FOREIGN, DIPLOMATIC, AND CONSULAR SERVICES.

HC Deb 21 May 1910 vol 116 cc489-531

Lieut.-Colonel Sir S. HOARE

I beg to move, That, in view of the time that has elapsed and the. changes that have taken place since the Report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service with reference to the Foreign, Diplomatic, and Consular Services, a Committee should at once be set up for carrying into effect such of their recommendations as are still practicable, and for introducing a single graded Foreign Service recruited by open competition in the examinations of the Civil Service Commission, supervised for the purpose of promotion by representative Boards, and paid at such rates as to disqualify no candidate on the ground of inadequate financial means. Hon. Members will see that I ask the House to do two things. First, to appoint a small Committee to bring into operation at once such of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Civil Service as are still practicable, and, second, by their terms of reference, to instruct the Committee to introduce into our foreign service one single graded service. If the House agrees with my Motion, there need be no delay in carrying out the objects which I have in view. It would not be necessary for the Committee to contemplate spending any large period of time in taking evidence or making any detailed examination. All the material is ready to hand. The Royal Commission on Civil Service, of winch I was a member, accumulated an immense amount of material, and since then other inquiries into the Consular Service and other branches of our foreign service have also been held, with the result that at the present moment material is quite ready upon which the Committee that I ask the House to appoint could act without delay. I have taken a very close interest In this question, both on the Royal Commission which reported in 1914, and during the four or five years of the War, and I say at once that the experience I have gained during the War, by seeing at first hand, the problems and difficulties in most of the European Embassies and Legations and many of the European Consulates, has made me modify in several material respects the opinions which I held in 1914, and the House will see in the course of my few observations how in many respects I go considerably beyond the Report that I signed then and how in certain respects I have altered the opinion that I then held.

I do not think that any apology is necessary for introducing this subject to the attention of the House. The last Debate of this kind, directed explicitly to our foreign service, took place in the year 1877, and the House will agree that when we are considering all the many problems of reconstruction, one of the most insistent problems is the reconstruction of our foreign service. On that account it is not, I think, taking up the time of the House unnecessarily if I ask it to concentrate its attention upon what I believe to be one of the most vital parts of our national reconstruction—the complete re construction of our various foreign services. At the present moment it seems to me that there is widespread dissatisfaction with our foreign service, felt by the public outside for the service, and felt within the service among members of the service itself against the conditions under which they serve. As to the dissatisfaction which the public feel, I believe that a certain phase of it is justified and that a certain phase of it is not justified. For instance, I think that it is altogether un just to blame the Foreign Office for policy and acts which have been the policy and acts not of officials in the Foreign Office, but of Ministers and Governments. Secret diplomacy, for instance, which we often hear attacked, has on several important occasions, particularly during the War, been the result of decisions taken, not by officials of the Foreign office or our diplomats abroad, but by Ministers of the day and directly or indirectly by the Parliaments which failed to maintain control in foreign politics over the Ministers. The feeling of dissatisfaction felt against our foreign service in that respect, I think, is not justified. But the criticism which I think is justified against our Foreign Office—and by our Foreign Office I mean all our various foreign services—is the reeling 'hot the Foreign Office has shown itself on many occasions remote from the big events and the great currents that have come to the surface in different parts of the world.

It seems to me, looking back over the events not only of the last five years, but for many years before, that for some reason or other our Foreign Office—and other Foreign Offices perhaps have been equally to blame—has been remote from the really big currents that have been showing themselves in Europe. Take two or three examples from the War as to which there does seem to be cause for justifiable criticism against the officials of the Foreign Office. At the beginning of the War our Diplomats at Constantinople were apparently totally ignorant of the fact that Turkey had taken sides against us. Again I think that there is cause of criticism that the officials of the Foreign Office—I do not include in this charge our diplomats in Russia—did not realise the immensity of the Russian Revolution; and to take another instance that was mentioned by the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs only this week, I think that it is cause for criticism that the Foreign Office from their own admission were totally ignorant of the state of affairs in Egypt that led to the unfortunate out breaks during the last two or three weeks. That makes me think that there is cause for the criticism, that for one reason or another. the officials of the Foreign Office have not shown themselves sensitive to the big events and the great currents that we have seen in Europe and in the world during the last five years. There is the other phase, the other side of the feeling of dissatisfaction—the feeling within the Service itself. I believe that I am within the mark when I say that at present there is a very general feeling of dissatisfaction within the Service against the conditions under which its members are serving.

In the Service you have excellent material, men of really distinguished ability and very high training, and yet you find them, whether they hold higher positions or lower positions, profoundly discontented with the present conditions of the Service. They are discontented with the fact that much of their ability, owing to a faulty division of labour, is at present wasted upon purely routine work. They are discontented because certain branches of the Service—for instance, the Diplomatic Service—are altogether in adequately paid. A Service that for the first two years gives the man no pay at all, and further demands from him that he should have an income of his own of £400 a year, suffers from conditions that to my mind are absolutely indefensible. I am aware that in these two respects, under the new Regulations, the Foreign Office is making great improvement, but to me it is incredible that conditions of that kind should have gone on so long. Take another reason for discontent. The diplomats feel, and always have felt, that the men on the spot do not receive the attention that they should receive at home. Take, again, the fact that, for some purpose or other that I do not understand, the Consular Service is held to be inferior to the Diplomatic Service. The fact that Consuls, many of whom have a unique knowledge of the countries in which they are serving and of the languages of those countries, many of whom are doing work of the first importance—the fact that these men see themselves inferior in status to the Diplomatic Service, seems to me to be not only a justifiable cause for discontent within the Service, but an absolutely indefensible position. There, in a few sentences, are the problems connected with the Foreign Service that I have in mind—a Foreign Service that at the present moment, in spite of the excellent men that it has as its members, does not possess the full confidence of the country; a Foreign Service that is administered in such conditions as to leave the officials in London, the diplomats abroad, and the Consuls in the various countries in which they serve justifiable causes for discontent and irritation. With that problem in mind, I ask myself how it is possible to regain for the Service the general confidence of the country and to introduce into the Service conditions that will remove the existing causes of discontent and irritation. I believe that no little measure of the discontent of the country is due to the existing conditions of admission. I am quite aware that, owing to changes that have been made during the last few years, the Foreign Service is no longer the close borough that it was ten or fifteen years ago. I am quite aware that the criticism of the Service in that respect has sometimes been ill-directed and some times exaggerated. None the less, I do feel that some measure of the lack of confidence the country as a whole feels to wards the Foreign Office is not a little due to the fact that it is a service apart, with rules of its own for admission, and that it is not open to all the talent as other Government offices are.

Although so many restrictions have been removed, there is still a provision that it is necessary, before competition for admission to the Service, to obtain the approval of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and of a special Foreign Office board of selection. The defence to this exceptional treatment is that every precaution—exceptional precautions, in fact—must be taken to ensure that our representatives in foreign countries are trust-worthy men of really first-class ability. I acknowledge the importance of it. You must have men of a high standard of education. You must have men who are not susceptible to any kind of improper influence, political or financial. You must have men upon whom you can absolutely rely as worthy representatives of the nation in foreign countries. But, granting all this, special limitations, the limitation of nomination and approval by a special selection board, I have come to the conclusion that really does more harm than good. They do harm by leaving the impression upon the public outside that the Service is still a close borough, restricted to a particular class, and on that account they shake the confidence of the country in the Service. I do not Relieve that they are really necessary.

Of course we want men whom we can trust as the country's representatives abroad, but so also do we want men whom we can trust as the country's officials in the Government offices in this country. Let us ask ourselves this question, Which office on the whole has gained the better men, the Treasury, after forty years of open competition, or the Foreign Office with these limitations, modifications and exceptional treatment? From the experience of the War I draw this further conclusion. I look to Paris and I see that the two most successful British delegates in the Peace Conference, the Prime Minister and the right hon. Member for the Gorbals Division of Glasgow (Mr. Barnes), would neither of them have been eligible to be even third Attaches in a South American Legation with the limitations and conditions which have been in force in the foreign service during the last thirty years. On that account I say that the time has come to merge for the purposes of administration the foreign service into the general organisation of Government offices. I mean by that that candidates for admission into the foreign service should sit for the ordinary Civil Service examination. Probably in future there will be three such examinations, an examination at the age of sixteen or seventeen, an examination at pre-graduate age, and another examination at post-graduate age. I want candidates for the foreign service to enter those examinations just like any other candidates. It is possible that a candidate might pass creditably in a Civil Service examination, but that there might be no office open for him in the foreign service. If he entered for the general examination he would not have wasted his time, because he might then obtain an appointment in one of the other Government offices. In addition to examinations I think it is quite possible in the future, and this was one of the subjects which the Royal Com mission on the Civil Service considered at some length, that there should also be a personal interview of the candidates Mho had sat for examination. I am quite ready to say that those candidates, having had their written examination, should also have a personal interview to see if there was any reason why they were not suitable for the foreign service. But what I want to emphasise is, that any kind of selection board must not be a special board for the foreign service, but a general selection board working either on rota or one single board, as the case may be, for the whole Civil Service. I do not want the examination for the foreign service to be a different examination from that for any other service. I have consulted many people well qualified to speak, and they tell me it is perfectly possible to ensure that the special qualifications—for instance, an accurate knowledge of foreign languages, should have their full weight in the ordinary Civil Service examination and that it is perfectly easy to organise the first, second and third division examination by a system of groups in which every candidate for the foreign service, whether he be a candidate for the Diplomatic Service or the Consular Service, could compete and could give the examiner an adequate opportunity of testing his qualifications. That is my first point, that the foreign service should be brought into the general swim of the whole of the Civil Service, and that, candidates should enter by the ordinary Civil Service examination and that if there is to be any board of selection that the board should be for all Civil servants rather than a special board for the Foreign Office or Consular service, or any other branch of the Foreign service.

