§ Order for Second Reading read.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—[Mr. Gulland.]
2292§ Mr. T. M. HEALYThe House may remember the manner in which the Secretary to the Treasury yesterday attempted to make sport of a question of mine dealing with a very important subject connected with the finance of this country. I asked him a question in plain terms, which is to be found in the OFFICIAL REPORT. This question goes, I think, to the root of the entire plan of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in impounding £6,500,000 of money illegally on the occasion of the Budget. I asked him whether any precedent could be found in the long line of British history for putting into the Appropriation Bill loans instead of Grants. The right hon. Gentleman thought it good fun to read out to the House a list of twelve items, going back about thirty years, which he pretended contained an answer to my question. We often hear appeals to the Treasury Bench from hon. Members on this side of the House not to waste the time of the House, but the right hon. Gentleman took up ten minutes at least of Question Time, which is most precious to Members of this House. Will the House believe that not one of the answers he gave was the precedent of a loan about which I asked him, and that every one of them consisted of Grants, for which, the Appropriation Bill is the proper place, whereas on this occasion you have £500,000 of loan money put in the Appropriation Bill, as I contended when the Estimate was before the House, under the guise and pretence of a Grant to His Majesty. I propose before dealing with that scandalous reply of the right hon. Gentleman—which I must say is quite in keeping with the parasites of the Treasury who supplied him with the information, who, being the financial authority of this country, never disdain to stoop to any trick or device, no matter how contemptible, for the purpose of blindfolding Members of this House with a view to assisting Ministers when they get into a scrape or fix, as they now are—before I cite to the House what are the authorities with which he was good enough to supply me, let me give the House what is our position with regard to this financial question.
4.0 P.M.
We in Ireland are continually pressing for small Grants for national teachers, and for small loans. We cannot even suppress the cattle plague by killing a few beasts, in order to prevent misery and loss to the rest of the people, because there are no funds in the possession of the Department to enable these things to be 2293 carried out. But some day in the Cabinet, when the Government have committed an illegality and have impounded £6,500,000 belonging to the taxpayers—it is as much their property as the watch in my pocket is my property—when Ministers find that they are detected in this illegality, and the question of its distribution comes on, then apparently this £6,500,000 may be gifted away to one Member or another, according to the favouritism of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I should liked to have been present at that famous Cabinet Council. [Interruption.] The Labour party are interested in this, because they have been asking for funds to deal with the destitution of the poor. Here was £6,500,000 of money hanging on a loose end and needing distribution, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer is buttonholed by the Colonial Secretary, who says, "Won't you give £500,000 to me? I want it for motor roads in Uganda." We cannot have motor roads in our own country. "I want to put a ship of a thousand tons burden on Lake Victoria, and I am going to put electric light on the pier at Kilindini." Let the House remember that twenty-five years ago this was not a British Possession. There are British possessions in Ireland with piers with no electric light and, if I might make a bull, with very small little pier. Accordingly, if you favour the Chancellor's policy in the Cabinet, you can get his donations in the shape of Grants. I suppose the Colonial Secretary is one of his favourites in the Cabinet. I suppose he supports his single-tax policy, though when you come to propose it I think the representatives of the Irish farmers will have something to say. Accordingly, without a memorandum, without a note in writing, without a letter passing between the two Departments, without any man here being able to put his finger as to why or wherefore, this scandalous transaction was accomplished, because you already had an Estimate as being a sufficiency for the entire Colonial amount—a sum of £50,000. That is to say, you prepared your Estimate, you prepared your Budget, you prepared your Finance Bill with nothing in it but £50,000, and then the exponents of the single-tax doctrine in the Cabinet looked around to see how they could support their favourites in the Cabinet, and the Colonial Secretary was favoured above all other members of the Ministry: one man alone is singled out for favour and he gets a Grant. Of course, 2294 the Navy had to get it. That was the suggestion upon which the £6,500,000 were held up. You said you were going to give the whole of it to the Navy if the strike did not cause too much depletion in the finances, so that it was no surprise to anyone that £1,000,000 was given to the Navy, and I supported it myself. I wish to state bluntly and frankly my position on the point If there is an invasion of these countries Ireland will suffer most, and therefore I cheerfully voted as far as I was concerned. If the Germans land it is our sheep and cattle that they will eat. It is our railways that they will seize, and for my part I do not want any of my descendants to grow up Von Healys. I shall have no hesitation whatever in extending my support to that part of the Grant.
