it, in respect of sales of property covered by transactions which took place during the period of the validity of the tax. The duty may be repealed but I don’t think the liability will be repealed. Now, I want to deal with another matter in regard to our income tax, normal tax, super tax and surcharge. The hon. member for Kensington and the hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. Bell), while not objecting strongly to the surcharge—I accept their statement that they do not mind the extra amount having to be paid—feel that there is a more excellent way of dealing with the matter and that is to revise our whole system of normal and super tax. It is perfectly true that our income tax even with the surchage is a light tax. I am comparing these taxes with taxes in other countries. As I have pointed out it is not the man at the top who gets away relatively lightly; he pays a pretty big proportion of what is paid in the highest taxed countries. Our system is a light system in two respects. We start much higher up in liability for income tax than most other countries, and the other point is that the tax on medium incomes is a great deal lower than in most other countries. I have already given reasons for not wanting, if we can avoid it to lower the starting point of our income tax. I believe the cost of doing so would be disproportionate to the amount of income that would be collected, and the staff difficulties would be tremendous. I should like to avoid that as long as possible and that is why we introduced a personal and savings levy. At the same time, as far as the moderate income man is concerned, I would be loath to revise the whole system of income taxation at this stage. It was only introduced two years ago. I still believe that that system is a fair and reasonable one for normal times, and that being so, for the present at least, the proper way of dealing with increased revenue from income taxation is by way of surcharge as proposed. Now, let me say something about the taxation of the gold mines. Of course, we heard the usual speeches from hon. members opposite criticising us for letting off the gold mines too lightly. We have heard these speeches before and we shall probably hear them again.

Yes, you will continue to hear them.

I am sure we shall. However heavy the taxation on the gold mines is we shall always hear these speeches. I am reminded of a statement appearing in a small town newspaper announcing the holding of the annual meeting of the local benevolent society, and after stating the time and place of the meeting the notice went on to say: “The usual speeches will be made by the usual speakers.” One of the accented criteria of mediocrity for hon. members on the Opposition benches is the capacity to make a speech about Hoggenheimer and the Government’s subservience to Hoggenheimer. One member after another opposite from the hon. member for Gezina upwards told us about the boom on the Stock Exchange caused by the Budget. They said it so often, they said it so loudly, that they really believed that the prices of the Stock Exchange—the prices of gold shares—had gone sky high. And what actually happened? I have the index figures here. I take producers first. On February 12th the index figure for producers was 35s., and on February 19th 35s. 2d. Prices wept up by 2d. in the pre-budget week. On February 26 th—that is in the budget week—prices went up to 35s. 7d.—and by March 3rd they were back to 35s. 4d. Now, take developers. In the pre-budget week developers went up from 56s. 4d. to 57s. 4d. In the pre-budget week the increase was 1s. And in the Budget week the increase was 1s. 1d. to 58s. 5d. and next week it was back to 57s. 4d. So it was really a tremendous boom. Happy days were there again. The hon. member for Prieska (Mr. Geldenhuys) was at great pains to tell us with a great wealth of figures how well the gold mines are doing, and how easily they can stand more taxation. He quoted the sharemarket figures for certain mines. But to draw a reliable inference one has to look at the mines as a whole. And I have gone to the official bulletin of statistics, and what I find is this. In December, 1941, the index figures for 29 representative mines as put forward in the Union Bulletin of Statistics was 2,533. In December 1942 there was a decrease of 15 per cent.—down to 2,169. That shows how well the gold mines are doing. I am simply going to give these further figures to sum up the situation. In 1940 the working profits of the gold mines amounted to £47,500,000. Their dividends amounted to £20,360,000. In 1941 their working profits had fallen to £45,845,000 and their dividends had fallen to £18,650,000. In 1942 the working profits fell still further to £43,655,000, and their dividends fell to £16,890,000. And the very fact that we are expecting £2,000,000 less from the gold mines on the present basis of taxation is proof that there will be again a substantial fall in their working profits. These figures speak more eloquently than words. I do not think any reasonable person in the light of these figures could take it amiss that we have not imposed a heavier additional tax on the mines. Of the other taxation measures I propose to deal with only one. I am not going to talk about the taxation on liquor or tobacco. As I have said before these are voluntary taxes—they are not paid by the producer but by the consumer. But I must dwell just for a few minutes on the Railway passengers’ tax. That has been specially singled out in the Opposition amendment. It is declared to be in conflict with the Act of Union. Well, my hon. friends need not be afraid of that. If that tax is enacted by Parliament it will be valid. The hon. member for Cape Town, Castle (Mr. Alexander) asked me if the Government law advisers had been consulted before this proposal was announced. They have been consulted, and my hon. friend can put his mind at ease. The hon. member for Fauresmith made the point that the Act of Union says that the Railways must be run on business principles. I have yet to learn that Mr. Schlesinger’s bioscopes are not run on business principles, because the Provinces collect entertainment tax from them. This is not a tax on the Railways, it is a tax on Railway passengers. It is no more a tax on the Railways than those contributions referred to by the hon. member for Pretoria, Central (Mr. Pocock) those contributions in the way of rebates in respect of rates on agricultural products are contributions to the Railways. If the one is a tax then the other is a contribution, and the contribution will be higher than the tax. Insofar as the merits of the tax are concerned the position was summed up very well by the hon. member for Caledon (Mr. H. C. de Wet). In normal times, he said, he would disapprove of this tax. So would I in normal times, but these are not normal times. It is essential for the Railways to reduce passenger traffic. All appeals to the public to travel less have passed unheeded, and in such circumstances such a tax is natural and proper, and may I say emphatically that this proposal has been submitted with the fullest approval of the Minister of Railways with regards the levying of this tax as a step in furtherance of the policy which he has pursued.

He has no option.

There were two points made in particular in regard to this tax. The one was that it will bear heavily on the family man. The hon. member for Kensington made that point, and the hon. member for Roodepoort (Mr. Allen) supported it. Let me tell these hon. members that we do not intend to make this tax payable in respect of any children under the age of 16. It will also not be payable by students and scholars who are travelling on concessions granted to them as such. I think that they will regard that as substantially meeting that point.

What about civil servants?

Then we were told that it was a tax on the Interior. I don’t know if we must assume that it is only people from the Interior who travel to the Coast.

Mainly.

As far as business is concerned there is just as much reason for people to travel from the Coast to the Interior as from the Interior to the Coast, but the difference comes in where holidays are concerned, and if my hon. friends want to tell me that this is a differential tax on the hoiday makers of the Interior then I do not go far in disputing that. But I do not attach much importance to that argument, and I say that it ill becomes those who preach austerity or who applaud speeches in support of austerity now to condemn a tax which imposes a burden on people wanting to go on holidays. To do so shows a lack of logic or intellectual honesty. For my part I attach a great deal of importance to this tax. It has a psychological as well as an economic significance. It is an indication to the people that we cannot go on living as usual—we must be prepared to forego some of the things which we regarded even as essential in peacetime. And I would like to suggest to these people who complain about interference with their holidays as a result of this tax to put this question to themselves: How many days, not how many weeks holiday, has the head of the Government had since the beginning of this war?

He is having continuous holiday.

And that is the end of the story. I have taken a long time in coming to it, and for that I ask the pardon of the House. But my Budget raised a number of controversial issues and the debate has touched on a wider range of financial subjects than usual. I have sought to deal as faithfully as I could with the contributions made to this debate. One thing I think I can say emerges from it all, and that is that the principles on which this debate has been based are sound; and that we have dealt fairly and reasonably with the Budgetary problems with which we were faced. I claim for this Budget that it was a fearless and a just Budget. Electoral considerations did not stand in our way in placing large additional burdens on the people in this country, and no one has been able to show that the burden has been otherwise than fairly distributed. And so at the end of this debate I have less doubt than ever that the people of South Africa in general will appreciate and endorse the spirit in which we have achieved our task.

After the not unexpectedly great speech of my colleague, the Minister of Finance, I am in the fortunate position of not having to delay this House very long. As usual, there has been very little said about the Railway Budget. In the course of my Budget speech this year, I raised two major issues, one dealing with the future financial policy of the Administration and the other dealing with the question of staff promotion. Not a single word has been said by any speaker on any of these issues.

That’s hard.

On the contrary, I think this can be taken as a most complete and unqualified endorsement of the policies I outlined, and as a complete vote of confidence in the Railway Administration.

You don’t know what is coming.

Silence in this case undoubtedly connotes consent, and I think the Minister and the General Manager have every reason to be satisfied with the outcome of this debate. The hon. member for Bloemfontein, District (Mr. Haywood) raised one or two points which I should like to deal with. He thought that we should concentrate on making the position of the railways safe for the future, rather than on diverting our energies towards military and war work. May I say that I can conceive of no way of making the future of the railways safer than by putting all the resources of the railways into war work?

You know, of course, that that is nonsense.

It is only by adopting that policy that the railways and the country will be made safe for the future. But even taking the hon. member in the narrower sense, might I point out that any work which is now held over as a result of our doing war work is being put into a reservoir of work and employment which will be available after the war is over, which will be there to help the railways to tide over that period of dislocation and change between war time and peace conditions, so whether we look at it in the largest way or in the narrowest way, what we are doing is the right policy. The hon. member was rather gloomy about the future; and, of course, so far as the hon. member is concerned, I can understand it. He has every reason to be gloomy about his future. I am not gloomy about the future. While I recognise that there will be a period of adjustment, I see no reason whatever, provided the country, as it undoubtedly will do, holds on to the present Government, that we should be in any fear as to any great depression or dislocation.

You are indulging in wishful thinking.