I come to the second point to which I desire to draw the attention of the House, and here again I feel that it is one of the ways in which we could improve the ad ministration of the Foreign Office. I want, as I have said, candidates to be admitted by the ordinary Civil Service examination and to be admitted into a single graded service. At the present moment the Foreign Office, although it is a small service, is divided up into a number of water tight compartments. I say watertight compartments advisedly. I know that in theory there is interchangeability between them, but in actual practice the inter changeability is so rare that for the purpose of general argument I think I may well ignore it. You have got now, first of all, the Foreign Office with a staff of 121 officials. You have got the Diplomatic service with a staff of 120 officials. You have got the General Consular service with a staff of 165. You have got the Far Eastern Consular service with a staff of 101, and that service is again divided up into three more or less watertight compartments, the China service, the Japan service, and the Siam service. Then you have got the Levant service, also more or less a watertight compartment, with an establishment of ninety-seven. And lastly, you have got the Department of Over sea Trade, the exact position of which I do not understand, as it is under two Ministries at once, and has a staff of 561. In other words, you have a personnel that amounts to about the strength of an Infantry battalion divided up into nine more or less watertight compartments. It is my conviction that no service organised on those lines could be properly administered. Hon. Members will see at once the difficulties and anomalies which must arise in a service which, though nominally a single foreign service, is actually divided into nine more or less, watertight compartments. I say at once, take the first step, and a step which I believe is regarded favourably by the Foreign Office, and amalgamate the Foreign service and the Diplomatic service. I do not think I need labour that point. It is probably obvious to every Member of the House this evening that that would be a step in advance. But I go further than that, and I say not only amalgamate the Foreign Service and Diplomatic service, but amalgamate both with the Consular service. I know that up to the present there has been an opinion very widely felt that the Consular service and the Diplomatic service differ materially, and the Consular service has been regarded as an inferior service It was urged on the Royal Commission on the Civil Service that a higher standard of education was necessary for the Diplomatic service, and moreover, it has been urged frequently that the functions of the services differed so much that it was impossible to amalgamate them. To these objections I say this. I say, first of all, that as far as an educational standard goes the Foreign Office themselves admit that as high a standard is necessary for the Consular Service as for the Diplomatic Service, for I understand that they are in the act of assimilating the examinations for admission into these two services, so that that objection is wiped away. Then there is the objection that the functions of the two services materially differ. I have seen during the War something of the work of the diplomats and of the Consulates at first hand, and the more I have seen of it the more convinced I became that, although in many details the work of the two services differed, materially it was very much the same, and that the whole course of events in Europe was making it more and more the same. I am aware that there is the other school of thought which says that the Consular Service in its functions is so distinct from the Diplomatic Service that it ought to be cutaway from the Foreign Office altogether and put directly under the Board of Trade, or under the Ministry of Commerce that perhaps we shall see in the future. I would regard any such proposal as that with great regret, and for this reason. I believe that it would be disastrous to the Diplomatic Service to be cut adrift from all the great questions of commerce and economics. It would leave the Diplomatic Service in a more stagnant backwater than it often finds itself in at present. In the future, economic questions are bound to play an even greater part in the country's life, and to me it would be an act of unpardonable retrogression if, with economic questions playing so large a part in our national life, we cut the Consular Service away from the foreign service and put it under the Board of Trade; and I believe it would also have this further disastrous effect.

I believe that one of the lessons that we have learned during the War is that in a foreign country the nation can only be represented in face of the foreign Government by a single Department. The Germans tried a different principle, the principle of leaving their military Attachés, their naval Attachés, and their commercial Attachés practically independent of their Ambassadors, and the result was that you had the Ambassador with one policy and you had the Attachés with different policies, and very often diametrically opposite policies, in the same country. Let me give the House one example. There was a moment in the War when the German Minister in Christiania was carrying on some extremely delicate negotiations with the Norwegian Government. At that moment the German Naval Attaché, who had an entirely different policy, was spending his time in smuggling dynamite bombs through the courier's bag. The House will see at once how hopeless is adminstration in a foreign country when you have the Ambassador with one policy and some other British official very likely with a totally opposite policy, and I believe that to put the Consular Service under the Board of Trade would mean that the Consular Service, with the Commercial Attaché possibly at the head, would have one policy and the Ambassador very likely would have a divergent policy. On this account I take the opposite view, that, so far from removing the Consular Service from the pur- view of the foreign service, I go the length of saying that the two services ought to be one single foreign service, that every diplomat ought to have an economic training, and that to many diplomats it would be a great advantage if at some time during their career they had served in one of the great and important Consulates of the world. Incidentally, that, of course, means that the Department of Oversea Trade must come directly under the Foreign Office. I believe, rightly or wrongly, that the divided control of the Department of Oversea Trade has been most unfortunate, and I say it for this reason: There is my hon. Friend (Sir A. Steel-Maitland) on the Front Bench. Anyone who has been in this House for some time will know that with his abilities no one was "better fitted to make a great success of that Department, and I am convinced that the fact that with all his ability he has not been able to make a greater success of the Department of Oversea Trade shows that the present divided system of control is quite impossible. There are my two first points in the reorganisation of the foreign service—the amalgamation of the Diplomatic Service and the Foreign Office, and the amalgamation also of the Consular Service.

The third point that I desire to make is that when those two changes have been made the service must be one single-graded service. A man, whether he enters at seventeen or eighteen or twenty-three, will enter a single service with a definite place in the hierarchy of that service. At the top, to give two or three examples, you will have the first or second grade, with certain Ambassadors in it, with the Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office, with the Secretary-General of the League of Nations—because one wants to work that all in the same organisation; lower down, you will have a grade with Ministers, assistant secretaries,. British representatives upon international commissions, of whom there probably will be many in the future, and one or two of the Consuls General; lower down still,, you will have the lower division clerks,, whatever be their designation in the future, certain of the Consular posts, officials such as archivists, officials such as King's messengers. Everyone will have some definite post in this single unified service. The pay of the various grades will be uniform. A man in such and such a grade will know that whether he is serving abroad or whether he is serving at home lie will receive a uniform rate of pay. If he serves abroad there will be a definite amount attached, to the particular post as a living allowance or as an allowance for an establishment of an office in that foreign country. No man, therefore, will lose or gain financially by remaining at home or by going abroad. Every man in the service will have a chance, not only of pro motion, but of variety of work. One of the difficulties that I remember being emphasised in the Royal Commission on the Civil Service was the difficulty of finding promotion for the second division clerks in the Foreign Office. Under my scheme, there would be a number of posts graded in the same grade, or in the grades immediately above the grade to which second division clerks would look for pro motion in the ordinary course of events. My system, therefore, I urge, would re move one of the great difficulties in finding promotion in these numerous small services. By having one big service there would be a much more open career to every man in it.

With reference to the foreign posts, I would draw a very clear distinction between the salary attached to the post, and the foreign service allowance that would also be attached to the post. At the pre sent moment—to take a single instance—.you have the Ambassador in Rome who, nominally, has a salary of £7,000 a year, but of that salary no less than £2,100 goes in Income Tax and Super-tax, and a great part of the rest goes in expenses that ought to be office expenses borne on the Votes of the general foreign service. My scheme would mean that a post like that would have a salary, say, of £l,500 or £2,000 a year attached to its holder, and the rest of the expenses would be office expenses based upon a definite establishment, sanctioned by this House, and in no way involving the occupant of the office in any personal expenses. Further, with this big uniform service, I believe that if merit is to be kept to the fore, and if the best people are to rise to the top, you must have in the Foreign Office at home, committees or boards dealing with promotion. I know there is a great feeling in the ser vice abroad that the further a man lives away the less likely he is to obtain promotion. He is lost sight of. I believe, with this big service of a thousand odd members, if you had two or three representative committees—certainly two representative committees—in the Foreign Office, with all the various interests represented upon it, there would be less likelihood of the merits of men in distant places being lost sight of, and I believe one of the great causes of discontent with the conditions of the service at the present moment would be removed.

