§ Mr. PIRIECertainly, it is true that it is the unexpected that happens in this House, and one can never be certain of what is going to happen; otherwise I know I should have been supported now, as I hope to be later, by several of my Scottish colleagues who wish to take part in the discussion of a matter which is not before the House for the first time, namely, the neglect of the commercial interests of Scotland by cutting it off from the advantage of enjoying the underground system of telegraphs in that part of the country north of Falkirk. In the miserable remnants of time which unfortunately are left to us Scottish Members to discuss this 1292 question, the question was raised as regards the action of the Postmaster-General as to the very unjust proportion in the money expended in this country and in Scotland on this service. Let it suffice for me to point out that 1,200 miles of underground telegraph lines have been laid in England and 130 in Scotland. That is not all. By a series of questions I elicited the fact that over and above those 1,200 miles of telegraph lines in England there are also an additional number of shorter underground cable communications not taken into account in those 1,200 miles, and I hope by still more questioning I shall find out the exact mileage. Thus the proportion of mileage between the two countries is even greater than the figures I have given. However, it is not my purpose to dwell on this matter as regards the Postmaster-General, because I know that some of my colleagues, especially the Member for West Aberdeenshire (Mr. J. M. Henderson), were going to take part in the discussion. We Scottish Members are determined to raise this question on another adjournment, when I hope my hon. Friend will be able to be present and give us the benefit of his great business knowledge on this question as regards the action of the Postmaster-General.
To-night my purpose is to call attention to the action, or rather inaction, of the Secretary for Scotland as regards this matter in defence of Scottish interests. I say at once that, as far as possible, I do not intend to make any criticism or attack on either the Secretary for Scotland personally or on his office, but more on the system which prevails in his office. I say, however tied down that office may be by Parliamentary usages, yet when you come to unprecedented cases you are justified in taking unprecedented action. We live in more ways than one in an era of unprecedented action and unprecedented events, and as far as unequal treatment between Scotland and England are concerned, I do not think there has ever been a blacker case of injustice than in this apportionment of money devoted to underground telegraphic extension. I therefore say that it is time, and more than time, not only in the case of the present holder of the office, but also in that of his predecessor, for representations to be made on behalf of Scotland generally that more justice should be done. The Secretary for Scotland tries to ride off by saying that that is not his province, but the province of the Scottish Members. I will 1293 ask any fair-minded man to put himself in the place of the Scottish Members, and think what opportunities they have either of taking time by the forelock and getting beforehand, or even, when details of injustice are known, of taking any action. The Scottish Member cannot be aware of the intentions of the Government, and his opportunities for criticism or debate in this House are limited as far as his own affairs are concerned to a miserable half-dozen hours in the year, and that even sometimes is overstating the facts of the case. Then, again, if he brings up a grievance such as this on the Estimates he is naturally voted down by his more numerous English colleagues.
What is the unfortunate Scottish Member to do, if he cannot look to the right hon. or hon. Gentleman who occupies the post of Secretary for Scotland, and more than ever when, as in this case, I am happy to say the Secretary for Scotland is not in another place, but here with us in the House of Commons. It was a great enough scandal, and I say that now, after all these years, when the Secretary for Scotland was allowed to be in the other place. Many of my Scottish colleagues at the time of the appointment of the late Secretary to another place spoke out more strongly even than I am speaking now. I held my tongue, hoping his appointment was only temporary. It ran its course despite the many attempts to secure other conditions, and it was not until his appointment to the Governorship of Madras that we got rid of being separated from our Secretary in this House. Now we have him here, and I venture to say that the A B C of his position would be this: to endeavour to constitute himself the leader of the Scottish Members on both sides of the House to defend Scottish interests. This ought not to be a party question. I recall what happened a few weeks ago as regards Ireland when there was a just grievance felt by all Irish Members as regards the treatment by the Board of Agriculture. I allude to the attack of foot-and-mouth disease in which there were Regulations proposed which were considered very unfair by the Irish Members. There both parties of Irish representatives united at once to make re presentations in defence of their national interests. Here at the present moment apart from party—
§ Mr. MACPHERSONOn a point of Order. I see two Members (Mr. MacVeagh and Mr. Pringle) who are not Members of 1294 the Privy Council sitting on the Front Opposition Bench.