But then there is this £500,000. The first thing the House has to remember is that this £500,000 is put down as a loan. I want to know has this House ever lent the Kings of England money and has it not always granted them money? Did King Charles I., even in his greatest distress, come to your predecessor, Mr. Speaker, and say, "Pray lend me half-a-crown"? The Kings of England came to this House for grants of money, and Ministers are in exactly the same position, and when they want loans of money they must present a Bill to Parliament, which has to be read a first, second, and third time, asking the House for a loan and defining and delimiting the terms upon which the loan shall be granted, otherwise, say, when you lend the Irish farmers money for land purchase it could be put on the Estimates like the salaries of Members of Parliament. They have no conditions of percentage, Sinking Fund, or other details to be provided for. Of course, you can put them on the Estimates, but all the precedents are to the contrary. The fantastic so-called loan, which is the only one of the lot which even bears the suggestion of a loan, the loan to the Viceroy of Wuchang, was not a loan from this House at all. It was a loan from the Hong Kong Bank direct to the Viceroy, and all this House did was to supply a Grant to the bank in place of the loan which, in these days of distress, the Viceroy has obtained from the bank.
When the Chancellor of the Exchequer in April decided to hang up his £6,500,000 there came a time when, under pressure from the country, he had to agree to distribute that amount, and accordingly he stated that he would give this £500,000 to 2295 the Colonial Secretary. At that time the Ways and Means Resolution of this House had been passed. We had passed the whole of the Budget Resolutions. Furthermore, the Finance Bill itself, founded on these Budget Resolutions, had been introduced, and accordingly the Government were in this difficulty, that the finance Resolution and the Finance Bill were already in black and white before this House. What did they do? I challenge it and I am prepared to submit it to any constitutional lawyer on that side or on this. What has been done has been absolutely illegal, and these so-called precedents, so far from being precedents in favour of the position of the Government, are precedents in connection with the argument which I am submitting. The right hon. Gentleman could not go further back, although this country has a record in finance of something like two or three centuries. Furthermore, this country has taught finance to Europe—nay, it has taught it to the other hemisphere, for every Parliament, wherever it has been founded, has adopted the British model of finance, and when you touch the British model of finance it is almost, so to speak, like touching the Ark of the Covenant, because you are touching that upon which the whole of your liberties depend because, although here from time you may forget the meaning of Votes on Account and Army Annual Bills or the Annual Finance Bill, in the minds of wise and prudent men these are the machinery by which you suppress tyranny. I therefore come to this case of 1877, which is the first instance that the right hon. Gentleman gives of his position. Here is his answer, produced for him no doubt by his advisers. I observe that wherever it was possible he tried to tar the Tory party with responsibility, because Disraeli was in office in 1877, and to say that Mr. Disraeli and his Cabinet had agreed to do this thing would have been, of course, to shut the mouth of anyone on this side who is a professor of constitutional practice:—
The earliest precedent which I have been able to trace goes back to 1877, when, on a Supplementary Estimate for 1876–7 a Grant of £35,000, being part of sums amounting in all to £105,000, was voted in aid of the Fiji revenues, to be repaid should Colonial funds become available for the purpose.What was my question? It was:—Whether he will state the precedents where loans of money as distinct from Grants were placed on the Estimates?The right hon. Gentleman thinks himself candid and thinks he will do credit 2296 to that bespattered Department, the British Treasury, which mints more lies annually than all the other Departments put together, by giving this precedent. Here it is. Forty and 41 Victoria, cap. 61. The right hon. Gentleman proposes by that reference to give me his statement that it contains a precedent for a loan. I suppose he thought he would reel off his twelve precedents and no one would take the trouble of going through these Statutes, because really we have something else to do than to be bamboozled by stories of this kind. Here is the precedent:—In aid of Colonial revenues and for the salaries and allowances of Governors of the Transvaal, £171,000; charge on the Orange Territory, £2,000; expenses of mixed Commission, £7,000; Emigration Board, £2,000; salaries and expenses of the three representatives of the Suez Canal Company, £60,000; expenses of Her Majesty's Embassies abroad, £200,000; Consular establishments abroad, £247,000.There is not a rag or tittle of foundation for the suggestion made by the right hon. Gentleman that any one of these statements includes a loan.