Any little depression or dislocation which we may have to face we can face with equanimity, with such resources and reserves as we now have. The suggestion that I should raise the Rates Equalisation Fund to £20,000,000 is, I suggest, a gesture of panic. I don’t think there is any need even to consider that, and, as I outlined in my previous remarks, we do not propose raising that fund beyond the limit of £10,000,000. One of the most interesting arguments of the hon. member for Bloemfontein, District, was that I must not carry any traffic for the Defence Department, because I said I was carrying that traffic at a loss, and as we were compelled to apply business principles to the railways the hon. member said that we should concentrate on the traffic that pays. I don’t know whether I heard the hon. member correctly. I hope I may remind the hon. member, the next time he asks for additional facilities for the transport of agricultural products, of what he has just told us. I hope that when we are asked again to carry agricultural products—which we carry at a heavy loss—to say nothing of livestock—that I may remind the hon. member of his plea that we should only concentrate on profitable traffic. I think an argument like that would shake up hon. members over there very badly. But I shall bear this argument in mind for future reference. The hon. member thought we should make more locomotives and trucks in our workshops. Let me say this—if we are not making all the trucks and locomotives which we should be making, it is not due to the fact that we have not the capacity to make them, but it is due to the fact that we have not got the steel. But I think the position is now easing off. Owing to the slackening off of the need for certain war supplies, the chairman of Iscor tells me that he may have some steel to spare and I am in negotiation with him to see if we can make a plan to build 500 trucks for the Railways with steel supplied in South Africa. I can assure the hon. member in conclusion—so far as he is concerned—that we intend in spite of the criticisms which we have received to maintain our activities in respect of war work to the limit of our ability and right to the end. And even if our coaches and trucks begin to suffer in appearance, I can assure hon. members that what is essential in respect of upkeep and safety will not be overlooked and will not suffer because of war work. On the subject of the employment of natives, it is not my intention to increase these at the expense of white workers. I stand 100 per cent. behind the policy of white labour. It is true that at present there is a small increase, but that is due to the fact that we cannot get Europeans and cannot mix Europeans with natives. But I want to tell the hon. member that every month I have statements submitted to me personally showing what the figures are, showing the increases or decreases, and I can assure him that I shall keep a weather eye open. The hon. member objected to my making arrangements whereby our non-European staff would have proper representation in regard to its needs and conditions. He pointed out that this has never been done before, and he assured me that he and his side would oppose me in doing this. The hon. member wants to go back to the policy of the Voortrekkers. I want to tell him, however, that the country is going ahead and the question of staff representation is looked upon from a different point of view than it was looked upon in the days of the Voortrekkers. We don’t look upon these things in the way our grandfathers did. It is right that I should employ natives who are big users of the Railways. And if it is right that I should employ natives, then it is equally right that I should do all I can to ensure that their conditions are fair and reasonable.

What about Spoorbond?

I have dealt at length with Spoorbond. It was not I who killed Spoorbond, it was Spoorbond which committed suicide. With regard to the expenditure on our Harbour works the great bulk of that expenditure is merely finishing off the work which was begun by my predecessor. The hon. member for Gezina (Mr. Pirow) was responsible for certain of these arrangements—for the building of the basin at Cape Town, and for starting the T Jetties at Durban. I am only completing that work now. Surely hon. members do not wish me to leave the work unfinished. Any work we are carrying on is necessary for peace time conditions. As I said in my opening remarks on the Budget speech, although we are doing a good deal of work on our harbours, although we are extending the facilities at those harbours, I am quite satisfied that we are not anticipating the needs of our country by more than a very few years. I should like to say a few words about the remarks that the hon. member for Roodepoort (Mr. Allen) made. I will not deal, of course, with the question of the railway passenger tax, as the Minister of Finance has already replied on that point. But I regret I cannot agree with his suggestion as to the alternative way in which this tax might have been met. After stating his belief that the passenger tax was against the spirit of the Act of Union, he calmly suggests that I should meet it, that I should meet the estimated receipts of that tax by a direct contribution from railway revenue.

A rebate.

Call it what you like; the fact remains that it is a direct contribution from railway revenue. I will deal with the question of rebate in a moment. He suggests that instead of allowing the Minister of Finance to tax my passengers, I should allow him to tax me. That is not only against the spirit of the Act; it would be a breach of the Act itself I am a little bit at a loss to understand how the hon. member can justify such a suggestion. The idea that we will not actually pay the tax because of the rebate allowed on Defence Force traffic, is equally obscure to me. The Defence Department get a rebate, and I gather that the hon. member asked why, if we give the Defence Department a rebate, we don’t give it to the contractors to the Defence Department? Well, we do not usually extend rebates to friends of people to whom we give rebates. If the Defence Department get a rebate on railage, and then allow the contractor to rail things to them, it is a very unbusinesslike proceeding, which I would do nothing to support. Obviously, the Defence Department should take deliveries of any goods at the works, because they pay the lower rates, rather than allow other people to pay railage on a higher rate. What the hon. member suggests would involve going back through all the accounts of the contractors, an operation that will take many months, and one which would be practically impossible to achieve. Otherwise it would mean a lump sum payment of an amount which it is alleged we are morally due to pay to the Treasury. Then, I say, you are getting right back to what is nothing more or less than a Treasury tax on railway revenue, to which I will not be a party. The hon. member complained about the cost to the railways of collecting this tax. That also rather astonished me, because it is quite obvious that the cost of collecting a tax from the passengers will not be the total cost of the tax. On the one hand, he says I should pay the whole of the tax to the Treasury, and then he complains about my spending money on collecting it. I don’t think the hon. member is very logical there. Then, in regard to the hon. member for Greyville (Mr. Derbyshire), he suggested that we should employ more stewardesses, particularly on the longdistance run, I would like to explain that this is not quite so simple as it looks. When we employ stewardesses, special arrangements as to their hostels and other things have to be made, and there are practical difficulties also about mixing male and female stewards on the same train. I would like to tell the House that the experiment we have carried out in the employment of stewardesses has been extraordinarily successful, and I can assure the House that in the fullness of time that method of catering for the needs of our passengers will probably be extended on the railways. With regard to the artisans, about whom the hon. member spoke, I am meeting the Artisans’ Association in the course of the next few days, and the matters which he raised will no doubt be dealt with between myself and the members of that association. Now, Mr. Speaker, I think that completes the whole survey of the Railway Budget. As I have said, the fact that so little has been said, was very encouraging, and I can only assure this House, in conclusion, that the Administration will continue in its humble role of offering willing and efficient service to the State.

Question put: That all the words after “That”, proposed to be omitted, stand part of the motion.

Upon which the House divided:

Ayes—74:

Abbott, C. B. M.

Abrahamson, H.

Acutt, F. H.

Alexander, M.

Allen, F. B.

Ballinger, V. M. L.

Bawden, W.

Bell, R. E.

Blackwell, L.

Botha, H. N. W.

Bowen, R. W.

Bowker, T. B.

Burnside, D. C.

Carinus, J. G.

Christopher, R. M.

Clark, C. W.

Collins, W. R.

Conradie, J. M.

Davis, A.

Deane, W. A.

Derbyshire, J. G.

De Wet, H. C.

Du Toit, R. J.

Egeland, L.

Fourie, J. P.

Friedlander, A.

Gilson, L. D.

Gluckman, H.

Goldberg, A.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Henderson, R. H.

Hirsch, J. G.

Hofmeyr, J. H

Hooper, E. C.

Howarth, F. T.

Johnson, H. A.

Kentridge, M.

Klopper, L. B.

Lawrence, H. G.

Lindhorst, B. H.

Long, B. K.

Madeley, W. B.

Marwick, J. S.

Moll, A. M.

Molteno, D. B.

Mushet, J. W.

Neate, C.

Pocock, P. V.

Quinlan, S. C.

Raubenheimer, L. J.

Reitz, L. A. B.

Robertson, R. B.

Rood, K.

Smuts, J. C.

Solomon, B.

Solomon. V. G. F.

Sonnenberg, M.

Stallard, C. F.

Steyn, C. F.

Steytler, L. J.

Sturrock, F. C.

Tothill, H. A.

Trollip, A. E.

Van Coller, C. M.

Van den Berg, M. J.

Van der Byl, P. V. G.

Van der Merwe, H.

Wallach, I.

Wares, A. P. J.

Warren, C. M.

Waterson, S. F.

Tellers: J. W. Higgerty and W. B. Humphreys.

Noes—45:

Badenhorst, C. C. E.

Bekker, G.

Bekker, S.

Bezuidenhout, J. T.

Bosman, P. J.

Bremer, K.

Conradie, J. H.

Conroy, E. A.

De Bruyn, D. A. S.

Dönges, T. E.

Du Plessis, P. J.

Fouche, J. J.

Grobler, J. H.

Haywood, J. J.

Hugo, P. J.

Le Roux, P. M. K.

Le Roux, S. P.

Liebenberg, J. L. V.

Loubser, S. M.

Louw, E. H.

Malan, D. F.

Olivier, P. J.

Oost, H.

Pieterse, P. W. A.

Pirow, O.

Schoeman, B. J.

Schoeman, N. J.

Steyn, G. P.

Strauss, E. R.

Strydom, G. H. F.

Strydom, J. G.

Swart, A. P.

Van den Berg, C. J.

Van Zyl, J. J. M.

Verster, J. D. H.

Viljoen, D. T. du P.

Viljoen, J. H.

Warren, S. E.

Wentzel, J. J.

Werth, A. J.

Wilkens, Jacob.

Wilkens, Jan.

Wolfaard, G. v. Z.

Tellers: J. F. T. Naudé and P. O. Sauer.

The Committee has to consider the Estimates of Expenditure to be defrayed from the Consolidated Revenue Fund and the Estimates of Expenditure to be defrayed from Railway and Harbour Funds, during the year ending 31st March, 1944.