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. Maclean)Hon Members are entitled to sit in any part of the House which is open to them.
§ 9.0 p.m.
§ Mr. PIRIEI do not mind the hon. Member from Ireland occupying a seat there, but I must say the hon. Member from Scotland ought to show a greater sense of seriousness, although some of these matters may be objects of ridicule, but really they are not, and I think they deserve the serious consideration of the House. I wish now to call attention to the nature of the answers which the Secretary for Scotland thinks it his duty to give to questions on such paints as these. His main object seems to be to endeavour to hide the true facts. I ask the Secretary for Scotland whether any representations had been made either by his predecessor or by himself to the Postmaster-General with regard to the frequent breakdowns of telegraphic communications in the North-East of Scotland, and the consequent great financial loss which had been incurred. If he had given me a straight answer his answer would have been "No, I do not know what my predecessor has done, and I have made no representations." That really is what his answer amounted to. Instead of that, he desired to mislead the Scottish newspaper readers. I say that plainly to the right hon. Gentleman's face. He said:—
I am not able to say what representations my predecessor may have made at the time referred to.He might have taken the trouble to find out. He said further:—On a recent occasion representations were properly made directly to my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General.That was not my question. My question was whether he himself had made any representations. Any straightforward man would at once have given me the answer, "No, I have not made any representations." That is the plain and blunt truth, which the right hon. Gentleman did not want the Scottish electors to know. I asked him then if he had taken the trouble to find out what representations, if any, his predecessor had made. He then gave me a straight answer, because it was a. supplementary question, and he had not time to prepare the reply. He said, "No, I have not." Last week I asked him, in view of the statement of the Postmaster-General, what steps he was prepared to I take to safeguard Scottish interests. He 1295 made another evasive answer. He began by saying:—The first part of the question asking for postal statistics should be addressed to my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General.I had not asked for any statistics; on the contrary, I had given some statistics and asked him if he was aware of them. He then rides off on the old excuse that it is not in accordance with Parliamentary practice for a Minister to make communications on a matter which is entirely in a colleague's province. That may be; but if it is the Parliamentary practice, and if he holds office on those terms, it is time that he changed the practice. I openly say that under present conditions no self-respecting Liberal ought to hold the office of Secretary for Scotland unless he is prepared to get justice done to his country. It is time the people of Scotland knew the actual state of affairs in regard to the way in which the right hon. Gentleman treats representations from Scotland and Scottish interests. As long as they are not in his Department he treats them with absolute indifference, apathy, and neglect. It is a monstrous thing that the whole of the North-East of Scotland and important centres of commerce like Dundee and Aberdeen should not receive proper treatment, whilst small town in the suburbs of London are treated to underground communication. Not only as regards postal matters, but also as regards larger questions affecting the national development of Scotland, Scottish interests are treated with indifference, contempt, and neglect. We Scottish Members are unduly handicapped in this House at present, and the least the Secretary for Scotland could do is to take up a decided line of action, and say that there must be a change—such, for instance, as perhaps federalism would give. On that point, during the passage of the Home Rule Bill, whom would one have expected to speak on the federal scheme but the Secretary for Scotland? But not once did the right hon. Gentleman open his lips. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why?"] Because he is half-hearted in the matter, as some others are. Luckily, we know that important Members of the Cabinet favour the federal scheme, and the minor Members will have to follow their lead. We Scottish Members are absolutely entitled to have heard during these last few weeks some outline of the policy of the Secretary 1296 for Scotland for the country which he misrepresents.
