Commons Sitting of 9 April 1925

Preamble
The House met at Eleven of the Clock.
The CLERK at the Table (Sir LONSDALE WEBSTER) informed the House of the unavoidable absence of Mr. SPEAKER from this day's Sitting.
Whereupon Mr. JAMES HOPE, the Chairman of Ways and Means, proceeded to the Table and, after Prayers, took the Chair as DEPUTY-SPEAKER, pursuant to the Standing Order.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Bolton Corporation Bill,
Read the Third time, and passed.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  EX-SERVICE MEN (MINISTRY OF PENSIONS).
  Colonel DAYasked the Minister of Pensions how many ex-service men have been discharged in his Department in the four months ending 28th February; and what steps are taken with a view to ensuring to ex-service men employed by the Ministry of Pensions permanency of employment?
  The MINISTER of PENSIONS (Major Tryon): During the four months ended 28th February, 1925, the temporary ex-service staff was reduced by 868, but this number includes voluntary resignations. The hon. Member is doubtless aware of the settlement in regard to the permanent employment of temporary ex-service grades, which was debated in this House on Thursday last. The terms of that settlement will be applied to the staff of the Ministry of Pensions. When men become redundant, and there are no posts available in other branches of the Ministry, reports on the men concerned are furnished to the Joint Substitution Board or the local Divisional Committees of the Ministry of Labour for considera-
  2396
  tion for vacancies arising in other Departments, and under this arrangement it has been possible to provide further employment for a considerable number of the redundant men. The Ministry cannot, of course, retain staff in excess of that necessary for the performance of the work.
  Colonel DAYasked the Minister of Pensions whether, seeing that the removal expenses of the permanent civil servants are borne by the State when they are transferred, he can secure the same advantage for all ex-service men in his Departments, who are under notice of dismissal, if alternative employment is found for them in other districts?
  Major TRYON: Removal expenses of civil servants are not paid in the case of voluntary transfers, i.e., transfers made at the instance of, or in the interests of, the individual. The offer of further temporary employment to temporary Government employés whose previous work has disappeared is usually made in the interests of the officer concerned, and removal expenses can only be paid in those special cases where the transfer can be stated to be primarily in the interests of the Service. A contribution towards removal expenses is made as an exceptional arrangement where temporary staff are transferred with their work.

  NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

    TREATMENT ALLOWANCE.
    Colonel DAYasked the Minister of Pensions whether, seeing that under the rules of the Ministry a man suffering from attributable disabilities which disable him from work is not entitled to treatment allowance, unless the treatment prescribed by the Ministry is of such a character as actually to prevent him from obtaining work, and in view of the fact that a man certified by his panel doctor or by a hospital board to be incapable of work is thereby rendered incapable of obtaining work, and at the same time is receiving no treatment allowance, he will take steps to remove what appears to be a great hardship to ex-service men?
    Major TRYON: I would remind the hon. and gallant Member that, as was stated in reply to a similar question on the 28th July last, given on behalf of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bromwich (Mr. F. Roberts), the conditions governing the grant of allowances under Article 6 of the Warrant are not identical with those which determine certification for the purpose of sickness benefit under the National Health Insurance Acts. Allowances under the Warrant are not, therefore, necessarily also payable in all cases, because sickness benefit is obtained. I am not, therefore, in a position to accept the hon. Member's suggestion.

    COMPLAINTS.
    Mr. HAYESasked the Minister of Pensions whether a person summoned to appear before a local war pensions complaints committee is entitled to be accompanied by a solicitor or a friend; and, if so, whether this is a Ministry of Pensions' instruction or within the discretion of the local committee?
    Major TRYON: It is not the function of a war pensions committee to adjudicate upon complaints, but to investigate them. Representation of a complainant by another person would not, therefore, ordinarily be appropriate to the committee's procedure, and no provision has been made for it in the Regulations. Where, in exceptional circumstances, however, a committee desired to hear information from another source in regard to a complainant's case, it would be within their discretion to do so.
    Mr. HAYES: May I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman will consider the issuing of an instruction that a person who has to attend a complaints' committee may be accompanied by a friend?
    Major TRYON: I think, if the hon. Gentleman reads my answer, he will see that that is a matter which we leave to the discretion of the committee.

    DEPENDANT'S PENSION.
    Mr. HAYESasked the Minister of Pensions whether Mrs. Stanhope, of 23, Gladstone Road, Seacombe, is entitled to a pension in respect of her child, Elsie Violet, from the date of her husband's
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    discharge from the Army until 26th February, 1924; and, if so, why payment has been made from the latter date only?
    Major TRYON: I have ascertained that in the case referred to the pensioner was twice invited by the Ministy in 1920 to furnish information in regard to the existence of any child, and that he omitted to comply with the request. He took no further step to make a claim in the matter until the present year. Payment is due, under the standing practice of the Ministry, in respect of a claim when such claim is established, and in the absence of any indication that there are any special circumstances to account for the facts in the present case, I see no ground for making an exception to the general rule.

    ASSESSMENTS, NORTH-WESTERN REGION.
    Sir WILFRID SUGDENasked the Minister of Pensions whether he has inquired into the complaint that the assessors in the north-western region are required by the regional awards officer to reduce a certain number of pensions weekly; that if they affirm or, in some cases, increase the assessment the regional awards officer sends for them and inquires why they have not produced the regular quota of reductions; and, if he has made such an inquiry, whether he will state the result of his investigations?
    Major TRYON: I have made careful inquiry into this allegation, and am satisfied that there is no foundation whatever for it. The hon. and gallant Member for Salford (Lieut.-Commander Astbury) has given me no assistance, but I have had full reports from the Regional Director, the Commissioner of Medical Services, the Regional Awarding Officer and the Medical Assessors, all of whom deny the charge absolutely. I need scarcely add that any such practice would be entirely contrary to all instructions, and, indeed, impossible under the existing organisation of the Regional Office.

    ADMINISTRATION.
    An HON. MEMBER who failed to hand in his name had the following Question upon the Order Paper: 7. To ask the Minister of Pensions whether there has been any change in the provision made by his predecessor for an improved system of representation of war pensions committees on the

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    advisory councils and of representation in turn of the advisory councils on the central advisory committee constituted by the War Pensions Act, 1921, thus providing for direct consideration by local area committees of the Ministry rules and Regulations; and, if so, will he place in the Library copies of any Circular or Circulars issued in this matter for the information of Members of the House?
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: On a point of Order. May I ask, Sir, why you did not call on No. 7? I may say I am interested in the question, and would like to hear the answer.
    Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I did not call on No. 7, because I did not know on whom to call. I paused a moment to give the hon. Member who had sent in the question the opportunity of asking it.
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: What happens in that ease? Do we get the answer in the OFFICIAL REPORT? Because this is an important question. [See col. 2438.]
    Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: That is outside my province.
    Sir HARRY BRITTAINasked the Minister of Pensions whether, in view of the saving of the nation to retain the Pensions Issue Office under one roof at Acton, he will resist any attempt to decentralise the work to local offices?
    Major TRYON: The decentralisation of the issue of pensions is not in contemplation, and, as I have indicated recently in this House, I am opposed to such a change, which would not, in present circumstances, make for efficiency or economy of working.
    Sir H. BRITTAIN: Is it not a fact that this is not only the best office building in the world, but, at the same time, one of the most economic and convenient to run?
    Major TRYON: This centralised issue of pensions is greatly to the advantage of the pensioner, and is economical in cost of administration.

  SECONDARY SCHOOLS.
  Captain WATERHOUSEasked the President of the Board of Education how many plans for new secondary schools
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  were passed by the Board during last year; what was the proposed accommodation to be provided; how many of such schools have actually been started; and what will be their capacity?
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Lord Eustace Percy): As the reply to this question contains a number of figures, I will, with the hon. Member's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
  Following is the Answer:

  Plans for new Secondary Schools approved during the Financial Year, 1924–25.

  —

  Number of Schools.

  Additional Accommodation.

  Gross.

  Net.

  Preliminary plans

  30

  11,459

  6,686

  Final plans

  36

  10,960

  7,562

  66

  22,419

  14,248

  I am unable to state how many of the buildings have actually been started, but I anticipate that 27 new school buildings may be completed during the current financial year, providing a gross additional accommodation for 9,344 pupils and a net additional accommodation for 6,680 pupils.

  HOUSING.

    SUBSIDY (LOCAL AUTHORITIES).
    Mr. T. THOMSONasked the Minister of Health in how many cases he has authorised payment of subsidy for houses where the local authority has decided to take no action under any of the Housing Acts?
    Major Sir HARRY BARNSTON (for Mr. NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN): No such cases have as yet occurred.

    DIRECT LABOUR.
    Mr. KELLYasked the Minister of Health whether he can give the number of housing schemes at present proceeding under direct labour conditions; the number of houses covered by such schemes; and the estimated cost of labour and other charges in those schemes.
    Sir H. BARNSTON: Up to the 1st March last 53 local authorities in England and Wales and two private bodies under Section 3 of the Housing, etc., Act, 1923, had commenced work by direct labour on schemes approved under the Housing Acts of 1923 and 1924. The numbers of houses in such schemes were 4,531 and 44 respectively. Information is not available as to the estimated costs of labour and other charges in connection with these schemes.

    ST. PANCRAS (SUNK FLATS).
    Mr. HARDIEasked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that certain occupied sunk flats in, the St. Pancras area are infested with bugs and rats and that rents are being collected for such places; and whether he will see that these houses are put into habitable condition.
    Sir H. BARNSTON: My right hon. Friend will be glad to be furnished with particulars of the cases the hon. Member has in mind, and he will then consider the matter.
    Mr. HARDIE: Does the hon. Gentleman want me to give him the facts now, or will he rather have them in private?
    Sir H. BARNSTON: Perhaps my hon. Friend will send them to me.
    Sir H. BRITTAIN: Why should this interference from Scotland be added to the already existing trouble of bugs and rats?

    STEPNEY BOROUGH COUNCIL.
    Mr. SCURRasked the Minister of Health whether he is aware of the overcrowded condition of the Metropolitan borough of Stepney and of the difficulties of the borough council in dealing with the housing problem; and whether he can give any assistance to the local authority in order to ease its difficulties?
    Sir H. BARNSTON: Yes, Sir. My right hon. Friend is in touch with the borough council, and has intimated that he will be ready to consider proposals for the clearance of a suitable area for building.

    RENTS (CONCILIATION COURTS).
    Mr. R. MORRISONasked the Minister of Health if he will consider the desirability of setting up conciliation
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    courts for settling cases arising out of the Rent Restriction Acts on the lines of the system of arbitration obtaining in the Philadelphia Municipal Court?
    Sir H. BARNSTON: My right hon. Friend thinks that it would be undesirable to remove the cases in question from the jurisdiction of the County Courts, which have now 10 years' experience in the matter.