I just want to raise a matter here, which affects both the House of Assembly and the Senate, but I think I can raise it here, and that is that I again want to draw the attention of the Government to the poor state of affairs in connection with our Parliamentary library. When I say “a poor state of affairs,” I mean that there is a really great danger of fire in our library, where there is a particularly valuable collection of books. The library building was built in the old days when the necessary precautions were not taken against fire, and in my opinion we really have a dangerous state of affairs in the library. I may point out that during the past few years fires occurred in libraries. A few years ago a library on the Witwatersrand burned down, and the library which was built thereafter, in view of the experience gained, proved that one has to take many precautions in connection with the building of a library which is protected to the greatest possible extent against fire. We do not want to have a Reichstag fire in our Parliament, nor do we want to lose our library, but there is also another aspect, and that is, that in the House of Parliament we have been inconvenienced for years by very limited space. We continually get requests at the Internal Arrangements Committee for more space and the space which is at present taken up by the library could very usefully be used by Parliament for its various activities. A third point is that a modern library is constructed according to certain scientific principles, which makes it easy to arrange books and which also makes if easy for the public to get hold of books.

May I just ask which item the hon. member is discussing?

I am discussing the Vote “Senate.” The Chairman of the Senate is also Chairman of the Committee.

The hon. member can discuss that more appropriately under the next Vote.

I do not mind at all, but last year when I wanted to discuss it under the Vote “House of Assembly”, I was stopped and told that I must discuss it under the Vote “Senate”. I am practically finished however. There is a joint service and the building arrangements are very much out of date. There was an investigation into the possibility of building a new library in the Parliamentary grounds, or next to it, and I think a plan was already approved of. I just want to draw attention to that again today. The building is ineffective and dangerous and I hope that we shall not continue to expose this beautiful collection to danger.

May I just say that I understand from the Minister of Public Works that there was a motion a few years ago but that it was rejected in the Other Place. They were not prepared to agree to it. But I shall go into the matter more fully.

I would like to say a word or two in amplification of something I have been saying all the Session in connection with this vote of £700 a year for 142 members. I seems to me that the country generally is paying far too much for its members of Parliament.

Some of them.

Mr. Chairman, I am speaking now very seriously, because I am quite satisfied that the amount of work which members of Parliament are permitted to do does not justify the expenditure of £700 a year—the work which we back benchers on the Government side are permitted to do does not justify the expenditure of £150 a year. We have just had an example during the debate which concluded a few minutes ago, in which members who are sent here after fighting an election, after spending a considerable amount of their own money, and after being returned by a majority of opinion in their constituencies, are only actually entitled to speak for three or four minutes in a Budget debate. It is a scandalous state of affairs, and the sooner this whole question of the status of members of Parliament is reviewed, the better. I see you looking at me, sir.

I hope the hon. member will not make any reflections on the proceedings of the House.

Not on the proceedings of the House, sir; after all, the Speaker has nothing whatever to do with how long a member speaks. When a member rises in a Budget debate, he is entitled to speak for 40 minutes, as far as the Speaker is concerned. I am not referring to the action of officers who run the House; I am referring to the system which is running the House behind the scenes.

It still comes back to the same thing. A reflection against the manner in which the business of the House is conducted is a reflection against the House itself.

I beg to submit not, sir. Members are forced to accept through circumstances extraneous to the House, a position which is not consonant with their dignity. When through circumstances extraneous to the House, members have to satisfy their constituents by a three-and-a-half or four minute speech in one Parliamentary Session, it is time that we reduced the salary to about £150, and got our members of Parliament from the O.K. Bazaars, and then the Government could get on with the job. That is what it is rapidly coming to. Members are more and more being asked to delegate their powers to outside bodies; they are more and more being stifled. The essence of any Parliamentary institution is talk, debate; the foundation of the democratic system is the free expression of opinion, and from that expression of opinion it is alleged under the democratic system you get the very best, or at least you get the opinion of the majority of the people of the country. I am not complaining for myself, because so far I have always seen to it that if I want to speak I speak; therefore I don’t want my salary reduced. But, sir, it is getting even me down, because I do not speak nearly so much as I used to do in the happy days of opposition, which I hope one day to be able to get back to. The point is, I believe I am speaking for a very large measure of opinion in the United Party. I happen to be possibly in a position where I can get up and make a speech like this, and I am prepared to tell the Prime Minister that there are a great many of these young and very able followers on the back benches, who would very much like to get up and make the same speech. There is a very large measure of dissatisfaction, and it does not fall in very well with the high-sounding theories and pledges we are continually making about making the world safe for democracy, when we are stifling free speech, and not allowing members to speak their mind.

I understood that the hon. member wished to discuss the salaries of members.

I am trying to give you reasons why members should not get the salaries which are laid down here.

Except yourself.

Except myself. I am not blaming hon. members. I am blaming a system which is extraneous to the House itself, a system which has grown up, and which places members in a position where they can only feel they are not earning this £700 a year. When a man is in a private job, and finds that his work is consistently given to somebody else, he gives notice, his dignity forces him to give notice. But there is no consideration about the dignity of a member of Parliament, his job is given to civil servants and other so-called experts, he is not allowed in many instances to state his opinions in the House, he is not given permission to show what abilities he has, abilities which have appealed to his constituents. This is a growing practice in this House. I do not know whether it is a growing practice in other parliaments throughout the Commonwealth, but in South Africa, in the last few years it has got to the stage when the only words we can use are “aye” and “no”, and we are being forced into the position of nonentities.

Dummies.

Dummies, yes, registering dummies, we can say “aye” or “no”, but beyond that we are not expected to go.

“Yes” men.

Well, you are very much in the same position, and as a matter of fact, with some of you that is about all you can say. I have raised this point on several occasions, but up to now no Minister has been prepared to pay much attention to it, but it is a matter which is agitating the minds of people in this country, not only members of Parliament. Various leading articles have appeared in the last few months, drawing attention to the same tendency, this tendency to delegate the powers of Parliament to outside bodies who have no responsibility to anybody but themselves. If we are going to put democracy on the right lines, we cannot start better than by making Parliament a real Parliament, and by conferring some power and dignity upon the members, 142 of them who are next year going to be paid £700.

I think there is something to be said for the view of the hon. member who has just spoken, although we realise that the work of Parliament has to be expedited. I would like to draw the Prime Minister’s attention to another little matter that effects members of Parliament, and that is that while they have a duty to their constituents in this House, they also have a duty to perform to their constituents outside, and we are rapidly getting to this stage in Parliament that we have become a lot of “yes” men, and have to agree with everything that is being done by the Government. The fact is so many vital matters affecting the public outside are being perpetrated chiefly by control boards, about the activities of which members of Parliament have no say. Proclamations are issued by these boards, they are published in the Gazette, and probably about one person in 20,000 or 30,000 see these proclamations and know anything about them. I say that is definitely wrong. We are elected by the people, and the people hold us responsible, and it is time Ministers took members of Parliament more into their confidence, especially when they are paying visits to constituencies. Ministers should at least have the courtesy to advise members of Parliament when they contemplate visiting their constituencies. What has been happening in the last few years is that Ministers arrive in constituencies by aeroplane and other means, and members of Parliament know nothing about their visit until they have left. Let the public outside look to the members of Parliament for some guidance. Surely if Ministers want to make statements of importance, members of Parliament should be acquainted of these matters. They may be able to tell the public what the Ministers have in mind. The public blame the Government for a lot of the things, but if members of Parliament could be informed of the reasons for Minsiters’ actions many of the objections of the public could be removed.

I am afraid the hon. member is discussing matters which do not fall under the Vote before the Committee.

I think that it is necessary to draw the attention of the House to what the public require of members of Parliament. I want to pay a tribute to the Minister of Justice who always informs members of Parliament when he visits our constituencies. I wish other Ministers would do the same.

This will probably be the first occasion on which I agree with the hon. member for Umbilo (Mr. Burnside). But I feel that he has a good case here. We saw this morning how the Prime Minister proposed to apply the guillotine in the future, and the question really arises whether at a later date we will only have a Prime Minister, a seconder, a Speaker and a Clerk. In view of the fact that large sums are voted here, this is surely the time to bring financial matters to the notice of the Government. I agree with what the hon. member for Umbilo said. The fact is that a member of Parliament does have a certain responsibility, and as a member of Parliament he is tied down in such a way that he cannot discharge that responsibility which is placed on him. This is surely a ridiculous position. I think the Government should give an opportunity to the House to discuss these matters properly.

In the past, no matter to what party an hon. member belonged, he always got the support of this side when he came forward with a sensible proposal in this House. I want to tell the hon. member for Umbilo (Mr. Burnside) that I heartily agree with him, where he refers to the difficulties which hon. members experience in bringing to the notice of the Government in this House matters entrusted to them by their constituencies. The allowance which members of Parliament receive, namely £700, is not fixed in respect of three months, but it is £700 per annum. I do not know why we should always be limited, because the work has to be completed within a certain time. It makes it very difficult for us to go back to our constituencies. When they ask us why we did not bring this, that or the other to the notice of the Minister, we are placed in a difficult position. The Parliamentary system is being made ridiculous, not because the system is wrong, but because we are placed in such circumstances that we cannot give effect to the instructions we get from our voters. I want to ask the Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister whether he agrees that a private member should not have an opportunity to come forward with motions in this House. The Prime Minister has now moved the application of the guillotine in certain cases. The other side of the House passes judgment as to when there is obstruction and when there is not obstruction. They decide whether the time of the House is being wasted. I am glad that the hon. member for Umbilo has brought this matter to the notice of the House and of the people today, and I hope that the Prime Minister will agree to the request to give private members greater opportunities to place before the House the difficulties of the people in the country. The Prime Minister does not come into contact with the man in the street, as the private member does. The Ministers on the other side are not acquainted with the troubles of the man in the street. They are engaged on other problems and on the war. In these circumstances I hope that the Prime Minister and the Government will cease rushing matters in an effort to put them through the Houses within a certain time. I want to ask the Prime Minister with all respect how he knows that 100 hours or 110 hours will be sufficient for the debate. I want to ask the Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister not to make a farce of Parliament.