9.0 P.M.

There, in general terms, is this scheme of a uniform foreign service that I have in my mind. I may be asked why I am not satisfied with the changes that the Foreign Office are already undertaking. I am aware, for instance, that both the Foreign Office and the Department of Oversea Trade are in the Votes, which are now before Parliament, increasing the salaries of many of the Diplomats and Consuls, and that some of the causes of discontent will be consequently removed. I understand, for instance, that the hon. Member who directs the Department of Oversea Trade has ready to bring into operation a very important scheme under which the conditions in the Consular Service will be considerably improved. I am grateful. At the same time, it does not meet my contention. I do not want to see the various branches of the foreign service treated separately. I want to see the whole problem treated as a whole, and I can quite believe that, however excellent is his scheme, and however necessary are many of the rises in the salaries of the Consular Service he proposes, it may complicate, rather than simplify, the solution of the whole problem, because by treating the Consular Service as a separate service from the diplomatic and the other branches of the foreign service, you will be getting further away from uniformity rather than nearer to it. And what I want to see is a single-graded service with uniform pay throughout every single one of its grades.

My Motion, I venture to think, is necessary for this further reason. I am aware that the Foreign Office are considering various reforms. I am aware that they are proposing certain improvements in the conditions of the service. But so they have been for forty or fifty years. The history of the Foreign Office during the last fifty years has been a continuous history of reluctant and very overdue agreement with reforms that were long over due. Time after time, years have passed before reforms, about which there was no controversy whatever, were adopted. For years—to take one or two instances—the Foreign Office insisted upon conditions for its examinations that put a premium upon bad education and cramming. In 1886 Lord Ridley's Commission recommended that the Diplomatic and the Foreign Office personnel should be amalgamated. It has only been done this year. Commission after Commission, inquiry after inquiry, recommended that the condition that a man in the Diplomatic Service must guarantee an income of £400 a year should be abolished. That ridiculous condition Is only being abolished this year. And with the Consular Service for the last generation men of every party, and in every walk of life, have been clamouring for drastic reforms, and it is only now that any kind of substantial reforms are being introduced. Lastly, the Royal Commission on the Civil Service five years ago recommended that promotion boards should be set up, such as those that I have outlined during my speech this evening. So far as I know, those boards have not yet been adopted.

Because of this continuous policy of delay in adopting reforms, in the face of strong public opinion in the country, I urge the House this evening to support my Motion, which would result in this: A Committee would be set up that would bring at once into operation the reforms which I have suggested this evening, and, by its terms of reference, would insist upon introducing into a service of water tight compartments a single uniform system. That need, in my view, is urgent. I see a machine which is out of date. I see a machine which, at any rate, to me seems to be working badly. I see magnificent material in our Diplomatic, Consular, and Foreign Office Services being wasted, because the machine is so out of date and working so badly. It is because of that, and because I wish to see the foreign service representative of all phases of our national life, because I want 'to see it not in. a backwater, but one of our central offices, that I ask the House to pass this Resolution, and ensure by passing it that the reforms that we have in mind shall be immediately carried out.

Mr. CLYNES

I beg to second the Motion.

I think the hon. and gallant Gentleman has rendered a real public service in selecting the topic covered by the terms of the Motion. I hope that the high value of the advice and information covered by his speech will not be lost upon the Departments affected, or upon those representatives of the Government who later on will answer. I was privileged to work on the Civil Service Commission, whose labours, if they did not cover very much else, covered a very long period, as that Commission sat for between two and three years. It dealt with the whole range of our Civil Service. Finally it came to the Diplomatic and Consular branches which are dealt with in the Motion. That Civil Service Inquiry did very considerable good. Many of its recommendations have been the cause of improvements in several branches of the services. Unhappily, however, soon after the Commission completed its work the War broke out. Much of what no doubt would have been immediately taken in hand was thrust into the background by the larger events which consumed our attention, and that of most of the State Departments. Now that the War is over, it is fitting that this very large branch, and most important section of the work of the Commission, should again be brought to the public notice and some effective action taken to give full effect to the recommendations of the Commission. Not one of us can look at any part of the subject which the hon. and gallant Gentleman has brought before the House from any party standpoint. We can approach the subject without the influence of any class or party consideration whatever. It is a subject in which all classes are equally interested, no matter to what party or creed they belong. We are all, I hope and believe, equally anxious to spread and improve the reputation of our country abroad, and in any way to assist, as well as we can, those who are charged with these very heavy obligations—as they often are—of acting for their country, and sustaining its interest and good name in different parts of the world.

As I understand the functions of our various representatives abroad they may be stated simply under three heads. They have to safeguard, and, when necessary, defend, our reputation and our good name in foreign countries. They have to assist, on occasion, to develop the trade and commercial interests of our country—not as paid or unpaid commercial travellers, or to pursue or advance in any way the interests of particular trading firms—but what we know broadly as the commercial name of Britain is to be sustained and upheld so far as possible by those who represent it abroad. Thirdly, these representatives in these various offices are frequently called upon to look after the family and individual interests of British subjects who are serving or working in different parts of the world. For all these offices I am sure the House will agree there ought to be, if it can be secured at all, the highest possible quality of individual ability. There is no guarantee of securing such ability through the agency of any such property qualification as has been so properly censured by the Mover of the Resolution. If we are not prepared for any other revolution, I hope the House is in favour of completely turning down any kind of property qualification relating particularly to these appointments. We can well understand that in former years how it seemed to every party in the country to be the right thing that only those who had land, property, or a private in come of some substance should have the opportunity of serving their country abroad. We have learned in recent years that comparatively poor men can be men of high capability and of such qualifications as worthily to act on behalf of the country in the remotest parts of the world.

I do not know whether the recommendations of the Civil Service Commission have been, or are to be, completely carried out by the Foreign Office or by the Oversea Trading Department. I shall be interested later to hear how far the Government is going in giving effect to these recommendations. I am also interested in trying to extract from the right hon. Gentleman opposite some amplification of the answer given to me in reply to a question. The answer to that revealed the fact that we have abroad some, I think, 540 unsalaried Consular officers. Just as on the one hand one reasonably objects to service of this kind resting on a property qualification, so we, on the other, should object to this service being a mere matter of ornament. Surely it can be no more than that in the case of these men, or most of them, who are serving without salary, and who therefore cannot be regarded as feeling fully the responsibility of the position they occupy. I can well imagine a number of instances where there may be no need for the appointment of a salaried official, where no one of the three branches of the service, Consular, Diplomatic, or Commercial, can be put in any jeopardy whatever "by not having a salaried official. But in these 640 cases it seems to me we are seeking too much to run these services on the cheap, and we might well spend a little more State money in order to get a far better return than we may hope to get with such a number of unsalaried officers. I suggest to the House that the need of drastic reform in these matters has become more urgent and greater as time has gone on, and that we are fully justified in de parting altogether from both the practice and the traditions through which we have secured and sustained these appointments in the past. We cannot have too high a standard of efficiency in this branch of the service, and in view of the establishment of the League of Nations there is all the more reason for having the most efficient men we can obtain in our Colonies. We are looking to the League of Nations to help us to solve inter national questions, and we should feel far more confidence if we were assured that all these appointments were secured by accomplished and competent men. It is often very difficult, if not impossible, to give effect to all the recommendations of a Commission. They do not settle questions of principle or policy, and more frequently they deal with questions of method. Thousands of pounds have been spent on Commissions, whose labours after wards have been put upon shelves and their Reports have rested there without anything being done.

I want to draw attention to what are precisely the recommendations, and the proposals of my hon. and gallant Friend in the Motion he has submitted to the House. He suggests four definite lines of action. First, that there should be a Committee appointed to carry into effect the recommendations of the Civil Service Commission in relation to the Consular and Diplomatic branch of the service. I sup port that proposal because the Report of a Commission can scarcely bear the full fruit of its work, and that full fruit can not be gathered by leaving the Report on the doorstep, so to speak, of any particular State Department which may be affected by it. It may be that the particular State Department concerned may not desire to be reformed, and may be well content with the state in which it is. We know that State Departments at time hare had to be propelled and forced for ward by outside pressure. The improvements suggested by the Civil Service Cora- mission have not yet taken place, for which I do not blame any State Department, in view of the interruption of the War, but I think it would be better to have a Committee charged with the duty of applying those changes, and not leave the initiative to the Departments them selves.

