§ Question again proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
§ 5.0 P.M.
§ Mr. BONAR LAWWhen the interruption took place I was dealing with the question of Under-Secretaries. I was trying to assure the House that the Government have no intention of appointing any larger number than were absolutely necessary for the efficient working of the Government. My right hon. Friend (Mr. McKenna) had referred to the Board of Trade as an instance where obviously, on the face of it, an additional Under-Secretary is not wanted. Whether or not there is to be an additional Under-Secretary there has not yet been decided. The reason we wish at this moment for power to do it is this: Sir Albert Stanley, who is President of the Board of Trade, has been appointed to that post obviously not because of any Parliamentary gifts. However, as a matter of fact, I have heard him, and I think he could explain his case as well as most old-time politicians, but he does not want to do it. He is going there to do work and not to defend what he does in the House of Commons. But he suggested that probably an additional Parliamentary Under-Secretary would free his hand and enable him to do the work. The Government are now considering whether or not they should recommend this additional Under-Secretary. If we do, it will simply be because we believe the work could be more efficiently done in that way than if we did not appoint another Under-Secretary. As regards the other points raised by the hon. Member, he took first of all the question of the Minister of Blockade. As my right hon. Friends who were in the late Government know, we are making no change in that respect. My Noble Friend (Lord R. Cecil) was appointed Minister of Blockade under the late Government, and in that capacity he attended Cabinet meetings. The position now remains the same.
§ Mr. DILLONHe does not regularly attend Cabinet meetings now?
§ Mr. BONAR LAWI did not say that that was so.
§ Mr. DILLONYou said his position was the same.
§ Mr. BONAR LAWHis position is the same as regards Ministerial functions, and it was the view at the time he was appointed, and it is our view now, that the arrangements made for blockade must all be in connection with foreign countries of one kind or another, and that makes it almost essential that the man who fills that office, if he is to fill it to the best advantage, should also be Under-Secretary for the Foreign Office. That does not in the least mean he is under the Foreign Office as Minister of Blockade. Of course everything is abnormal, but his position will be precisely the same as that of the Food Controller or the Shipping Controller, or anyone else. If there is any question on which he has to come to the War Cabinet, he will come there as Minister of Blockade and state his own case in that capacity and not as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. That is the position as regards my Noble Friend. Now we come to the case of the Minister for Agriculture and the Food Controller. It is quite obvious that if the people who are going to try to run these Departments of Government want to make friction, they have got the opportunity of doing it on every hand. On the other hand, it is equally obvious that there are some points where the duties of the Food Controller and the Minister of Agriculture overlap. The way that works has already been shown in practice. Both of these Gentlemen have been present at the War Council. They are working together in many ways. The Board of Agriculture can get through the Food Controller more quickly and more certainly the things that it needs than it could get them through the mechanism of its own Department. They have been there and they have drawn up their plans together. There is no shadow of friction, and if anything of that sort should arise, if there should be a difference of opinion, the obvious remedy, and the remedy which will be applied at once, is that they should come to the War Council, state their case, and the War Council will be the final arbiter on every question that arises.
Take, again, the question of shipping control. The hon. Gentleman said, "We have been trying to do this through the Board of Trade." I wish the late President of the Board of Trade were present, for nobody knows better than I do how hard he tried to do it. One of the objects 1161 of creating a Shipping Controller is this: that by getting that important work into the hands of one man who devotes his whole energy to it, and to nothing else, he will see more clearly and express more forcibly the things that ought to be done, and in that way, in my belief, they will be done more quickly. What happens? It has happened already. The new Shipping Controller has been in touch with the Admiralty. He has already made his plans. I am not sure that they differ very much from those that would have been made by the late President of the Board of Trade. He brings forward definite proposals. He has arranged them to a certain extent with the Admiralty. They are working on them now. There is there the interweaving of responsibilities and duties. That raises at once the question of whether the vital needs of this War require that we should have merchant ships or whether we should go on increasing in some form our ships of war or such ships as are needed for war purposes. Very well, the new Shipping Controller goes into that with the Admiralty. If they do not come to the same conclusion, they come to the War Cabinet. We then have the whole case before us. We think it will be decided quickly and rapidly, and whatever can be done will be done immediately.
§ Mr. HOUSTONWill the right hon. Gentleman tell me when the Shipping Controller came into office or into his Department?
§ Mr. BONAR LAWI do not believe that his powers have yet been created. The Bill is not passed.
§ Mr. HOUSTONWhen did he commence operations?
§ Mr. BONAR LAWI forget the day he came and saw the Prime Minister and myself, but he began operations the same afternoon. When my hon. Friend interrupted I was going to deal with his point that the Controller of Shipping ought to be in this House. Well, I say at once that that is contrary to the whole spirit with which we are trying to run the Government under the new system. What we want is to get the work done. That does not mean the House of Commons is to be treated with less respect. Nothing of the kind. But the man who is most competent —and we have chosen the best man we could get—to do the particular work would be unable to give all the necessary 1162 time and attention to it which ought to be given if he had to attend at the same time regularly in this House.
§ Mr. HOUSTONI understand he is coming into the House.
§ Mr. BONAR LAWI understand he is coming to the House, but, as Shipping Controller, he said to me "I know what I can do and I know what I cannot do, and I do not think I can do the work in the House of Commons and this work as well." We want him to do the work that is most important, and we shall make the best arrangements we can to defend in the House of Commons what he has done. May I point out this to the House: Who will suffer by this kind of arrangement? Is it not the Government? We have got to depend for our existence on the House of Commons and if we are not able to make a good defence here it is obvious that our position is weakened in the House; but in my opinion, and still more I think in the opinion of the Prime Minister, that is not the essential thing at this moment. The essential thing is to get the work done, and we will trust to the House of Commons, if if we do it efficiently, to forgive any deficiencies there may be. I do not think there is any more that it is necessary for me to say. I will repeat what I said at the beginning. If the House of Commons chooses to treat these proposals in a way in which proposals would be treated in times of peace we could hardly carry them through the House of Commons, but, up to now, the House has shown itself ready to give us a fair trial, to judge us by what we do, and I for one say that if they do that, and we are not able to justify our methods and what we are doing by results, then it is for the House of Commons to condemn us. But, in the meantime, I hope they will imitate the spirit which up to now has been shown by my right hon. Friend, and that they will do their best to allow us to get the machinery into operation and see how it will work. I may say that I am not now going to deal with the larger question raised by the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. Dillon)—that is, as to how the different Departments are going to work. That is something that results must show. I have no doubt that that will be dealt with to-morrow by the Prime Minister, and very likely, if I have to speak, I shall also deal with it myself; but in my own belief it will be found, in an emergency like this, that it will work 1163 pretty well. I am sure of this, that not one of the heads of these Department feels that he is in a humbler or worse position because of the arrangement which has been made in regard to him.
