HC Deb 24 July 1918 vol 108 cc1929-36

(1) If His Majesty is pleased by Proclamation or Order in Council to signify his intention to make a grant of prize money out of the proceeds of prize captured in the present War, the sums which have been or may be received in respect of ships and goods captured during the present War specified in Part I. of the Schedule to this Act shall (subject as respects money in any Prize Court to the assent of that Court) be paid as and when the Treasury and Admiralty jointly direct into a separate fund to be called the Naval Prize Fund, and there shall be charged on and payable out of the Naval Prize Fund all such costs, charges, expenses, and claims as are mentioned in Part II. of the said Schedule, and any question whether any sum is payable into or out of that fund shall be determined by the tribunal hereinafter constituted.

(2) Subject to the payment of such costs, charges, expenses, and claims as aforesaid, such sum as may be required for the payment of prize money under this Act shall be a first charge on the Naval Prize Fund, and such prize money shall be of such amounts and payable to such members of His Majesty's Naval and Marine Forces as hereinafter defined, or in the case of their death their representatives, and in such manner, as His Majesty may by Proclamation or Order in Council determine.

Commander BELLAIRS

I beg to move, at the end of Sub-section (2), to add the words "after the scale of shares for the different ranks has received the approval of a Select Committee of the House of Commons."

The reason I have handed this Amendment in is that under the Naval Prize Bill the House of Commons has no control whatever over the system by which this naval prize money shall be shared. It has been published in the form of a White Paper, which probably nine out of ten Members of the House have not seen. A very large sum indeed is involved. My right hon. Friend told the Committee that there is £9,819,000 in the Central Prize Court alone, and that does not include any of the large sums in the prize Courts abroad, nor any of the 251 detained ships, some of which may be allocated by the judicial tribunals which are to be set up, and which may be selected as droits of the Crown, and therefore come in as prize money. My desire is that the House should have some share in fixing how much of this money is to go to the admirals, the captains, down to the lowest ranks, the able seamen, ordinary seamen, and boys. The sharing system which the Admiralty proposes is set out in a White Paper which is going to be issued as a Proclamation. That sharing system we were promised would appear in the Bill. Lord Lytton said so in the House of Lords, and if my right hon. Friend disputes that, I shall be under the necessity of quoting the Debate, both at the beginning and at the end. I know that my right hon. Friend thinks that Lord Lytton qualified the words in the latter part of his speech, but it does not bear that interpretation. In my opinion, Lord Lytton never qualified the words which led this House to believe that the actual sharing system would be in the Bill, and therefore under the control of the House. I quite agree that it would have been undesirable to put the whole of the sharing system into the Bill, because it would have enabled any hon. Member to move an Amendment on any particular share. But that argument does not apply to a Select Committee of the House, and if reasons were put before a Select Committee there would be fair play between officers and men.

My right hon. Friend says this matter has been considered by a Departmental Committee, but a Departmental Committee is a very unsatisfactory body for this purpose. I believe it was a perfectly fair Committee, but a Committee presided over by a full admiral, and having on it a captain, a lawyer, a Treasury official, and a paymaster is not one to look after the interests of the men. Whatever good will they might have, the predominant influence is exercised by the admiral, who is an interested party. I do not suggest that Admiral Bethell acted as an interested party, but I do suggest that a Select Committee of the House of Commons will look at it from a different point of view, and would nowadays have but scant regard to what existed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but would have regard to what they considered to be the justice of the case. My right hon. Friend very truly contends that the men are getting better terms than they did in the 1900 Proclamation. It is true that they are getting better terms, but that Proclamation was based on what was the practice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. If my right hon. Friend will only think it out, he will see that the men in the Navy is the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were not a permanent force. They signed on temporarily, and obviously the officers were very much better treated because they were a permanent force. They gave long service. That does not hold to-day, because now the men are a permanent force, and you may have men under this sharing system who have served quite as long as the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet. Why I think a Select Committee of the House would come to a different conclusion as to the sharing system can be illustrated by-one broad example taken from the two extremes. The Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet under this sharing system set out in the White Paper gets 2,000 shares. I will not take the lowest rank, which gets two shares, but I will take the able seaman, who gets five shares. That is to say, the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet will get 400 times as much as the able seaman.