In another part of the Motion there is the definite statement that the positions should be secured by the test of examinations. We are well aware that in this, as in other respects, an examination may not be a perfect test. It is defective, as any other practice would be, but on the whole I think it is the best test, because it commands the greatest confidence, and though you may not secure by any process of examination absolutely the man who has all the qualifications required to fill a certain post, yet the fact that you have at least got that great element of confidence goes far to justify the House in accepting the view that these positions should be filled on the basis of a test examination. I have already dealt with the question of the complete abolition of any property or money qualification for the filling of any of these posts.

Lastly, there is the very important point, which I was glad the Mover argued at some length, that there ought to be a single-graded service. I put it to the hon. Member that unless he can accept this almost revolutionary suggestion, it rests upon him to prove the contrary case. Certainly I think a case has been made out for the establishment and practice of this single-graded system, and I shall be greatly disappointed if my hon. Friend opposite cannot see his way to accept the Motion now before the House. I want to associate myself and my colleagues with both the terms and spirit of this Resolution, and I trust that hon. Members on all sides will see that we have a common cause to serve abroad, and that we have our reputation and goodwill and prosperity to maintain in all those lands. Therefore, regardless of personal questions or party, I think we ought to unite in doing something to advance the interest of our country abroad.

Sir PARK GOFF

As a new and humble Member I crave the indulgence of this House. My only reason for presuming to intervene is that I have for many years had some personal knowledge of some of those parts of the world which I think come within the orbit of this Debate. As honorary King's Messenger during the War I have had the privilege and opportunity of visiting our Embassies, Legations and Consulates in Europe and also beyond. From my youth upwards I have always had the most pro found veneration for this House, for its ancient history and privileges and customs, and this has been enhanced since I have had the honour of becoming a Member of Parliament. I have tried to prove my devotion by attending regularly every after noon, except upon those rare occasions when my Whips have sent me elsewhere to assist in losing by elections.

I had not been many hours in this House before I appreciated and realised the kindly advice and assistance of old Members and officials. An old and distinguished Member in giving me advice said, "Do not speak more than you can help, and if you do try to know something about your subject." When I asked him the respective merits of oral and written questions he said, "It is entirely a question of whether you want things done or you want to advertise yourself." There is one point which has struck me as a new Member, and that is, when we realise that the population of the British Empire is 815,107,000, each of the 707 Members is legislating for1,152,000 souls. It is a serious responsibility, and I think it is germane to the Debate this evening. I admit that in. our endeavours

we may be handicapped by those Departments of State which have always been proverbial for being so tightly encircled with that cordon of roseate hue. I have always tried to interest myself in foreign affairs, because I believe the conduct of our foreign policy is the pivot upon which the whole Empire turns, but when advocating this from any platform in the past I have found that it has fallen upon deaf and un interested ears, because for the most part people then were not quite sure whether Budapest was an Indian god or some new plague.

I have no intention of criticising any person or persons. In my official capacity I have always received the greatest courtesy and consideration both at home and abroad. The stacks of my diaries may be of some interest to my executors as to men and matters, but now I merely reserve to myself the right to criticise the system. Personally, I do not believe that it would be either wise or practical to blend the two Services, although doubt-loss there are Consuls who would make good Ministers and diplomats who might make useful Consuls. Modern diplomacy, to my mind, is an attempt to ingraft the archaic traditions of the Middle Ages on the modern customs of to-day. It was different in the Middle Ages, when an Ambassador was sent abroad to persuade some Royalty for reasons of State to marry a lady with a hump or with the face of an angel and a Satanic temper, or when Earls of Holland and Carlisle went to Paris to arrange the marriage of Charles and Henrietta and to conclude that treaty. Hon. Members are familiar with the famous dictum of Sir Henry Wotton: An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country. To my mind, the fiction of all modern diplomacy is to cultivate good relations between nations and to find out their intrigues and to circumvent them. This War has proved the absolute fallacy of both. In 1914, twenty-five days elapsed between the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, and yet, with the exception of the German and Austrian Ambassadors, not a single Ambassador knew anything about it at all. Of course, there have been and there are extraordinarily able diplomats. These men were remark able in spite of and not because they were diplomats. One reason why diplomats are at a great and serious disadvantage is that they live and move in such a narrow circle, and are therefore ignorant of current events, whereas a Consul can know everybody without loss of dignity and so gain an enormous amount of valuable information. During the War I formed a very high opinion, with very few exceptions, of our Consular Service. They did their work extremely well, especially in the sea port towns, where they were hard at it from six o'clock in the morning till ten o'clock at night, and often much longer. The new strain which was introduced during the War was also a very good one indeed. The men selected had not only a public school or a college education, but, what is much more valuable, they had along with that a sound practical experience of some business or trade. That is the class of man that we want in our Consular Service to-day. That is the man that we must have, and at the same time that is the man for whom we must be prepared to pay handsomely. Both services have been starved in this respect in the past. We must lay down once and for all as the law of the Medes and Persians as-far as our Consuls are concerned, "Only British need apply." When you have not already a man exactly fitted or suited for a particular post, the remedy is to select the best Englishman resident there with an established business, with some real stake or interest in the country, a man who knows the language of the country, and, what is much more important, who also knows that he cannot be transferred to-morrow to some other part of the world altogether. A man may be a great success in the East and a hopeless failure in the West. It is our duty to see, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will see in the future, that there are no square pegs in round holes in our Consular Service.

Personally, I should like to see the Consular Service, if possible, under and immediately responsible to some central control in London acting under the-Foreign Office. This would avoid those tortuous channels of communications between Legations and Embassies. At the risk of being egotistical, I will illustrate what I mean by stating what happened to myself in September, 1917, when I was arrested as a spy and a revolutionary owing to German propaganda. I asked my Consul to wire to London, and he said he could not do so without getting leave first of all from the Ambassador. I then asked him to wire to the Ambassador, and he said he was very sorry but he could not do that without first getting the leave of his Consul-General, who was resident 150miles away. At that time Spain was under martial law, and they were in the position of dreading the outbreak of peace. In my judgment, the two countries that we have got to look to in the future from a trade point of view are the new Russia and South America. In the thirty-four journeys that I made across the North Sea I never travelled once without there were some Americans or some Scots men who were on their way to Russia and Siberia both with their bumps of acquisitiveness abnormally developed. Spain is the jumping-off ground for South America, and immediately the United States came into the War all the sea ports of Spain and Portugal, and all the towns, were flooded with Consuls and Vice Consuls, and so-called Naval Consuls from America, but if you scratched any one of these men; you found a most astute and thoroughly capable commercial traveller. There was-no lack of money either for themselves or their propaganda. They always selected the best and most prominent sites for their Consulates.

As regards our Consulates, I am very sorry to say that for the most part they are a perfect disgrace to the dignity and prestige of the British Empire. I should like to take hon. Members with me to four points of the compass in Europe—to Moscow and Odessa in the East, to Oporto and Lisbon in the West, to Bergen in the North, and to Brindisi in the South. I feel sure they would all agree with me that some of them would shame even one of Mr. Smillie's best. The reason is not far to seek. The Consul, with inadequate housing and office allowance, cannot afford to keep up a house commensurate with the great position which he ought to hold as a Consul of the British Empire. Our Consulates, like out Embassies and Legations, ought to be bought by and kept up by the State. It is not the Foreign Office that is to blame. It has nothing to do with the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office has had enormous demands made upon it during the War, and those demands have been met in the most generous spirit that it was permissible to meet them. No, it is not the Foreign Office. It is that universal departmental scapegoat, the Treasury, an abomination unto many, but departmentally a very pleasant help in time of trouble. The War is now presumably over, but the great commercial war is merely in its in fancy. We are face to face with the keenest competition in the- world. We are face to face with the most zealous and the most jealous competitors. The interests, as far as trade is concerned, of the British Empire are at stake to-day. Now is our opportunity and our chance, and if we miss it, it is gone for ever. We must grasp the nettle firmly. We must remember that to spare the purse is to spoil posterity. It is not sufficient for us in these days that Britannia should rule the waves; Britannia must rule the roost as well. I thank the House for the patience and courtesy which has been extended to me. If I have spoken somewhat strongly it is because I feel strongly. I do feel deeply upon these matters, concerning as they do the prestige of our trade abroad. I love my country. My one sole aim and object is to see that country once again in the forefront of every nation in the world, a position which she has held, and proudly held, for centuries in the past, and which, with God's help, she will hold for centuries to come.

