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54
any other Company or person either supplying or intending to
supply electricity within the parish. That clause formed the
subject, I think, of three interviews with the Board of Trade
last year, and so the whole circumstance would be quite
familiar to you. We have adopted this view deliberately. We
say that until we are in a position to district London, let us
have competition—let us have limited competition—let us have
effective competition, because we believe that effective competition
will help us to solve the difficulty of districting at a more
early date than either free trade or districting at the present
time. And after all, those clauses prohibiting the association
of competing Companies, preventing practically a working
arrangement to defeat the purposes of competition, is not much
more than an extension of the 11th section of the Electric
Lighting Act of 1882. The latter part of that section, Sir, is
that "no local authority, Company, or person, shall by any
contract or assignment transfer to any other Company or person
or divest themselves of any legal powers given to them, or any
legal liabilities imposed upon them by this Act, or by any
licence, order, or special Act without the consent of the Board
of Trade." We go a step further and say that the Companies
shall not only not do that, but that they shall not make a
working arrangement which would defeat the purpose and
object we have in introducing limited competition. The Vestry
are the best judges, I think, of local requirements. I have
nothing to say against the Board of Trade being the authority
to say whether the working arrangements shall or shall not be
permitted, but inasmuch as the Vestry are the statutory local
authority, and, as I submit most respectfully, they have a better
local knowledge, I think the solution which has been adopted
is the best one Now, I should like just to say a
word or two with regard to the principles affected with regard
to the Order and to the Bill. The Vestry have not taken an
extreme view. They have laid down a principle that an
electric lighting undertaking, like any other undertaking that
appeals to the public for support, must largely depend for its
success upon commercial principles. That view has been
steadily kept in mind throughout the negotiations both with
the Metropolitan Company and with the St. James's Company.
Of course we have the experience to Some extent of the working
of the Gasworks Clauses Acts and of the special Acts of the