9.0 P.M.

I could come to a sort of working agreement with my right hon. Friend as to relative rate of pay. Take the pay and allowances into consideration. The Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet gets about £3,000 a year, and the able seaman, taking his rates of pay with a wife and two children, gets about £92 a year. That is to say, the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet gets thirty-two times as much in the way of pay and allowances. Why should not this arrangement of prize money be simplified on the basis of pay, and then, instead of getting four hundred times as much, the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet would get thirty-two times as much as the able seaman? That, I think, is an argument which ought to be looked into by a Select Committee of the House of Commons, because if the House of Commons once parts with this Bill it will never have another opportunity of controlling these matters. The Admiralty will for ever afterwards be able to fix the rates by Proclamation, and the House of Commons will have parted with the control for ever. My right hon. Friend, I think, in the course of the Second Reading Debate, spoke of the great services the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet had rendered to the nation. I am sorry to have to make comparisons, because everybody recognises those great services that both the Commanders-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet have rendered; but I am obliged to illustrate my argument by taking those two extremes of the scale, the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet and the able-seaman, and my contention is that this prize money is not the reward of the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet for those great services that he has rendered. When the time comes to reward the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet this House, I presume, will vote its thanks and will vote a sum of money, as it did in the case of all the great generals in the past, and, therefore, the prize money argument does not come into the matter. We have had a series of successful generals in the last thirty years, like Lord Wolseley, Lord Roberts, and Lord Kitchener, and to all of them have been voted sums of money, so that really that argument is an argument for reducing the prize money rather than increasing it at the upper end of the scale. But I do not suggest that a Select Committee of the House of Commons would necessarily reduce the money at the upper end of the scale. What I think they would probably do is to raise the money at the lower end of the scale, so that when the whole pool is shared after the War those at the upper end, still keeping the same number of shares, will get less money. Anyhow, I do not really see how the Admiralty can resist the proposal that a Select Committee of the House of Commons should examine this matter. I am perfectly certain that they will deal fairly with the Navy. The House has a reputation, in regard to the Navy, that it is always generous to profusion where the interests of the Navy are concerned. I think Macaulay used those very words in his "History." That generosity nearly always leads them to believe that the Admiralty is in the right, and therefore the Admiralty, in my opinion, are in a completely advantageous position compared with the War Office, of which this House is suspicious, but it is never suspicious of the Admiralty, and I believe that if the Admiralty has a good case for the sharing system which they have decided the Select Committee would pass it through in one day. If my right hon. Friend cannot accept that proposal, I hope he will make some proposals himself which will meet the circumstances of the cage. I would not delay this Bill for one moment. It is a most necessary and a most excellent Bill, and that part of the Proclamation in the White Paper which deals with the sharing system is in no way essential to the other parts, and the right hon. Gentleman may be willing to make some proposal by which this matter of the sharing system will be more fully considered later on, if he objects to my proposal of a Select Committee of the House, which I still think is the fairest system that could be proposed.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara)

This is a proposal that the scale of distribution now before the House in the draft publication shall be submitted to a Select Committee. I am sorry that I must trouble the House with a few words on constitutional history on this question. This is not a Grant from the Consolidated Fund or from any public exchequer. This is by grace of the Crown a Grant to the Fleet. All prize is the property of the Crown.

Commander BELLAIRS

Give us the date of the surrender of the Crown's rights.

Dr. MACNAMARA

Prize is the property of the Crown. By grace of the Crown, from time immemorial, there has been a Grant of prize money. Therefore, while I am a strong advocate for the control of the House of Commons, and, I trust, as good a democrat as my hon. and gallant Friend, I hope I show no disrespect when I say the House of Commons has not any control over this, and never has had. All the Navy Prize Acts that have ever been passed have had their concomitant in a Proclamation, which has proclaimed the pleasure of the Crown and set out the scheme of eligibility and the scale of distribution and has passed into law. My hon. and gallant Friend would have been on much stronger ground if he had raised it on a Proclamation providing for the award of prize bounty. Prize bounty is a Grant by the Exchequer out of the Consolidated Fund of £5 a head of the personnel of the enemy warships sunk. That has happened in this very War. We have had no less than three Proclamations providing for the eligibility and distribution out of moneys voted as prize bounty from the Exchequer. The Proclamation—or, rather, I should say, the Order in Council—of 2nd March, 1915, sanctioned the award of bounty, and the Orders in Council of 29th February, 1916, and 24th October, 1916, sanctioned a scale of distribution. There, if you like, was a case for House of Commons control.

As regards the scale of award, after all, that is a really substantial point we have in mind to see that fair play and equity are meted out to all ranks and ratings in the Navy. My hon. and gallant Friend admits that this proposed scale is a great improvement on the last, or I think he will admit that. But it does not go far enough in the direction he would desire; particularly, as I gather from his speech to-night and that of yesterday, inasmuch as it gives too many shares to the officers at the very top. That is his case.