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYYes. I am not going to refer to a single Estimate, for this reason. An Estimate, as I understand the law, has no Statutory validity. The thing that has Statutory validity is what is signed by His Majesty the King, and nothing else. An Estimate is a mere departmental document which has no validity of any kind, sort or description. I am reading from the Statute, and anyone can read it, as well as I, who has learnt his A B C. That is the beginning of the precedents of the right hon. Gentleman. That is his Disraelian classic. I now take seriatim through the Statutes the rest of his answer. Every one of them has as little foundation as the great Beaconsfield quotation. The first he gave was 1900. He calls it £200,000 voted for a Supplementary Estimate for the Gold Coast, and, remember, I was asking for loans. I asked nothing about Grants. We have granted hundreds of millions of money all over the shop in the last forty years, I am not asking about Grants; I am asking about loans, and loans alone. That is the only point in connection with this money for Uganda which is pretended to be a loan. To quote a Grant to me in support of what is now being done is to quote an absurdity. I have never asked about Grants. [Laughter.] This seems 2297 to be great fun for those hon. Members who go down to their constituents and pretend to be such high economists. Here is what was stated in 1900 about the £200,000 for the Gold Coast:—
For Grants-in-Aid of the expenses of the British Protectorates in Uganda and Central East Africa, and under the Uganda Railway Acts.Why have we not a Uganda Railway Act of 1912? You had one in 1911. Why do you not put the present £500,000 into an Act? What was the famous loan to the Wuchang Viceroy which the right hon. Gentleman quoted. Of course, we all remember, I suppose, that there was a disturbance in China in the year 1901. I suppose that, Hong-Kong being a British Possession, the bankers there, owing to stress of weather, thought it right to advance to the Viceroy of Wuchang the sum of £75,000. Why they did so, I do not stay to inquire. Let me quote the right hon. Gentleman's answer in regard to this pretended loan from us to the Viceroy of Wuchang, which was the only item of his long list that can figure in any shape as a loan. He said the loan to the Wuchang Viceroy of £75,000 was voted on a Supplementary Estimate on 8th August, and included in the Appropriation Act of 1901. When you turn to that Act, what do you find? It is not a loan at all. It is a Grant; it is a repayment by us to the Hong Kong Bank; it is in no sense a loan by us to the Wuchang Viceroy, although the right hon. Gentleman assured the House of Commons that we made a loan to the Wuchang Viceroy in 1901. It was nothing of the kind. We made a Grant of money, absolute and entire, and put it on the Estimates to recoup the Hong Kong Bank, for some consular or diplomatic reason, for the money they advanced to Wuchang. I would like to know if we got any of it back, and if after all it was a loan, I wonder whether the Viceroy of Wuchang met his I. O. U.'s in that country or whether the Hong Kong Bank returned to us any of the loan. I shall look through the next Estimates to see how much of that money we got back. I come to the right hon. Gentleman's next quotation, "Uganda Railway extension for 1910–11." This is another pretended loan. Really, when one does take an interest in these Appropriation Acts, one begins to see that of late, instead of the detailed information that was given in them in former years, millions are lumped as if they were the merest trifles, so that in fact the right hon. 2298 Gentleman's statement that there is £130,000 included in the Supplementary Estimate is one which I am willing to take his word for. It is put in this way in the Appropriation Act of 1910:—For sundry Colonial services, including certain Grants-in-Aid (including a Supplementary sum of £130,000)—£1,277,759.The right hon. Gentleman had the audacity to quote that as a loan granted by us as a pattern for the loan we are now making. I can be contradicted in regard to these precedents if I am wrong. All his pretended precedents are alike, except that to the Viceroy of Wuchang. There is nothing to support his statement that the course he is now taking is in accordance with practice. There is a thing of a remarkable character in connection with last year's Statutes. I assert fearlessly that every loan this country has made has been by Bill. I will not say that in the long history of this country there have not been some exceptional occasions of emergency and stress; but I say that, taken normally, every loan we have made has been by Statute. Certainly, if anything could confound the practice of the Government, it is their own Finance Act of last year. What is the difference in principle between the £500,000 to Uganda in 1912 and the Grant of a smaller amount last year? You find on turning to the Statutes of 1911 that the Chancellor of the Exchequer in that Session thought it was absolutely necessary to