    EMPTY HOUSES (RATING).
    Mr. CECIL WILSONasked the Minister of Health whether, in view of his intention to introduce legislation dealing with the question of the rating of machinery in the course of the present Session, he also proposes to deal with the rating of empty houses?
    Sir H. BARNSTON: No, Sir.
    Captain WEDGWOOD BENN: Is this question of the rating of machinery covered by the new Rating Bill which is to be presented by the Government?
    Sir H. BARNSTON: I am afraid that I cannot answer that.

    WEIR HOUSES.
    Sir H. BRITTAINasked the Minister of Health whether he has yet received information from anyone occupying one of the Weir houses as to their general comfort and suitability as compared with houses built of other materials; and, if not, whether he will publish information as and when it is obtainable?
    Sir H. BARNSTON: I understand that one of these houses has been in occupation for some time, and has been found satisfactory. I believe a certain number of the houses are coming into occupation in Scotland, and, as regards these, I would refer my hon. Friend to the Secretary for Scotland.
    Sir H. BRITTAIN: May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether his Department has any houses available for any hon. Member to try out during the Recess?
    Sir H. BARNSTON: I will inquire as to that.

  CASUAL WARDS (WORK).
  Mr. R. RICHARDSONasked the Minister of Health whether, as alternative tasks to stone-pounding and oakum picking for casual paupers, he will

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  recommend work on the land and in the garden, washing of garments, towels, and other materials provided by the guardians for the casual ward, scrubbing and cleansing and chopping wood?
  Sir H. BARNSTON: The tasks suggested by the hon. Member for casual paupers are already in common use.
  Mr. RICHARDSONalso asked the Minister of Health whether, in view of the fact that the number of provincial unions which, after the decision in Rex. v. Baddeley in 1906, sought for and obtained power to impose the task of stone-pounding upon casual paupers was 48, and that more than eight per cent. of them were Berkshire unions, he will take steps to stop this practice in this and other counties?
  Sir H. BARNSTON: As the hon. Member has already been informed, my right hon. Friend will consider how far it is necessary or desirable to retain this particular task.

  DEATHS FROM STARVATION.
  Mr. R. RICHARDSONasked the Minister of Health what number of cases in Berkshire appear in the starvation lists for the years 1906 to 1914, inclusive; how many of these were tramps or homeless persons; will he give the numbers also for the rest of the provinces; and will he state, approximately, the percentages, having regard to the population of Berkshire and the rest of the provinces?
  Sir H. BARNSTON: My right hon. Friend regrets that this information is not available for years previous to 1908. In the years 1908–14 the number of cases in Berkshire in which a verdict of death from starvation or death accelerated by privation was returned, was nine, of whom seven would appear to have been tramps or homeless persons. For the rest of England and Wales outside London and Berkshire the number was 386 of whom 185 would appear to have been tramps or homeless persons. Expressed as percentages of the population, these numbers represent ·0032 and ·0024 for Berkshire and ·0012 and ·0005 for the rest of the provinces.

  GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS.

    HOME OFFICE (WOMEN).
    Mr. TREVELYAN THOMSONasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many women in his Department are performing the same work as men and receiving equal pay; how many are performing the same work and not receiving equal pay; and what is the reason for the differentiation?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir William Joynson-Hicks): One medical inspector of factories receives the same rate of pay as the men performing the same duties. In this connection I would refer the hon. Member to the reply of the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Miss Wilkinson) on the 25th ultimo. There are 39 other women employed by the Home Office in grades open to men and women whose remuneration follows the general principles enunciated by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury in his reply to the hon. and learned Member for Moss Side (Mr. Hurst) on the 24th ultimo. In the case of 14 women factory inspectors, the scale for women is identical with that for men so far as regards the lowest grade in the inspectorate.
    Mr. THOMSON: May I ask what is the prospect of the Government carrying out the Resolution of the House, which speaks of "equal pay for equal work"?
    Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I am not quite aware that any Resolution of the House puts it quite as baldly as that.

    CLERICAL WOMEN.
    Mr. T. THOMSONasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether the 26 and 3,534 posts in the Treasury grade of the executive are reserved, respectively, for women and for men, or, if not, in which departments women would in the ordinary course be considered for a vacancy in a post now filled by a man; and whether, in view of the fact that there are less than three times as many clerical men as clerical women, he will revise the distribution of posts so as to give the clerical women the same opportunities of entering the executive grade as men?
    Mr. GUINNESS: I would remind the hon. Member that the figures which he quotes are the numbers of men and women on the scales of salary prescribed for the Training Grade of the Executive Class, not the number of posts in that grade. The number of men includes the redundant officers awaiting absorption, and temporarily filling clerical class posts. Speaking generally, posts in the Training Grade are not reserved specifically either to men or to women, and there is, therefore, no such distribution of posts as the hon. Member suggests. As I explained to him on the 9th March, women already have opportunities of entering this class which are not less favourable than those enjoyed by men in comparison.

  POLICE (LIVES LOST ON DUTY).
  Mr. MacKENZIE LIVINGSTONEasked the Home Secretary how many police officers lost their lives while on duty in London during last year?
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: The answer is two. In addition, one constable died last year as the result of injuries received on duty in 1923.

  RABBITS AND HARES (SUNDAY COURSING).
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHYasked the Home Secretary whether he has initiated any prosecutions for coursing rabbits or hares on Sundays?
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: The answer is in the negative.
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Why have no prosecutions taken place for coursing for game on Sunday? Is it not illegal to course on the Sabbath?
  Sir W. JOYNSON- HICKS: As a sportsman the hon. and gallant Gentleman will know that rabbits are not game.
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: I am quite aware of that fact, but I was asking about hares. I wanted to know whether it was not illegal to course for rabbits or hares on Sunday?
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: As I told the hon. and gallant Gentleman the other day, I have received only one complaint
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  in regard to this matter. If he will forward me any complaints I will have it inquired into.
  Mr. JOHNSTON: Does the right hon. Gentleman consider that cruelty on Sunday is any more reprehensible than cruelty on a Saturday?
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: No.

  NIGHT CLUBS BILL.
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHYasked the Home Secretary when the proposed Bill to regulate bogus night clubs will be introduced?
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Perhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman will repeat his question after the holidays?
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: But did not the right hon. Gentleman hold out strong hopes that this important Bill would be introduced before Easter? Cannot we be told what progress is being made with the Bill, seeing that the scandal continues?
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Perhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman has already had experience of the fact that "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick."
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman—
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: We cannot have a number of supplementaries on each question.

  INDUSTRIAL ALCOHOL.
  Mr. HARDIEasked the Home Secretary whether he will amend the present Spirit Acts to permit the continuous working of plants producing industrial alcohol and save the three days in each week at present lost?
  The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Guinness): I assume that the honourable Member refers to the existing statutory prohibition against concurrent brewing and distilling at distilleries. An amendment of the Spirits Act in the direction indicated could not be made without involving other amendments of a far-reaching nature, and I am not prepared to introduce such legislation at the present time.
  Mr. HARDIE: Is the hon. Member aware that industrial alcohol is being made apart from ordinary distillery methods, and is he further aware that the Spirit Act prevents the development of trade; might I further ask, seeing his party is always calling for an increase of industrial production, whether they might not do something to allow continuous industrial alcohol production, and so get on with work to cheapen the product?
  Mr. GUINNESS: If I understand the case put by the hon. Gentleman, it means that a certain amount of illicit distilling is going on. [HON MEMBERS: "No!"] That, however, does not really justify us in waiving the existing Regulations, which enable us to prevent fraud by checking the amount after fermentation, and not before, in a distillery.
  Mr. HARDIE: Is the hon. Gentleman familiar with the 1880 Spirit Act as applied to the conditions of making industrial alcohol?
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I think the hon. Gentleman must wait for an opportunity to discuss this matter till the 28th April.
  Mr. HARDIE: But Mr. Deputy-Speaker, is it fair to a Member like myself, who puts a question from a deep knowledge of the subject, to be fobbed off with an answer by someone who does not even understand the Act?
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: It is impossible, I think, for the Secretary to the Treasury to get knowledge of an Act in the interval between the first question and the supplementary.

  PRISON GATE ARRESTS.
  Mr. HAYESasked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to the practice of arresting persons at the gates of prisons on discharge, consequent upon courts declining to take cognizance of charges other than those immediately before the court; and what steps he is taking to eliminate this procedure?
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I do not think the few occurrences can be called a practice; indeed, I think such arrests are rare. If I find that the hon.
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  Member's question is justified on fresh inquiry, I will consider what I can do to stop what I admit is an undesirable practice.
  Mr. HAYES: Has the right hon. Gentleman considered the opinion recently expressed on this matter by the Liverpool Stipendiary?
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Yes.

  ELECTIONS (COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS).
  Mr. DIXEYasked the Home Secretary whether he is aware that, owing to their occupation, thousands of commercial travellers are unable to vote on election days, and that there is considerable dissatisfaction caused thereby: and whether he will consider introducing legislation to enable them to vote by proxy?
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I am told that in some cases commercial travellers have experienced difficulty in voting at Parliamentary elections, but I do not think there is need for legislation. In my opinion commercial travellers, as well as other classes of electors who are likely to be away from home at a Parliamentary election, are entitled to the benefit of Rule 16 in Schedule I to the Representation of the People Act, 1918, which enables electors in such circumstances to claim to be placed on the absent voters list so that they may vote by post, and the information in my Department is that Registration Officers ordinarily act on this view. Each claim under the Rule, however, has to be decided by the Registration Officer according to the circumstances of the particular case; in some cases I believe decisions adverse to electors have been reversed on appeal to the County Court.

  RUSSIA.

    NEWSPAPERS.
    Sir PHILIP RICHARDSONasked the Hon. Secretary whether he has received any complaints from the Soviet authorities that forgeries of either of the Russian newspapers, "Pravda" or "Isvestia," containing inaccurate representations of the pronouncements of members of the Soviet Government, have

    2409
    been published in London; and whether he has satisfied himself that there is any ground for such complaints?
    Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: The answer to the first, part of the question is in the negative. The second part, therefore, does not arise.

    SUGGESTED LOAN.
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHYasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the Treasury has been advised of conversations proceeding between British and Russian banks with a view to the raising -of a Russian loan.
    Mr. GUINNESS: I am not aware of any such conversations.
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: May I ask what is the attitude of the Treasury towards such negotiations?
    Mr. GUINNESS: There is no attitude, because the matter has not arisen.

    BRITISH TRADE.
    Mr. W. THORNEasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what has been the expansion of trade between this country and Russia between 1921 and 1924?
    Sir B. CHADWICK: I have been asked to reply. The total declared value of the imports into Great Britain and Ireland registered as consigned from Russia in the year 1924 was £20,038,000, an increase of £17,343,000 as compared with the total for 1921. The value of exports of home produce and manufactures consigned to Russia in 1924 was £3,821,000, and of foreign and colonial merchandise, £7,358,000, representing increases of £1,640,000 and £6,148,000, respectively, as compared with 1921.

