§ 15. Mr. SNOWDENasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he is aware that application has been made to the Acting Colonial Secretary at Gibraltar on behalf of the Gibraltar Dock-yard Workmen's Association and other working-class bodies for labour representation on the Food Control and Markets Control Committee, and that the Acting Colonial Secretary has refused to admit such representation on the ground that, the question of food supply and the regulation of prices being one in which the interest of every individual consumer in the community is the same, there would not appear to be any necessity for the separate representation of any particular class; if he is aware that the committee in question is com posed of the command paymaster, an officer of the Army Service Corps, a naval store officer, the president of the Chamber 1952 of Commerce, and the chairman of the Exchange Committee: and whether, in view of the fact that only the naval and military interests and the trade interests are represented on this committee, he will instruct the Acting Colonial Secretary to give adequate working-class representation on this committee, he will instruct the Acting Colonial Secretary to give adequate working-class representation?
§ The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Hewins)The conditions of Gibraltar in time of war are practically those of an army in the field, every person in it being subject to military law; and I do not think it desirable to interfere with the arrangements which the Governor and Commander-in-Chief may see fit to make in regard to such an essentially military question as the safeguarding of the food supply of the fortress.