Lieut.-Colonel ARCHER-SHEE

The Motion before the House to-night is one which must be, of course, of very great interest to all parties, and, although I do-not personally quite agree with everything in it, I should like to say a word or two about the Foreign Diplomatic Service. Let me state, in the first instance, that, in my opinion, the Diplomatic and Consular Services should not be joined together; they should be kept apart in the future at they have been in the past. The Diplomatic Service has, at any rate, with all its faults, served the country well. No one can say that the service has been inferior to that of any other European country, at any rate for a hundred years—which is about the period of its existence as an established Diplomatic Service—it has kept us out of war, with the exception of the Crimean War; at any rate, it has kept us out of any serious war. I quite agree with everything said by the hon. Baronet who moved this Motion as regards the remuneration of our Ambassadors abroad. His suggestion that we should pay our Ambassadors a fixed sum and give them an extra allowance on the French system is a very excellent one, and might very well be followed out. But the principal, subject I wish to deal with is the Consular Service. Before the War there were many occasions when hon. Members raised the question of our Consular Service. They were always put off with evasive replies, and practically nothing was done to improve it. In the Foreign Office List for 1914 there were 489 British Vice-Consuls, of whom 245 had alien names, and even in 1918 there were 436 British Vice-Consuls, of whom 168 had alien names. With regard? to the Vice-Consuls, it is quite true that a very large number are unpaid and unestablished, and, therefore, as there was probably no suitable British citizen in the neighbourhood, we had to appoint foreigners to represent our interests. But I think the War has Shown us the tremendous value of having British people to represent British interests. We should, therefore, establish a Consular Service of a very much larger size than the one we? have at present, and it should be graded, as the hon. Baronet suggested, in different grades, with chances of promotion and adequate salaries. We know that a certain- amount has been done lately towards that end, but I do not think anything like sufficient has been done.

I was very glad to hear the remarks of the last speaker. He spoke about the ill impression caused by the way in which our Consulates are housed abroad. That has been one of the greatest scandals. Before the War, in Africa Germany had magnificent Consulates, which produced a great effect on the native mind and undoubtedly secured them a great deal of trade; whereas our Consulates were always dingy and of a very poor description, not only in Africa but also in other parts of the world. The reason of that is that we have never yet spent nearly enough on our Consular Service and have. starved our representatives so that they have not been able to keep up their positions. I hope that in the reply which will be made by the Government we shall receive some assurances that that is going to be remedied. I do not see why our Dominions should not be asked to help us from a financial point of view in keeping. up an expensive Consular Service, be cause if we were to work the Consular Service of the British Empire properly it would bring trade to every part of the Empire, as it already does. Therefore we ought to ask for some support from our. great Dominions. They are growing enormously in wealth and strength and have shown themselves -so eager to join us in every way, in trade and in promoting the interests of the Empire, not only from a commercial point of view, but also from a naval and military point of view, that I am sure they would help us in that way in treating the commercial interests of the Empire as a unified service instead of one that represents the United Kingdom alone. The pay of Consuls has been exceedingly inadequate in the past. According to the statements which are made frequently at meetings which have been held protesting against our Consular Service, their training has not been sufficiently of a commercial character. I believe it is the fact that under the German Consular system they trained all their Consuls, particularly giving them a thorough grounding in commercial law, banking, and the requirements of manufacturers. I do not see any reason at all why we should not adopt a better policy in that direction. If we get a very much larger service, with adequate pay and chances of promotion, a thorough grounding in commercial knowledge, with proper allowances made fur the expenses of the position and for the rents or the purchase of the offices, then I feel quite certain that the financial return to this country in trade and in prestige would fully repay whatever expense it may be necessary to incur.

Major WARING

I desire to associate myself generally with the terms of this Resolution so ably moved by the hon. and gallant Member for Chelsea. There are two or three points I wish to emphasise. The hon. and gallant Member spoke of a single-graded service. I agree that there should be a single-graded service, if by that he means that the. Status of our Consuls should not be subordinate to the status of the diplomats, as it is at the present time. The state of things at present is such that the Consuls cannot be come members of St. James's Club, which is the diplomatic club. That is absurd. I believe it is the fact that Consuls are not called on by diplomats. That is ludicrous. At the same time I agree to certain ex tent with the last speaker that the two Services should not be actually amalgamated. I would not like to see our Consuls become diplomats. They must be trained business men, and must be interested in trade. To a great extent now our Consuls are not interested in trade. One instance occurs to my mind in which a Consul was approached on some subject connected with business, and he said in an airy sort of way, "I suppose that Consuls are sup posed to take an interest in British trade." We do not want that sort of thing any longer. We must get business men, and their status must be such that they can represent Great Britain adequately in foreign countries in connection with business. My second point is in regard to the unpaid Consul. The right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Clynes) mentioned that there were 540 of these gentlemen. He said the number was too large. I say that the trading Vice-Consul ought to be abolished altogether. The system of employing trading Vice-Consuls is absurd, parsimonious, and absolutely fatal. It is impossible for a man to forget altogether his own business. A man would naturally be very chary in coins? to consult a Consul in a foreign town who may be, for all he knows—or possibly ho does know—actually a business competitor. That is what hap pens at the present time, and it should be changed.

Another point I wish to make is that it is important, now that the War is over, that every Consul who has held his post throughout the War should be changed. It is a very difficult thing for a Consul who has been in one place throughout the War to carry out his duties by reason of his being concerned in the black list. That would make it very difficult. All Consular appointments should be changed now. Fresh men should arrive with new ideas and view the whole situation from a new point of view. One word about pay. We all listened with the greatest possible interest to the speech of my hon. Friend below me (Sir P. Goff), and we all hope that his interventions in Debate in this House will be frequent in the future. I cannot speak with the same authority that he does, because my travels were not so extensive nor were my experiences so great. I did travel about to a certain extent during the War, and, as my hon. Friend will remember, we met in a distant part of the world on one occasion, and I think we motored together for a consider able distance. I do not know whether my hon. Friend favours oral or non-oral questions, but at all events I can find a taxi more easily since he came into this House than I could have done a few months ago. I am sure my hon. Friend will forgive me making these few personal remarks. I wish to associate myself with the re marks that fell from him with regard to the pay of our officials overseas. Take, for instance, the case of Commercial Attachés. The appointment of new men as Commercial Attachés is the one thing that has been attempted 'by the Department of Overseas Trade. There is one case that has come to my knowledge where a Commercial Attaché has been appointed and his pay, what with Income Tax and so forth, is actually less now than it was when he was a Consul before the War. He is no longer in a provincial town. He has been moved to the capital. His pay is actually less and the cost of living and upkeep of his position has immensely increased. You must pay an adequate salary if you want to get the results which we all want to see. You should have a good office. I know of one chancellery in which you go up a little tortuous staircase and axe ushered into a waiting room where there is no room at all. There is one arm chair there, and you must sit down in it because you cannot stand. There is no room for yourself and the chair as well. That is a thing that must be changed. You must have a decent office and waiting loom so as to impress foreigners with the importance of our Empire. Of course, the men who have undertaken the duty must be paid a good salary in order that they can keep up their position. I associate my self wholly with the Motion, and I trust the reforms which we all desire will be carried into effect soon. This reform of the Consular Service was actually included in the Coalition programme and we are here to see that the Coalition programme is carried out, and I would urge the Government to carry it out with the utmost speed.

10.0 P.M.

Lieut.-Colonel A. MURRAY

This is a most important Debate, and I am only sorry that, instead of having inside three hours, we have not a longer time in which to discuss the question. So far as it has proceeded it must have delighted the heart of the hon. Gentleman who is going to reply, because on the most important portion of the Resolution there has been some division of opinion, which is always, so far as I am aware, a matter for gratification on the Treasury Bench. But the hon. Members (Sir P. Goff, Lieut.-Colonel Archer-Shee and Major Waring) seem to me, in their objections to the unification of the Diplomatic, Foreign Office and Consular Services, to have missed the point made by the hon. Baronet (Sir S. Hoare). I was very glad to hear him lay particular stress upon the necessity for unifying these three services. Ho did so for several reasons, to which the hon. Members to whom I have referred made no allusion whatsoever. His argument was that it was necessary to amalgamate these services in order that in the future diplomacy and commerce should walk hand in hand, which they have been unable to do in the past. The hon. and gallant Gentleman (Lieut.-Colonel Archer-shee) was quite content-with the Consular Service that it is pro posed to introduce within a short space of time, but that is not sufficient. If the Government will amalgamate the three services, all the other reforms to which hon. Members have referred will follow in their wake. To my mind the most important part of the Resolution is that it would amalgamate these services, and I say so as having had some considerable experience of the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service during my Parliamentary career and having seen the. work of Embassies and Legations at close quarters during the later stages of this War. If a scheme of amalgamation which would prevent the working of these three services in watertight compartments were put into operation by the government it seems to me that it would hinge very largely upon the position of the Department of Oversea Trade.

