MUNITIONS OF WAR [EXPENSES]. (Hansard, 28 June 1915)

§ Mr. HOGGE
I object. It is after eleven o'clock.

§ Mr. PRINGLE
I object.

§ Mr. HOGGE
I really do object. It is after eleven o'clock.

§ The CHAIRMAN
There is no question of objecting. The hon. Member should move to report Progress.

§ Mr. HOGGE
I beg to move to report Progress.

§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGE
This is purely a formal stage; there is nothing that arises on it. My hon. Friend knows that it is a purely formal stage, and I beg him to withdraw his objection. I shall be glad to meet my hon. Friend in my room at four o'clock to-morrow, and to discuss with him any point he may wish to raise.

§ Mr. HOGGE
I sat here through the Debate on the Motion and leave was given to introduce the Bill, and I have sat here through the Second Reading, all the time intending to make a few remarks on the Bill. The Coalition Government was formed because we were not allowed 1609 to talk. In previous times mistakes have been made which we think are bad mistakes, but about which we are content to say nothing if we are allowed free criticism. If the right hon Gentleman (Mr. Lloyd George) gets an inch he wants an ell. I am perfectly prepared to make a bargain with the right hon. Gentleman and that is this, that those of us who take the opposite point of view, but who are as much in favour of the successful prosecution of the War as he is, ought to be allowed some adequate opportunity of expressing our views. Members have been talking to-day who were talking on the Motion, and leave was given to introduce the Bill, and Members have been making the same speeches over and over again. Members have been called to order for dealing with the general and not with the particular subject, and those of us who took the suggestion that was made from the Chair and refrained from making these kind of speeches have sat here the whole day and could not get a chance of offering our views for what they are worth. Our views may not be worth anything, but we are entitled to put them before the House. Only one speech has been made by my hon. Friend (Mr. Pringle) putting our position and it ought to have been supported, but we had not had the chance of supporting it. It does not do to meet the Minister of Munitions in his room He meets men in different ways; it all depends on the man whether he should go to his room or go to breakfast I am not sure whether an invitation to his room is sufficient.

§ Mr. GEORGE TERRELL
I desire to associate myself with the protest made. I have been here all the afternoon attempting to offer a few remarks. The Debate has been such that one would almost imagine it was purely a trade union squabble. I represent interests which are not otherwise represented in this House, or, at any rate, no criticism such as I desire to offer has been made. The Bill is an enormously important one, and very far-reaching in its effects. I am not hostile to it. I want to support it, and my line of protest would be that it did not go far enough, and that no opportunity is given to the outside Member to raise a point which he wishes to raise.

§ Mr. PRINGLE
I think that we might come to a friendly arrangement. The Committee stage is down for Thursday. We can get the Committee of this Resolution 1610 to-morrow, have the Report on Wednesday, and the Committee stage of the Bill on Thursday. That will not cause any delay.

§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGE
I will tell the House, quite frankly, that is is exceedingly difficult for me to get down to the House at the present moment. I am starting a new Department. One never knows quite the moment when something requiring attention comes on, and it would undoubtedly be a great inconvenience to me that I should be here. Four o'clock tomorrow is a specific hour to meet hon. Members and discuss matters with them. One never knows when one comes down to the House when he will get away. It is really very important for me to be in my Department. I hope that my hon. Friends will now see their way to let me have this. I have often sat here for three days with a most eloquent speech ready to deliver which I failed to deliver, and I always thought that these speeches were the most eloquent speeches that I could have made.

§ Mr. HOGGE
I can meet the right hon. Gentleman as my hon. Friend suggests. We will come and see him in his room at four o'clock, and if he satisfies us probably we will not care to go on. We do not want to delay him. I give him my promise, if he sees us first to-morrow and reserves for us an opportunity for talking—

§ Sir F. BANBURY
May I point out that this particular Resolution will give very little opportunity for talking to the hon. Member. It merely empowers the House of Commons to grant a certain sum of money to the people who will sit as arbitrators under the Bill, and the discussion would be limited to the question whether or not these arbitrators should be paid.

§ Mr. HOGGE
The hon. Baronet could talk at great length on that.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
If the hon. Gentleman thinks it patriotic to talk at great length when his country is suffering, I have nothing further to say. I am glad that he has revealed himself in his true colours.

§ Mr. LLOYD GEORGE
I do not want to dispute the matter. On that understanding I do not press it.
Committee report Progress; to sit again to-morrow (Tuesday).
1611 The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

§ Sir RICHARD COOPER
I am sorry to delay the House, but it is impossible for me to leave the matter of the unfortunate personal dispute between the Minister of Munitions and myself in the position in which it now is. The right hon. Gentleman last Wednesday made a grossly unfair accusation—that is putting it in true words—against my character. I was accused of making wild and irresponsible statements, and of misleading this House as well as the public. The speech of the right hon. Gentleman in the OFFICIAL REPORT is based entirely on the statement that the name of the firm I gave was a firm of lithographic printers. I am only going to read one quotation to show the spirit in which the right hon. Gentleman attacked me. He says:— They have never turned out any shells before. They are a firm of lithographic printers. That is not a very substantial contribution, and it does not carry us very far on the way to 24,000,000 shells. I should have thought if the hon. Baronet was taking a sample out of bulk he would have produced something a little more reassuring than a lithographic printer prepared with machinery to turn out 10,000 shells per week."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd June, 1916, col. 1256, Vol. LXVII.] So far from the statement of the right hon. Gentleman having a vestige of truth in it, I may inform the House—the right hon. Gentleman is not present, but that is not my fault—and I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that he knows it—because he said in his reply that he had a letter from this firm—that the heading on the paper of the firm is "Specialist Lithographic Machinery Contractors to His Majesty's Government and the Colonial Governments." This firm, which is not good enough for the right hon. Gentleman to consider now as worthy of making 1612 shells, though they are approved by the Government, and were on the Government contractors' lists, are engineers pure and simple. Here is a drawing sent to me of a batch of machines—cartridge-drawing machines—in process of completion for other firms, to make munitions of war. When I appealed to the right hon. Gentleman this evening to do a simple act of justice and of honour, as between one Member of the House and another, and that was to withdraw the imputation against my character, which I suggested was made entirely on a misapprehension, the right hon. Gentleman stood up here again to-night, and had the audacity to practically repeat the imputations which he made before, and said, "If you cannot give me the names of the people it is no use wasting time." I have given him the name of a firm approved by his Government on the list of contractors and in face of that he says, "You must give me the names of the people, so that I may know with whom I am dealing." What is the use of giving him the names of a large number of firms when, for some reason which is left to the imagination of the House, they will not deal with an honourable firm which has been trying since the middle of April to get an order for shells, and which has got machinery and five hundred skilled mechanics in their factory, the whole of whom are available, and were since last April, to make shells? I do not know what steps it is in my power to take to secure an act of simple justice from a Minister of the Crown in this country. I cannot let this matter lie here. If it is no use appealing to the right hon. Gentleman's sense of honour, I can only ask him to repeat his exact statement outside this House, where he will not be privileged, and then I shall be allowed, at any rate, the liberty which is left to every citizen of this country, to defend his honour and defend his name.