The SECRETARY for SCOTLAND (Mr. McKinnon Wood)The matter upon which my hon. and gallant Friend has made so vivacious a speech is one of great simplicity. I do not know what authority he has for saying that I have treated it with indifference, apathy, or neglect; because he has not the least idea how I have treated it, and I have not the least intention of telling him. He finds fault with me for not inquiring what line my predecessor took, not in regard to anything which happened in Scotland, but in regard to the laying of a telegraphic cable at Penzance. My predecessor is in India, and I say quite frankly that I did not feel called upon to expend sums of public money on cablegrams for the purpose of dealing with a matter which was really not in the province of my Noble Friend, namely, the question of laying telegraphic lines in England. I believe, as a matter of fact they were laid to connect with oceanic cables. As for myself, the position is perfectly clear. What my hon. Friend invites me to do is to take up a question that has never been brought to my notice by the representatives who came here expressly to deal with it—representatives of trade and commerce in the municipalities interested. They understood a great deal more about the procedure of Parliament and the duties of Ministers than my hon. and gallant Friend seems to do. They came directly to the Postmaster-General, and put their case before him. This House, in course of time, has laid a vast number of duties on the Secretary for Scotland, but the duty of running the postal system of this country is not included in them. It is perfectly true that it is a matter upon which the Secretary for Scotland would naturally take a personal interest, but that is not what my hon. and gallant Friend is asking me to do. What he is really inviting me to do is to criticise my colleague the Postmaster-General. I think I am entitled to say that is not only contrary to Parliamentary practice, but that it is not a course of action which will promote harmony in the Cabinet, or serve the interest of any person who really desires to see work accomplished. What my hon. and gallant Friend wants is not work, but grounds for complaint. He finds them in the most trivial causes, and searches for them in the most obscure corners. He has no right at all to expect anything of the kind. If I make representations to my colleagues about 1297 Scottish business, I intend to do it in the way I think most effective, and that is, to speak to my colleagues in private and try to convince them of the justice of any claim that I think right. I have no notion of getting up and being made a sort of stalking horse for an attack upon one of my colleagues. If that is all the complaint the hon. and gallant Gentleman has against me, I am not afraid to meet it in Scotland or anywhere else, and I cannot help regretting that the time of the House should have been taken up by a matter so trivial and so absurd.
§ Mr. HOGGEI did not intend to speak, but I think it is the duty of a colleague of any Scotsman who brings up a question to support him in the main point that he puts. I do not think that the Secretary for Scotland has such reason to complain of the attitude that the hon. and gallant Member has taken up that he makes things better by taking up the attitude he himself has taken up in the speech which he has just delivered. He says deliberately in this House that he has not the least intention of telling hon. Members what he has done. I submit that that is not the attitude that the Secretary for Scotland ought to take up towards one of his colleagues. However much I may differ from my colleague, and however much the right hon. Gentleman may think that my colleague searches obscure corners for trivial cases to criticise his conduct in the House, I take it that the Secretary for Scotland ought to take Members from Scotland—at any rate Members from Scotland who sit on this side of the House—into his confidence on matters of the kind. I must frankly say that the action of the Scottish Secretary is not always above criticism any more than the suggestions we make on occasions of this sort may be above criticism from him. For example, I myself raised a question which is a very acute question so far as a large part of one of the counties of Scotland is concerned. No less than some eight or nine months ago I drew attention to the fact that owing to the want of telegraphic communication—and this does not involve the overhead or underground cables at all—but for want of reasonable telegraphic communication the Island of St. Kilda was shut off for six months of the year from communication with the mainland. An offer was made to the Post Office by an outside individual to supply a wireless telegraphic installation between that island and the mainland. The only thing that prevented 1298 it being erected at once was the procuring of a licence from the Post Office. Owing to some cause which I have never been able yet to understand, that licence was delayed to such an extent that although the installation was ready and was offered for nothing to the Post Office, St. Kilda is again shut off from the mainland this winter and will be for some six months. Advantage was not taken of this offer to the nation. One would have thought that here was a question upon which the Secretary for Scotland might have spoken privately to his colleague, the Postmaster-General, and have seen that the thing did not lapse for so many months. I think that is fair criticism.