§ Mr. WARDLEI have listened to the right hon. Gentleman with great interest, and I should like to say at once that, so far as I am concerned, I, and I believe most of the Members of this House, desire that the Government should be given every opportunity. We quite realise that this Bill presents a number of extremely difficult problems which, under ordinary Parliamentary procedure, certainly could not have been got through before Christmas. I should like to say this with regard to the Bill as a Bill: In my opinion the Government have attempted to do too much in one Bill. If this Bill had been divided into two, or, better still, three different Bills, it would have secured quite as speedy a progress in getting these matters settled as by attempting to deal with them in one complicated Bill. The really urgent problem undoubtedly is to get the Food Controller and Shipping Controller appointed with Parliamentary powers, and if these two matters had been dealt with in one Bill, that would have been by far the better plan. But to attempt to deal with them in the same measure with the creation of permanent and temporary Ministries is to adopt a course which, in my opinion, it would have been far wiser not to take. But it has been attempted, and we are face to face with the Government's proposal.
I shall not offer any opposition to the second Reading of this Bill. But let me add one thing in regard to the concluding remarks of the Leader of the House. I think the essence of the success of this Bill will largely depend, as the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) said, on whether it will solve difficulties between Departments. Undoubtedly in the past conduct of the War such difficulties have constituted one of the greatest stumbling-blocks that have existed, and, if these difficulties are to continue in the future, I see no prospect that, even by the creation of more Departments and more Ministries, this difficult problem will be solved. I understand, however, that this point may be debated to-morrow, and I will therefore say no more upon it at present, beyond repeating that it seems to me the essence whether this Bill will work or not is whether the question of the differences 1164 between Departments can be brought to some quick solution and some authority exercised to see that the work is carried out. I believe decisions have been taken by the War Council in the past which have never been carried out and which to this day are a dead letter.
One reason I suggest it would have been better if two Bills had been brought in instead of one is in connection with the question of the Ministry of Labour. I followed very closely the right hon. Gentleman who introduced the Bill, and I should like to point out to him that while I quite agree that the creation of a Ministry of Labour at this time makes it difficult to put whoever is named as Minister of Labour in charge of the whole of the duties with which a Ministry of Labour ought to be charged, it does seem an extraordinary proceeding to create a Ministry of Labour and to transfer certain powers to it by this Bill to-day, leaving certain other powers to be transferred in a way which I think the House of Commons does not like and which is not in the best interests of the public. I do not think any Minister of Labour or any Ministry of Labour will be complete so long as powers under the Mines and Factories Acts are left outside the scope of the Minister's duties. They are important matters affecting labour, more important, in my opinion, than some of the duties now being handed over to the Minister of Labour—much more important, for instance, than the Labour Exchanges, in connection with which I can see a certain amount of over-lapping. I do not understand what the position will be with regard to this Ministry and the Labour side of the Munitions Department. There is in connection with that a very valuable adjunct called the Social Welfare side. This side is extremely important, and I would like to know if that is to be transferred to the Ministry of Labour. If so, it is very similar in regard to certain powers under the Mines Act and the Factories Acts, and there should be some coordination in this respect.
But my real objection on this point is this: that I want to see all the powers, whatever they are, put into the Bill. I do not say that they can all be taken over at once. I do not suggest you can make a clean sweep and put the new Minister in charge of all these various things in five minutes. J quite agree with my right hon. friend on that point, but I do suggest that whatever the Ministry of Labour is to be, 1165 whatever functions are entrusted to it, they should be put into the Bill so that they may be undertaken when the time comes.
With regard to the question which was raised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as to the attempt which the new Government intend to make to govern the country, I think we may fairly say that their desire to govern the country during this War with as little interference on the part of the House of Commons as is possible may or may not be a good thing, but there is one point I want to make myself perfectly clear upon. I believe that if the Government shows itself in earnest in getting on with this War, if it shows that it can be efficient in the machinery it proposes to create, then much will be forgiven. But, if as a result of its proposals —which I do not think the present House of Commons will reject because it is disposed to give them a fair and honest chance—if by the creation of still more war machinery they should, instead of making themselves more efficient, really make their task more difficult, then I think the country and the House of Commons will blame them in this respect for taking a wrong stand. I have considerable sympathy with the objections raised by the hon. Member for East Mayo and by the right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury) and others to any proposal to create an ad lib number of Under-Secretaries as seems to underlie this Bill. It is possible, of course, that the alarm is exaggerated, and perhaps it will not be necessary, but I believe the (House of Commons is right to sound a warning note. It is right it should keep a strict hold on this matter, and warn even this, which is, I suppose, the most powerful Government, that it had better take care. The real sense of the House of Commons in regard to these important matters is, I believe, with the Government, and I hope there will be no factious opposition when we get into Committee, although there will be certain necessary alterations to be made. But I do trust that this is the last time we shall have the Government coming here and saying that a Bill has been framed in such a hurry that they have not had time to put it into a proper shape. That is an excuse which may perhaps be accepted on this occasion, but I do submit that future Bills should be carefully considered and not overloaded like this one.
§ Sir F. BANBURYMy right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer concluded his remarks by saying that he hoped that this House would give the Government any necessary powers that they might ask for. Personally I think there is no doubt that that will be done. But perhaps I may venture to put to the Home Secretary this point: Is it necessary in this particular Bill to take such very unlimited powers? My remarks will be limited to Sub-section (2) of Clause 7, which deals with the appointment of Parliamentary Secretaries, and which reads as follows:
"(2) Notwithstanding anything in any Act, additional Parliamentary Under-Secretaries may be appointed to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to the Secretary of State for War, and to the Board of Trade; and it shall also be lawful for His Majesty to appoint a Parliamentary Secretary to any special authority or board constituted in connection with the supply of aircraft for the present War."
And then the Bill proceeds in Sub-section (3) to say:
"(3) Any Parliamentary Secretaries appointed under this Section shall hold office only during the continuance of the present War and a period of six months thereafter, and there shall be paid to any secretary so appointed such remuneration as may be fixed by the Treasury."
I maintain that under this Section there is power for the Government to appoint any number of Under-Secretaries they like and to pay them any sum the Treasury may authorise. The only limit is in Clause 10, which says that not more than two of such additional Parliamentary Secretaries may sit in this House. But there is nothing to prevent them sitting in another House, and a large number of Parliamentary Secretaries might be appointed at a remuneration fixed by the Treasury who would be very glad not to have to sit in this House, or in fact in any House at all. I feel, especially in view of the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that this House will probably give anything the Government asks for in reason, there ought to be a limit in the Bill to the number of secretaries to be appointed. This is, I admit, rather a Committee point, but still it is a very important one, and I do not think we ought to give any power to create patronage to such an unlimited extent. I do not think, of course, that it 1167 is intended, but that is all the more reason why my request should be acceded to. I hope therefore that in the Committee stage the Government will put in an Amendment limiting the number of Under-Secretaries. If they desire to appoint any more it will be a perfectly simple thing for them to bring in another Bill. While we are most anxious to get on with the War, the appointment of an unlimited number of Under-Secretaries cannot be of any advantage and will not cause the War to be proceeded with any quicker. I rather gather from the conversations I have had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and other right hon. Gentlemen opposite that they are inclined to regard my proposal with sympathy and I hope, if they cannot give any definite pledge at present, they will at any rate do so on the Committee stage.