The hon. Baronet very rightly said that Department had not achieved what it was hoped it would achieve, and the reason for that was quite clear, that there was joint control. In one sense it was responsible to the Board of Trade and in another to the Foreign Office. It is rumoured that the Board of Trade, or the Ministry of Commerce as it will be, would like the Department of Oversea Trade to be wholly responsible to them. But in the scheme which has been suggested by the hon. Baronet, it seems to me that the Department of Oversea Trade might be the responsible head in London of all of what are now the Consular Services abroad. It would collect from what are now called the Consular Services, from the officials of the amalgamated services, all commercial intelligence, it would be a fountain of supply for the Foreign Office itself, it would pass on to the Board of Trade such commercial intelligence as was necessary to the Board of Trade for home affairs, and the Commercial Intelligence Department of the Board of Trade dealing with home affairs would be in close connection with the Department of Oversea Trade. I cannot myself see any reason why it should not be done. It would be of great assistance to the Foreign Office, and it would ensure co operation between the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office and the Department of Overseas Trade. I hope the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office will not be allowed to disintegrate. I have some experience of the great value to the country of the Political Intelligence Department during the War. It was created during the War and it did great work, but there are signs that it will be allowed to fall to pieces unless some very strong action is taken in the immediate future. I hope that will not foe done, and that the hon. Gentleman will be able to give us an assurance that it will continue as one of the most active branches of the Foreign Office.

There are several other matters, but I will limit myself to one matter which has not been referred to, and that is that in any scheme of re-organisation I hope that every encouragement will be given to our Overseas Dominions and Colonies to enter candidates for the foreign service examination. I believe that there is one—I speak subject to correction—member of the Diplomatic Service who is a resident of one of our great Dominions over seas. If the Government would encourage the Dominions to enter candidates for this service it would serve as a bond of unity within the Empire and would undoubtedly be a great accession of strength to the service itself. I hope the hon. Gentleman when he replies will be able to say that he is prepared to set up the Committee called for by the hon. Baronet in his Resolution, and to lay down as to the terms of reference the Resolution, and as it appears upon the Paper. I hope he will not pay too much attention to the speeches which have been made in opposition to the proposals of the hon. Baronet. It is quite impossible in the short time at our disposal to examine this subject at any length. Were it not so, I feel perfectly sure that other hon. Members would be able to bring forward added and stronger arguments in favour of an amalgamation of the three services. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to inform us at least that the Government are prepared to set up the Committee asked for.

Mr. GRANT

This subject is one of great and far reaching importance with regard to our future relations with foreign countries, and it is especially of importance in regard to the future of our overseas trade on which so much depends. No one is satisfied at the present moment with the arrangements for our overseas trade. Our financial situation consequent upon the War demands the fullest development of our trade in all parts of the world, and to attain this it is surely necessary that all the assistance possible should be given by the Government to traders at home and abroad. To do this, we must have machinery of the most perfect nature that we can fashion. I think the importance of this cannot be over-estimated. The hon. and gallant Member who moved this Resolution gave his conclusions as to the best machinery to be adopted. I think that much that he said is already in contemplation by the Foreign Office. He suggested, and the hon. and gallant Member who has just spoken agreed with him, that there should be an amalgamation between the Diplomatic and Consular Services, and he rather preferred the Foreign Office. There I must differ. I think all trade matters ought to be divorced from the control of the Foreign Office. If my hon. and gallant Friend desires to extend the sphere of operations of the Foreign Office, I desire to curtail them so far as trade is concerned.

It is of the utmost importance that we should have the fullest commercial development at the present time, and it seems to me almost elementary that if we are to have the fullest development we should have a great Department of State whose sole duty it is to look after our commercial interests. I do not think that we can divorce one portion of the trade of our Empire from another. It is all interdependent. It is one and the same thing—our trade in foreign countries, in our Colonies, and in this country. You cannot divide it. I cannot see how you can have two controls over the same thing. If you have the Foreign Office looking after one part of our trade and the Ministry of Commerce looking after another part of our trade you will inevitably introduce different methods, and you will introduce friction and will not obtain the best results. What you require is a great Department of Commerce presided over by a Minister of first rank, subservient to no one, whose sole interest is to look after the whole trade of the Empire. Our rival commercial nations spare no efforts to assist their trade. They do what they can to gain our markets, to gain markets which we formerly held successfully—and never more successfully than they have been during the War—and to obtain new markets for their trade. We have no weapons to successfully counter that attack. I desire to make no criticism of the work of the Foreign Office, but trade has never been the business of the Foreign Office. It is traditionally incapable of dealing with it.

I quite agree that in foreign countries the representative of the Crown, the Minister, must be at the head of the affairs of his fellow-subjects, and that would seem to argue the necessity of Foreign Office control in that country. But that control need not be of a real character. I do not think it need be of a more real character than is the control of the Crown over the. Departments in this country. Of course, the Minister should be cognisant of all that goes on, and be able to communicate with the Foreign Office as to what goes on; but ho should not interfere locally with the representatives of trade. The representatives of what would be the Ministry of Commerce should work under and work through their chief at home, a Minister who would be on an equality with, the Foreign Minister, and if it was necessary to apply to the Foreign Office for assistance the instructions should come from home from the Minister of Commerce and it should not be done locally by interfering with trade. What we want is to get the best results, and I do not believe that you will ever obtain the best results by amalgamating trade and diplomacy. "You will never get the finished diplomat to be a trained commercial expert any more than you would get a man whose mind is saturated with the complications of trade to understand the niceties of diplomacy. The two turns of mind are contradictory. It is the business of the diplomat to study, interpret, and report upon political matters in the country, in which he lives, and to confine himself to that work and become expert in that science it takes a man's whole time. I do not think you will obtain the best results or get the best diplomacy if you require of such men that they are at the same time to deal with business. On the other hand, if you are to have your trade assisted in foreign countries, it should be by a class of man who have from their schooldays been trained in business affairs. Broadly, these men should be specialised in certain industries in the country where they are to be employed, and get an intimate knowledge of the products and requirements of that country, and they ought to be equally well informed as to the capacity of manufacturers at home to meet these requirements, and to be able to explain to them what is required and how best they can meet these demands. That is the life work of a man, and it could not be successfully accomplished unless you had cordial co-operation between traders in other countries and those at home. A diplomatist, I think, would become more efficient by gaining experience in different countries, whereas a commercial expert would become more expert by spending his whole life in giving attention to one country and its industries, and I cannot see how you are to gain the best results if you amalgamate the two duties.

Our commercial colonists in foreign countries have long ceased to have any hope of assistance from any Department that we have at home at present. They have no faith in the Foreign Office assisting them, and it will take time to build up such a faith. If we could give them such faith, it would be an enormous impetus to them to make further efforts. It would give some hope that you had Departments at home who had their interests at heart, whose sole duty it was to assist them in every way. They could feel that they were on an equality with rival nations, and get the assistance which their rivals get. It would give them hope. It would give them an impetus which they deserve, and would add enormously to the prosperity of this country. Last year I had the opportunity of realising, in South America, what this feeling was with regard to Departments in this country. Hope was revived in traders when you established the Department of Over sea Trade. They thought, "At last the people at home will take some notice of what we desire, and will give us that help which our rivals have," but I am sorry to say, and I say it with no discourtesy to the hon. Gentleman, for I associate myself with what has been said, that the hopes originating from the Department of Over sea Trade have not been realised. The Department of Oversea Trade might surely form a nucleus for some great State Department of trade, which would have a status commensurate with the great interests with which it had to deal. I hope that we may have some indication from the Government to-night as to what conclusion they have come to. The time is long since past when action should be taken, and I only hope that to-night we shall hear that the Government have determined to take some action and to take it without further delay.

Major BAIRD

No doubt the changed situation with regard to the Foreign Office in consequence of the establishment of the League of Nations will necessitate a revision of the whole of our mechanism for dealing with international relation, and it is right and proper that we should examine the organisation which we have for dealing with foreign affairs at this moment. I think that I am in agreement with what my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea said with regard to the amalgamation of the different branches of the service which deals with foreign affairs. In particular is that necessary with regard to interchangeability between the members of the service who serve at home and those whose duty takes them abroad. I think the House should not be under any illusion on one point, and that is that it-is going to cost a great deal of money. It will be money well spent, but we shall have to find it. The present situation really is ridiculous. We find a man in the Diplomatic Service of the same rank serving in Paris, in Brussels, in Washington, or in Buenos Ayres. The coal of living in all these places is widely different, yet a man's salary is the same. It is physically impossible for a man to take his wife and family out to Buenos Ayres and to live there on pay on which ho could live perfectly well at Brussels. Everyone who has been in the Diplomatic Service has experienced these difficulties, and it really is time that something was done beyond talking to put matters right, because the present system is having a very serious effect in discouraging the kind of man who is required in the service to deal with our international relations. The service is a small one; it must necessarily be a small service. Consequently, we want the very best men we can get. But so long as the terms of service are such as obtain at present, there is no inducement for a man to put his son into either the Consular or Diplomatic Service, unless he happens to be rich. That is a point made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Manchester (Mr. Clynes), who objected, quite rightly, to the limitation in the selection of members of the Diplomatic Service, imposed now in regard to the necessity of a private income of £400 a year—a qualification which does not indicate any merit whatever on the part of the individual in question. But do not let us talk about taking away the limitation unless we are prepared at the same time to find adequate-salaries for the men to do the work. That is the first thing that must be done.