  FACTORIES BILL.
  Mr. ROBINSONasked the Home Secretary whether any decision has been come to with respect to the promised Factories Bill; and whether it is intended to introduce the Bill without delay and pass it. this Session?
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will repeat his question after the holidays.

  LICENSING SESSIONS (RIGHTS OF PUBLIC).
  Mr. CECIL WILSONasked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to the action of certain clerks to licensing justices in different parts of the country in taking exception to a member of the local community opposing the granting of a new licence, informing him that because he is not a solicitor he can only give evidence; and whether information can be sent to all clerks to licensing justices informing them of the words of Lord Herschell and Lord Halsbury, in the case of Boulter versus Kent in 1897, to the effect that every person may object to a grant, of a licence on public grounds, and that in respect of the application for a licence, as the justices do not occupy the position of Judges, but only exercise discretionary jurisdiction, they may receive representations not on oath?
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I have not had my attention drawn to any facts of the nature indicated in the first paragraph of the Question, but I think that the law, as laid down in this case, is well known.

  PUBLIC HEALTH (MEAT) REGULATIONS.
  Mr. HERBERT WILLIAMSasked the Minister of Health if he is aware that the Public Health (Meat) Regulations are being interpreted in varying ways by different local authorities; and whether, under those circumstances, he is prepared to issue a memorandum to local authorities in order to ensure a reasonable interpretation of the regulations in all districts?
  Sir H. BARNSTON: My right hon. Friend is not in a position to give any directions to local authorities as to the interpretation of the Regulations, and on the information at present before him he does not think that he could usefully add anything to the Circular Letter issued with the Regulations, a copy of which is being sent to my hon. Friend.

  COAL (SCIENTIFIC TREATMENT).
  Sir H. BRITTAINasked the Minister of Health whether he is prepared to co-operate with the Mines

  2411
  Department in the scientific treatment of coal, so as to eliminate the smoke now existent in every city and town in the country, and to conserve the valuable dye products which are wasted to-day?
  Sir H. BARNSTON: The treatment of coal is not within my right hon. Friend's province, but he is watching with much interest the work which is being done to obtain a satisfactory smokeless fuel at a commercial price.
  Sir H. BRITTAIN: May I ask if the hon. Gentleman has had his attention drawn to a very interesting speech by the Secretary for Mines on this subject?

  GERMAN MARK.
  Mr. CONNOLLYasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the present internal, external, and nominal values, respectively, of the German mark?
  Mr. GUINNESS: The value of the present German mark is defined in terms of gold at 2,790 marks to a kilogramme of fine gold. Its actual value, as tested by the foreign exchange market, coincides very closely with the above Mint par. According to the official index number for last February, internal wholesale prices in Germany were then 36½ per cent. above the level of 1913, an increase less than the average world increase. But owing to changes in German import duties, particularly on wheat since that date, it is not possible to compare this figure without qualification with the increases elsewhere.
  Captain BENN: Does the right hon. Gentleman mean that the import duties have caused prices to rise in Germany?

  IRISH REPRESENTATIVE PEERS.
  Mr. MacKENZIE LIVINGSTONEasked the Prime Minister what steps it is proposed to take to fill up the vacancy at present existing in the ranks of the Irish representative peers?
  The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Baldwin): This matter is receiving the consideration of the Government, who are taking advice upon it.
  Mr. LIVINGSTONE: To whom will the writ of summons be sent?
  The PRIME MINISTER: When we have had advice, I hope I may be able to tell the hon. Gentleman.
  Lieut-Commander KENWORTHY: How is it that this breach of the Constitution has been made, and allowed to continue for so long?
  The PRIME MINISTER: It is to avoid making a breach that I am taking advice.
  Captain BENN: Is it not the fact that the difficulty of the Prime Minister arises from the fact that he has to send the writ to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, who does not exist?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I beg my hon. and gallant Friend not to imagine that I am in any difficulty.

  ARMAMENT FIRMS (RATING).
  Mr. CECIL WILSONasked the Prime Minister whether he is aware that armament firms have since 1918 kept considerable quantities of plant available for possible Government requirements and at Government request; and that much of the plant has lain idle but that rates have been charged upon it; and whether he proposes either to sanction the conversion of such plant or to make some allowance to the firms, or whether they will be expected to recoup themselves in the event of a call being made upon the plant?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Mr. Davidson): I have been asked to reply. The Admiralty have this matter constantly under consideration with reference to the amount of naval work available. I may say, however, that, apart from the fact that some of the plant has been diverted to the manufacture of commercial products, much of it has been utilised in the manufacture of armour and armaments of ships constructed, reconstructed or laid down since 1918.

  BRITISH INVESTORS (DEFAULTING STATES).
  Mr. WARDLAW-MILNEasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what countries outside Europe, and excluding the United States and Russia, owe money to British investors; to what extent such countries have defaulted; and what steps

  2413
  are being taken by the Government to secure payment of the debts due and to defend the interests of British investors?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. A. Chamber-Iain): The Chancellor of the Exchequer has asked me to reply. I am not in a position to give a list of the foreign Governments, States, municipalities, etc. which are in default on loans held by British investors, since questions arising out of such a default are primarily matters to be settled between representatives of the bondholders and the defaulting borrower, and are in many cases dealt with without the Foreign Office being asked to intervene. Detailed information on the matter will be found in the reports of the Council of the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders, which are published annually, and, as regards any special loan, details are given in the "Stock Exchange Intelligence," and similar publications. It is the general practice of the Foreign Office to give support by diplomatic action to authorised representatives of British bondholders when requested to do so by them. The terms of my hon. Friend's question might be held by a casual reader to suggest that the Government of the United States of America have defaulted in respect of some of their obligations. I am sure that this is not my hon. Friend's intention, and I have already expressly dissociated myself from any such charge.
  Mr. WARDLAW-MILNE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the House quite realises that the default is not on the part of the United States, but on the part of certain States which now form part of the United States?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I know that certain States are in default, but not the United States of America, and I was sure that my hon. Friend did not intend to imply that the United States were in default.
  Mr. WARDLAW-MILNEasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer which of the States of the United States of America are in arrears in the payment of interest and the return of principal of money borrowed from British investors; what is the total amount owing to this country in respect of interest and prin-
  2414
  cipal from these States; which of the States have definitely defaulted; and which have legislated to prohibit recognition of the debts?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: With regard to the first part of the question, I would refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. and gallant Member for Burton (Colonel Gretton) on the 1st April. With regard to the second part of the question, attempts have been made in the past to gather accurate figures but it has been found impossible to secure complete or accurate information. As far as can be ascertained, the approximate amount in default with compound interest accrued at five per cent., would be about £180,000,000 but it has not been possible to ascertain what part of this sum is owing to British subjects. There is no information on the third and last parts of the question.
  Mr. WARDLAW-MILNE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, if the bondholders desire this body to take action, he will support any representations they may make to the United States as the only Government now representing, however indirectly, the original defaulting States?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The United States Government does not control those States, and I am afraid that representations to the United States Government would be useless. I think, therefore, it is inexpedient that I should make them.
  Mr. WARDLAW-MILNE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if there is any other body he can suggest to whom the bondholders can make any representation?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The British bondholders are in the same position as the American bondholders, and have the same means, or absence of means, of getting redress.
  Mr. WARDLAW-MILNE: Except that we owe them money.

  INCOME TAX.
  Major HARVEYasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if, in view of the increasing tendency on the part of inspectors of taxes to demand, in accord-

  2415
  ance with the circular from the Board of Inland Revenue, dated 23rd October, 1924, personal attendance and the production of securities from persons who cannot be suspected of any intention to defraud, and whose identity has already been satisfactorily established, he will take steps to ensure that the paragraph in that circular stating that this procedure will normally be applied only in a relatively small number of cases in which the inspector finds it impracticable otherwise to establish satisfactorily the identity of the claimant, is strictly complied with?
  Mr. GUINNESS: I am not aware that the terms of the circular to which the hon. and gallant Member refers are not being strictly complied with; if, however, he will give me particulars of any cases in which it is alleged that taxpayers have been improperly troubled, I will cause inquiry to be made and communicate the result to him in due course
  Miss WILKINSONasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that it is the practice of certain Income Tax officers to issue summonses in respect of Income Tax in the cases of manual workers at a period of the year when they are in a position to know that on the total annual earnings no Income Tax is payable; that in these cases the local collector compels the person assessed to pay the cost of the summons, 5s., though no money is due to the State; will he issue instructions that in no case shall a summons be issued if it is evident that no tax is due in respect of the whole year; and will he instruct Mr. J. E. Taylor, Collector, of 4, Middlesbrough Road, South Bank, to return the 5s. cost of summons that he obtained from Mr. T. Speakman, 23, Station Road, South Bank, though that gentleman is not liable for Income Tax for the year 1924–25?
  Mr. GUINNESS: The hon. Member appears to be under a misapprehension as to the practice of the Inland Revenue Department in this matter. In making the assessment to Income Tax for any quarter, due regard is had to the previous quarters of the year of assessment and the charge is limited by reference to the liability on the earnings for the whole period. Moreover, as soon as possible after the fourth quarter's earnings have
  2416
  been ascertained the assessments for the earlier quarters are reviewed, and any adjustment is made without waiting for any application by the wage-earner. I am having inquiry made into the particular case to which the hon. Member refers, and I will communicate the result to her in due course.
  Miss WILKINSON: May I ask why the Income Tax of the wage-earners is based on a quarterly assessment, while the business man has a three years' average because in many cases these people would not be liable to Income Tax if the whole year's earnings were taken into account?
  Mr. GUINNESS:I have explained that that matter is readjusted on the full year.
  Miss WILKINSON: The point I was making was that the business man's income is averaged on the three years, while we are assessing working men on a quarter's income, and I want to know why that differentiation is made?
  Mr. H. WILLIAMS: Is it not the fact that all earned incomes are assessed on a yearly basis, and not on a three years' average?
  Miss WILKINSON: May I have an answer to my question?
  Mr. GUINNESS: If the hon. Member will put a question on the Paper, it shall be looked into.

  CROWN PROPERTIES.
  Captain GARRO-JONESasked the Minister of Agriculture the Government's total gross rentals from Crown properties in Regent Street in 1913, 1920, and 1925?
  The MINISTER of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Edward Wood): The total of the gross rentals from Crown properties in Regent Street in the year ended 31st March, 1913, was £44,070 4s. The corresponding total for the year ended 31st. March, 1920, was £192,786 14s. 6d., and for the year to 31st March. 1925, £315,229 5s. 6d.
  Captain GARRO-JONESasked the Minister of Agriculture whether he will undertake that no rebuilding or repairs, except such as are urgently necessary, shall be carried out in future on Crown properties until the housing shortage is overtaken?
  Mr. WOOD: Due regard will be had to the suggestion of the hon. and gallant Member where such work would be likely to conflict with house-building requirements, but work of the kind referred to provides employment for a large number of men in the building and allied industries, who would not in any event be employed on house-building, and, in the circumstances, I cannot, therefore, give the undertaking suggested.
  Captain GARRO-JONES: Was the right hon. Gentleman consulted before the Regent Street rebuilding took place last year?
  Mr. WOOD: I think Regent Street has been in the process of being rebuilt for more years than I was allowed to be consulted.
  Captain GARRO-JONES: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there has been far more rebuilding done during the last year than could have been done in the last 20 or 30 years combined?
  Mr. WOOD: The only part of last year for which I was responsible was from about the beginning of November to the end of the year, and by that time it was completed.
  Captain GARRO-JONES: That is why I asked whether the right hon. Gentleman was consulted before these extensive building operations were undertaken?