Last year a statement was made that on account of the shortage of paper we should use less blue books. I want to deal with item (c). I should like to know if the publication of Hansard is to be continued.

If anything was needed to emphasise my remarks, they have been emphasised by the contempt with which the Prime Minister has treated what I have said. Surely we are entitled to get some reply from the Minister in charge.

He is too busy fighting the war.

Surely I should get some reply.

Are you dealing with the reduction of salaries?

Yes.

Why not move a reduction?

I move a reduction of £100,000—and I would put in brackets “the hon. member for Umbilo.” I regret to note the levity with which the Prime Minister is treating this question. It is becoming common practice for Ministers to take no notice of what members have to say. This question of the reform of Parliament is a matter which is agitating the mind of the public, but the Prime Minister is treating us with discourtesy when we raise the matter.

The hon. member must confine himself to the items in the Vote before the Committee. The hon. member is now discussing Parliamentary reform.

I am discussing the policy. I understand that on any Vote one can discuss the policy of the Minister concerned.

There is no Minister in charge of the Vote of the House of Assembly.

Is there no Minister responsible for Parliament?

There is no Minister’s salary under this Vote. Mr. Speaker is responsible for moneys spent under this Vote.

I am discussing policy now. I doubt whether Mr. Speaker is responsible for the policy of this House. Here is a point I want to put. It appears that there is no one responsible for the House.

There are rulings by Mr. Speaker that the procedure of the House cannot be discussed on this Vote.

Is one not allowed to discuss one’s own policy in one’s own House?

Order, order!

I have not finished. I am like yourself apparently getting into difficulties about procedure. But something has to be done. No one apparently is responsible.

The hon. member will get plenty of opportunities to discuss this matter but it cannot be discussed on this Vote.

I want to discuss it now, unless you definitely rule me out of order.

I cannot allow the hon. member to discuss procedure under this Vote.

I am not discussing procedure, I am discussing the ineffectiveness of the average member of Parliament and I am asking the Minister to give us his opinion. I say that the £700 put down here is far too much for the work which the average member of Parliament is allowed to do, and I want to know who is stopping the average member of Parliament from doing the work which he is elected by his constituents to do? I am asking the Minister concerned what his views are. I am entitled to a reply from from some Minister—I don’t care which Minister it is. It is only a matter of courtesy. It’s not a particular bee in my particular bonnet. The country generally is becoming perturbed over the actions of this House, and there is a crying demand that members of Parliament should either be paid less or else be given the opportunity to be worth their £700 per annum.

I am surprised that the hon. member now raises this as a matter of courtesy. I thought he was making suggestions, and I was listening to him with considerable interest. But he has been ruled out of order on the question as to how the procedure of the House could be improved. Of course, we know that we have to deal with certain of these matters. Unless certain rules are laid down we shall have interminable debates. But I just want to say that if I were to try to reply to the hon. member I might be ruled out of order, too. Now, the hon. member says it is a matter of courtesy. I am afraid I cannot reply to a matter which has been ruled out of order by the Chairman. The point which my hon. friend has raised is naturally one of difficulty. This is a House consisting of 153 members, sitting only for a certain time every year, and having to get through a certain amount of work, and the question is what is the limit to which private members can exercise their right of speech in this House? It is a most difficult problem to solve. We are always trying to solve it, and the only way is by trying to come to some working arrangement almost from day to day—by trying to come to some arrangement between the various sections and the various points of view represented in this House. But if the hon. member wants members to be able to speak freely as long as they want to, nothing will be done. Twelve months in the year will be too short. We are trying to overcome the difficulties inherent in a position like that. I was listening with interest to the hon. member’s remarks, but I really was not interested in his suggestion that the pay of members of Parliament should be diminished. I think members of Parliament are hard worked.

I only used that proposal to keep the motion in order.

If I were to attempt to express my opinion as the hon. member has done, I would also be out of order, and therefore I do not look upon it as a matter of courtesy—it is a matter of keeping within bounds. There is no question of my being discourteous—it is merely a matter of being courteous to the Chairman.

On what occasion would it be in order to discuss procedure?

Not on this Vote.

May I ask when it will be in order? There is a feeling in this House that procedure should be discussed, and it has always seemed to me that it is impossible to bring up this matter.

The hon. member should move a motion, then anything can be discussed.

The hon. member can either move a substantive motion, or raise the matter on the Appropriation Bill.

I am a little confused now. I do not know whether I will be in order. I do not want to criticise the procedure now, but I want to put a question in connection with our membership as members of this House. The procedure which is followed today is that admission to this House is only granted to certain ex-members and certain persons. An exmember of Parliament has not got the right to come into this House.

I am sorry, that does not fall under this Vote.

Under which Vote does it fall then?

May I suggest with all respect that it does fall under this Vote. It falls under the salary of the Sergeant-at-Arms. I am quite serious about the matter. I may now discuss the question of a outsider who is allowed to come into the House, and under which conditions he can come into the House. It is the duty of the Sergeant to see to it that no one comes into the House unauthorised.

He is even armed for that purpose.

The point which the hon. member for Bethlehem (Mr. R. A. T. van der Merwe) wanted to make was that certain privileges were allowed to people which were not allowed to ex-members of the House. He wants to try to remove the injustice which is done to them.

I am glad that it falls under this Vote. In that case I am more privileged than the hon. member who spoke just now. I feel that here is an inconsistency which we must remove. There are ex-members of Parliament today, honourable members who rendered up to thirty years’ faithful service to this country, and what becomes of them? They lose their seats at an election, and then they have not got the slight privilege, as ex-members of this House, to come into the House.

I am sorry, I cannot allow the hon. member to go into that point any further. The Sergeant carries out his duties in respect of strangers under the orders of Mr. Speaker.

But then it comes under the salary of Mr. Speaker.

The hon. member can discuss it with Mr. Speaker.

I take it you will agree that the question of the admission of exmembers to the Parliamentary buildings at certain times, should be discussed under some Vote or other under the Estimates, and I cannot imagine under which other Vote it will be allowed. I must therefore come to to the conclusion that it must be this Vote.

It is the practice to discuss these matters with Mr. Speaker, and then if necessary, he submits it to a Committee of the House.

If that is your ruling then we must accept it, but it seems to me to be altogether unsound.’ Here we are dealing with certain people to whom an injustice is done, and I do not think that it has anything to do with Mr. Speaker.

The whole building and all strangers who enter the building, fall under Mr. Speaker.

Let me put it this way: I take it that Mr. Speaker has no right to alter the position.

Parliament must alter it.

Mr. Speaker has the right, and if he deems it essential, he submits it to a Committee of the House.

Has he the sole right? If you give me the assurance that it is in the hands of Mr. Speaker and that as soon as Mr. Speaker alters that arrangement it will remain altered, then I leave it there. If he has the sole say, then we know immediately to whom to go, and we have not known that in the past fifteen years.

You say that Mr. Speaker has the sole right to put this matter right. I would like to know, if he has that right, where he gets it from.

He is the representative of the House.

If he has that right, then he gets it from this House, and then this House has the right to discuss that right under his salary. All the power Mr. Speaker has he gets from this House, and it is only under this Vote that it can be discussed—the right that is given to Mr. Speaker—and I therefore want to suggest with all due respect that the hon. member is in order when he discusses the exercise of powers of allowing certain people here and of not allowing others.

I understood you, sir, to give a ruling a little while ago that the only way in which we can discuss the salaries and status of members of Parliament, is by way of a specific motion.

If the hon. member had listened carefully to what I said …

There was so much noise going on, sir.

I said that the matter can be discussed either on a substantive motion or on the Appropriation Bill.

Then it follows that we cannot discuss it this Session.

Mr. Chairman, a year ago I brought up the question of the expenditure of £13,500 on the printing of Hansard. Owing to the shortage of paper, I thought we could set an example to the rest of the country, and for the duration of the war, discontinue this expenditure. I have another idea, which possibly would not only curtail the use of paper, but also expedite the business of this House. I would like to suggest that a charge of 5s. be made against members for every column in Hansard taken up by their speeches, such charge to be deducted from the annual allowance received by members.

And a super-charge on anyone whose speeches exceed 100 columns of Hansard.

I am quite sure if that idea were adopted by the House, we should have a saving of paper and expedite the business of the House and the affairs of the country. I hope the Prime Minister will consider this matter and possibly accept the idea. My hon. friend the member for Greyville (Mr. Derbyshire) referred to the question of Ministers’ visits to various parts of the country, and not advising the local representatives of that visit. I would like to say with regard to the hon. Minister of Justice, whenever he visits our part of the world he advises the local members and discusses matters of public interest with them.

I think I have allowed quite a lot of latitude in connection with this matter. Hon. members must get back to the vote before the Committee.

That is all I have to say, Mr. Chairman.