provide for the £250,000 by Statute, and, that being so, surely he condemns himself when he tries to do this year by Estimate and the insertion of £500,000 in the Appropriation Act what he did last year in respect of a smaller amount by Statute. Really the Budgets of the Chancellor of the Exchequer have become to himself sacrosanct, and I should have thought that he would be the last person to depart from the precedents he has sacredly set for himself. If we turn to the Finance Act of 1911, where the modest sum of £250,000 has been included, we find that Section 16, Sub-section (2), says:—The Treasury may advance, by way of loan to the Government of the East Africa Protectorate for the purpose of providing improved railway communication and harbours in the Protectorate and improved water supply for Mombasa, any sums not exceeding in the whole two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.2299 That is not all; that only provides for Grants. Here comes the provision for repayment, which is an important point. I would like to know how much of the £500,000 we are going to get back for the benefit of the strikers in the East End or the people who are losing by cattle disease in Ireland and in this country. The same Sub-section says:—The Government of the Protectorate shall annually, until the whole advance is deemed to have been repaid, pay to the Treasury interest at the rate of three and a half per cent. on the amount advanced, and also, by way of Sinking Fund, a further sum equal to one per cent. on the amount advanced, and the whole of the advance shall be deemed to have been repaid when Sinking Fund payments have been made sufficient, if accumulated at three and a half per cent., with yearly rests, to produce an amount equal to the advance.The House will see that as regards this £250,000 there is an absolute provision by Statute for the Grant, and next for the repayment under a sinking fund. What are you doing with this £500,000? Remember you are giving it away without any power for the Comptroller and Auditor-General to come near it. I can understand in the case of a Grant-in-Aid to a Colony in a distant place that the Comptroller and Auditor-General would not have much to say to it, and that it might be exempt from the check which this House has imposed with respect to matters more immediately within our purview. But this £500,000 is to be granted away with no provision for repayment, or for a sinking fund. Where is it in the Appropriation Bill? If it is in the Bill, I should be glad to be enlightened on the subject by the right hon. Gentleman. From the glance I was able to take at the Bill, I could see no mention of it.I end as I began. I say this House has no security for these advances except upon Budget night. The Chancellor of the Exchequer estimates on that night for the whole of the requirements of the year, in order that the taxpayers shall know on that night what the liabilities of the country are, and how they are going to be met. What has happened here is a gross irregularity, and it reinforces my argument. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer impounds money of the public, no matter on what pretext, and allows himself to be canvassed by this Minister 2300 or that, according as he thinks he can get support for his policy in the Cabinet, then every irregularity grows out of that, because the system is a breeding ground of irregularities. Then when a humble Member of the House who has no special axe to grind in these matters, but who is only anxious to put forward, say, the case of the national school teachers of Ireland, who teach children who have to go to school with a piece of turf under the arm in order to get warmth and comfort in winter, the Chief Secretary, who, I frankly acknowledge, is doing his best, says, "We cannot give a shilling for Ireland; all our eyes are on the ends of the earth in Uganda or East Africa, and we have to give half a million one year and a quarter of a million in another year, and the unhappy people of our own household have to go without help, because all our interests are for these people abroad." As for the humbug of the great riches this country is going to get out of Africa, I do not believe it. You will get nothing out of that part of Africa except mosquito bites. It is a place where a mosquito bites you at ten in the morning; you then get a fever, and you are dead at three in the afternoon. This is the country into which you are pouring millions and millions and missionaries. I therefore, at all events, feel as regards these distant places, when money is being shovelled out on such a system, that it is essential that rigidness and regularity should take place in connection with it; and, at all events, when questions are put as to what are the precedents for loans, the Member who has not the opportunity of replying should not get reeled off to him a series of fraudulent statements issuing from the right hon. Gentleman as I have seen ribbons issuing from the mouth of a conjuror, including what I may call the blue ribbon of the Viceroy of Wuchang.