  ROYAL COMMISSION ON FOOD PRICES.
  Mr. A. V. ALEXANDERasked the President of the Board of Trade whether the promised Interim Report of the Food Commission is to be presented before Easter; if not, can he state the reason for the delay; and when the publication of the Report may be expected?
  Sir WALTER de FRECEasked the President of the Board of Trade when the Report of the Commission on High Prices is expected; and whether he will endeavour to expedite the presentation of this document if he has not already received it?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Sir Burton Chadwick): I would refer the hon. Members to the answer given by the President of the Board of Trade to the
  2418
  hon. and gallant Member for South Hackney (Captain Garro-Jones) on Tuesday, a copy of which I am sending them.
  Mr. ALEXANDER: May I ask whether the delay has been caused by an unbridgeable division amongst the members of the Commission, and the Government are finding it inconvenient to publish a minority Report?
  Sir B. CHADWICK: I do not know anything beyond what was in the question to which I referred, which says that the Report may be expected in about three weeks' time.
  Mr. ALEXANDER: Has the hon. Gentleman's attention been called to the promise which was made, that we should have it before Easter—I think the hon. Gentleman said it would be an. Easter egg—and has he seen the article of the political correspondent of the "Evening Standard" on this question?
  Sir B. CHADWICK: I can only say that every effort is being made to get out the Report as early as possible.

  TRANSPORT.

    LONDON-BRIGHTON PRIVATE MOTOR ROAD.
    Mr. A. R. KENNEDYasked the Minister of Transport whether he has approved the promotion of a private scheme for the making of a motor road between London and Brighton; if so, upon what grounds he has so approved; and, if so, whether he is willing to hear objections to the scheme from local authorities and other bodies and persons affected before arriving at any decision on the matter?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of TRANSPORT (Lieut.-Colonel Moore-Brabazon): I have not been approached regarding this scheme, which, I assume, must form the subject of legislation before effect could be given to it.

    NEW ROADS (EQUESTRIAN TRAFFIC).
    Mr. SMITHERSasked the Minister of Transport whether he will give the necessary instructions to ensure that, in the construction of new arterial and by-pass roads, proper provision is made, where possible, on one or both sides for

    2419
    equestrian traffic, especially in the rural districts?
    Lieut.-Colonel MOORE-BRABAZON: Every encouragement is given to highway authorities to provide on new roads sufficient space to accommodate all forms of traffic, and, whilst I do not think it necessary to issue the instructions suggested by the hon. Member, I am fully prepared to consider any application that may be submitted for the provision of special accommodation for equestrian traffic where the circumstances justify such a step.

  SCOTLAND.

    EDUCATION FUND.
    Captain BENNasked the Secretary for Scotland whether he is prepared to make inquiry as to the methods of the distribution of the Scottish Education Fund, with special reference to the varying incidence of expenditure in rural and urban districts?
    Captain ELLIOT (Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health, Scotland): I have been asked to reply. The draft of a Minute providing for the distribution of the balance of the Education (Scotland) Fund during the year 1925–26 will be circulated to education authorities immediately for their observations. That seems to my right hon. Friend the most practical form of inquiry which it would be possible to institute at this stage.
    Captain BENN: If I were able to bring to the notice of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the opinion and desire of one of the leading educational authorities in Scotland, would he then make the inquiry for which I have asked?
    Captain ELLIOT: I am sure that my right hon. Friend would be most willing to consider any representations which were brought forward by a leading educational authority, but I cannot pledge him to the setting up of an inquiry.
    Captain BENNasked the Secretary for Scotland whether he is prepared to set up a committee to inquire into the constitution of the Scottish Education Fund and the method by which the amount of it is determined?
    Captain ELLIOT: I have been asked to reply. My right hon. Friend has no reason to believe that there is any such general desire for an amendment of the existing law as would justify the setting up of a special committee. But he is, of course, ready to consider any representation which the hon. Member may make.
    Captain BENN: Would that inquiry permit the local authorities to ask for a revision of the basis on which the amount of the fund should be determined?
    Captain ELLIOT: They will be invited to submit their observations, but whether it is useful to submit observations of so wide a nature is a matter for the authorities to consider.
    Captain BENN: Is it not rather a matter for the Government to consider whether they would take observations of such a wide nature into serious account?
    Sir HENRY CRAIK: Is it not a fact that the basis on which the amount is determined is a statutory one and is fixed?

    DUNDEE SHERIFF COURT (MEDICAL REFEREE).
    Mr. JOHNSTONasked the Secretary for Scotland if he is aware that Professor D. McEwan has resigned from the position of medical referee on workmen's compensation cases in the Sheriff Court, Dundee, and that there has been great difficulty in filling the position, thereby causing hardship to many workmen who are unable to have their cases disposed of in the absence of a medical referee; and if he can take any steps to expedite an appointment?
    Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: My right hon. Friend has asked me to reply to this question. There has been some delay in this case, but the vacancy has now been filled. No complaint has been received at the Home Office, and I know of no reason why the workmen should have suffered any hardship, as there are two other referees for the Sheriffdom whose services were available. Moreover, in any case where the referees on the panel are unable to act, I am always ready to make an ad hoc appointment.

  POST OFFICE (ENGINEERING BRANCH, WAGES).
  Mr. DENNISONasked the Postmaster-General whether all workers in the engineering branch and other technical sections, as distinct from the postal and clerical staffs, are paid not less than the trade union rate of wages current in the district where they are employed?
  The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Sir William Mitchell-Thomson): The great majority of the workers referred to are paid at special rates agreed upon with the Post Office Staff Associations, plus the usual Civil Service bonus; the remaining workers are paid at trade rates where such rates exist.

  PALESTINE (LORD BALFOUR'S VISIT).
  Captain WATERHOUSEasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if, in view of the law-abiding nature of the Arab protest in Palestine on the occasion of Lord Balfour's visit, he will inquire into and take measures to remove their grievances, in order to maintain their traditional friendship with, and confidence in, this country?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Ormsby-Gore): It is not clear what special measures are intended. Palestine is being administered in strict accordance with the man date, and I am not aware that the civil or religious rights of the Arabs are being in any way prejudiced.
  Captain WATERHOUSE: Is it not a fact that the Arabs have, or think they have, a grievance that they are lacking representation on the Legislative Council in Palestine?
  Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: As the hon. and gallant Gentleman is aware, various efforts have been made by successive Governments to secure their co-operation in the Legislative Council, but so far without any success.
  Captain WATERHOUSE: Will the hon. Gentleman make a further attempt?
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Does the hon. Member think the way to get grievances remedied by a Conserva-
  2422
  tive Government is to offer an affront to one of the leading Conservative states men on a visit to that country?
  Mr. DIXIEasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the military garrison of Palestine was specially reinforced on account of Lord Balfour's visit to that country?
  Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: The answer is in the negative.

  JUSTICES OF THE PEACE (DURHAM).
  Mr. WHITELEYasked the Attorney-General whether he is aware of the appointment of 19 new Magistrates for the County of Durham and that only two representing the interests of Labour are included in the list, who are appointed because of being members of the advisory committee; and whether he is prepared to take any action in the matter to see that Labour opinion is more adequately represented, in view of the already small number of such representatives in the existing lists of Magistrates?
  The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir Douglas Hogg): I understand that the appointments referred to in the question were made on the recommendation of the Durham County Advisory Committee, upon which all interests are fully represented. The Lord Chancellor has drawn the attention of the advisory committee to the desirability of including an adequate number of representatives of the point of view of labour when they are recommending persons for appointment to the Durham County Bench, and he has no doubt that they will give careful consideration to this point in the future.
  Mr. WHITELEY: Is the Attorney-General aware that in this particular list there is a person aged 21 years, who has never rendered any public service at all?
  Sir D. HOGG: No, Sir, I have no idea whether it is so or not.
  Mr. BATEY: Is he aware that this young man is the son of a lord?
  Sir D. HOGG: I do not in the least. know what names were before the committee which recommended certain names to the Lord Chancellor. All I know is

  2423
  that certain recommendations were made by the committee, and the Lord Chancellor gave effect to them.
  Mr. WHITELEY: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman not aware that the composition of this committee shows that the members representing Labour ideas are in a very small minority, and they have not power to decide these things?
  Sir D. HOGG: I do not in the least know what is the composition of this particular committee, but as the House knows, these committees are set up in the various counties by the Lord Lieutenant of the County, after consultation with the Lord Chancellor, and the Lord Chancellor has drawn the attention of the Advisory Committee to the desirability of including all points of view
  Mr. BATEY: Is the Attorney-General aware that the packing of the local Police Courts will result in them being more Tory in the County of Durham?

  UNEMPLOYMENT.

    BLAINA AND ABERTILLERY AREAS.
    Mr. BARKERasked the Minister of Labour what arrangements he has made to deal with the cases of men in the Blaina and Abertillery areas whose unemployment benefit has been stopped owing to the effect of the circular, dated 12th February last, and who are unable to find employment?
    The MINISTER of LABOUR (Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland): A special effort was made recently to place some of the unemployed men in the Blaina area at new sinkings a short distance away. Nearly 100 men were interviewed by the Exchange, of whom nearly two-thirds were found to be unsuitable. Only five of the men were considered by the employers' representative to be suitable for the work, and only one of these accepted the offer of employment. I am, however, still in consultation with the Departments dealing with relief work for unemployed men, particularly with my hon. Friend, the Minister of Transport, but I am unable to make any more definite statement at the moment.

    RELIEF WORK (INSURANCE).
    Mr. W. THORNEasked the Minister of Labour whether his Department treats work given to men through relief schemes as insurable irrespective of whether the work is carried out by direct labour or by contract; and, if so, whether the contributions paid are taken into account in the same way as if any employer obtained workmen through the Employment Exchange?
    Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: Where men are employed on relief work under a contract of service they are insurable provided that the work is normally an insured trade. Contributions are payable in respect of such insurable relief work, and are regarded as valid and as having been properly paid. They entitle the worker to benefit, subject to the usual conditions laid down in the Unemployment Insurance Acts.