§ Mr. PRINGLEThere are no two opinions in any quarter of the House as to the importance of the main offices which are created by this Bill. As they are now being created, there is equal agreement that the officers placed in charge of those offices should get to work as quickly as possible, consequently the House will be glad that the Government should be enabled to get this Bill as part of the law of the land at the earliest possible date. There is some justification for the criticism which has come from more than one quarter during the Debate as to the unnecessary multiplication of offices in the present Government. We have seen in connection with the appointments already announced a number of appointments made to offices which are really sinecures in character. We have seen separate appointments made to offices which were joined together in the last Government. For example, there has been an appointment made to the Chancellorship of the Duchy, an office which was held along with another office in the late Government, and there has been a separate appointment made as Lord Privy Seal and with regard to the Lord Presidency of the Council. In view of the necessity of creating new offices, an opportunity should have been taken by this Government to amalgamate existing sinecure offices with some of the other more important executive offices. That would have been an earnest given by the Government to the House and the country that they were concerned not in 1168 the multiplication of officers, but in having officers at the head of important departments who would discharge their duties and whose position there would not add to the expenditure of the State.
This matter further arises in connection with the Under-Secretaries, to whom the right hon Baronet (Sir F. Banbury) has just referred. We find in the Clause regarding Under-Secretaryships that it is possible to appoint new and fresh Under-Secretaries to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to the Secretary of State for War, and to the Board of Trade. The right hon. Gentleman the late Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. McKenna) has already pointed out how unnecessary it is, from a superficial examination, to appoint a new Under-Secretary to the Board of Trade. Here we are, splitting up the Board of Trade. We are appointing three new Ministers to discharge duties which in the past were performed by the President of the Board of Trade with a single Under-Secretary in this House. That means six Parliamentary officials at least. In addition to that, with this truncated Board of Trade, with this Board of Trade shorn of its more important powers, we take the authority now to add another Under-Secretary. That is a preposterous proposition. The same thing applies to the War Office. We have passed through the House of Commons a Bill dealing with pensions which is now in another place and will be passed before this week is out. Under that Bill we are taking away from the War Office the whole administration of pensions, one of the most important parts of their administration in the past and one which has cast a very large amount of work on the Department. Yet, in face of that, the new Government is suggesting that the War Office is to be endowed with another Under-Secretary. We should at least expect a case to be made out for such a course before the House assents to it. Anyone who listened to the Chancellor of the Exchequer must come to the conclusion that no case has been made out for a new Under-Secretary either to the Board of Trade or to the Secretary of State for War.
After all, the main thing in connection with these new appointments is, will the work be done? If there is one reason more than another why the late Government fell—I think there was great justification for its fall—it was because the 1169 work was not done. Simply by multiplying officers you are not going to secure the work being done. You may have still arising that conflict between Departments which was a characteristic of the administration of the last Government; indeed, by the multiplication of Departments, you are increasing the opportunities for such conflict. We had a War Council under the last Government. By simply saying that you are going to have a War Cabinet or a War Council you have no security whatever that the work will be done. I remember in connection with the matter of shipping, which is dealt with under this Bill, that a number of hon. Members in this House as well as myself in the spring raised the question of the necessity of dealing drastically with shipping, and we were told that steps would be taken to limit the number of ships employed on purely military work. I was subsequently informed privately, by a Minister concerned, that a decision had been given by the War Council, and he attributed that to some extent to the criticism made in this House. Only a month ago I once more inquired about the matter, saying, "What about the decision of the War Council in the spring?" The reply was that although there had been a decision of the War Council in the month of April, nothing had been done to carry it out. Simply having a War Council does not enable you to have the work done. The question is, Is the War Council to have authority over the Admiralty and the War Office, who at present are responsible for this use of our shipping resources? These are the things which are really at issue. It is not by creating offices, setting up new officials and having new men to answer for Departments in Parliament once a year in this House, that you will get the work done, unless the House, as I hope the House will, sees to it that the decisions taken by this supreme body are not nullified by interdepartmental jealousy.
§ Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALDI wish to associate myself fully with what the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Pringle) has said with regard to the creation of Departments. As a matter of fact, the House ought to consider whether the Departments which have been created ought to be termed Departments at all. The old Parliamentary theory of Departments is that there is a well-defined function of Government that requires a head of its own, who requires either to be in this House or in another place, for the purpose 1170 of keeping this House in intimate and personal contact with the multifarious work of that Department. The Food Ministry and the Shipping Ministry are the most typical examples of sub-sections of a Department, with a head who does not require to be here, who does his work, but who is defended by a legitimate head in this House. It will be a most unsatisfactory method of procedure if we are to have an independent Department unrepresented in this House or in another place, but defended by men in this House who need not be directly responsible for the action of the Department. This multiplication of Departments, so far from giving us any security that efficiency is going to be pursued by the new Government, as a matter of fact shows that they have begun already with very erroneous ideas as to what are the conditions of efficiency. However, they have made up their minds to-day, and, so far as I am concerned, I am going to let the matter alone. I rise not for the purpose of criticising the Bill, but to ask the Government whether it has leally said its final word on the new Ministry of Labour so far as this Bill is concerned? Of the three Departments that are to be created, this Department alone is to be a permanent one, and, being a permanent one and being an attempt to meet certain demands of Labour, it ought to give some sort of guarantee that it is going to be adequate and that it is really going to be a Ministry of Labour and not merely intended for passing munition purposes. It must do its work during the War and must do it efficiently. If it is merely created as it now is, with none of the large responsibilities associated with the Home Office and none of the large constructive responsibilities in connection with factory and mine administration, then it is such a poor thing that it will not be acceptable outside as being in any way a redemption of the pledge that has been made so often that Labour would at last have a Department of its own.
I would therefore ask the Government to very seriously consider whether the matter is satisfactorily dealt with in this Bill. If they will take the advice of anybody who has been working at this problem outside the Department they will get no one to advise them that a Ministry begun on a basis like this is going to be satisfactory. Hon. Members who have not had experience of the conflicting administration of the Home Office and the Board of Trade, with all their overlapping, with 1171 all the differences between them, with the duplication of instructions and authority and so on, have no idea of the tremendous amount of inefficiency that has crept in, inefficiency which has been experienced during the War, and the House ought to take this opportunity of saying, at any rate, that they are aware of the problem and are going to make some contribution to its solution. By merely taking a certain section of responsibility from the Board of Trade and by failing to ally that section with the kindred sections of the Home Office they are really missing a tremendous opportunity from the point of view of the War. But they are doing worse than that. They are leaving the officers of the Department without any sufficient guarantee that those functions are going to be added to their powers, and that failure on their part will be regarded outside as being ominous so far as the future is concerned. Let me take one problem. The Home Secretary, in introducing the Bill, said that this Department was to do war work only at the moment. Then he went on to indicate that in war work he included such problems as those of demobilisation. The Minister of Labour is not merely going to keep things going now; he must keep his eye on the tremendous problems that this country and his Department will have to face as soon as the soldier comes back and has to be fitted into the factories, mines, and workshops. That raises at once the problem of the hours of labour. There is nobody who has given five minutes' thought to that problem but has come up straight away against the problem of the hours of labour. The question of the new industrial efficiency which is being developed during the War, into which so much of the capital of the nation has been sunk, also relates to the same problem. If this Bill is carried in its present form, and no additional authority is given to the Minister of Labour, he will be responsible for dealing with demobilisation as the Minister of Labour, but the Home Office, under existing law and practice, is the authority for dealing with hours of labour.