§ Viscount WOLMEROn a point of Order. I wish to ask whether this Bill is in order inasmuch as it is not founded upon a financial Resolution in respect of the money which is being lent to Uganda and there is no precedent for a loan being put in the Appropriation Bill?
§ Mr. SPEAKERThe terms of the Resolution which was passed last night are:—
That towards making good the Supply granted to His Majesty for the Service of the year ending the 31st March, 1913, the sum of £92,847,343 be granted out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom.2301 That is the exact amount which is mentioned in the First Clause. This Bill is founded strictly upon the Financial Resolution.
§ Viscount WOLMERAm I not right in thinking that there has never been an Committee of Ways and Means a Resolution dealing with this specific loan in Uganda, and that it has never been specifically mentioned in any Resolution passed in Committee of Ways and Means?
§ Mr. SPEAKERThe Resolution in Ways and Means deals with the grand total of all the sums passed in Committee of Supply. That is the sum I have just quoted. That sum is made up of the different sums which have been voted in Supply, and the sum to which the Noble Lord referred is one of these. It was voted as a Supplementary Estimate.
§ Viscount WOLMERMay I be allowed to point out that the question of a loan to Uganda was never mentioned in connection with the moneys voted in Supply?
§ Mr. SPEAKERIf the Noble Lord will look at the Supplementary Votes in Supply he will see that the sum of money was mentioned—£500,000—and the terms in which it was granted appeared in the Notes.
§ Mr. MASTERMANIf the Noble Lord who has interrupted had heard me give a little explanation of the matter he would have had no need to raise the point, because, as I shall have no difficulty in showing, the course which has been pursued by the Government this year in this matter is exactly similar to the course pursued by all Governments, at least since 1877, and every one of the precedents which I quoted yesterday to the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. T. M. Healy) are exact precedents for the course which is being taken at the present moment. The hon. and learned Gentleman spoke with some bitterness concerning myself, not only for making, as he said, fraudulent statements but also for what he seemed to think was an attempt to make little of him before the House. I can assure him that I had no such intention, but that I gave what I thought was a full and perfect answer to the question put by him, and that I could not have answered that question properly without giving the answer which I did give, though it was a long one, because the hon. and learned Gentleman definitely asked me for precedents, dates, Statutes and amounts where loans of 2302 money were placed on the Estimates and included in the Appropriation Bill.
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYAs distinct from Grants.
§ Mr. MASTERMANCertainly loans of money. In every one of these cases the money was given as a loan, and in all these cases the statement was on the Estimate that the money was a loan. In every one of these cases in the Appropriation Bill that loan was included as a Grant just the same as it is here. If the hon. and learned Gentleman will turn to the Appropriation Bill he will find that this loan is included as a Grant in exactly the same terms and under exactly the same conditions. I will not go through all these precedents. I am sure that he does not, and I am certain that the House does not, want me to do so. But I am perfectly sure that if he looks into them he will find that in the case of all the precedents I gave him yesterday they were exactly the same. Here is one of them. It is a Conservative precedent, but that, I assure him, has got nothing to do with, any attempt to make a party score out of the matter. He will see a Supplementary Estimate given under Colonial Services for the Grant-in-Aid to the Gold Coast Colonies in August, 1900. Without the amount ever having been on the original Estimate, and without any Bill or any Act of Parliament at all, but in the ordinary course of the machinery of finance of the year the House was invited to vote a Supplementary Estimate of £200,000 for the benefit of the Gold Coast Colony. On the Estimate it was definitely stated, "It is intended that the advance shall be repaid by the Gold Coast in such instalments as, looking to the financial condition of the Colonies, the Secretary of State may require."
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYIs that Statute?
