§ I would like now to deal very briefly with the necessity for a centralised control in shipbuilding, and show how impracticable the suggestion is that we should leave shipbuilders in the country to run their business themselves or work on the basis—as one hon. Member put it in Debate in this House—of "bringing pressure to bear upon the shipbuilders to complete their contracts." That honest inquiry, honestly put, was, I confess, a revelation to me, and is my excuse, if excuse is needed, for reviewing so fully the work of the Admiralty Controller's Department. I claim some little personal qualifications to speak on this point of central Government control—qualifications I make bold to say possessed by few, if by anyone else. With every instinct and ail my training against Government control, I have spent during the War, roughly, one year each in the Ministry of Munitions, War Office and Admiralty—mainly in supply of war material. I therefore submit that I have peculiar qualifications to give an opinion on this point. I have no hesitation in saying that at the present time there is no question of a shipbuilder left to himself being able to build any ships at all, and there is no question of bringing pressure to bear upon him to fulfil his contract. Under the present conditions of the labour and material market and of the possibilities of output, no manufacturer could possibly obtain any output at all without a Government Department looking after his raw materials, machines, and labour supply for him and in detail.
§ It was, I submit, because of the absence of such a Department that the Shipbuilders Advisory Committee, under Sir Joseph Maclay, felt their powerlessness to increase tonnage, and it was in order to provide such a Department that the Controller was appointed. It was in order to secure for merchant tonnage all needful supplies, free from competition with Admiralty war shipbuilding, that one authority was appointed.