The Minister of Finance considers that this Bill has been in our possession long enough. It is true that it has been available to us since 1st March. But I want to give him the assurance that our work is now so onerous that it is difficult to keep pace with all these matters. We are busy during the mornings on Select Committees; then the sittings start in the morning, and it is difficult to get through all the work. We do not only want to form our own opinion about such matters, but we would also like to know the opinions of persons outside. Then I want to mention another matter. The old Cape Laws are printed in English, and when they are amended then everything is drafted in English. The result is that there is no Afrikaans translation, and I reckon that the Minister ought to make available an Afrikaans translation to members who like to read the law in Afrikaans. It is easier for some to follow the amendments in Afrikaans. It is an injustice towards Afrikaans-speaking members if this procedure is followed. This Bill amends the Bills of Exchange Act adopted as far back as fifty years ago. It was a particularly good law, for in all the time that has elapsed only two amendments have been brought about. The one is in connection with the endorsement of orders and the notice that has to be given to the endorser, and then there is another minor amendment. We grew up with this law, and so far as I know it is a good law. Now the Minister proposes certain amendments in connection with it. I understand that the Government has had much difficulty. In a sense it is understandable because they have to pay hundreds of persons whom they do not know, and this may result in trouble. We can understand that those cheques may go wrong. But one must not amend a law because there are such difficulties. The fact that the cheques come into the hands of wrong persons is proof of neglect on the part of the person who sends away the cheque or the order. Now a change is being brought about. The clause that is repealed in the first place is Clause 80 of the Act. The repeal of this clause means nothing because the Minister provides for the protection of the banks. The responsibility that rests upon the bank is no greater under the new clause which the Minister inserts in place of Clause 80. But then the Minister goes further. He provides that where an order is stolen, and somebody draws the money, and he does not draw at a bank, if that cheque is crossed, then the person who issues the cheque can claim compensation from that person. If a cheque is crossed, then it means that it must be deposited in the bank. The position now is that the Government sends out cheques to persons. They have no banking accounts and they come to us to change the cheques for them. Business people also do this, and now the Minister provides here that every person who has to do with that cheque shall be responsible for the repayment of it to the Government, if that cheque falls into wrong hands. The position is that the Government issues cheques to soldiers. A soldier perhaps does not live with his wife, but with someone else. One of the two gets possession of the cheque. The woman changes the cheque with a shopkeeper with whom she generally deals and the business man accepts the cheque. He will not do this if he is aware of any dishonesty. But if he is to be held responsible; whether he is neglectful or not, then it is going to cause trouble. We thus get the position that the Government official or any person who issues the cheque, is neglectful, with the result that the cheque falls into wrong hands, or that the person who receives it is neglectful and it is stolen from him; such a person goes to a shopkeeper or to some other person who changes the cheque for him, and all those persons are then responsible towards the person from whom the cheque was stolen or towards the person who issued the cheque. The bank is protected. But the person who has taken the cheque meanwhile and has given value for it, as in the case of the shopkeeper, and who was protected in the past, is now no longer protected. The Minister now wants the persons who helped that receiver of the cheque or the owner of the cheque to change it, possibly for business reasons or even out of friendship, to be responsible if someone has stolen the cheque. I say in the first place that this is not an improvement on the old Act that has existed for fifty years. That Act was good. There is no change in the action of persons. But because the Government experiences difficulty, the Act must be amended, and now the responsibility must be thrown on persons in between. The Minister must realise that he is interfering here with procedure that existed under that Act for fifty years. He interferes with a good Act to assist persons who are neglectful. The Bill comes down to this, that if a person receives from the Government or someone else a crossed cheque on which is the mark “not negotiable,” and if he has no banking account, then he will have difficulty in obtaining the money because those middle people fall away. The person in-between will not take the order, and the receiver of it will have to see that he is assisted by the bank. The Minister is now eliminating a procedure of fifty years standing, and he does this to help people who are neglectful with the issue of the order, or who are so neglectful that the orders are stolen from them. I do not think that this Bill is a forward step. I personally think that it will cause difficulty to persons who receive such cheques. It will perhaps help the Government with the cheques that it is now issuing in the Defence Force, but it is going to put other people in difficulty. I do not think that the Minister is rendering the country a service by this Bill. If he proceeds with the law as it is today then there is sufficient protection. If the Government experiences difficulty with payments, let it make payments in cash, or let it send out some one to make the payments. I do not feel that there is any necessity for the alterations. If persons are more careful with the orders and cheques, theft will not take place. I feel that I shall not be in a position to vote for this Bill.

There can be no exception to the principle of this Bill, which simply makes more clear the intention of the existing law. If the hon. member who has just spoken will look at Section 79 of the Act 19/1893 (Cape) he will find it sets out that when a person takes a crossed cheque that has the words “not negotiable” on it, he shall not be capable of giving a better title to the cheque than that which the person from whom he took it had. The Minister of Finance has shown that in the application of this section, the results are quite different to what was intended, and he now wants to put the thing right. I must say I was a little surprised when I heard what the Minister said about the difficulties that have arisen. If you have a cow or a horse which is stolen, it does not matter how many hands it passes through, you can still recover. The ordinary law, therefore, is perfectly clear, but when you come to’ negotiable instruments, you cannot recover, even when they have been lost or stolen, if somebody has subsequently acquired them in good faith for value. A special law was made in respect of bills of exchange and other negotiable instruments which, of course, are necessary in commerce. I gather from what the Minister has told us, that in practice in a number of cases, the present law does not protect us, even if you write on the cheque “not negotiable”. There are some cases where that is no protection, and he wants to make the law so that in every case it shall be rigid protection. I do not think there can be any quarrel with that. The wording of the Bill can be considered in Committee. It is not a simple matter; it is complicated, and if there had been time I myself would have been prepared to support a proposal that it should be sent to a Select Committee for consideration. If the Bill were referred to a Select Committee now, it would probably not go through this Session. Therefore I would like to help the Minister in his endeavour to see that the original intention of the Cape Act is carried out. I hope during the recess, if the Minister is not too busy—he certainly carries a tremendous load on his shoulders—I hope he will consider the consolidation of all the laws relating to bills of exchange. This is an important matter, and I hope the time will come soon when the laws relating to bills of exchange will be consolidated in one statute. I think we should give our support to the second reading of this Bill.

The hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) has raised a general point arising from the fact that this Bill is drafted principally in English, also with regard to the Afrikaans text. It is a difficulty we often experience, not only as regards English, but also as regards Netherlands. Where a law which is drafted only in English and in Netherlands is amended, the amendments must be made in Netherlands. It will not be possible to give effect to his suggestion. The desired way out is by way of consolidation, as suggested by the hon. member for Cape Town, Castle (Mr. Alexander) and in view of the decision that you, Mr. Speaker, gave last year, the consolidation of this part of our legislation is something that merits consideration. The hon. member further said that because this law has operated well for fifty years we should not now interfere with it. We have had the law for fifty years, but we have now discovered that the law as it stands on this point does not really attain the object envisaged by the legislation at the time. The hon. member for Cape Town, Castle, is quite right when he says that the object of the Bill is simply to attain the original object of the law. We are not out solely for the protection of the Treasury and the Government; we are out also for the protection of other persons; and what we envisage is not only the protection of the drawer of the cheque, but also the person in whose favour the cheque is drawn. He often gets into difficulty, and we want to protect him. The protection we propose is fair. Only when the drawer of the cheque or the person in whose favour the cheque is drawn has crossed it and added the words “not negotiable” must the person in whose hands the cheque comes be on his guard. It is a fair compromise between the drawer and the person in whose hands the cheque may fall, and I hope the House will accept the Bill. I am quite prepared to consider suggestions at the Committee stage.

I move—

The whole object of the Bill is to make the Act No. 22 of 1939, applicable to South-West Africa. Before the passage of that Bill, it was not possible for a woman domiciled in one province to sue her husband domiciled in another. The Act gave a woman that power, and we are now extending it to South-West Africa.

I would just like to congratulate the Minister of Justice that they as men have at last got so far as to give this right to the woman. Fomerly it was impossible for her to obtain a divorce from her husband if he does not want to divorce her, while yet having left her. I know of a woman who came here from Johannesburg to follow her husband. When she came here, he was in Bloemfontein. She followed him, and when she came to Bloemfontein he had left there. In this way she had to travel through the country, because the position is that where the man is there is the home. It was a very unwise law and therefore I want to congratulate the Minister that he has at last got so far as to allow justice to be done to the female sex.

I should just like to raise a point with the Minister here in regard to the definition of a person under disability. In terms of that definition it includes a minor, a person under curatorship, a husband or wife in the case of an action between husband and wife only, and a partner in the case of an action between partners only so long as the partnership subsists. I want co be quite clear as to what we are doing here. As I understand the common law, a woman who has a debt in her favour and subsequently marries under the marital power, even though community of profit is excluded, that woman would be under a disability. I am not talking now of an action between husband and wife, but I am talking of a woman who marries, having contracted the debt before her marriage. If she married, excluding community of profit and loss but not the marital power, she is in the position of a minor when she marries, and the prescription will be interrupted. That is not so under this clause, and I would like to ask the Minister whether he has considered that.

I should like to move an amendment to this Clause, which stands on the Order Paper in the name of the hon. member for Transkei (Mr. Hemming)—

On the Second Reading, the hon. member for Transkei explained the reason why he was moving this amendment. The reason is that prescription under native law and custom is unknown. The object of the amendment is simply to observe the status quo in that respect. I hope the hon. Minister will be prepared to accept.

I accept that amendment.

I move—

This is a small measure designed to meet a difficulty which I as Minister of Railways have experienced. For a long time farmers have complained against the railways, on the ground that we frequently cause serious grass fires, and it is extremely difficult to bring home to the railways any responsibility for that, owing to the present statutory provisions. I felt that the present condition was rather unsatisfactory, inasmuch as, although we have paid compensation, we very rarely paid compensation when anyone took us to Court. A good deal of money was spent on litigation, but nothing resulted from it.

The railways always endeavour to evade payment where they cause the damage.

Very frequently we were taken to law. Farmers spent a lot of money and got nothing out of it. I, perhaps in a generous moment, undertook to see whether we could not simplify the procedure regarding claims in respect of grass fires, and this Bill is an effort to do this. I would like to make this perfectly clear, that this Bill is superimposed on existing legislation; it does not interfere in any way with any rights the farmer now has. He retains all the rights he has today. I am trying to give the farmer something; I am not taking anything away from him. This Bill is based on the principle of co-operation. Where the farmer will take a little trouble to protect himself, the railways will compensate him in the event of fires taking place. In 1941 I appointed a Committee, as a result of the Border representations, to go into this question and to make recommendations. That Committee had on it a representative of the farmers, a member representing the Agricultural Department and a member representing the railways. Apart from various minor recommendations, that Committee emphasised that the farmers were very anxious to have some arrangement made whereby the railways would pay compensation on some reasonable basis, without the necessity for any disputes or litigation. Under this scheme, which is putting into legislative and statutory effect what I had in mind, we will in effect pay any farmer, suffering loss owing to a fire, a grass fire, or a crop fire, where he has taken the trouble to make a fire-break in accordance with approved principles, compensation in the event of his having a fire up to an amount of £250 for one fire.