§ Mr. MASTERMANPerhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman will let me keep to my argument. In March of the following year a further sum of £200,000 was voted under similar conditions and with the same statement made on the face of the Estimate. It was given to the Gold Coast by way of loan as a Grant-in-Aid, and the House was informed on the Estimate that it would be paid back to the Imperial Exchequer. If the hon. Gentleman takes the Appropriation Act of 1900 he will see sundry Colonial Services, including certain Grants-in-Aid, including a 2303 Supplementary sum of £200,000. That is the Statutory Service for which the money is released, and in 1901 the Appropriation Act granted sundry Colonial Services, including certain Grants-in-Aid. In all the precedents, and in the precedents in the ten or twelve examples which I gave, the House is asked to vote money as a Grant-in-Aid. It is informed on the Estimate that the Grant-in-Aid will be given to the Colonies by way of loans, and it is informed that the loan will be given under such conditions as the Treasury may prescribe, and that the money will be paid back, both interest and sinking fund, into the Imperial Exchequer. I would ask the House, further, to consider what has happened this year. A Supplementary Estimate is announced in exactly the same term as the Estimate for the Gold Coast. It is announced that it will be a Grant-in-Aid for Uganda, and that an additional sum of £500,000 will be given by way of loan, and that it will be accounted for by the Colonial audit, and not by the Comptroller and Auditor-General, and that it will be repaid at an interest of 3½ per cent. on terms prescribed by the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury. To complete my story, if the hon. and learned Gentleman will turn to the Appropriation Bill of this year he will find that we are appropriating under the Colonial Office Vote sundry Colonial services, including certain Grants-in-Aid (including a Supplementary sum of £503,000), £1,363,754. There is not a word of difference, yet the hon. and learned Gentleman called my precedents fantastic and fraudulent.
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYSo they are.
§ Mr. MASTERMANEvery one of them is exactly similar to what has already been done, including a Grant-in-Aid of £3,000,000 on the Supplementary Estimate to the Transvaal Colony, and including a large number of sums more substantial in character than the sums which are being voted at the present time. The hon. and learned Gentleman said, I think, that we had for the first time taken this Grant out of the control of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, and he seemed to think that that was another criminal action.
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYThat was not the way I put it.
§ Mr. MASTERMANWill the hon. and learned Gentleman explain the way he put it?
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYI said that we knew very well that Grants-in-Aid for these distant places had not been put under the control of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, but I said that last year, when you dealt with the matter by Statute, there was no such provision in the Statute.
§ Mr. MASTERMANThe complaint that the hon. and learned Gentleman made was that this was not under the control of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, and he seemed to think that this was a special arrangement made because the nature of the loan would not bear examination. The conditions under which this loan is accounted for and audited are precisely the same as the conditions under which the Colonial Vote is accounted for and audited, and it is accounted for and audited by the Colonial audit under the conditions laid down by the Public Accounts Committee. In 1910 the Colonial Audit Office was created, and the Public Accounts Committee recommended that the Colonial Services should be accounted for, not by the Comptroller and Auditor-General, but by the Colonial Audit when given in Grants-in-Aid. If the hon. and learned Gentleman had taken the trouble to turn up the original Colonial Office Vote he would have found exactly similar cases not accounted for by the Comptroller and Auditor-General, but by the Colonial Audit, and in giving a Grant-in-Aid supplementary to the original Colonial Office Vote the same conditions, of course, must necessarily prevail.
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYWhy had you a Statute last year?
§ Mr. MASTERMANThat is a different question altogether. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that there was no precedent for this, and that it was quite an illegal and fraudulent business. I gave him ten precedents.
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYYou have given none.
§ Mr. MASTERMANHe then stated that they were all fraudulent and were a deliberate attempt to deceive the House, and when I assured him that there had been numerous cases exactly similar, I should have thought that he would be prepared to acknowledge it and to withdraw the term fraudulent.
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYAs the right hon. Gentleman has appealed to me, I did not mean to suggest that the right hon. Gentleman was personally conscious of it, but I believe that he has been, and is being, imposed upon.
§ Mr. MASTERMANIf the hon. and learned Gentleman will go through all the ten or twelve precedents which I have established, I think he will find that every one of them was exactly similar in character.
§ Mr. T. M. HEALYWhy had you an Act last year?
§ Mr. MASTERMANAs to the general question attending this loan to Uganda which the hon. and learned Gentleman has raised, I do not think he will expect me to say anything on that. The other question relating to Uganda which the hon. and learned Gentleman raised was very fully explained last week, and it was accepted with enthusiasm by hon. Members, and I think passed without any vote against it. In these circumstances, I trust we may proceed to the general question whether the Uganda loan is still desirable or not.