NAVAL EXPENDITURE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXVII, Issue 166, 15 July 1903, Page 2

NAVAL EXPENDITURE.

DISCUSSION IN THE HOUSE OF

COMMONS.

ALLEGED LAND PURCHASE

JOBBERY.

Press Aawciatforr, Electric Telegraph Copyright. London, July 13. In the House of Commons, Mr Buchanan moved, and Mr E. Wason seconded, a motion for the rejection of the proposed expenditure on new naval works because the total estimate for the new naval base at Rosyth (St. Margaret's Hope, Scotland) was not disclosed.

The amendment was negatived by 164 votes to 73.

The second reading of the Naval Works Bill was then agreed to.

Daring the debate Mr E. Robertson, Liberal member for Dundee, said, regarding the Rosyth site, that the Marquis of Linlithgow (formerly Lord Hopetoun, late Governor-General of the Australian Commonwealth) was receiving £127,000 for land which was producing only £1600 per annum in rents. This price, he declared, was two and a half times the market value of the land.

Mr T. Gibson Bowles, Conservative member for King's Lynn, said it was equivalent to nearly eighty years' purchase.

Captain E. G. Pretyman, Civil Lord of the Admiralty, said the Admiralty had engaged two experienced valuers in Scotland and the vendor also had » valuer. The Admiralty's valuation was £7000 below that of the vendor. The Marquis of Linlithgow, said Captain Pretyman, was unwilling to sell land which for three centuries had been in his family, and which was opposite his residence, but was willing on learning what the land was required for.

Captain Pretyman went on to say that the bargain was a fair one in view of the increasing value of land near Edinburgh. To exercise compulsion on the part of the Crown by resuming the land would be more costly. It was customary to pay thirty years' pur* chase, plus fifty per cent., for land resumed compulsorily.