That is most unsatisfactory. I do not believe for a single moment that the Minister for Labour will agree to have his powers so limited and confined as that There is not a single problem relating to demobilisation but brings the Minister of Labour right up against the administration of factories, and there is not a single 1172 power given here, unless you stretch the Wages Board Act, which gives him power to deal with the internal administration of factories at all. I make these observations because I want this Ministry to be a real Ministry. If it were merely a war Ministry I should not mind. The Munitions Department has had more to do with present war conditions than the Home Office. The House will remember the valuable memoranda—abouV thirteen of them have been issued—of the Committee inquiring into the industrial conditions of munition workers. A Minister of Labour, if he has any authority at all, if it is anything more than a nominal office, must deal with these memoranda about conditions of employment, refreshment, and so on—the most valuable set of documents from the industrial and labour point of view which have been published since the War started. But if the Bill remains what it is those memoranda will not be dealt with by the Ministry of Labour, but by the Home Office, and consequently, by the creation of a new Department, you are not adding to the efficiency of your organisation of State, but you are simply presenting new points of friction, misunderstanding, and trouble, and it is not that you actually get friction, but that both Departments do their best to avoid friction, and the best way to avoid friction is to do nothing at all. This country has suffered far too much from that in the past to enable us who have seen it at first hand to keep silent when this Bill is being produced in its present very imperfect form so far as Clauses 1 and 2 are concerned.
In know perfectly well about Orders in Council, but I want something more than that It is not good enough for the Government to say, "If we experience certain difficulties or if we widen our minds or change our ideas or if we see fit we will, by Orders in Council, extend the authority of the Ministry of Labour." The Ministry ought to tell us exactly what the Ministry of Labour is going to do. If they say it is inexpedient at the moment to take over Factory Act administration and all the work of the Home Office I can quite understand their argument, but they ought to put some sort of guarantee into the Bill, which shows the country that it is their definite intention to, amalgamate that section of Home Office responsibility with the new Ministry that they are creating. It is a perfectly simple thing to devise some words, "as early as may be," 1173 or something like that, and then lay down under those conditions their intention that the Ministry of Labour is really going to be a comprehensive, self-contained Ministry, and is going to deal not only with the very important and useful, but complicated and purely administrative work of the Board of Trade, but also with the more important and more honourable work with which the Home Office concerns itself, which is mainly confined to legislation and to the administration of the legislation which it itself has been responsible for getting carried. So I will appeal to the Government to reconsider the provisions of Clauses 2 and 3, remembering that these two Clauses establish a Department that is going to be permanent and that if the Department is to be held in honour and respect by the people concerned with it outside, it must be presented to them from the very beginning as a Department which is important and authoritative, so that they can look up to it, and not be presented as a kind of maid-of-all-work dealing with the certainly very important responsibilities detailed in the Schedule, but after all very minor in view of the sort of work that the Home Office has done. I therefore hope the Government will consider this and more particularly any Amendments which may be moved for the purpose of making it a real Department and not merely a war convenience.
§ Mr. HOBHOUSEIt is rather a pity that no responsible head of a Department will appear to listen to the extremely interesting and valuable speech of my hon. Friend (Mr. Macdonald). I think he is the first Member of the House who has raised the question of the new Labour Ministry which, as he truly points out, is to be the one permanent feature of this Bill. The criticism which he has made on that proposal seems to me to be so well founded and so fully justified, both as to the present and as to the future, that it is a pity that the Home Secretary, who has now come in, and who I am sure was only absent by accident and by necessity, was not able to listen to the speech. I may be old-fashioned in this respect, but I can see almost certain jealousy arising either from the side of the capitalists or from the side of labour in appointing a special man to have as his sole and special task nothing but the consideration of labour problems. If he belongs to the ranks of the capitalists he is sure to be suspect by labour. If he is drawn on the other hand from the voices of the trade unions, as the present Minister 1174 is drawn, he is sure to encounter the suspicions of the great captains of industry. I may be almost alone in this opinion, but I believe I shall be justified by events, that in separating these questions from the Home Office you will isolate labour and you will not advance but hinder the proper consideration of the subjects which must come under discussion.
I turn to the other portions of the Bill. The Leader of the House made an appeal for the Bill as being introduced under very exceptional circumstances, and I thought that was an appeal which was justified. If it had not been for those exceptional circumstances it would have been impossible to dissociate this Bill from that which was passed on Thursday last providing for the non-vacation of seats by Ministers. It is quite clear that under these two Bills together it would be possible for a Ministry, and I think it would be proper for a Ministry, in ordinary times to be charged with doing that which the House of Commons has always successfully prevented it from doing—from purchasing support in the House of Commons by the creation of posts. But in times of this sort that consideration ought not to arise, and I do not believe it will arise; and if it does it ought to be put entirely on one side, and we ought to come to the consideration of the Bill itself apart from any accidental and outside circumstances. The real question is whether, when you have created all these separate Departments and when you have elevated branches into separate Departments, the proposal will or will not work. That is the real question which we have to consider to-day. What happened during the time of the two last Governments? Various Departments of the State were broken up into separate branches and persons who were Members either of this or of the other House were appointed as chairmen of those branches—I take the most prominent instance of that, the War Trade Department presided over by Lord Emmott, as an example of smaller branches—and they were charged with the special consideration of circumstances arising out of the War. What was the result of the creation of these separate authorities? I take an instance which came within my own knowledge, and with which I had something to do. It was proposed to export from this country a certain article which was wanted by a prominent neutral country. The consideration of that question, first of all, had to go to the 1175 War Trade Department, which agreed. It went from there to the Foreign Office, which agreed. It went from there to the War Office, which disagreed, and thereupon the question had to be referred back to the Foreign Office, which then agreed with the War Office, and back to the War-Trade Department, which agreed with the Board of Trade, which had originally put forward the question. The question has not yet been settled. It has been running a year.
§ Mr. W. THORNENo wonder they wanted a change.