    ABERTILLERY (CLOSED COLLIERIES).
    Mr. BARKERasked the Secretary for Mines if he is aware that three collieries in Abertillery, owned by the Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron, and Coal Company, have been shut down for several months; that upwards of 4,000 men are unemployed in consequence of the closing down of these collieries; and that recently new plant has been installed at these pits; and has he any information as to the likelihood of these mines being soon restarted?
    The SECRETARY for MINES (Colonel Lane-Fox): I am aware that three collieries, normally employing a total of approximately 2,500 wage-earners, were closed on 25th October, 31st December and 9th March respectively. I regret that I have no information as to the prospects of reopening these pits.
    Mr. BARKER: Has the right hon. Gentleman made any inquiries with regard to that matter, and can he say why this particular company has had seven collieries closed for this considerable period of time?
    Colonel LANE-FOX: I shall be very glad to make any inquiries, and I will let the hon. Member know.

  RAILWAY-OWNED STEAMERS (CREW).
  Mr. KIRKWOOD: 75. To ask the Minister of Labour how many men are employed as engineers and seamen on board the steamships run by the railway companies during the summer months; and what steps he proposes to take to stop the excessive number of hours these men are worked?
  Mr. KIRKWOOD: I addressed this question to the President of the Board of Trade, but it is down on the Order Paper as addressed to the Minister of Labour. I want to know how it is that the Question which was handed in by me as addressed to the President of the Board of Trade appears on the Order Paper as addressed to the Minister of Labour?
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I presume that the Clerk at the Table transferred it to the relevant department?
  Sir B. CHADWICK: I have been asked to reply. No figures are readily available of the number of firemen and seamen employed in all railway-owned steamers during the summer months, and their compilation would take some time. The Board of Trade have no power to regulate hours of labour on board ship, and can only intervene if there be reason to think that the arrangements are such as to cause inefficiency or danger.
  Mr. JOHNSTON: Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that last year the Board of Trade admitted in this House that there were instances known to them of men being employed for 90 hours a week upon these steamers, and is not that detrimental to the public interest?
  Sir B. CHADWICK: I can understand that the Board of Trade may or may not have made certain admissions, but it seems to me that these representations can always be heard, and heard sympathetically, if they are brought to the proper quarter and through the proper channel—the men's representatives.
  Mr. KIRKWOOD: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we have done everything that we possibly can in the proper quarters, and will he not use his influence, and the influence of the
  2426
  Government, to see that engineers are employed here when we have so many unemployed engineers and when the engineers on board these steamers are working as many as 90 hours a week? The Government have the power to see that the Fair Wages Clause is put into operation.
  Sir B. CHADWICK: All I can say is that that has not been represented to my Department since I have been in office. If representations were made, one would give them a sympathetic hearing, and do anything that one possibly could.
  Mr. KIRKWOOD: If I give the hon. Gentleman the information, will he do it?
  Sir B. CHADWICK: I will give it sympathetic consideration.
  Mr. KIRKWOOD: Then I will let the hon. Gentleman have the information.

  INDIA.

    SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL PEACE.
    Mr. LANSBURYasked the Under-Secretary of State for India if it is the intention of the Secretary of State to invite Mr. C. R. Das and Mr. Gandhi, together with other representatives of Indian opinion such as Messrs. Sastri and Lajpat Rai and Mrs. Besant, to come to this country for the purpose of discussion and conference as to the best methods to be adopted for securing full co-operation between all classes in India for the re-establishment of social and industrial peace in that country?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Earl Winterton): I must ask the indulgence of the House for a somewhat long answer, but the subject is very important. As I said on Monday, His Majesty's Government will receive with sympathy any concrete proposals put before them by Indian political parties with the support of the Government of India and the local Governments concerned; but it is not their intention to give such invitations as the hon. Member suggests for two reasons:
    First, the direct conduct of policy and administration in India has been entrusted by Parliament to the Government of India and the local Governments. It is therefore with these authorities that

    2427
    any discussions or negotiations of the kind must take place, and no useful purpose would be served by the intervention or participation at this stage of His Majesty's Government in matters which must ultimately come before them for decision, and for the decision on which they are responsible to Parliament.
    Second, though the Viceroy is about to visit this country for the purpose (among others) of discussing with His Majesty's Government the political situation in India, it would be placing both him and the Government of India in an entirely false position if his presence here were made the occasion for negotiations with Indian political parties.

    COKE OUTPUT.
    Mr. HARDIEasked the Under-Secretary of State for India how many plants for coking coal are in operation in India; what is the annual output of coke; and the average weekly wage of the men operating the plant?
    Earl WINTERTON: The output of coke in 1923—the latest year for which figures are available—was about 300,000 tons. The rest of the information asked for is not available.
    Mr. HARDIE: May I ask what use is made of this 300,000 tons of coke?? Is it consumed in India, or is it sent out, and, if so, where?
    Earl WINTERTON: I think the hon. Gentleman will agree that, obviously, I must have notice of that question. He really asked for the production, which I have given him.

  OTTOMAN LOANS.
  Sir FREDRIC WISEasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Government have ever explicitly rejected the claim of the Egyption Government that they are not bound to continue the service of the Ottoman loans secured on the Egyptian tribute?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: Yes, Sir. On the 3rd October, the late Prime Minister informed Zaghlul Pasha that His Majesty's Government did not for one moment admit the right of the Egyptian Government in law or in equity to shirk their obligations in respect of these loans.
  2428
  His Majesty's present Government adhere to the attitude adopted by their predecessors in this matter.
  Sir F. WISE: Might I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether this is a political or a financial matter?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I do not understand the hon. Gentleman's question.

  QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS (MORNING SITTINGS).
  Major HORE-BELISHA: (who was not present) 15. To ask the Home Secretary how many police pensioners there are on the post-April, 1919, scale, and how many there are on the pre-April, 1919, scale, respectively?
  Captain GARRO-JONES: I have been requested by my hon. Friend to ask Question No. 15.
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: Mr. Speaker informs me that it is not the custom to have a second round when Questions are asked at a morning sitting.
  Captain BENN: What is the duration for Questions on a day when we meet at 11 o'clock? Is it an hour, or is there any definition of the time? May I respectfully submit that the right of asking questions is a very important part, and the only vested part, of the rights left to private Members?
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: If there be sufficient Questions on the Paper, we go on until 12 o'clock with the first round, and then pass from Questions. But Mr. Speaker informs me that it is not the practice of the House to have a second round when Questions are asked at a morning sitting.
  Mr. BARKER: Is it not the fact that yesterday we passed a Resolution that questions should be asked from Eleven o'clock until Twelve?
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I have consulted Mr. Speaker on the matter, and his interpretation of the Resolution is that, while questions could not be asked after Twelve o'clock, it does not say that there shall be a second round up to Twelve o'clock.

BILLS PRESENTED.
  RATING AND VALUATION BILL,
  "to simplify and amend the law with respect to the making and collection of rates by the consolidation of rates and otherwise; to promote uniformity in the valuation of property for the purpose of rates and taxes; to amend the law with respect to the valuation of machinery and certain other classes of properties; and for other purposes incidental to or connected with the matters aforesaid," presented by Mr. NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN; supported by Mr. Guinness, Mr. Solicitor-General, and Sir Kingsley Wood; to be read a Second time upon Tuesday, 28th April, and to be printed. [Bill 160.]
  WILD BIRDS PROTECTION BILL,
  "to repeal the enactments providing for the protection of Wild Birds and to substitute other provisions therefor," presented by Sir WILLIAM JOYNSON-HICKS; to be read a Second time upon Tuesday, 28th April, and to be printed. [Bill 161.]
  MINING INDUSTRY (WELFARE FUND) BILL,
  "to extend the period during which payments are to be made to the fund constituted under Section twenty of the Mining Industry Act, 1920, and to increase the number of the Committee appointed thereunder," presented by Colonel LANE-FOX; supported by Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister; to be read a Second time upon Tuesday, 28th April, and to be printed.[Bill 162.]

ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE (EASTER).
Resolved,
"That this House, at its rising this day, do adjourn until Tuesday, 28th April."—[The Prime Minister.]

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to consolidate and regulate the Law regarding the circuits of the High Court of Justiciary and the holding of circuit courts, and to amend the Law relating to criminal procedure in Scotland in certain respects." [Circuit Courts and Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Bill [Lords.]
And also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to change the name of the Commissioners for the harbour of Poole; to increase the duties, rates, and charges leviable by the Commissioners; and for other purposes.'' [Poole Harbour Bill [Lords.]

POOLE HARBOUR BILL [Lords].
Read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

CHAIRMEN'S PANEL.
Mr. WILLIAM NICHOLSON reported from the Chairmen's Panel; That they had appointed him to act as Chairman of Standing Committee B (in respect of the British Empire Exhibition (Guarantee) Bill).
Report to lie upon the Table.

SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).

  STANDING COMMITTEE B.
  Mr. WILLIAM NICHOLSON reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had added the following Ten Members to Standing Committee B (in respect of the British Empire Exhibition (Guarantee) Bill): Mr. Briggs, Sir Harry Brittain, Mr. Cazalet, Mr. Duff Cooper, Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, Captain Howard, Mr. Lunn, Mr. Montague, Mr. Runciman and Mr. Arthur Michael Samuel.
  Report to lie upon the Table.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE (EASTER).
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Colonel Gibbs.]
  ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE (EASTER).

    INTERNATIONAL LABOUR CONVENTIONS.
    Mr. RHYS DAVIES: I desire to raise the issue of the International Labour Conventions, and I propose to put certain questions to the Government, in order, in the first place, to find out what is the policy of the present Government towards Conventions already adopted but not ratified by Great Britain, and to elicit information on the attitude to be adopted by the British Government delegates attending the Seventh Session of the International Labour Conference, to be held at Geneva in May. I make no apology for raising an issue of this kind on the Adjournment Motion, and, strange as it may seem, the question has now become very appropriate and topical. I have noticed within the last few days a growing criticism in this House from the Benches opposite of the work of the International Labour Organisation. Some of that criticism, I ought to say, is absolutely unintelligent and uniformed, and I wish very much that hon gentleman who criticise the work of the organisation could see it at work, as I have seen it myself. They would then probably alter their view when they actually saw the operations of the organisation at Geneva.
    We on these benches are very interested in the work of this Organisation, because it was established very definitely in order to approximate the standard of labour conditions throughout the world. The British Labour Party have realised long ago that different conditions of toil throughout the world are a menace to the peace and security of all nations, and that inferior conditions of labour in other countries are being used as an argument in favour of depreciating our own standards in this country. As I said a moment or two ago, I have seen a growing hostility in this House to the work of the International Labour Organisation, and an hon. Member on the Benches opposite, whom I am sorry not to see in his place to-day, complained of the cost of the
    2470
    Organisation. He said, in effect, "Just imagine this country spending £28,000 per annum on this Organisation." I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman had ever thought for a moment what it means. This Organisation was established by the Treaty of Versailles in a grand effort—a majestic effort, if I might say so—to try to secure peace between the nations of the world; and, surely, if a country could spend £6,000,000 a day on waging battles on the Continent of Europe and elsewhere, it can afford about £80 a day in an effort to try to solve the problems of peace and war.
    I was astonished, if I might say so, at the ill-informed criticism that came from the hon. Gentleman to whom I refer. He said, too, that the delegates to the last Annual Conference of the International Labour Organisation cost this country £100 per week each. I do not know in what school he was trained or educated, but I would ask him very respectfully to look at the figures again, when he will find a very different result.
    With regard to the signs of hostility of which I have spoken, I wish that the Secretary of State for War were here now, because I should like to know from him whether he has been influenced by the Federation of British Industries, or a section of it, to withdraw the order which was in force, whereby the War Office decided some time ago, in connection with the painting of buildings under their care, that they would not use white lead in paint. I am authoritatively informed that the order, which was issued a long while ago, is now cancelled, and that the War Department is at the moment using white lead in paint, to the detriment, in my view, of the operative painters.
    One strange criticism of the International Labour Organisation is that it has done too much, while some people declare, on the other hand, that it has done too little. Great Britain is a member of the Organisation, and, if I may say so with some pride, it is a, very influential member. Indeed, I might almost say that it is the most influential member of that Organisation; and I declare, therefore, that it ill becomes us to criticise an Organisation of which we are such an influential part.
    I was a little disturbed at the reply given the other day by the Parliamentary