Commander BELLAIRS

My real case is that you give too few shares to the people at the bottom.

Dr. MACNAMARA

If you have only a certain sum to distribute, surely, as my hon. and gallant Friend said in his speech, that comes to the same thing!

Commander BELLAIRS

No.

Dr. MACNAMARA

I have worked out a little sum which I think will show what I mean. Assume a quite arbitrary basis of distribution for 500,000 officers and men on the basis of a share being £1. First of all, to get these shares, these gallant gentlemen have to give thirty months' sea service, which is a pretty tall order in these times. On that speculative basis of a share being worked out at £1 and distributed amongst 500,000 officers and men, all the officers under this new scale would get 23.75 per cent. of the total and all ratings 76.25 per cent. Compare that with the previous scale; the officers would get 34.08 per cent. and all ratings would get 65.92 per cent. In other words, the ratings get three-quarters of the whole amount to be distributed. Take it another way. Suppose you take this scale and stop at 100 shares, the number for the junior captain, and let that be the top. You can cut the shares of the top down by one-half, but the number of persons concerned are so few, and the numbers concerned at the bottom are so many, that a most serious deduction at the top makes practically no difference at the bottom. To take the case I am giving. Supposing the scale of the senior captain, the commodore, rear-admiral, vice-admiral, admiral, and com mander-in-chief stop at 100 shares, the able seaman in that case would get £5 1s. 5d. as against £5 under our proposed scale. That is really an endeavour to reinforce the point I tried to make, that if you divide the scale at the top by one-half the numbers are so small that you do not seriously affect, except by a few pence, the scale at the bottom.

On the constitutional point, I am not sure that my hon. and gallant Friend does not come perilously near to interference with the prerogative of the Crown, because this is not a Grant from the Exchequer. This is what I am prepared to do: The first five paragraphs of this draft Proclamation raise no issue between us. They are the paragraphs announcing the pleasure of the Crown to grant prize money. We want that Proclamation now. As the hon. and gallant Gentleman said, we really ought to get this Bill as soon as we can. In order that the wheels of the Bill may go round, and that the tribunal may be authorised to start its work, we must have at once a Proclamation, so far as the first five paragraphs are concerned—that is to say, the part of the Proclamation which does no more and no less than declare the pleasure of the Crown to grant prize. It would be necessary to modify it a little towards the end, where it says the distribution shall be made in shares in the manner hereinafter mentioned, and later where it says, "in accordance with the Proclamation." That would have to be rounded off. I do not want those words in at all. What follows in the Proclamation, first of all, is the scheme of eligibility, and secondly, the scale of distribution. We do not want that at present. No time will be lost if that is left over. There is not going to be any distribution yet. I am quite prepared to seek the proper authority to issue a Proclamation embodying the first five paragraphs. I go further, and leave over the scheme of eligibility and the scale of distribution for a second Proclamation, or an Order-in-Council, whichever it may be. In relation to those who are interested in this matter, and think that the scale might be flattened still further, I say that we at the Admiralty shall be very glad to hear their views and to give every consideration to them. Quite honestly and sincerely, if this matter is left over in that way, when we meet again I shall be glad, on behalf of the Admiralty, to consider what in the meantime may be said by those various Service Members, and perhaps not only them but others—views to which we shall listen with care and to which we shall give every consideration. I hope my hon. and gallant Friend will feel that I have gone as far as I can in the desire that they shall have full opportunity of expressing their views.

Commander BELLAIRS

I am perfectly willing to accept the proposal of my right hon. Friend, more especially because the Bill is a good one, and I do not want to delay it.

Mr. KING

As an ordinary Member of the House who has no technical experience like that of the two hon. and gallant Gentlemen who have addressed the Committee, I think I am entitled to say that there is one point that we as Members of the House feel interested in, and that is control by the House. I quite understand that this Bill and this draft Proclamation are in a line with previous legislation, previous practice, and so on. I think also the concessions that have been made from the Treasury Bench on this occasion are all for the good in these days when so many popular and Parliamentary rights are being trampled under foot. It is very pleasing, indeed, to see that conciliatory and democratic spirit really operating as we have seen it this evening. There is also this point—we might even go further in this direction—that if we take too much note of the precedents set up and in our recognition of the prerogatives of the past we shall never make any progress at all. As one who stands up for the rights of the House of Commons and the rights of the people through their representatives to control the Army and Navy and even the operations of the Crown itself, I am very glad this discussion has been raised, and very glad of the spirit in which it has been met.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.