§ Mr. HOBHOUSEBut what will happen in the future? It has taken a year for four sub-Departments, with only two Ministers, to decide the question as to whether or not this article was to be exported. Leave it to these four separate Departments of the State, each with a Minister responsible to this House, and each supporting his own Department with all the authority that comes from a Minister of this House, and see how indefinitely that situation will be prolonged. There is no guarantee that when you have four Ministers discussing as to whether or not a particular action should or should not be taken you will get any more speedy decision than when you have to refer it to only two Ministers. I should like to remind the House of what has taken place in France during the last fortnight. The French have done exactly what we have done here. They have reconstituted their Government, largely on the Government which preceded it, but they have gone on precisely dissimilar lines to those which have obtained in this country. Instead of increasing the number of Ministers they have diminished them by five. They have made their War Council consist of five instead of six members. They have rolled up their Departments. They have concentrated them instead of dissipating them, as we have done here. Take, for instance, the Minister of Commerce. In France he is responsible for commerce, agriculture, and posts. I wonder how many Ministers you have in this House representing those three Departments. I should think nine or ten; yet in France they are to be concentrated under one head. Take, again, justice, education, and labour. They are all rolled up in France in one man. Here we have eight or nine Ministers to superintend those three important Departments. Under which system are 1176 you most likely to get a speedy decision, one where you have eight, nine or ten Ministers or one where you have only one responsible person to decide questions at issue and to state to the Chamber, or to the House of Commons, what that decision is? I ask my hon. Friend, who seemed to differ from me just now, whether he really thinks that under the system of dissipation and of dissemination you are more likely to get speedy decisions than you are in the case of concentration? Yet that is the guiding principle upon which the French Ministry has been reconstituted for the purpose of carrying on the War more efficiently, more effectually and more triumphantly, just as this Ministry has been reconstituted here. I should certainly not oppose the Bill, because I entirely agree with the appeal of the Leader of the House that the present Government should have a fair field and full favour, but I entirely dissociate myself, so far as my own personal responsibility for a vote in this House is concerned, from the principles upon which this Bill is founded, because I believe it is sure to lead to confusion, to delay, and to all the difficulties and dangers for which the late Government has been turned out of office; and I believe if the present Ministry conducts its policy on the lines which are indicated in this Bill, it will not be-very long before it follows its predecessors.
§ 6.0 p.m.
§ Mr. C. DUNCANI am in disagreement with most of those who have spoken in criticism of the Bill. The last speaker instanced the different method employed in France from that laid down in this Bill. He criticised the method laid down in this Bill and if I understood him aright was rather in agreement with that laid down in France. I can quite understand Members of the French Parliament criticising their method and being in agreement with that applied in this country, because there is not only difference in method, but, it seems to me, there is a difference in the way of conducting the work, and it is reasonable to assume that what might be acceptable to France will not be acceptable in this country. As long as it enables this country to get on with the War, the question of method is, after all, a question of minor importance. He seemed to me rather to labour the point, too, with regard to a question which had come before his notice with regard to getting a settlement on a certain point which had been raised. It seems to me that it is 1177 not so much a question of the number of Departments, although I agree that has some bearing on it. But I think I never heard a keener criticism than his own speech with regard to the slowness of method of those who are in the Government when he was in it, and it seems to me that after all, with regard to a question of this kind, it is not so much the number of Departments which is of importance at all. The question is rather of the ability of the people at the head of the Department to bring a little business instinct to bear and get a settlement. I know that the Government methods in the past have been slow and tortuous, and if by the method laid down in this Bill we are going to have a little bit of speeding up and a little more responsibility put upon individuals to get on with their work, it will have been a big stride in the right direction. The idea underlying this Bill is to get on with the War. The War is still going on; but I am rather inclined to think that some hon. Members would go on discussing for ever a Bill of this kind. The War might even end before we had got through the Bill, but I do not think that that fact would limit their ability to go on discussing the Bill. Some of us, however, are anxious to get on with the War, and that is the animating principle underlying the Bill. When difficulties arise, as they have arisen in this country, with regard to food and shipping, and with regard to dealing with the millions of workers employed on Government work, it is surely obvious that it is almost playing with the matter to suggest that such great questions as are now seriously facing the people of this country with regard to the supply of food, with regard to the control of shipping, and with regard to the controlling of the millions of men who are now daily employed on Government work, should be dealt with by one man. It seems to me ridiculous and futile to suggest that two or three of these Departments might very well be handled by one officer of the State, instead of dividing the work, decentralising it, and making it the special work of one special individual, whose duty it is to get on with the work and so end some of the difficulties.
Let us take a case that has happened in the last few days, since the appointment of the Minister of Labour. There has been a dispute at Birkenhead, affecting, possibly, thousands of men whose work is of a vital character in regard to the speedy ending of this War or, at any rate, in regard to 1178 its successful prosecution. By the institution of a new Ministry of Labour, a new understanding and a new grip of the question has been brought to bear, and we see already with what result. One has only to realise the immense number of people in this country engaged on purely Government work to understand the importance of this subject. One can realise that there are some people in this country who do not want to get on with the War, but who want to limit, to stop, and to interfere wherever they possibly can with the activities which will help to make this nation victorious. These sort of people are active and busy amongst the workers of this country, and I am not a bit surprised at the speech of the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. R. Macdonald), who seems to have his mind as full of doubt and hesitation and timidity in regard to these matters as in regard to the conduct of the War since its very inception. I trust that the Government will go ahead in the direction upon which they have started. It seems to me that Clause 2 of the Bill is sufficiently wide, and, if you like, sufficiently vague, to embrace any duties in regard to the Ministry of Labour that the mind of man can conceive. There is another point of some interest and importance. So far as the Minister of Labour is concerned, he has got enough work in his own particular Department, covering in the main the whole of the activities of the Government in regard to the production of munitions of war and in looking after those activities and keeping the whole of those people going in their particular employment. We have not yet finished the War, and the work of the Minister of Labour in that connection will constitute a very great part of his duties. But it is very easy to see that when the War is over and some of these Labour problems have been settled, that it will not be a matter of any great difficulty to transfer other activities to his Department, and thus widen his activities. For instance, certain duties might be taken from the Home Office and other Departments and placed, under the control of the Minister of Labour, who by that time surely will have had experience which must inevitably be helpful to him in enabling him to carry on his duties.
I am in agreement with the Bill. I think it is right. It would be wrong to place two or three of these great Departments under the control of one man. I believe that decentralisation is the right way to win 1179 the War. It is by appointing men who have some understanding of the questions with which they are going to deal that eventually we are going to reach success. Believing that, I hope the Government will prosecute their action in this direction vigorously, and by so doing they will satisfy an overwhelming number of the Members of this House, and they will get the help of the country in facing these difficulties and in bringing this War to a successful issue. I am sure that the majority of hon. Members in this House are only too anxious to render every assistance possible to the Government, and so long as it indicates by its activity and by the legislation it is producing that it means business and desires to get on with the work which it has been appointed to carry out, I believe it will have the full support of this House and the country.
§ Mr. SHERWELLI do not think that the speech to which the House has just listened will greatly help the Government or commend itself to the right hon. Gentleman who is in charge of the Bill. I particularly regret what I believe to be the unfortunate and unfair reference to the hon. Member for Leicester, who, I think, in the almost unanimous opinion of the House—I leave out the hon. Member (Mr. Duncan)—has made one of the most valuable constructive contributions to the discussion of the Bill that we have had the fortune to listen to to-day. My own position in regard to this Bill is very much that of my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester. I do not quarrel with its intention. My difficulty lies in the limitation of its scope. The Home Secretary in introducing the Bill justified it as a war emergency Bill. On the subject of the two new Ministries of Food and Shipping that is true, but I think that one of the principal parts of the Bill—that relating to the creation of a Ministry of Labour—can only in a very superficial sense be referred to as a war emergency measure. As the hon. Member for Leicester has pointed out, the Ministry of Food and the Ministry of Shipping are temporary Ministries, but the Ministry of Labour is not only made a permanent Ministry under the provisions of this Bill, but represents the first legislative attempt in this country to give expression to a demand which has existed for at least one generation. I share the view 1180 of the Leader of the Labour Party, who spoke earlier in the Debate, that it is rather unfortunate, in the interests of the Labour Ministry itself, that the Labour Ministry should be included as part of an omnibus Bill. I believe that every consideration of business and practical expediency would have justified the Government in creating a Labour Ministry in a wholly separate Bill. The Bill as it has been drafted, despite the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman, does give us a very bare skeleton outline of what are to be the true and real functions of the Ministry of Labour. It proposes to take over certain sub-departments or activities of the Board of Trade, and the administration of one part of the Munitions Act, which to-day are already in a state of efficient administration under the existing staff.