    2471
    Secretary to the Ministry of Labour. On the 6th April, in reply to a question in this House, he said:—
    "The Treaty of Versailles imposes no obligation on members of the International Labour Organisation to ratify draft conventions or accept recommendations adopted by the International Labour Conference, even if the Government delegates of the member have voted for the draft convention or recommendation. "—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th April, 1925; col. 1818, Vol. 182.]
    I know the words that follow, but I want the Government, of whatever political colour it may be, when it sends delegates to Geneva or any other place where the Conference may be held, and when it instructs its delegates to vote in favour of a Convention or recommendation, to deem it to be a moral obligation to carry that Convention into law in our own country. I know that there is no legal obligation, even under the Treaty itself, but I would hold the Government to a moral obligation, at any rate, because it seems to me simply absurd that we should send Government delegates to Geneva to take part in the Conference and actually vote in favour of Conventions, and that we should then get a statement to the effect that there is no obligation upon the Government to translate those recommendations into law.
    I should imagine that Great Britain has as much interest as, if not more than, any country in the world in this Organisation, because complaint is always being made in this House, and rightly so on occasion, that the conditions of labour in this country are such that we cannot compete successfully with other countries. I am sorry that the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs is not here at the moment, because I wanted to know, if it were at all possible, whether the Ministry of Labour, in conjunction with the Home Office in charge of these several conventions, have made representations at all to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to use diplomatic channels in order to secure the adoption and ratification of these conventions by other countries.
    12 N.
    I would sum up the precise points that I want to put on that issue as follows: What has this country done to promote ratification by other countries of conventions already adopted? I am not speaking' now of what the Home Office or the
    2472
    Ministry of Labour may have done by bringing Bills before the House. I am anxious to know what influence has been brought to bear by the Government on other countries in order to secure the ratification of Conventions by them. I would put the question in another form. What are we doing to insure that the machinery of the International Labour Organisation will in future be used to the best interests of this country by bringing the conditions in other countries to the British level?
    The House ought to know something about the Conventions which have already been adopted by the Organisation. Seventeen Conventions have already been adopted. Of these, Great Britain has ratified eight. An examination of the figures shows that it is far from being the case that Great Britain is the only country which ratifies Conventions. Apart from France and Germany, Great Britain has not done a great deal more in the way of ratifying Conventions than have the majority of other important industrial countries. For instance, Great Britain has never been the first country to ratify a Convention, and only once has she been one of the first three. I make that statement because it is always assumed in this House and outside that we are the first people to take heed of the decisions of the International Labour Organisation. The Conventions which Great Britain has not ratified are, the Washington Convention on hours of labour, four relating to conditions of labour at sea, one on maternity, one on the minimum age for employment in agriculture, one on the prohibition of the use of white lead in paint and one on a weekly rest day in industry.
    I will leave the question of the eight-hour day to my right hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mr. T. Shaw) who knows more about the subject than I do, but I should like to ask the Home Secretary whether he can give us to-day information as to the policy of the Government, more particularly in regard to the use of white lead in paint? I am very interested in that question, and I am a little disturbed as to the growth of the number of cases of lead poisoning as shown in the reports of the Home Office. I will give them as far I have been able to secure them. The number of cases

    2473
    of lead poisoning in 1922 was 246, with 26deaths; in 1923, 337 cases and 25 deaths; and in 1924, 486 cases and 32 deaths. I feel sure that figures of that kind will appeal to the Home Secretary and that he will favourably consider ratifying the White Lead Convention by bringing before this House a Bill very shortly to deal with the whole of this intricate and important problem. I trust he will bring in a Bill on the same lines as the Labour Government introduced a Bill last year. That is to say we are not satisfied merely with a Bill to regulate the problem. We want a Bill to prohibit the use of white lead in paint on all occasions and in all connections. There may be a difference of opinion in that connection, but I make the appeal to the right hon. Gentleman in that way.
    I would sum up therefore, on the question of past conventions as follows. Most of the newer, and many of the older countries as well, have not waited for Great Britain to set an example before they ratified conventions. The countries which have made no effort to ratify conventions are countries of practically no industrial importance. The countries which have a specially bad record in regard to non-ratification of conventions are France and Germany. The British Government ought to take some positive measures to try to induce them to improve their record and we ought also to urge further progress by Japan. I say that because my right hon. Friend the Member for Preston commenced negotiations with the Ministers of Labour of other countries and I understand he did very good work in that connection last year. I would appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to follow suit and see what can be done to hasten ratification by other countries.
    With regard to the future, the House will be aware that the next session of the International Labour Conference will open at Geneva on 19th May, and I am very anxious to find out what attitude the Government propose to take and what are the instructions to the delegation on behalf of the British Government at that Conference. The three issues which will come before the Conference are these. There is, first, the question of workmen's compensation—equality of treatment—and I want to urge that we shall not give definite instructions to our Delegation in such a way that they will
    2474
    be tied hand and foot and will not be able to arrive at a compromise with other countries. Having attended the Conference myself, I am convinced that no international agreement of any kind is possible if the British Government lay it down beforehand that the delegates shall not be able to compromise at all, I trust they will have what I will call plenary powers, not only in connection with workmen's compensation, but there is the second question of a weekly rest in glass manufacture. There is also the third question of the prohibition of night baking. I know full well the difference there is in the treatment of this last question on the Continent and in this country. In this country we proceed, to begin with, by safeguarding the interests of the workman. We leave the employer to do what he likes. I am not sure whether that is the right course or not, but that is what is done. On the Continent, however, the countries which have adopted the Convention are prohibiting night baking even by employers, large and small. In fact, they extend the prohibition even to workhouses, asylums, hospitals and hotels. I do not know how far we can agree in that connection between ourselves and Continental points of view, and the best way, I repeat, is to allow our delegates to have, a great deal of power of compromise.
    I would ask the Home Secretary whether it is his intention to incorporate the suggested convention and the Recommendations of the Departmental Committee which met on the question some time ago on Night Baking, in the Factories Bill, which I understand he is going to introduce soon after Easter. I urge that we should have a reply to that point to-day if at all possible.
    Then I come to what is to me a very thorny problem but a very important one, that is the question of anthrax. That matter concerns the Home Office, except that the Minister of Labour last year, I understand, when there was a very intelligent Government in office in this country, called together representatives of the Dominions who are affected by the import and export of wool in order to find out whether we could secure agreement in regard to its disinfection.

    ROYAL ASSENT.
    Message to attend the Lords Commissioners.
    The House went, and, having returned,
    Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERreported the Royal Assent to:—

    1. Housing Act, 1925.

    2. Housing (Scotland) Act, 1925.

    3. Town Planning Act, 1925.

    4. Town Planning (Scotland) Act, 1925.

    5. Settled Land Act, 1925.

    6. Trustee Act, 1925.

    7. Law of Property Act, 1925.

    8. Land Registration Act, 1925.

    9. Land Charges Act, 1925.

    10. Administration of Estates Act, 1925.

    11. Universities and College Estates Act, 1925.

    12. Hamilton Burgh Order Confirmation Act, 1925.

    13. Dundee Harbour and Tay Ferries Order Confirmation Act, 1925.

  ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE (EASTER).
  Question again proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."
  Mr. R. DAVIES: I was about to urge the Home Secretary not to allow the question of anthrax to drop. I hope he will not adopt the attitude of waiting for something to turn up, but that he will again call delegates together from the Dominions in order to find out, first of all, whether a settlement within the Empire is possible, and then raise the whole issue at Geneva. I appreciate that it is very difficult to secure the co-operation of other countries in regard to this matter, when we are not united within the Empire itself.
  Of the last two points to which I wish to draw attention, one relates to emigration. I understand that this country was placed in a very awkward position some time ago by the fact that the Italian Government called together a conference of several States to deal with emigration. I would urge the point that whenever His Majesty's Government receives an invitation from any foreign Government
  2476
  in connection with a conference on emigration, that foreign Government shall be informed that emigration is a subject which ought to be dealt with by the International Labour Organisation, and ought not to be taken up by a separate Government.
  During the last few weeks, in fact almost every week during the past year, we have had debates in this House as to sweated goods and tariffs, and the menace to our industries because people are working long hours for very low wages on the Continent and elsewhere. It does seem to me that in the discussions regarding Free Trade and tariffs and sweated goods, there is only one way out, and that is to so arrange the conditions of labour throughout the world that they will be standardised as far as possible, and that having standardised them we shall then proceed to find out whether further reforms are possible in this or that country. I would suggest that people who are criticising the International Labour Organisation would remember one thing above all others, and that is that wars and disputes between nations in the past have arisen because of the economic problems to which I have referred, because there is competition for markets between the several States. I came to the conclusion long ago that whatever fault this International Labour Organisation may have, and I have criticised it myself, up to now it is the only means available whereby governments can meet together and discuss these awkward questions, and where they may be settled. I would appeal, finally, that when the delegates go to Geneva they shall not be tied hand and foot to the British policy only. There is only one way to secure international agreement, and that is by compromise between all the nations who attend the Conference.
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir William Joynson-Hicks): It would be convenient if I give the honourable Member the information for which he asks in regard to those matters which affect my Department. In regard to what he says as to the Delegates to the International Labour Office, I think that would be better left to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour. The hon. Member will realise that while there are various shades of red and pink in the Labour and Socialist