Then there is the question which has been widely touched upon, of how the members of our Diplomatic and Consular Service can best render assistance to our commercial interests abroad. There are two sides to that question. I think anyone-who has had experience—it fell to my lot to be twelve years in the Diplomatic Service—of dealing with these commercial matters abroad, knows that, in the past at any rate, our business men have shown a deplorable lack of enterprise as compared with their foreign rivals in themselves exploring these fields of commercial enterprise. I remember that in the Argentine it was the rarest thing in the world to find a British commercial traveller, mere were numberless German, French, and American commercial travellers there investigating the situation. We used to get at the Legation inquiries, cuttings from news papers, and so forth, but there was no organised effort to exploit the country in the interest of the commercial community, such as was made by our German and American rivals. I think that ought to be remembered when people expect, and wrongly expect, that the Consular or Diplomatic representative could take the place of a commercial traveller. That is an impossibility. What is possible is that it should be understood—there should be strong instructions issued to our representatives in foreign countries—that their first business is to push British interests and to push them in the way that the Germans and representatives of other foreign countries pushed their interests. There, again, you come back to the question of money very largely. There must be a local allowance for these posts. In the aggregate it is a small sum, but it makes a vast difference to the individual. Unless you put the Consular or Diplomatic representative in a position to entertain, to keep open house, to be a personage in the town, it is futile to expect him to do the work lie is sent there to do. That entails undoubtedly the. grant of an adequate local allowance, which would vary according to the cost of living and importance of the post to which the man is sent. Those are a very few points in connection with this very important topic, but most important of all is the frank realisation that it is the business of the British representative abroad, be ho diplomat or Consul, to push British interests to the utmost of his power. In the past we have been rather apt to stand aloof and to rather take the line that those who went in for commercial enterprises in foreign countries did so on their own responsibility and at their own risk, as there is plenty of room inside the British Empire, and if people chose to go outside the Empire to exploit their business they must look after themselves. That is putting the matter rather crudely, and I do not suppose it was intentional, but that was the effect. I believe that the best thing we can do, and the most important thing to be done in connection with the matter of our position abroad and the encouragement and assistance of our trade in foreign countries, is the realisation here at home of the necessity of affording every possible assistance to our business men in foreign conutries, which they cannot claim to have received in every case in the past, by a proper local allow- ance and the raising of the standard and status of our foreign representatives in such a manner as to encourage the best men to go into the service.

Mr. BETTERTON

I desire to support this Resolution, and I think the House is under a very great obligation to my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare) for bringing the subject forward. I think that one of the conclusions to which we have been drawn in this War is this, and it is strictly relevant to the discussion to-night, that in future the tendency will be to increase the importance of economic intelligence and possibly to decrease the importance of political intelligence. It is idle to suppose, as was pointed out by the right hon. Gentleman who spoke, that we have come to the end of trade competition, and, therefore, a policy resting on economic intelligence is more important than ever before. Policy, whether it be economic, commercial, political, naval, or military, depends on information and intelligence, and at present this aspect is even more important by reason of the League of Nations. I have got here the draft agreement and, as the House will remember, if arbitration fails the next weapon to be brought into operation is the economic weapon, and Article 16 provides the precise way in which that weapon is to be brought into action. As everybody knows there is, perhaps, no weapon which requires more accurate information and intelligence than the economic weapon, because it is a weapon which, while it may hurt our enemy may, if used in this country without sufficient intelligence, hurt ourselves a great deal more. There force in so far as this is concerned, complete and accurate intelligence is absolutely and vitally necessary. It seems to me that to divorce the sources from which we get this information, Diplomatic and Consular, is at the present time absolutely indefensible.

How you can imagine that that information is going to be more valuable because you get it from two different sources I cannot imagine. As I said a moment ago, no greater responsibilty rests upon our representatives abroad at the present time than the sending of this economic information to this country. I have read a good many of these Reports to which we have been referred to-night, and I think that all of them fail to recognise the difference between what I may call economic information and commercial information. If you get this information from two different sources, you may have your diplomat in the same town or city, on the same set of facts, reporting in favour of one policy, while you may have your Consul, on the same set of facts, supporting an absolutely different and possibly mutually destructive policy. I cannot imagine a greater evil than that that should happen, but that it is likely to happen, and I think has happened in the past, is beyond doubt.

I am well aware of the great debt which the country owes to my hon. Friend the Member for Erdington (Sir A. Steel-Maitland) for what he has done for the Consular Service. He has improved its organisation almost out of recognition, and he has done a great deal to secure the better pay which was absolutely necessary; and whereas in the old days it was not unusual for a Consul to be sent from one end of the world to the other, from Odessa to South America, or from Japan to Spain, I believe now that he has done much to prevent these absurdities happening in future. But it seems to me that the hon. Member for Kincardine (Lieut. -Colonel A. Murray) went to the whole root of the matter when he said it was of very little use having a good Consular Service or a good Diplomatic Service unless you make good use of the information when you get it, and so, as a necessary corollary to any reorganisation or any improvement or blending of the Consular and Diplomatic Services, it seems necessary that you should have this under some central Department or part of a Department into which this information can flow. This economic information would be the information upon which the Foreign Office would act, it would be available to the Board of Trade in so far as it is commercial information, it would be available to the War Office in so far as the information is useful to them, and it would be available also to the Admiralty; but I do not myself believe that any Department of that kind will be either efficient or sat is factory unless it is practically independent of all existing Departments, and that the information which flows into it is available to all. I think a Report which has, perhaps, received too little consideration is a Report to the Ministry of Reconstruction of a Committee over which Lord Haldane presided, and which included amongst its members the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Mr. J. H. Thomas), the hon. Member for Knutsford (Colonel Sir A. Sykes), and various other people. This is one paragraph from the Report, which, I think, supports the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman: We have come to the conclusion, after surveying what came before us, that in the sphere of civil government the duty of investigation and thought, as preliminary to action, might with great advantage be more definitely recognised. It appears to us that adequate provision has not been made in the past for the organised acquisition of facts and information, and for the systematic application of thought, as preliminary to the settlement of policy and its subsequent administration. I believe that, until you have some such department as I have indicated, where all this information and intelligence can be assimilated and used, to deal merely with the reorganisation of the Diplomatic and the Consular Services is to touch only the fringe of a vitally important question.

Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND (Department of Oversea Trade)

I am quite sure everyone in the House this evening will agree that we have had a most interesting debate within the limits which time has made possible, and, if I may say so, the speech of the hon. and gallant Baronet who opened the debate showed a grasp of the subject of the services as a whole, certainly unequalled by anyone who has-not been actually serving in those services. I think the occasion is the more fortunate, because at this time in all subjects of administration we are in the mood really for a national stocktaking, and it is-perhaps just as well that in a subject of this kind, which is not always a matter of common knowledge, and not very often, a matter for debate in this House, that stock should be taken of the present state of affairs, and, through such a debate as this, the knowledge should be disseminated to the public at large as well of affairs as they actually exist.

As the time is short, and there is considerable ground to cover, I am sure hon. Members will not mind if I go straight to the point with regard to the various questions that have been raised. First of all, I would deal with the points raised, with regard to the conditions of the-Diplomatic Service and the Foreign Office. The hon. and gallant Member first of all drew attention, as did the right hon. Gentleman opposite, to the conditions of entry which were the subject of inquiry by the Royal Commission before the War. I am happy to be able to tell the House that, in the first place, the property qualification has been, done away with, and that is no longer in existence. In the next place, what was considered as one of the causes which made it easy to speak of an exclusive service—that is, the necessity for a prior nomination by the Secretary of State before anyone could sit for examination—that has also been done away with and is no longer in existence. So also is the separate examination for the Foreign Office. At the present time, as of course everyone is aware, you cannot have the ordinary Civil Service examinations as they obtained before the War. During this interregnum there have to be special arrangements made, but at any rate a system has been quite definitely adopted, and will be brought into force as soon as possible—probably the year after next is the first year in which it will be possible—in which candidates for the Diplomatic Service and Foreign Office will sit in precisely the same examination as is held for the rest of the Civil Service. To that, perhaps, I ought to make just one exception, which, I am sure, will command the approval of everyone in the House, which is that special qualifications in languages are necessary, and therefore among the subjects which candidates will be required to take up is one or two special foreign languages. That, however, will not disenable those who have sat for this examination from passing into any other office if they do not happen to enter the Foreign Office or Diplomatic Service, but it is just one special qualification which will quite properly be demanded of those who enter those two services.

Sir S. HOARE

Does that mean—this is a very important point—that anybody can enter for examination, under exactly the same conditions as for the Foreign and other offices?

Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND

Precisely the same. It is a Class 1 examination.

Sir S. HOARE

That is not my point. My point is: Is any other condition necessary? Can anyone enter for the examination without selection or nomination?

Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND

There are just these two special points—there is the strict rule in regard to nationality——

Sir S. HOARE

Yes, but that applies to everybody.

Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND

There is a stricter rule for the Foreign Office than in the other services. The other point is that, after passing, the candidates come before a Selection Board.

Sir S. HOARE

I am sorry to interrupt you, but the point is an important one. Is that Selection Board common to the whole service or peculiar for the Foreign Office?

Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND

If the hon. Gentleman would curb his impatience, I am just coming to that. In this case the Selection Board for the Foreign Office, Diplomatic and Consular Services will be a special one. The reason for that—and, I think, quite a right one—is that you do need to have those on the Selection Board who are not officials but who are acquainted with the special kind of duties of the Foreign Office and diplomatic officers. In precisely the same way the Consular Service will be dealt with by a Board possessed of such knowledge of the Consular subjects as will enable the members to give a first-rate opinion of the candidates that come before them. In order to avoid misconception, may I illustrate what is really intended by the composition of the Selection Board, which is even at present sitting, before the permanent system comes into force. That Board consists of the Chairman, the Chief Civil Service Commissioner, two members representing the Foreign Office, also four others, the hon. Members for Monmouthshire and Cam bridge University, Sir R. Maguire and Colonel Herbert, from the War Office. That is a Selection Board to which I do not think any hon. Member can take ex ception—the type of Selection Board in tended for the future.

I come to the question of pay and grading. Here, again, I think the credit of it is very largely due to the initiative of the Noble Lord (Lord Robert Cecil), when he was Minister of Blockade and Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. The whole of that question is largely settled. The only parts of it not actually settled are details outstanding in relation to war bonuses, and other cognate matters. As regards pay, in the first place, the pay for both the Diplomatic and Consular Services is to be calculated on a scale which will enable the holders of offices in those two Services to live and maintain their position properly, and in addition—and this is a point upon which I have best laid stress—the remuneration they will receive is really divided into two parts, the regular scale of pay which they will receive, and then a house allowance and local allowance, which will vary according to the expenses and other obligations incurred by their locality in. the country where they serve. The grading will be uniform right through out the whole service. Similarly with regard to the question of routine, of which a great deal too much was done by regular officials in the Diplomatic Service, and that will largely devolve on the subordinate staffs in the various missions abroad.

Lastly, a Committee on promotions such as these ought to be has already been set up and is already at work, and it has passed the last promotions for the Diplomatic and Consular Services. All those re forms have actually been brought into effect. The only thing outstanding with regard to these questions is the actual settlement with the Treasury and the rates of pay, not that there is any disagreement as to the amount, but it has to be brought into correlation with the war bonus introduced during the War. I may say, broadly, that the whole of the recommendations that were really made in the fifth Report of the Civil Service Commission have been actually and definitely decided upon with those adjustments which the War has necessitated with one exception, and that is the recommendation dealing with the Second Division Service and the scheme for that is actually under consideration at' the present moment. Those are the conditions with regard to the Diplomatic and the Foreign Services. It has not been possible to bring those into force during the War because the conditions abroad have been anomalous, but it is not a question of waiting and considering. A Committee, like the Committee on pomotions, is already at work, but the rest of the points have actually been decided upon, and are being brought into force as rapidly as circumstances and returning peace permit.

The second portion of the subject was what may be called the water-tight compartments into which the foreign services are divided. In the first place, the Foreign Service and the Diplomatic Service have already been amalgamated for this purpose. The staff will for the future be interchangeable, and indeed, one and the same. In fact, all the recent candidates that have been selected by the Selec- tion Committee are now ready for either service, 60 that these two water-tight compartments have been merged into one. I turn now to another series of the Consular Services, originally divided into five services—the General, the Levant, China, Japan, and the Siam services. The China and Japan services, so far as the recommendations are concerned, will, I trust, remain separate services. And for this reason: I would have been glad to recommend that they should have been united with the others, but everyone conversant with the extraordinary differences of conditions in China and Japan, linguistic, racial, and others, knows that they present a case so peculiar that they have to be considered by themselves. On the other hand, as regards the case of the general service and the Levant service the recommendations have been accepted and have been merged into one, and I am considering the merging of the Siam service into this also. On the one hand, the desirability is recognised of having one large service without a water-tight compartment. Hon. Members may say, "Are you going to take a man from Northern Russia and move him down to the south of South America. The real answer is to have one service as a whole and no actual barrier between them, but within the one general service there will inevitably, with wise administration, be a quite natural selection, so that the officers who are accustomed to Latin languages, Latin mentality, Latin customs, habits of thought, habits of trade, and the rest of it tend to circulate in the Latin and Latin-American countries. and similarly with the Slavonic and Teutonic countries.

Lieut.-Colonel A. MURRAY

Does the hon. Gentleman mean one general service to include the Foreign Diplomatic?

Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND

No, I have left the Foreign Diplomatic alone for the moment and am dealing with the Consular Service. Therefore, with the exception of China and Japan and conceivably Siam, the whole of the Consular Service will be made one big general service. With regard to the last amalgamation which has been suggested, namely, that of the Foreign Office and Diplomatic with the Consular Service and the Department of Oversea Trade, as all Members in the House may know it is an uncommonly difficult question to settle whether Over sea Trade ought to be a matter of foreign importance, and therefore go to the Foreign Office, or ought to be a matter of trade and go to the Hoard of Trade. The present constitution of that Department was the result of the question having been considered very nearly two years ago. The Government have now come to the decision that they should go into the question again in the light of what has passed during the past two years, and consequently a Committee has been set up and will, I trust, begin to take evidence during next week.

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY

Will it be a Departmental Committee?

Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND

I am just coming to the composition of it. Viscount Cave will be the Chairman and Sir Horace Munro, Mr. Dudley Docker and Mr. Kenneth Lee will be the other member Far from being departmental, the hon. and gallant Member will realise that there is not a departmental member upon it.

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY

I was only asking for information.

Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND

With regard to the two members who came from commerce and industry, I fancy every Member of the House knows that in the engineering world Mr. Dudley Docker is, if not possibly the foremost industrialist in the country, at any rate among the foremost, and Mr. Kenneth Lee, of the firm of Tootal, Braodhurst, Lee and Company, is one of the best known and most respected men in Lancashire and in the whole of the textile trade. The question is being gone into by the Committee, and the future of the Consular Service rests to a large extent on its findings. Consequently, hon. Members will realise that it is not possible to give any positive answer with regard to the further amalgamation that has been suggested. May I now deal with the question of the service and the conditions in the Consular Service. One or two hon. Members have alluded to the fact that perhaps we have not enough posts in the salaried service, and that that is the reason we have un paid Consuls. I think it is possible to increase the number of paid posts in the salaried Consular Service. In regard to the list of such increased posts, I have personally consulted men with intimate experience commercially and officially of the different countries, so that the allocation of the posts will, I believe, stand criticism as well (as any list that could be drawn out. On the other hand, I would ask hon. Members to realise the difficulty that there is—and it is a complete differ ence—between the salaried and unsalaried Consular Services. They should not con fuse the two. There is no one who is not a British citizen in the salaried service. Hon. Members may ask why should there be an unsalaried service. The answer is clear. Even if you are willing to spend more money, there must come a limit some time to the number of salaried posts created, and then what are you going to do with the quite considerable number of towns abroad where you have no salaried representative. Is it not better to have a representative in those towns who even if he is unpaid, is not asked to contribute the same service as a paid Consul, but who will, at any rate, be able to help British citizens who may be stranded there in distress. I think the answer is obvious. But in every single case where there is a suitable British citizen available he is appointed. That is now the rule.

I will pass very briefly to the pay and grading of the Consular Service. That, I trust, will again be improved. In any suggestions that are brought forward on these points, regard is had to the similar grades in the Diplomatic Service, so that the position in regard to future amalgamation should not be prejudiced. To that point I have paid special care. Proposals are also in hand to deal with housing and staff, and, incidentally, I may say that within the last fortnight a Canadian has been appointed to Washington to be attached to the Commercial Service there. What is desired is that they should have a commercial training which will enable them to understand the ideas of people with different kinds of interests in industry and commerce, and therefore included in the new training scheme, after candidates have passed the Foreign Office examination, they will for two years go through a special course in currency, financing, industrial organisation, transport, commercial geography, and commercial industrial law. I have endeavoured to explain the situation, and I hope the hon. Baronet will not press his Motion for a Committee. The real fact is that everything has been done that is possible, and the appointment of a Committee would really delay matters instead of pushing them forward. The machinery is already there, and I think it will be found to be really efficient.

It being Eleven of the clock, the Debate stood adjourned.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.