Irrespective of what the damage may be?

We will pay damage up to £250. That is the maximum. If there would be a greater amount of damage, he can still sue us or claim for the balance. The point is that up to £250 we will make a very ready payment of compensation. If he suffers greater loss than that, he can claim, in addition to the £250, the balance which he thinks he is entitled to, and if it is a reasonable claim, it will be met. If it is not regarded by the railways as being reasonable, he can, of course, still take us to the Courts; in other words, he can take advantage of this £250 right up to the maximum, and still sue or claim against the railways for the balance. The only condition we make in regard to this payment is that the farmers themselves will provide fire-breaks on their farms. If the farmer does not provide a fire-break, he will not come under the provisions of this Bill, and the fire-break must be made in accordance with approved plans laid down by the railways. These may vary in the different parts of the country, but the firebreak regulation, generally speaking, will be a fire-break along the farmer’s land, not less than 200 feet, and not more than 300 feet from the centre of the railway track, and from 9 feet to 20 feet in width, according to the nature of the crops. If the farmer makes that break, then regardless of whether we have been negligent or not negligent, if the fire has been caused by a train passing, he will get compensation. He will also get compensation for crops which catch fire between the railway fence and the firebreak. If a farmer who has made a fire-break along his part of the railway line—if his crops catch fire as a result of a fire on an adjoining farm, the farmer will also get compensation; he will be treated, in other words, as if he himself was the origin of the fire, so that wherever a farmer makes a fire-break, we will be prepared to meet him up to £250, with as great a measure of generosity as is possible to achieve.

What will be the length of the fire-break?

The whole length of the farm along the railway line. The length of the fire-break must be along the whole railway line.

And the width?

That will vary according to the crops. It will vary from nine feet to twenty feet. The idea is that we shall lay down specifically what fire-breaks we require. It may be difficult sometimes for a farmer to make a fire-break, and we are prepared, as an Administration, where the farmer cannot make that fire-break, to make it for him, subject to the condition that if he will plough two furrows along the whole length, we will make a fire-break for him by burning—not by scoffling, because we have not got the machinery—but we will make that fire-break and charge him 12s 6d a mile for doing it. If he does not care to make the furrows, we will still do it, but in that case we will charge him £1 per mile for fire-break, not £1 per mile of railway. If he has a fire-break on both sides, that would be two miles. I am not putting the actual costs into the Bill, because this is a thing that may naturally in the process of time change. It may be increased or modified; I am just giving the House an idea of what we have in mind. I would like to make it quite clear that there is no catch in this Bill. It is a Bill which is meant to help a rather difficult situation, and to compensate the farmers in the great majority of cases for the actual damage they sustained. I do not know that there is really much more that I need say. The Bill makes provision, of course, against either wilful neglect or anything wilful in the way of encouraging fires, or a wilful failure to help putting out the fires. We expect the farmer to co-operate, and in that spirit we are prepared to pay compensation. I may mention this point, and I think that covers the whole ground. Where a farm is in joint ownership, we will pay the compensation between the owners. We won’t pay £250 to each joint owner of a farm. If a farm is in joint ownership, and one man is occupying it and working it, we shall pay it to him, but where there are several owners, they must share the compensation. The point is that for one fire there shall be a compensation of £250. If that fire spreads to another farm, that farmer will get £250.

No matter what the size of the farm is?

No, that would get us again into great complications. It is very rarely that the fire spreads over the whole length of the farm. One fire of half a mile may do just as much damage as a fire along five miles of railway line. The compensation is really adjusted according to the size of the fire, up to a maximum of £250. As it is practically a compensation which is given without recourse to the law, there has to be a limit to it. After that, if you are still not satisfied, you can come back and put in a claim as you do today.

The hon. the Minister has said that he is meeting the farmers in this Bill because in the past the farmers did not have much chance to claim damage against the Government. I disagree with the Minister, and I consider that if the Bill is adopted the farmers will be worse off than before. Under the existing Act of 1916 any farmer has an action for damages against the Railway Administration if a fire originates and his property is destroyed. Clause 70 of the Act lays the onus on the Administration to prove that there was no neglect. In other words, the farmers do not have to prove that there was neglect on the part of the Administration resulting in a fire. The clause remains, but as the law is now amended it is expected of the farmer to make the fire-breaks alongside the railway line in future. In the past the Administration did this, and it is often a tremendously big job. If a farmer has a long stretch beside the railway line then he has a big job, which will entail considerable expense. The Minister wants to assist the farmers by doing the work at 12s. 6d. and £1 per mile respectively, but that is an additional burden on the farmer. Unless the fire-break is made by the farmer, or by the Administration while the farmer has to pay, he has no claim to damage against the Administration. In future the onus will rest on the farmers to make fire-breaks. In the past the Administration was responsible, and if a fire then originated caused by a locomotive, the farmer had an action for damages. Then there is a provision in Clause 3 (a) where the farmer is saddled with the following—

In other words, if the Administration can prove that the farmer could have adopted measures to prevent or to mitigate the damage, then the Administration may simply refuse to pay damage. Then under the law the farmer will only have recourse to the court and will have to make a case. It also places an additional burden on the farmer. But the Minister goes further and says that the total amount that may be paid out to a person shall be £250. There may be a case where the railway line runs through the wheatlands of a farmer, and a spark from a locomotive may set the wheat alight and destroy the whole crop. Then the damage may not be only £250, but £1,000. One may have cases where a poor farmer is completely ruined, when he loses his crop, but his claim for damage is restricted to £250. I hope the Minister will accept an amendment in this connection at the Committe stage so as to increase the responsibility of the Administration in respect of fire. I just want to say that if a locomotive is in proper order, when the spark arrester is in order, then the danger of fire is very slight. But it sometimes happens that the spark arrester of a locomotive is broken and the coals fall out and cause fire. I therefore hope that the Minister will accept greater responsibility for the Administration and that he will accept an amendment in that respect.

Mr. Speaker, for many years I have brought up this question of grass fires, until it has almost become a hardy annual. The Minister promised he would investigate the matter, and, as indicated by him, he appointed this committee, who thoroughly investigated a large number of grass fires which were occasioned by passing engines. Well, sir, I must say on behalf of the farmers whom I represent, we welcome this Bill, and thank the Minister for bringing it forward. Farmers have been very loth indeed to go to Court with these cases, and the reason for that is that once the Railways have proved that they have taken all precautions, that proper spark arresters have been provided, then the onus of proof falls back on the farmer. Since the famous case of Sykes in the Appeal Court, and also another famous case in the Free State, very few farmers have taken the risk to go to Court and claim compensation, because the onus of proof is so difficult on them when the Railways have discharged their liability by stating that the engine has been fitted with proper spark arresters. So, sir, this measure is long overdue. Let me just quote what was said by one eminent judge in that famous case, which sums up the whole position, and the reason for this particular Bill. This is the statement made by Solomon, A. J., in the Appellate Division in the case of the Union Government (Minister of Railways) v. Sykes—

That is the object of this Bill today. In the United Kingdom they have actually an Act which the judge refers to here—

Well, Mr. Speaker, this alteration in the law is long overdue, and will be welcomed by farmers, as it will enable them to get compensation, where today they are hesitating in view of this decision, to go to law with their cases. It may spell ruination to the farmer to sue the Railways, if they take up this particular attitude that they have discharged their onus by providing efficient spark arresters. I do not want to enter into any contentious matter, but I want to impress upon the Minister that he should not insist on the farmer scuffling a fire-break on his ground, because a case that I know of upon Bushman’s Hoek near Sterkstroom, is one in point. The farmer complained that he was called upon to clear all vegetation of this fire path, and the result was that a donga nearly four miles long was created along the whole extent of the farm. I hope the Railways will not be unreasonable, but will consult the farmers as far as possible, so that only reasonable steps will be taken, steps which will not damage or cause any very serious erosion of the farmer’s land. With these few remarks, I hope the House will accept the Bill, and thank the Minister for introducing it. Amendments may be necessary in the clauses dealing with the fire-breaks, but as there is considerable difference of opinion on those points I prefer to leave the discussion of them to other speakers, as the conditions vary in each locality. I welcome the Bill as a step in the right direction.

We all understand that this Bill is necessary, and we hope that it will retain the existing rights of the farmers, and not diminish or whittle away any of those rights. The present state of the law seems to be that where fire damage has been caused through trains, no recovery in respect of damage is possible if the railways can show that the fire was not caused by negligence. I understand that in some cases they have disproved negligence, merely by bringing evidence to show that they had a spark arrester on the train. These spark arresters, like other arresters are not always efficient. In some cases the inefficiency of the spark arresters has really been the cause of the fire, and yet the fact that the railways were able to prove the existence of the spark arrester, seems to have entitled them to a favourable verdict. I hope we are not going to assent lightly to any proposition which, on the face of it, leaves the law in its present state. I hope we shall be entitled to press for amendments that will protect the farmer against the somewhat perfunctory defence that there was no negligence, because there was a spark arrester. Then also I should like to have an assurance from the Minister that claims already lodged are not going to be prejudiced in any way by the introduction of this Bill. I happen to know of a claim by one of my own constituents, a very clearly established claim, which has not yet been settled by the railways. I hope there will be no disposition to steal a march on people whose claims are in that position, by introducing legislation which will limit their claims to £250. Probably it is not often there are cases exceeding that amount, but occasionally, where damage has spread to hayricks and fodder, claims do exceed that amount. I hope the Minister, when he replies, will be able to clear up these points, and that the railways will not be able to avail themselves of proof to the existence of a spark arrester as a complete answer to claims. That seems to have been in the past an almost fatal bar to claims by farmers unprovided with funds for an expensive law suit.