  2477
  parties, so there may be different shades of blue in the Government. I think it is desirable that there should be different shades both on the Socialist side of the House and on our side of the House. I do not propose to be drawn into criticism or defence of the International Labour Office, which appertains rightly to the department of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour. He is responsible, and he or his Department will be sending Delegates to the forthcoming Conference.
  I will do my best to reply to the hon. Member's courteous inquiries in regard to several conventions which he has mentioned. With regard to the White Lead Convention proposals, there has been very great difficulty. I am not sure whether he will be pleased with the information which I am going to give. There are two schools of thought; one which wants to prohibit the use of white lead, and the other which wants to regulate the use of white lead. No one regrets more than I do the very grave figures which the hon. Gentleman quoted as to the cases and deaths that have arisen during the last three years from white lead poisoning. It is a matter to which any Government must pay the utmost attention and do their best to deal with it, having regard to the possibilities of legislation.
  In regard to white lead, there are great difficulties in getting a prohibition Bill through. I have come to the conclusion that the best thing to do is to proceed as far as we can, and then, if what we propose to do does not prove satisfactory, we can come again to the House of Commons for further powers. That being so, I hope to bring in directly after Easter a Bill, which I have already in draft, to enable me to make Regulations dealing with the use of white lead paint. It is, perhaps, not usual to quote the contents of a draft Bill, but I can go so far as to say that arrangements, amounting almost to an agreement, have been made between the users of white lead and the manufacturers of white lead. I hope to get general agreement in regard to the Bill which I propose to introduce after Easter, and to make regulations which have been agreed upon by the trade.
  They will be Regulations to deal with all persons employed in painting buildings, and, in particular, will prohibit
  2478
  the use of any lead compound except in the form of paste and paint ready for use.
  The Regulations will seek to prevent the danger arising from the application of lead paint in the form of spray, also to prevent, as far as possible, the danger arising from dust caused by rubbing down and scraping of old paint, and to prohibit the employment or to limit the period of employment of young persons in the lead processes, and secure facilities for washing during and on the cessation of work. It is also provided that all persons employed in lead painting should have the use of protective clothing, and that there should be a hygienic instruction and so forth. We hope that these provisions will go a long way in the direction of meeting the objections of my hon. Friend. Those are the main heads of the regulations which are in draft, and are practically agreed to by all the parties concerned.
  Mr. DAVIES: The right hon. Gentleman will understand that that is not conforming to the convention, and it means that the convention will not be ratified even if the Bill become law.
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I agree. I am just giving the hon. Gentleman the decisions of the Government in regard to the Convention. I shall give him the decisions in regard to the other Conventions later on. My standpoint is that in dealing with all these matters one must have regard to the exigencies of the position here. We must, in spite of the appeal which he has made for international agreement, put the interests of British commerce and trade first. That is the way in which I, at all events, approach all these questions—whether they are in the interests of British trade and tend to reduce the very large amount of unemployment which we have in Great Britain at the moment. I know that it will not be satisfactory to the hon. Member but it will do a great deal to improve the existing position of affairs. When I introduce the Bill I hope to be able to give the House the further undertaking that if the regulations which I propose to make, if the House gives me the power, do not carry out what I hope they will do, and do not enormously improve the position of affairs in the lead paint trade, and diminish enormously the

  2479
  illness and death to which the hon. Member has referred, then I shall have to come to the House for further powers and I am sure that after full experience of the regulations the House will give the Government the further powers if they so desire.
  Then the hon. Gentleman asked me what I proposed to do in regard to night baking. I assume that the hon. Gentleman has not seen the reply which His Majesty's Government made to Geneva -on the 12th of January, this year, which indicates fully the position which we had adopted and which our delegates will adopt when they go to Geneva. The position is that the Government are unable to accept the Convention in regard to night baking, unless it contains certain definite Amendments. These Amendments are, first, we think that it should be limited to bakeries where bread or confectionery is made for sale to the general public and should not apply to hotels, restaurants, schools and other institutions. That is one of the matters as to which we are going to ask our delegates to get an amendment adopted at Geneva this year. We have already given notice of it to the International Labour Office there. We also think that it is not necessary to make the prohibition apply to the master baker himself. All those Conventions are to protect the persons who are employed, and I am not sure that it is desirable that Parliament should interfere with the desires of individual persons if they wish to do night baking in their own bakery, but we want to protect the workers in the trade.
  Mr. MARCH: Have you taken into consideration the competition which the master baker and his family will be able to apply against the other people who are employing labour and do you not think that it would be rather awkward for them?
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Of course there will be competition. There always is competition in life. I am not one of those who object to competiton.
  Mr. MARCH: But this is not healthy competition.
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I have no evidence brought before me of master bakers producing unhealthy competition, but I think it is clear that this would be
  2480
  outside Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles, which deals with matters affecting the protection of employés and workmen, and I think that anything which goes outside the limits of the Treaty would be ultra vires, and that the Convention ought not to be ratified except subject to the amendments which we propose. One further amendment which we shall ask is to make the period of night shorter so that it should be either between 11 and 5 or 10 and 4. That is a small matter on which we shall instruct our delegates.
  It is only fair to state that the Government have decided that, even if these amendments are accepted at Geneva, they are not prepared to ratify the Night Baking Convention until they have received the report of the Royal Commission on Food Prices which is now sitting. We have asked the Royal Commission to take into consideration the effect of the abolition of night baking on any possible increase of prices. We hope to get the report of the Royal Commission in the course of a week or two, before the House reassembles, and if that report shows that, in the opinion of the Commission, the abolition of night baking would increase the cost of food to the people of this country then His Majesty's Government reserve the right to reconsider the whole position in regard to this convention. If, on the other hand, they come to the conclusion and advise the Government that the abolition of night baking will not cause any rise in the cost of food then, subject to these amendments, His Majesty's Government are prepared to accept the convention as proposed last year.
  I have here the report made by the hon. Gentleman himself on his own proceedings at Geneva last year. I have not time to read it all but, if hon. Members will take the trouble to get it—and it can be obtained in the Vote Office—they will find that the hon. Gentleman himself was not very much enamoured of the Convention without some amendments being made in it, and I think that he will agree that the amendments which we have suggested are not very far removed from the amendments which he himself would have suggested, and did suggest, while he was at Geneva. So much for night baking. Then the hon. Gentleman asked about the weekly suspension of work for 24 hours in the glass furnaces. There

  2481
  we get to very considerable difficulty because there is very keen international competition between the glass furnaces of the different countries of the world, and we have carefully to consider the effect which the adoption of this Convention would have on our glass factories, unless it was resented by all our rival countries which run glass factories competing with ourselves. We are in the most complete sympathy with the weekly rest. England has led the way in regard to the minimising, almost the abolition, of Sunday work. I for one am a strong believer in the Sunday rest, and I want to see the weekly rest day on Sunday made permanent in as many of our trades as possible, but on this point, after careful consideration, we have felt that there must be an amendment of Articles I and II, in reference to the stoppage of machinery on Sunday. We want a rest for the individual worker, it is true, but there is the question of a rest for machinery itself, and the Convention, as it now stands, I understand, would involve the stoppage of machinery as well as giving a rest to the workers.
  You may say that it is far better to stop the whole thing on Sunday, but very grave difficulties would arise in regard to machinery, and while we want to give, as far as possible, the greatest time of rest to the individual worker, there must be some workers kept on in order to keep the machinery going, provided that there should be as little interference as possible with Sunday rest. Therefore, we are authorising our delegates to do all they can to arange by the Convention that there should be a weekly rest of at least 24 hours, and that this rest, where possible, should be given on Sunday. That is the attitude which His Majesty's Government have taken up and which our delegates will take up at Geneva.
  Another very remarkable Clause in this Convention is Article III, which provides that each State shall be given an absolute discretion to exempt any work which must necessarily be carried on continuously for technical and economical reasons. The hon. Gentleman will recognise that where there is keen competition, as in the glass making, this leaves it open to, any State practically to abrogate the Convention altogether. Any State can say that for technical or economic reasons, connected with the cost of production,
  2482
  they are going to abrogate certain Clauses of the Convention, and the whole thing must continue as it is at present. The hon. Gentleman himself was very keen on this very point. He actually went so far as to say in his report that he would have preferred, as representing the Labour Government last year, a Convention of a particular form, requiring that every glass worker should be secured one day's rest in seven, to be given as far as practicable on a Sunday. That is what we want. We agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman in regard to that question.
  He recognises in his report that this would involve the re-drafting of the Convention. We agree that it will. When the Conservative Government agree with the Labour Government then the Convention must be redrafted, and when you get practically the whole House of Commons and the whole public opinion of Great Britain agreeing on this question then, even if it involves the redrafting of the Convention, I am afraid that that cannot be helped. The hon. Gentleman himself did not want to support the Convention in the form in which we have it, and he voted for amendment, but he was voted down by 61 votes to 13. Altogether the hon. Gentleman's report on this particular Convention is not very favourable, and he voted for it, and the Government delegate voted for it, provisionally on the distinct understanding that His Majesty's Government were entitled to put Amendments into it. This shows the very great care which the hon. Member took when he was at Geneva, and we have provided that we shall make amendment, and we propose to instruct our delegates merely to carry out his advice.
  Coming to the question of workmen's compensation, there we are wholeheartedly in favour of the Convention. We have led the way in regard to workmen's compensation. Our law is a good one. As I said the other day, I am hoping to codify very shortly all the Workmen's Compensation Acts, and I hope to get the necessary Bill through, if possible, this Session. [HON. MEMBERS: "What about amendments?"] I think that it would be a great pity, after the House has passed a very important and very valuable Act, within the last two years, that we should attempt to amend it without seeing much further how it has worked. In regard to

  2483
  this Convention we do give the stranger within our gates workmen's compensation, and I admit that the object of this Convention is practically that the British plan should be made obligatory on the other countries of the world. Therefore we give our whole-hearted support to this particular Convention, and we shall do our utmost to get it carried at Geneva on this occasion.
  There is only one other Convention to which the hon. Gentleman referred, and that is in regard to the trouble of anthrax from infected wools. He knows as well as I do where the difficulty lies. The difficulty lies, as he said, because the British Empire is not unanimous on this question. The hon. Gentleman was at Geneva last year. He knows that the Home Office, my predecessors at the Home Office, have been trying for years to improve the position in regard to infected wool. We have established at Liverpool a disinfecting station which is doing enormously good work in disinfecting vast quantities of wool. I hope that it is improving the position and minimising the danger of infection from anthrax. At the same tme, I say quite frankly that we are not only willing, but anxious to try to get a Convention which will enable us to ensure that wool will be disinfected before it comes to this country. The Conference at Geneva would not pass the proposal. I cannot help it. Not only would they not pass it, but they declined to have it put on the agenda for this year. There was a proposal made by the hon. Member himself, who spoke strongly in favour of a resolution on this matter being put on the Agenda for 1925. The hon. Gentleman was defeated by a majority of 50 against 41. Therefore, it will not appear on the agenda this year. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman did his best. Had he succeeded, had his speech been a trifle morn moving and eloquent, he might have transformed that minority of nine votes into a majority of three or four.
  Mr. DAVIES: I do not want the right hon. Gentleman to miss the point. Do the Government intend to try to secure agreement within the Empire? That is the point at issue.
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Had the proposal been on the agenda we would
  2484
  have done our best to promote a Convention. It is not on the agenda, and therefore it cannot arise. But I can say that I and my Department are anxious to do all that is possible. We realise the grievous evil of anthrax. It is our duty to do our utmost to stop it. By our disinfecting process at Liverpool we have done a great deal, and the hon. Member knows it. We are and we shall be willing to negotiate, willing to try to get the Empire as one. The hon. Gentleman knows the difficulty, perhaps, as well as I do. He was at Geneva. He heard the statements and speeches, and he came in close contact with the delegates of other parts of the Empire. He knows my difficulty. I ask him not to press me too hard in regard to that. But anything that we can do to this end we shall do, and if we can succeed in getting a Convention which will either minimise, or cause to disappear altogether, the dangers of anthrax, no one will be more pleased than the Home Secretary and the Department over which he presides. I have endeavoured to answer questions in detail, and I hope I have given the hon. Gentleman fair and straightforward answers. Any other point I shall be glad to answer, and my right hon. Friend later on will deal with the whole question of the International Labour Department.
  Mr. HERBERT FISHER: I am sure that the House must be very grateful to the Home Secretary for his full, perspicious and good-humoured statement. It is, at any rate, satisfactory so far, inasmuch as it shows us that the Home Office is taking these Conventions seriously, even if it is unable to adopt them in their entirety in every case. Personally, I regret that the Home Office has not seen its way to frame legislation more closely on the lines of the Convention in respect to white lead. I will defer my observations on that subject until we have the Government Bill before us. I did not rise to deal with these details, but rather to pursue a line of thought which was initiated by the hon. Member for West Houghton (Mr. Rhys Davies) in his interesting speech. The Home Secretary pointed out with considerable force that the Government, in considering a Convention which comes to it from the International Labour Office, is bound to take into account the conditions in this country. I agree; everybody agrees. But I submit that

