Question 2. “Will you explain to us how the ten shillings is to be collected and divided between the government and the local authorities?”
I would propose that the five shillings paid to the Government should be paid in the form of a charge upon each certificate; or, in other words, each certificate of registration should be stamped with a five shilling stamp, and collected by the Government as the other stamps are collected. The other five shillings should be kept by the local authorities for their trouble and expense in the matter.
Question 3. “How do you propose dealing with the fines?”
The fines should be handed over to the local sanitary authorities, who, I suggest, with the sanction of the Local Government Board, should enforce the Act.
Question 4. “How would you meet the case of a man who, with his family, is at the end of the year, when his annual certificate expires, a hundred miles away from the place where he obtained his certificate of registration?”
I will try to illustrate my meaning in this way. Suppose that a man registered his van at Tunstall, Staffordshire, in the first instance, say, on January, 1883, but during the year he had wandered all over the country almost, and on January, 1884, he was at Northampton with his van and family. I propose that he should take his last certificate of registration to the sanitary authority at Northampton and get it renewed. This plan works out right in the case of hawkers. Of course, the van would have to be brought to the officers, or at any rate, it would have to be where it could be inspected.
Question 5. “You say in your Congress papers that the certificate should be taken on the first of January in each year. Now suppose a man wanted to register his van in October, would the owner be required to pay the sum of ten shillings for the remaining two months of the year, and then be required to take out another certificate on the following January?”
According to the plan sketched out in my Congress paper it would be so; but on further consideration it would, I think, be much more simple, fair, and easy if the certificates were taken out for a year at any time or place the owner thought fit to apply for them.
Question 6. “Will you explain why it is that you think the certificates of registration should be renewed annually? Would it not be sufficient if the vans and temporary miserable dwellings were registered only once?”
No, I do not think it would. Vans, as in the case of canal boats, often change hands, and to keep an oversight of and be able to trace the vans through all their changes would require a lot of official and intricate machinery to be set in motion which would not be needful if the certificates of registration were taken out every year. Every application for a certificate or a renewal of a certificate would bring the owner to the front. The changes taking place during the year could be endorsed upon the back of the certificate, and with the transfer of the van I would hand over the certificate of registration in force to the new owner.