The Minister of Railways has said that this legislation is intended to provide a certain measure of assistance to the farmer. Where the farmer in the past was in an unfavourable position and practically had no opportunity of obtaining compensation when a fire is caused by the railways, he now comes, as he says, out of the goodness of his heart and to meet the farmer and to do well by him, and he says there is no catch. But after reading through this Bill I wonder what the reply of the Minister will be if I ask him as a good business man how much the railways will save by assuming the onus of damage on the one side, and on the other side throwing the onus on the farmer to make a fire-break. It may possibly be that the whole amount that the railways will have to pay in compensation is much less than it would cost the railways to make fire-breaks, and that the railways will thereby save money. It is further provided in the Bill that a sum not exceeding £250 may be paid out. I wonder if the Minister thinks that a sum of £250 can compensate a farmer for the damage that he may suffer to his crop in this manner. At a later stage of the Bill I would like to propose that £250 shall not be the maximum compensation, but that it should be increased to a reasonable sum. I would like to move that the sum ought to be increased in proportion to the damage that is caused, instead of being restricted to £250. Then I also want to ask the Minister to accept an amendment that will mean that fire-breaks should be made by the farmer, not at the expense of the farmer, but that there should be reasonable compensation to the farmer for the time and labour he will employ to make those firebreaks. These will have to be made. The Minister will have to see that those firebreaks are made well, and that they do not promote soil erosion. If it is demanded that two furrows must be ploughed and the grass weeded out in between, then I prophesy that the Minister is going to create great dongas. With the first rain storms those furrows will be washed deeper until a terrible sloot is formed. I welcome legislation of this nature because we realise that we have had no opportunity in the past of getting any compensation. But I want to express the hope that the Minister of Railways in the course of the passage of the Bill will accept all necessary advice so as to endeavour to make the Bill a good law. Then we as farmers will be grateful for it. But if he is going to put the Bill through as it is then I cannot promise him support on behalf of my farmers.

The purport of the Bill is, as stated by the Minister, to make the payments of compensation to the farmers easier in comparison with the existing position. That is, this Bill does not do away with any existing rights. It only provides to some extent an opportunity to obtain compensation in a more easy manner than that existing up till now. That in itself is proof to show that the Minister’s conscience has troubled him because circumstances up till now were such that the farmer was placed in an impossible position, not only in regard to what the hon. member for Queenstown (Mr. Van Coller) told us, but also because the entire legal position as it existed up till now, was, in fact, a violation, not only of the common law, but also of all equity. According to common law and equity the position is this, that if I do something dangerous and damage results to the property of another, then I remain liable for that damage. Now, the Railways send an engine blowing out sparks across the country, and consequently constituting a danger to the property of other people; therefore the Railways will have to be responsible for any damage caused according to the common law. But in consequence of legal protection to the Railways and also as a result of legal principles adopted by the Courts, the farmers have up till now been deprived of their rights afforded by the common law and the natural law. Where the Minister now comes along with this attempt in order to assist the farmer to obtain compensation more easily, even though it is limited to £250, I want to draw his attention to the general conduct of the Railways, not only in connection with compensation as regards fires, but also in connection with losses caused by the Railways in other ways. Until now the Railways have always adopted an unreasonable and exceptionally unfair attitude. Their attitude is this, that in all circumstances they refuse to pay compensation: no matter how fair or reasonable the claim might be. They refuse to pay compensation, and in most cases they succeed in bluffing people not to institute any action. As a result of this attitude, the Railways have succeeded in the past years to deprive poor people of many thousands of pounds. I have experience of this legal position as regards this immoral attitude of the Railways. Very often they remain silent until summons is almost applied for, and when they realise that they are unable to bluff the owner they submit and pay. But then the owner has already incurred considerable costs. I want to express the hope that the Minister will appreciate that this general attitude of the Railways towards the public is exceptionally unreasonable and immoral, and when they are satisfied that a claim is reasonable and correct they should not try to frighten the owner by bluffing him when he submits a claim for compensation. As regards this particular Bill, I admit that it is an attempt to show the farmers of our country a more simplified way by means of which compensation may be obtained. But I want to draw the Minister’s attention to a few things in the Bill. In the first instance, I want to ask him to have a look at Sub-Clause (3) (b)—

Then no compensation is paid. Now, let us see what its effect will be in practice. Unless the Minister intends to keep that fire-break clean throughout the year, it will happen in that part of the country where we have high grass, that during April and May, when we have a little drought, that the high grass will become dry, and, there being no fire-break, that the grass will be set on fire by the engine when the farmer will find himself up against this dead wall. Unless the Minister accepts to keep the firebreaks clean from January to January, I predict that this provision in the clause will prevent the payment of compensation to the farmers. Another weak link in the Bill can be found in Sub-Clause (c). In that it is provided that the Railway Administration, as it presently does, keep the fire-break clean itself at its own costs when the framer will have no claim against the Administration. This clause has no other purpose than an attempt on the part of the Administration to get the farmers to do the work themselves and actually to compel the farmers throughout the country to make fire-breaks. Until now the railways have done it. If the railways do it the farmers will have no claim as far as this particular indemnification is concerned. The actual position is that the Minister intends to place a burden on the farmers in this manner which until now rested entirely on the shoulders of the railways, because apart from the indemnification in this Bill, I think that the Minister, in order to avoid claims for compensation, was compelled to keep the fire-breaks, in order to prove that he was not negligent. But now the farmer has to be moved in this manner to make the fire-breaks himself. One must welcome the attempt made by the Minister in order to assist the farmers and even be thankful for it but then the Minister should not insert a clause which nullifies that attempt. I hope that the Minister will be willing at the Committee stage to leave this and exclude these few deficiencies from the Bill.

It is exactly the same clause that I would like to draw the Minister’s attention to. I did not know the exact procedure in other parts of the country. I do however know what it is in my areas. There fire breaks are made by the gangers of the railways. They are responsible for the danger or otherwise to keep the firebreaks clear. I know that every third, fourth of fifth year they come round to get the farmers to sign giving them the right to clear the fire-breaks for a definite distance from the line—I think 100 feet. I know that there are farmers who refuse to do it because the fire-breaks pass through valuable land and also through sow lands and it is such farmers who constitute a danger to themselves and to others.

It only assists the Low Veld.

I cannot speak on behalf of those parts. I speak for the parts with which I am acquainted. Those people are a danger to themselves and also to other farmers because if a spark from an engine should put their veld on fire, the fire may spread to other parts. Now it seems to me that the onus to keep the fire-break clean is placed on the owner of the land to see that it is kept in order so that the fire cannot spread to put the outside farm on fire. I should also like to draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that the railways are fenced in and that on some farms the railway line is fenced in far beyond the line. At the time when railway lines were fenced in land was not worth very much. Since that time land has become much more valuable. There are hundreds of morgen of land lying within the enclosures of the railways and it is useless to the owner. Now it is suggested that a fire-break should be cleared outside that enclosure. There is already a big lot of ground inside the enclosure and now it is asked that a road should be cleared on the outside of it, far enough from the line as to make it safe. If it is the intention of the Minister that it should be done by the farmer himself where it has previously been done by the road gangs of the railways then I maintain that it is absolutely an impossible thing. The Minister ought to know that when summer comes in our parts and it becomes dry, the farmer is very much engaged with his harvest and there is a scarcity of labour. The bustle of the harvest makes it absolutely impossible for him to clear those breaks, and thus ensure safety for the farm. Sometimes gangers are assisted by the farmers by placing at their disposal ploughs and animals in order to plough the breaks. This can be done but in large areas where the line passes through rocky ground it requires much labour. Those parts can be cleared during other parts of the year when they are not so busy. But it is impossible for the farmers and their people to do it when the crop starts to ripen on the land and every labourer of the farmer is required on the harvesting fields. I should like to have a very clear explanation from the Minister as regards to what exactly he means by this Bill. Is the onus being placed on the farmer and taken away from the ganger and his team to keep these fire-breaks clear as was the practice in the past? If the Minister is going to place the onus on the owner instead of on the railways as previously then I must tell the Minister that I shall be forced to fight this Bill tooth and nail in this House, but I sincerely hope that there is some misunderstanding somewhere, and that it is not the intention of the Minister or the Department to place the onus on the owner in this manner where in the past it rested on the Administration. Notwithstanding this, I should like to have an assuring statement from the Minister before this Bill is finally accepted in its third reading, so that I can support it.

I should like to touch on a few points.

Burn the stones at your place.

Allow me to tell the hon. member that we have in my electoral area the famous Bushman grass which cannot be found in any other part of South Africa, and which is the best in the whole world, and there is a grave danger that parts of the precious grass may be burnt down. I should like to draw the Minister’s attention to the unfairness to place the maximum indemnity which may be paid at £250. I should therefore like to know from the Minister whether this maximum amount would not be confined to losses sustained in respect of the veld only in order that payment may be made, apart from the loss of animals. Various things may be destroyed in the event of such a fire. Hundreds of sheep and big herds of animals may be destroyed in the fire when the maximum indemnity of £250 would not suffice at all. If there is a strong wind blowing it may also happen that a man’s dwelling house may be destroyed or his outbuildings may fall prey to the flames, and then £250 would be far from enough. In the second instance, as I have already stated, there are parts of the North-West which are famous for its Bushman grass which grows so compactly that a fire might cause very severe damage, and in the North-West farms are not like in other parts 200 or 400 morgen in extent, but much bigger in extent. The Minister says that in certain circumstances he will undertake the clearing of fire-breaks at 12s. 6d. per mile, and in other cases at £1 per mile. There are instances in the North-West where the line crosses a farmer’s land up to ten miles, and if he has to clear it on both sides, then it will cost him annually £12 to £15. It seems unreasonable. I should like the Minister to consider the fixing of a maximum. It seems unfair that where the Railways have been responsible in the past for the clearing of the fire-breaks, that the onus should now be placed on the farmer. Labour is a very difficult question today, making it simply impossible for the farmer to do it. To think that they should do the clearing is out of the question. The hon. member for Queenstown (Mr. Van Coller) has already shown that the Railways are today greatly responsible for soil erosion. If you go to the eastern parts, you notice how awful ditches have been washed open, and the Railways are greatly responsible for this. When clearings are hoed it often means the beginning of terrible dongas, and if the Railways are responsible the Minister must also see to it that the clearings which have to obviate fires should be prepared in such a way that they do not assist soil erosion. I hope that the Minister will accept a few amendments in Committee.