It will be idle to pretend that by doing that which the Bill says the Ministry of Labour shall do the Government are creating a Ministry of Labour in any real or true sense. The Ministry of Labour, to justify its separate existence, and especially to justify the additional sums of money required for salaries and establishment charges, must have a very much wider scope and very much wider functions than are claimed for it under the provisions of this Bill. I would like to ask this question—and I put it as the Home Secretary will recognise, in a perfectly friendly spirit, because I want to do all I can to help the Bill—what is to be gained in practical efficiency by creating a separate Ministry of Labour when the activities to be taken over are already, and for some time past have been, in efficient working administrative order? Take the question of conciliation, which is one of the most important provisions contained in the Bill. Will it really be seriously suggested—and here the House will acquit me of making even the least indirect personal reflection—that the work of conciliation under the Ministry of Labour is likely to be more efficient or more successful than under the direction of a man like Sir George Askwith, who is one of the most accomplished and successful conciliators this country has ever known. It is more the omissions from the Bill than the powers that are included that I should like to deal with. In my judgment the omissions from the Bill are more important than the things that are included. Take one very important Department, the Department of Labour Statistics. That Department in the 1181 past has proved itself one of the most valuable agencies this country has possessed for the organisation of industrial and social questions. Is the Department of Labour statistics to be taken over under the new Ministry of Labour1! That is not included in the Bill. Is that one of the further powers that are to be taken over by transfer under an Order in Council? Take the question of the Intelligence Department. Some of us have long thought that what was radically wrong in the administrative machinery of this country was that we had no separate Department or Sub-department responsible for anticipating events by organising information from all available sources, and this in many cases preventing strikes and other disorders. One development of the greatest possible importance which this country needs is the organisation of an efficient Intelligence Department, which would prevent much that otherwise occurs. I would also like to ask the Home Secretary about the secretariat. Is there to be in this Ministry of Labour an efficient and trained secretariat? Obviously a secretariat of that kind is essential if the many-sided work of the Department is to be efficiently done. If there is to be a secretariat,. what powers is that secretariat to have? And what type of man is to be represented on that secretariat? I ask these questions because it is a matter of common knowledge to some of us, despite what the hon. Member (Mr. Duncan) has said, that we have been exceedingly fortunate at the Board of Trade, at the Home Office, and in other Departments of the State in the possession of a staff of skilled men with full sympathy with social developments, and with social work and progress. That opinion is held by people at home and abroad who are competent to judge. I sincerely hope that some of these staffs, who have given valuable service to the State, will be retained and that suitable men may be obtained for the formation of a general secretariat of high efficiency.
The powers that are explicitly stated in the Bill are only part of the powers that a Ministry of Labour should have, and as regards the provision taken in the Bill to transfer other powers under Order in Council I agree with some of those who have already spoken, that to legislate by Order in Council is on every ground a vicious method of legislation, and I think that it is also a slovenly method. It gives no security or guarantee that the right 1182 things will be included in the powers or that the wrong things will be excluded. Our experience of Orders in Council during the War has not been a very happy one, and certain things have been decreed under Orders in Council which would not have been sanctioned if they had come up for ratification by this House. Independently of those Orders in Council it is because I feel that a Ministry of Labour is potentially so invaluable a Department for a State to have, and that its work may be so far-reaching in its consequences for the betterment of working-class life in this country,. that I regret that larger powers have not been taken under a separate Bill, because though certain large powers may be taken under Order in Council in connection with the Ministry of Labour the powers which may be so transferred are limited. While in the case of the Ministry of Food and the Ministry of Shipping you may under Order in Council transfer powers possessed by certain Departments and add further powers in conformity with the Defence of the Realm Regulations in connection with the most important of all these new Departments, the Ministry of Labour, there is no provision for taking additional powers outside the powers in the Order in Council and these powers will not be, under the provisions of the Bill, new powers. They will simply involve transferring to the Ministry of Labour powers already possessed by various Departments of the State. So one of the essential functions of the Ministry of Labour for meting the conditions of the country and reforming the whole spirit of our administrative action by the anticipation of new social needs is not met by the Bill as now drafted.
My real objection to this Bill—I shall support it so far as all its stages go, though I may put down one or two Amendments—is that there is no real coordination. It creates another Department, with limited powers of a temporary nature for a temporary purpose. I believe, and I believe it no less strongly in time of War, that it is better that all schemes of co-ordination should wait than we should attempt the work of co-ordination in a hasty and imperfect and fragmentary way. If I may be pardoned a personal reference, I may say that ten years ago I came into this House knowing nothing of politics, but with a very profound interest in social reform. I have seen legislation passed in the course of the last ten years dealing with several of those problems in which I 1183 was intimately interested, and I say frankly that I would much rather that some of those problems had not received legislative treatment during the last ten years than that they should have been treated in the way in which some of them have been treated. I say nothing, of course, against the desire of the Government to enlist the services of further representatives of labour. I support that proposal. But I do say that, when embarking upon a departure of such enormous importance, containing so much good and benefit to the working classes of this country, it might have been better for them to have drafted a separate Bill and put into that Bill larger powers than are contained in the present Bill.
§ Major NEWMANThree chief criticisms have been made against this Bill. The first is that it is a vague, indefinite Bill. If the late Government had been in office we should not have this Bill at all. The thing would have been done by Orders in Council after the Session had finished. Therefore we owe a debt of gratitude to the present Government, who have at any rate introduced this Bill, though it is a sketchy measure. Of course it is bound to be sketchy, and it is bound to go through. All these various Ministers who are being appointed, and their Secretaries who are to be appointed, have actually been at work making regulations—drastic and necessary regulations. Any of us who are so foolish this evening as to dine outside this House shall have only three courses to our dinner. That has been done by the Food Controller. [HON. MEMBERS: "It is the same inside the House!"] The Bill was bound to be indefinite and there is equally bound to be a very short discussion as it must become law before the end of the Session. Another criticism is that the various Departments are bound to overlap. The hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. Dillon) put this before us very clearly. He gave two instances in which there might be overlapping unless one thing happens. If we have a Committee of Public Safety, a Committee of the Prime Minister and two or three colleagues who are the real Government of this country just now, they will have to drop pretty heavily on these various Departments if there is any overlapping or quarreling or friction among them.
