"The use of the veto has had disastrous effects on private enterprise. In many districts it has led to utter stagnation of personal initiative. Good schemes have been barred by local authorities out of pure caprice or prejudice. Other schemes have been allowed to proceed under barely tolerable conditions; the undertaking has been crippled from the start by the high price municipalities have exacted for their consent. Others, again, have been withdrawn by the promoter because he found it impossible to agree to the extortionate demands of the governing bodies."
Mr Porter quotes various authorities who have expressed strong views on the subject of the veto.
The chairman of the Parliamentary Committee which considered a scheme of tramways promoted in Scotland said: "The Committee desire to put on record that in their opinion the original scheme was a good one, and calculated to be of much use to the district; but it has been so mutilated and loaded with conditions by conflicting interests and the excessive demands of several local bodies that it now appears to the Committee to be wholly unworkable."
In 1902 Mr Chaplin, at one time President of the Local Government Board, stated that "what local authorities would describe as conditions are regarded by promoters—and very often, no doubt, with good reason—as neither more nor less than blackmail. This has been the subject of great complaint for years, and I do not think I should be going too far if I said that on several occasions it has led to considerable scandals."
Lest these expressions of opinion may be considered unduly severe by any reader unacquainted with the facts, I turn for some definite data to the "Exhibit to Proof of Evidence," handed in by Sir Clifton Robinson to the Royal Commission on London Traffic when he was examined before that body in 1904.[[62]]
In the early days of his company (the London United), the local authorities, Sir Clifton said, "had not, perhaps, fully recognised their opportunity," and the company got their assents comparatively cheaply under their first Act in 1898.
Two years later the price they had to pay for the assents of local authorities to a group of tramways in the Twickenham, Teddington and Hampton district was £202,000, or £16,000 a mile. The requirements imposed on the company took the form of "wayleaves" and of street improvements, the greater part of the latter being entirely apart from the actual needs of the tramway. The improvements in Heath Road, Twickenham, giving a 45-ft. roadway, cost for properties and works alone some £30,000. A like sum had to be spent in Hampton and Hampton Wick, where the work done included the setting back of the entire frontage of the Royal Deer Park of Bushey.
In 1901 the company sought for powers to construct twelve miles of tramway in Kingston-upon-Thames and neighbourhood. On this occasion the "concessions" wrung from them by the local authorities amounted to £66,000 for street improvements, £20,000 for bridges, and a further £68,000, capitalised value of annual payments for so-called "wayleaves." This made a total of £154,000, or £12,800 per mile, merely for assents to the construction of their lines. The details of the account included a sum of £1500 extorted by an urban district council as "a contribution towards some town improvement, not necessarily on the company's proposed line of route, but anywhere in their district the council might desire."
One item to which the company had to agree in 1902, before they could obtain an Act authorising them to build another thirteen miles of tramway, was the construction at Barnes of an embankment and terrace along the river side. It made a very pleasant promenade, and was certainly an addition to the amenities of the neighbourhood; but it cost the tramway company £40,000. The "price" of local authorities' assents for these thirteen miles of line worked out thus: Street improvements (properties and works), £72,000; Barnes Boulevard, £40,000; "wayleaves" (capitalised), £100,000; a total of £412,000, or £31,600 per mile.
Altogether, in the four years, 1898-1902, the total expenditure of the company on street and bridge improvements in respect to less than fifty miles of tramway amounted to £745,000; and although, to a certain extent, the widenings, etc., were necessary for electric tramway purposes, "the bulk of the expenditure under this head," Sir Clifton declared, "was undertaken with a view to conciliate the local authorities, or was forced upon us by them as the 'price of their assents.'" To this £745,000 was to be added £241,000, the capitalised value, at five per cent, of the "wayleaves" the company had also agreed to pay, making a total of £986,500, irrespective altogether of the cost of construction and equipment of the lines.