If there is one thing which the farmers take up very seriously, then it is the fires caused by the Railways. Now, the Minister comes along and proposes new legislation. He wants to make it easier for the farmers to get indemnity in certain circumstances, but he makes it a condition that the farmers have to see that the clearings along the lines are made. But what were the circumstances in the past? A train passes and the engine puts the grass along the line on fire. In some instances the engine threw the fire right across the cleared path. Valuable grass and property is being burnt, and, should the farmer submit a claim, the Railways deny in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred any responsibility, and it is said that the onus of proof rests on the farmer that it is the engine which put the farm on fire. Now, can the farmer prove that it really is the engine that has just passed which has caused the fire if the farmer sits at home and only minutes afterwards or even latex sees the fire? Actually there was nothing else but the engine which passed there, but the Railways evade their responsibilities, and, as stated by the Minister, the farmers are loaded with great expenses from time to time without having been able to obtain compensation from the Administration through the courts. Now the Minister says that he wants to meet the farmers. But in the first instance he limits the compensation to £250. It is the maximum of the indemnity, and then he makes the condition that the fire-break must be cleared by the farmers themselves. But in the event of any losses being sustained, even if the farmer has cleared the road, then it will still be very difficult to prove that the train put the farm on fire. The same difficulties of the past will still be experienced if the railways want to evade their responsibilities. Consequently I fail to see how this legislation can assist us very much. A farmer may suffer thousands of pounds in losses but the maximum remains £250, and with that the farmers are saddled with the cleaning of the breaks. The farmers would like to do everything in order to assist the Railway Administration, but when the farmer has incurred the expenses and trouble in order to protect himself and his fellow farmers he expects reasonable and fair treatment from the Railway Administration and the indemnity should not be confined to a maximum of £250. I hope that the Minister will put the case very clearly, because before I vote for this Bill, I first want a better assurance from the Minister.

One becomes dumbfounded sometimes how some departments from time to time infringe the rights of private ownership. It makes one think of one’s school days when different teachers each gave the children work, with the result that the children eventually had too much work and were unable to do it. Here one has the position that various departments come along, and without worrying about each other, rights of private owners are being infringed. Not so very long ago the Department of Interior came along with a Bill in which various rights of private people were taken away. Now the Department of Railways comes along and again wants to take away rights. We admit that the Department has a certain amount of claim on special rights, but why should this further infringement be made on private possessions? In this abnormal time the railways employ conveyances and engines of all kinds. I am afraid that as soon as this Bill has been passed, the Minister will be ten times less careful as regards the engines which he uses in comparison with the past, and if the safety measures are neglected still further. Today they are using engines which are not provided with the usual safety measures, with the result that sparks are blown out and the farmers suffer great losses. It is not the fault of the farmers that old engines are used but that of the Railway Department. When I went home recently, I saw fires along the railways for long distances which were caused by the type of engine now in use. The Minister now comes along and places the responsibility on private owners. The private owners now have to take the necessary precautions. What right has the Minister to demand such a thing from private owners? It is one of the biggest transgressions of private rights with which any department has ever come along with. The railways now expect that private owners should protect themselves against the carelessness of the railways. It is not fair. What does the private owner know about the conditions of the engines? It is not right to place that onus on the owners. I believe that land owners on the other side also appreciate that this measure is wrong, and if they realise it, they should assist us to fight it. I hope that the Minister, in any case, will not evade his responsibility.

I think I can say on the whole that my Bill has had a very friendly reception because all the criticism against it was, I think, for the most part founded on an inaccurate conception of the Bill and on an inaccurate conception of the existing law. There is a surprising ignorance on the part of some hon. members opposite as to how they do stand in respect of the existing law. People talk about the onus being on the railways to make fire breaks, about the onus being on the railways to disprove that their engines were not in order. Under the existing law there is no onus on the railways. There is an onus in the event of a fire having been caused by an engine but it is very difficult to prove that the fire was ever caused by an engine unless you prove that the spark arrester was out of order. I know that the position of the farmer is difficult and I recognise that the farmer is not well treated under the existing legislation, and I am anxious to help him, but I cannot in my anxiety to help him immediately accept an unlimited liability in respect of what may happen in a fire. Let us be clear. Fires are not always caused by engines—even if farms run alongside a railway line. We have fires on Table Mountain and there are no railway lines there. It is natural that in any law there should be some provision for proof that the railways do something, that they have been negligent in some way or another. Let us admit that it is not always a disadvantage—even if there is a risk of fire, to have a railway line on or near your farm. I think there should be a spirit of co-operation and helpfulness. I note what the hon. member for Waterberg (Mr. J. G. Strydom) said about the usual attitude of the railways towards all kinds of claims. The railways, unfortunately, I am afraid, get hardened. We have hundreds of claims to deal with. They have to be dealt with in a rigid way, otherwise State money would be wasted.

That is no justification for refusing to pay out where you know you are liable.

I am not defending the position—I am only pointing out that we have a difficult task in that connection because large numbers of people do try to put it across the railways. The position is this. The idea underlying this Bill is that you will not have the ordinary sort of claim against the railways. We do not propose to put the farmers to the proof. If the trains go through or alongside a farm and a fire-break has been made, and a fire breaks out, we shall pay. There is no question of putting the farmer to the proof. I would suggest to hon. members to read the first part of the Bill which is very clear on that point. It is our idea to make it as easy as possible for farmers in ninety per cent. of the cases to get compensation without any difficulty.

Who is going to be responsible for the fire paths?

Fire-breaks will still have to be made. I am not a farmer and I cannot say how often a fire-break has to be made. But I think if a fire-break is made once a season it will be quite satisfactory. But if no fire-break has been made by the farmer …

Whose responsibility are the fire paths going to be?

The fire-breaks will have to be made. The fire-breaks today is the farmer’s responsibility, not the Railway’s responsibility.

But it is made by the Railways?

Yes, but there is no responsibility on us.

It is a safeguard for the Railways.

But there is no onus on us.

Except in your own interest.

Where it pays us we provide fire-breaks. But the point is that it is not going to be in our interest to pay £250 for any fire that may be caused.

Are you going to maintain the fire paths?

If we do maintain a firebreak in our interest—we shall continue to do so, but we do not pay compensation if the farmer has not paid for it.

Will you repeat the charges which you are going to make for these breaks?

I said I was not going to put it into the Bill. Our idea is that where a farmer ploughs a furrow at the proper distance apart to permit of our burning between, we shall make a fire-break at 12s. 6d. per mile. If we don’t have the furrow it will be £1 per mile.

Once a year?

Yes, once a year. We insist on a fire-break being made once a year.

How would you determine the compensation?

We should send an inspector along to see what the damage is.

What will the procedure be?

I really cannot answer all these questions at this stage.

Will hon. members kindly reserve all these questions for the Committee stage?

I cannot go into the question of procedure at this stage. We want to be helpful. I know hon. members are always suspicious about us. Now, in regard to the maximum amount I would suggest this to the House. We don’t know what it will cost, but it will cost the railways a good deal—the whole question is how many farmers will take advantage of this method of insurance. If a large number take advantage it will cost a large amount of money but I suggest that we should allow the Bill to go through on its present basis, and after a year or two years’ working we can see how works out and if it is not meeting the purpose for which I have designed it, I shall be prepared to amend it, but we must first see how it works. But there is one thing I want to be clear on. The railways cannot give way on this basic principle that this special form of compensation will only apply to the farmers willing to help themselves; it will not apply to the farmers whom we have to help. It will apply to a farmer who makes his own fire-break—and if a fire occurs on the farm next door which has no fire-break we shall pay compensation to the man who has a firebreak. So a farmer who helps himself will be compensated and compensated without enquiry, without elaborate proceedings, and that is why we cannot include such things as outbuildings and livestock. If the farmer does not do anything himself and we build the fire-break, the farmer will not get this compensation. As a rule, these fires are only small affairs. Now, the hon. member for Victoria West (Mr. D. T. du P. Viljoen) drew a sad picture of the farmer who owned a farm which had a ten miles frontage on the railway line, and he said: “Imagine that poor farmer having to pay £6 5s. per year as protection.” Well, if he has a ten mile frontage on the railway line, and there is a big risk of his having a fire, I think £6 5s. is a relatively small insurance premium.

You will never understand the farmers’ difficulties.

I understand them only too well. I don’t think any other question has been raised. I have answered the main points, but, in conclusion, I should like to say that if there is anything in the Bill which hon. members think should be amended, provided it is within the principles I have laid down, I am prepared to consider their amendments. I agree there was force in the remarks of the hon. member for Waterberg, that the Act is a little bit stringent in certain respects. The difficulty I am in there is that, although the Railway Minister is anxious to make a generous gesture to the farming community, when it comes to putting what he wants to do into legal language, the Bill may not look as if it was a generous gesture at all. This Bill has only one object, and that is to help the farmer. It is only where the farmer has been wilfully negligent and is not prepared to help himself that any difficulties will be raised when it comes to the question of paying compensation. I should like to say in conclusion that if hon. members want me to consider any amendments I hope they will put them on the Order Paper because it is always extremely difficult at the last minute to accept or reject an amendment unless one knows the implications of it.