The third argument, with which I totally disagree, is that we are going to have a 1184 great number of Secretaries appointed who are paid out of public funds and are not wanted, and that this is a waste of public money and will cause overlapping and confusion of their respective duties. I say on the question of Secretaries that as far as Ministers are concerned they can get as many as they wish. After all we are spending over £5,000,000 a day. Think of the hundreds and thousands of officers in the Army and Navy who are drawing from £700 to £800 a year for their services, and can we grudge a Parliamentary Secretary getting £600 a year on top of what he is getting at the present moment? Recollect that these Secretaries are going to save a certain amount of money. The late Government appointed a large number of committees and boards each of which had secretaries who were paid something like £400 a year. I presume that these Parliamentary Secretaries will save some of that money, as some of these Boards will be dissolved. It is not for that reason so much that I support this proposal. The House is going to finish the Session on Friday of this week when we are to prorogue for six weeks. I do not think that in the present state of the War we ought to prorogue for six weeks. I think that we ought to be practically in continuous Session.
Suppose that a discussion takes place before we come to the close of the Session. A Member like myself would be told that it is impossible to ask Ministers to be in their places in the House and look after Departments day by day when the Session is continuous. I quite admit that there is a certain force in the argument. The majority of Ministers know perfectly well —two of them told me themselves—that they grudge every minute that they are away from their offices and compelled to come down here to answer questions or make speeches in this House. They state that their work in their offices is so heavy and so important that they could not spare the time to come down here at all. But now, if there is an ample supply of Secretaries at £1,000 a year, that difficulty is obviated. They can sit here and make speeches and answer questions. The Secretaries who are to be appointed or are going to be appointed, are mostly Members who were on this side of the House and were pretty glib at asking questions and pretty glib hecklers, and now when they are on the front seat opposite they will be pretty glib at answering questions. So that to my mind it will not 1185 be necessary for what I may call the supermen to leave their Departments and come down here at all. Let these Under-Secretaries do the work for them. Let us have no excuse that Ministers are overworked. Let us during this important crisis of the country sit here, in continuous Session if need be, doing our best to help the War through. The Government have made a bold experiment in setting up these new Departments, and they are entitled to every encouragement in what they have done. I hope that the Bill will go through very easily and that it will become law before the end of the Session, and that when we assemble in the new Session we shall find the Under-Secretaries here at work and the Secretaries attending to their business to the best of their ability.
§ Mr. W. THORNEI desire to give my very hearty support to this Bill. I do not think that any Bill was ever introduced which gave satisfaction to all sections of the House. I think that this Bill goes a very long way to meet the demands which have been made by organised Labour for the past fifteen or twenty years. As the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald) knows, at various Trade Union Congresses resolutions have been tabled, and carried almost unanimously, in favour of a Ministry being established for the purpose of dealing purely and simply with labour problems. I quite recognise that the powers given to the Ministry of Labour do not altogether carry out the ideas which some of us have. I was under the impression, when it was first announced that a Ministry of Labour was going to be established, that a great many of the powers now possessed by the Home Office would have been transferred to the new Ministry. No doubt later on, when the Bill becomes an Act and the Department gets into proper working order, the Home Office may see that it is advisable to transfer to the Ministry of Labour some of the powers mentioned by the hon. Member for Leicester. I know that a number of us who have decided to back up the Government with regard to this Bill and many other Bills have during the last few days been handled very severely by a number of our own party who disagree with us upon the main principle. We have been told that we have sold every vestige of political honesty that we ever had. All I say in reply to those Gentleman is that, as good as they are and as bad as we are, we are as good as they are. That is my reply to their criticisms.
1186 I would call attention to a statement made by the hon. Member for East Mayo, which I trust will have the serious consideration of the Home Office. It has been pointed out that the Food Controller is to decide whether encouragement should be given to the production of food and other commodities. Personally I think that it would be a huge mistake to confer powers of the kind upon the Food Controller. I agree with the hon. Member for East Mayo that these powers should be handed over to the Board of Agriculture. There was another point raised by the hon. Member for Bristol (Mr. Hobhouse), who mentioned the case of the War Council, which was the cause of a great deal of discussion that has been pending for twelve months. There has been a change of Government, and that has been caused by the wish to bring the War to an end with greater speed than it was being brought before. I should say, therefore, that it is the duty of the War Council to have authority over all Departments, whether it be the Ministry of Labour or any other Department. If the War Council decides on a certain line of action it ought to be carried out without its having to consult anybody else. That is the way to get on with the War and that is the way to bring it to a speedier conclusion. For myself, during the last twenty-seven or twenty-eight years in which I have been general secretary to a large organisation, my experience has been, and I dare say it has been the experience of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for the Home Department (Mr. Brace), as it has been of every secretary of all organised labour, that the smaller the committee you have—unless it is too small, and consists simply of one member to deal with the administrative and executive work of the organisation—the more speedily you can arrive at a decision and the better it is for the members themselves. I submit, therefore, that if you have a War Council, that War Council ought to have ample powers. What is the good of such a body if it is not to be a supreme governing body in regard to the War?
§ Mr. HOBHOUSEHow can the War Council deal with a particular individual article of commerce or trade and avoid being overburdened with work that would weigh them down?
§ Mr. THORNEThe War Council should not have to trouble with the chief of any Department at all. If it is to be the 1187 supreme governing authority, prosecuting the War to a successful issue, it ought, as a matter of fact, to have power to come to a decision, whether it affects the Board of Trade, the Home Office, or any other Department. The War Council is the supreme authority to come to a decision, and they ought to be in a position to do that without being in any way troubled by any other Department, even if it be that of the Home Secretary. That is the most speedy way to get on with the business with which we are alone concerned at the present time—the War. I would refer hon. Members to the powers already given to the Ministry of Labour under the Bill. I find that there are to be transferred to the Ministry of Labour the powers and duties of the Board of Trade under the Conciliation Act, 1896. the Labour Exchanges Act, 1909, the Trade Boards Act, 1909, the National Insurance (Unemployment) Acts, 1911 and 1916, and Part I. of the Munitions of War Act, 1915, in each case as amended by any other Act. The Minister of Labour will have something like from 4,000,000 to 5,000,000 of workmen and workwomen under his control, and, if you take that in view, you see that he has very large powers in every direction without there being any more given to him for the time being. This being a new Department, the whole of its machinery has to be organised and put into proper working order—an operation that will take some little time, and I am not expecting too much from the Minister of Labour for the present. Everybody must understand that the taking over of these powers which are mentioned in the Schedule is an operation which will occupy some time, but I honestly believe that the powers now to be put into operation are going to be of great benefit, not only to organised labour, but also to the employers in general. I could not understand what the right hon. Member for Bristol (Mr. Hobhouse) was driving at. He made the remark that if the Ministry of Labour were handed over to an employer of labour it would cause dissatisfaction to the workers, but can that be taken to mean, or is it suggested, that the present Minister of Labour, who was secretary to a very large and powerful organisation of the workers, will cause dissatisfaction to the employers of labour? In the name of common sense, there are only two sections of the people, those who live on rents, property, interest, and so forth, and those who produce and 1188 make them—they are one side or the other. I do not anticipate that there will be any discontent. The right hon. Gentleman who has been given charge of the new Department is one whom I have known for many years, He does not appear to me to be the kind of revolutionary man that I may have been considered to be in days gone by—although that has not been quite so necessary since the War as it was previous to its breaking out; but, after the War is over, it is possible that I may be just as revolutionary as ever I was, and it may be that I shall have to bump up against my right hon. Friend, as I had to bump up against him in the old days. Reference has been made to conciliation between Labour and Capital, but that will all depend upon the employers of labour and how they act. If they go back to their methods of the pre-war days, then you may rest assured that we will have the same troubles in the future that we have had in the past. In conclusion I wish to strongly support the Bill.