§ Mr. HOGGEI asked a question in the House and got no information. If communications were made by the Secretary of Scotland will he stand up and say so?
§ Mr. HOGGEDid the Secretary for Scotland take the trouble to see that that installation was erected in time to prevent the island being shut off for six months?
Mr. McKINNON WOODThe hon. Member entirely changes his ground. He asks one moment if communications have been made, and he next asks if I have done the work of the Postmaster-General. Of course I have not!
§ Mr. HOGGEThe right hon. Gentleman does not seem to understand my question. The point I put is this: That it may be quite true that the right hon. Gentleman has spoken to his colleague upon the matter, but it does not matter whether he has spoken or not so long as he has not spoken effectively enough to procure the installation being erected before the island is shut off for six months. Speaking is nothing.
§ Mr. HOGGEQuite so, and that is quite possibly one reason why the Scottish Members are given so few opportunities of speaking. Action is very much better than speaking. The point I am putting is this: The right hon. Gentleman says that my hon. and gallant colleague for North Aberdeen wants him to get up and practically to abuse his colleagues on that bench. He says that is a thing subversive 1299 of discipline in the Cabinet of which he is a member. It is an experience we might all relish, as witness what happened only a few days ago, the result of which no one seemed to be very much struck about. The whole point seems to me to be this, that the Secretary for Scotland seems to have some kind of idea that he alone is competent to know all the business that exists in Scotland, that all the interests that require to be satisfied, and petitions, and other matters should be brought within his province. I am perfectly certain that the question which has been raised now is quite legitimate. You have in Scotland, owing to the absence of underground cables, continuous telegraphic breakdowns. You have in England underground cables all over the country. {An HON. MEMBER: "NO."] Well, to a much larger extent than in Scotland. Our point of view is that our Post Office in Scotland earns a very large profit, and that we are entitled out of that profit therefore to have served those towns in Scotland which are now cut off on account of the telegraphic delays which occur at intervals. Why, I say, it should be resented as an impertinence by the Secretary for Scotland that a Scottish Member should bring this matter up on the Adjournment passes my wit to understand. Because of the absolutely irrelevant and impertinent answer of the right hon. Gentleman I have taken a part in the Debate.
§ Dr. CHAPPLEI have no quarrel whatever with the Secretary for Scotland. He has always shown to me extreme courtesy and consideration in anything I laid before him. At the same time, I think he enunciated a principle the other day which might lead to a certain amount of barrenness in Scottish administration. It appears to me that if there is to be a scramble for public funds by the Celtic fringe, Scotland might suffer considerably in the presence of such rapacious demands as are made by the other component parts 1300 of the United Kingdom. It seems to me that the Secretary for Scotland would require to take a stand in favour of a fair allocation of public funds for Scotland. I want to call attention to one thing in Scotland that I think in the past has been very seriously neglected not by the present occupant of the high office of Secretary for Scotland alone, but quite as much by his predecessors. For many years in Scotland there has been an attempt to carry on an experimental investigation of a mid-Scotland canal joining up the east and west coasts. For want of a very small sum of money, that investigation has been retarded notwithstanding the fact that in very recent times the disposition of the fleet in the North Sea, the creation of a naval base at Rosyth, and "Dreadnought" docks at Renfrew make a canal a necessity.
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. Maclean)Perhaps the hon. Member would not persist in view of the fact that the Debate will automatically stand adjourned in a minute and a half.
§ Dr. CHAPPLEI want to appeal to the Secretary for Scotland to give some encouragement for the further investigation of this scheme, because of its strategic advantages to this country and because of the great commercial advantage that would accrue by the joining up of the east and west coast ports of Britain and by making that canal a great thoroughfare for European traffic. It would afford a short and safe route between the North Sea and the Atlantic, and between North European ports and America.
§ It being half an hour after the conclusion of Government business, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put.
§ Adjourned accordingly at Sixteen minutes after Nine o'clock.