§ Sir G. CAVEI trust the House will now give a Second Reading to the Bill, I have-only a few words to say in reply to the different questions which have been raised. I must acknowledge the seriousness with which the Bill has been debated, and I think the House recognises that there are things in it which would not all be proposed in a time of peace; but we ask for these powers in time of war as-being necessary for our purposes and for the purposes of carrying on the War. The general feeling of the House is that we ought to have the powers we ask for, and that there shall then be opportunity to see what use we make of them. I will not further discuss that view of the matter, for I admit there are some unusual provisions; I think that is obvious, and I believe that Members of the House will make no objection to the Bill. The question has been raised as to the number of Under-Secretaries that can be appointed. Under the Bill as it stands we do not desire to have power to appoint an unlimited number of Under-Secretaries to all the Departments. The intention is that there should be power under the Bill to appoint one additonal Under-Secretary for the Foreign Department, one additional Under-Secretary for the War Department, one for the Board of Trade, and one for the Air Board. I have stated to the Committee exactly what is proposed to be done, and if the House desires to modify 1189 that proposal it will have an opportunity of doing so. We do not desire unlimited powers to create new posts, but we think that these are necessary. The Minister of Labour has been designated, and he has already got to work, as have all the other Ministers. We want them to have their statutory powers within the week, and we thought it was better to take the course of putting all these provisions in one Bill, rather than to have two Bills, each of which would have to go through all its stages.
It is said, "Why not put in the powers you desire the Minister to have?" I do not know what the objections are to Orders in Council, but I know what our object is here, namely, that we want to transfer at once certain powers to the different Ministries. All that will have to be very carefully considered and worded in order to prevent any conflict between the different Departments. That is not a very easy thing to accomplish in a short time It requires examination of Statutes and a certain amount of drafting which has to be skilfully done, and it is desired to get that through in as short a time and as quickly as possible. I do not see myself why we should not at once pass this Bill, which contains all the essential provisions. I can assure the House that we will not limit the powers of the Departments; rather, we will make them as full and as strong as possible. In regard to the new Departments, care will be exercised as to taking over those staffs which are now doing the work, and I am quite sure that they will make it their first object to get the best men they can. A specific and serious point was taken by the hon. Member for Leicester, and may I express my regret that I was not in the House to hear the hon. Gentleman; I had been obliged to leave in order to attend to other public matters. I am informed that the hon. Member stated that now we were getting a Labour Department we should transfer to it the Home Office powers connected with mines and factories and that kind of thing. That is a point which I am sure the House will consider very carefully indeed. The hon. Member for West Ham has pointed out that this new Department of Labour which is just being formed will, under the Schedule of the Bill, take over wide powers which are immediately necessary to be used for the purposes of the War. The factory powers and mine powers exercised by the Home Office have, I believe, been used in a manner 1190 that has given satisfaction to both sides, both employers and employed. Therefore I do not want to say anything to disturb the present position unduly or to unsettle those who are now assisting us in the new Department. I submit, however, that this is not a matter to be decided now. Later on we shall have to consult those who are experts in these matters; we must consult with the employers and representatives of the workers in order to see whether they would like those powers transferred, and we must take the view of the Department in order to see whether they desire to have those powers. Therefore, I do not think I ought to give any definite promise to-day, and, if I did so, it would not bind a future Minister, who might be in office a little later on. For the reasons I have given we have deliberately decided not to include those powers in the Bill. Those are the main points which have been raised. I would only add one observation in reply to the criticism that we shall have too many administrators and that we may have conflicts. If there were differences between the Ministries the War Cabinet would decide them within twenty-four hours. But the War is a great reconciler, and I believe that any such differences would be settled amongst the Ministries themselves. To-day everybody has but one object in view, and you will find that spirit in those Departments, and that they will work together as they are working to-day.
§ Mr. HERBERT SAMUELI quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the House is now ready to come to a decision, and I only rise to refer to one point, and not to enter into the larger matters with which the right hon. Gentleman has dealt. The point with which I wish to deal is the creation of new offices in Ministries which already exist. I do not think the House feels quite easy in respect of the proposals of the Government in that regard. Since the War began we have had two new Ministries created, both of them quite necessary—the Ministry of Munitions and the Ministry of Pensions, both of them presided over by Ministers with their own Secretaries. We are now proposing to create more new Ministries. I have no quarrel whatever with the proposal that there should be a Minister of Labour, a Controller of Food, and a Controller of 1191 Shipping. Those three heads of Departments are to be set up, and also provided with their Under-Secretaries, and I think the House will readily agree that they should be so equipped. But now we come to another proposal in this Bill: that many of the old-established Ministries should also have their Parliamentary representation enlarged. Frequently it is said that there must be more than one Under-Secretary, in order that there should be a representative in the other House, but no such question arises here in any of these cases. The Foreign Office already has two representatives in this House, and it is now proposed to add a third. The War Office, which has been shorn of all the work which has been transferred to the Minister of Munitions, and shorn of the work transferred to the Ministry of Pensions, already has two representatives in this House, the Under-Secretary of State and the Financial Secretary, both of them men of great capacity. It is now proposed that there should be a third. The Board of Trade, which is to have taken away from it all its work dealing with shipping, with food and with labour, and which will consequently be a comparatively small Ministry, will have, as soon as the new President of the Board comes into the House of Commons, two representatives already in this House, and it is now proposed that this Ministry also shall have a third. The Air Board, which is extremely well represented in this House by the hon. and gallant Member for Rugby (Major Baird), is now to have a second representative in this House.
§ Sir G. CAVENo; only one in this House.
§ Mr. SAMUELIs it not proposed to have two Under-Secretaries?
§ Sir G. CAVENo; only one. It is proposed to authorise the Under-Secretary ship which now exists.
§ Mr. SAMUELThen it is merely to regularise the existing arrangement as to the Air Board, and as to that, of course, there is no criticism. With regard to the addition of further Parliamentary representatives to the Foreign Office, the War Office, and the Board of Trade, the three of which have already got representatives in this House, I think the House is a bit inclined to regard that proposal with some doubt. I find that the Government has already announced in the newspapers a 1192 personnel which, apart from the Court appointments, comprises sixty members, which is a very large administrative body. While I do not suggest that we should oppose any proposal such as this if the Government inform the House that it is necessary, and if they state some reasons for their proposal, still the proposition is one as to which I think the House will desire generally to have some further information, and with regard to which they wish to hear a little additional justification.
§ Question put, and agreed to.
§ Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House for To-morrow—[Mr. James Hope.]