  2485
  when the Convention has been ratified by the Conference, and when it has received the support of the British Delegates at the Conference, the Government should look at the problem with a very strong bias indeed in favour of ratification, and only on the serious ground of national necessity should fail to ratify it. It has been pointed out that there has been a great deal of criticism recently in this House upon the work of the International Labour Office. It has been alleged that it is expensive, that the country is getting nothing out of it, that it is doing its work ill, or that it is not doing sufficient work. I challenge all those statements. I believe that the International Labour Office does constitute a very fruitful and important departure in International politics.
  In this country we have built up by unremitting toil and many struggles a standard of life for our working population. It is not satisfactory in every respect, but in any case it is far more satisfactory than the standard of life which prevails in other industrial countries which compete with us. Nobody can look at the industrial landscape of the world without feeling that this country will be in an increasing measure exposed to the competition of sweated goods coming from other countries which have not our factory legislation, which have not our standard of life, which have not our conditions, and which are consequently able to undersell us in the markets of the world. I do not see how we can possibly maintain the standard of life of our population unless we give our support to an institution which stands for the levelling up of industrial conditions throughout the world. The International Labour Office has had a very short life. In that short life it has furnished a valuable tale of work. It has provided an industrial code for Czechoslovakia and other new countries which have been the creations of these Treaties. It has led to an improvement in the Factory Legislation of India, to a law prohibiting the industrial employment of children up to the age of 12. It has led to the improvement of factory conditions and the protection of child labour from industrial exploitation in Japan, but has led also to a very considerable strengthening of the Trade Union movement and of Trade Union feeling in Japan.
  2486
  I was talking only yesterday to a Japanese visitor to these shores, and he informed me that as a result of the work of the International Labour organisation, the Japanese Press was paying much more attention to Trade Union problems, that the ideals which have informed the Trade Union movement in Britain, in France, in America and other advanced countries, are becoming more and more familiar in Japan, with the result that there is growing up in Japan a public opinion far more sensitive to infractions of factory legislation than, would have been possible some years ago. I consider that these alone are very considerable achievements. The hon. Member for West Houghton has pointed to the fact that 17 Conventions which have been passed by the Labour Conference have been very widely ratified. I understand that there have been no fewer than 142 ratifications of Conventions. He has also reminded us that, so far from it being the case that Great Britain is the only country that ratifies Conventions, other important countries have ratified Conventions, and, indeed, I believe it to be the case that the only important country industrially which has not ratified the Conventions passed by these Conferences is New Zealand, and, as the House is well aware, there is no country in the world where labour conditions are more satisfactory, I might almost say so satisfactory, as they are in the Dominion of New Zealand.
  It is sometimes said that it it is all very well for countries to ratify Conventions, but can we be certain that these foreign countries really administer the Conventions? I agree that that is a very important question to ask. It is not sufficient for us to have ratifications on paper. If we are going into an International Combine for the regulation of industrial conditions, it is important to be assured that our associates in that Combine are playing the game. It is very important that the Labour Ministry should keep in close touch with the Labour organisation at Geneva. I believe that that is already done, but I suggest that the Labour Ministry should very closely watch the administration of these Conventions in other countries. I have made an attempt to discover how far these Conventions are in effect being operated in the countries that have

  2487
  accepted them. I confess that although it is true that in some countries public opinion is not so vigilant as it is here, or Trade Union organisation so strong or well developed, nevertheless the indications point to a loyal observance of the Conventions that have been accepted.
  I do not say that the evidence is complete, but I point to such indications as these: In France there has been a considerable agitation from influential sections of capitalist opinion against the working of the eight-hours, flay. The same movement is to be seen in Belgium, and I doubt if we should have such an agitation from the capitalist side, if it were not that the eight-hour day is being effectually operated in those countries. The International Labour Organisation has at its disposal the means for following out, verifying and checking the administration of these laws. I think I am right in saying that occasions have arisen in the past in which complaints have been made to the governing body of the organisation in Geneva, that in certain respects the Conventions have not been honoured. Inquiries have been made and protests have been made with the result that there has been amelioration, and that process can be carried still further. I know the Minister of Labour is a very heavily charged Member of the Government and has not much spare time on his hands, but just as it has been found desirable that the Foreign Secretary should attend the meetings of the Council of the League of Nations as often as possible, so it would be very much in the interests of this country if the Minister of Labour or, at any rate, his second-in-command, were to attend the meetings of the International Labour Office at Geneva. After all, to what do the complaints which we hear in various quarters amount? They amount to the fact that our delegates have, in certain cases, supported proposals and Conventions which have not altogether squared with the industrial needs of this country, and I cannot conceive a method more effectually calculated to obviate that danger and inconvenience in the future, than that the Minister should attend those meetings and make himself responsible for stating the views of this country.
  2488
  The hon. Member who introduced this subject asked some specific questions which have in large measure been answered by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, and I now desire to ask the Minister of Labour what are the intentions of the Government with respect to a very important Convention which the British Government has not yet seen its way to ratify, namely, the Hours Convention? The Hours Convention was, as the House knows, accepted at the Washington Conference in 1919, when the British delegation spoke emphatically to its favour, but difficulties have arisen, it has been found that the Eight Hours Convention—the 48 hours week—does not accord with the working arrangements on the railways, and that, I understand, has been the main objection to the acceptance of the Hours Convention. I am not one of those who complain of the delay in accepting these Conventions. I think they should be very carefully examined in this country, always with a bias in favour of accepting them.
  I am not for a moment suggesting that the British Government should ratify the Eight Hours Convention unconditionally. I certainly think if we do ratify the Convention, and I hope we may find a means of doing so, we should make it a condition that Germany and one or two other great industrial powers who have at present not ratified it should also do so. I understand there is now a feeling in Germany in favour of ratification, and that the German Minister of Labour actually indicated that the late German Government would have been willing to ratify. My right hon. Friend the Minister will perhaps be able to tell the House whether that is so or not, but in any case let me remind the House that this Eight Hours Convention, if ratified by us—and we must remember that Italy, Austria and Belgium are willing to ratify if other Powers do so—will have a great effect in levelling up industrial conditions all over the world. There is no Convention of all those which have been discussed and passed at these Conferences which will have so great an effect in realising the object we all have in view, namely, the protection of the standard of life in this country from the competition of sweated goods from outside. Consequently, I very much hope that His Majesty's Government will not let this matter drop, but will earnestly

  2489
  pursue the question and consider whether they cannot make suitable arrangements which will meet the difficulty of the rail ways. I hope that we may hear from my right hon. Friend the Minister that there is a prospect of something substantial being done in this direction.
  Major KINDERSLEY: I think we must all be grateful to the hon. Member for West Houghton (Mr. Rhys Davies) for raising this question which we have not had an opportunity of discussing so far this Session. Reference has been made to the existence of a certain amount of hostility towards the International Labour Organisation. I do not think there is any hostility towards the aims of the organisation, but I think there is a certain amount of hostility with regard to the methods adopted. As I understand it, the object of the International Labour Organisation is the levelling up of labour conditions throughout the world, and in this connection there is one point which I cannot quite understand. We are told that higher wages, better conditions of labour and shorter hours make for industrial efficiency, yet hon. Members opposite say that they want to see the industrial conditions of other countries raised because, on account of those conditions being at present lower than ours, we are adversely affected by the competition of those other countries. I should have thought that if better conditions meant greater efficiency, it was much better—from that point of view—to leave things as they are. But if the object of the International Labour Organisation is entirely philanthropic then understand it. If it is the desire of hon. Gentlemen opposite that other countries should enjoy the same conditions as we have, I appreciate their motive, but I cannot see the point of the other argument to which I have referred.
  At all events the first object of the organisation appears to be the levelling up of conditions of labour throughout the world and the second object, which is I think a far snore effective one, is to establish a sort of international clearing house for information on labour matters. Insofar as the organisation has not been an unqualified success I would refer to what appear to me to be the reasons for that want of success. I think one reason is that the United States, almost the greatest industrial nation, has taken no part while Germany has only just come
  2490
  in and Russia, which, of course, at the moment does not count for much in international trade, is outside. That seems to be one reason for the comparative failure in the working of the organisation hitherto. Secondly I think it has been due to excess of ambition on the part of the organisation. It tried to do too much. All countries after the War had mnay problems and they were asked to deal with too many of these conventions. I think in the three years, 1919, 1920 and 1921, sixteen draft Conventions were put forth. The countries concerned were too busy to deal with all these questions by legislation and it is interesting to note that by 1925 the 38 nations which took part in the conferences had between them registered only 130 ratifications. Had all the conventions been ratified that number would have been 608. There is another reason for the comparative failure of the working of the organisation and it is that the representatives who attend these conferences on behalf of various countries try to act as legislators. The fact is they do not really represent their constituents and they are not responsible in any way for accounting to those constituents. That seems to be another reason why this organisation as at present constituted, cannot succeed in its object.
  We also find that the representatives of the governments of different countries are mostly, with great respect,—of course I do not suggest that this applies to the hon. Member for West Houghton—only officials of no very great standing while the representatives of the workers and employers are merely nominated by their respective organisations. We can only deem them to be representatives; they are not in the real elective sense representative of the organisations which they profess to represent. Then it is to be remembered that some of the organisations which nominate representatives are interested in one thing and some in another, while some of the countries are interested in one thing and some in another, with the result that there is a great deal of "log rolling." The White Lead Convention was a case in which the interests of Great Britain and France were directly opposed and the propaganda, the log-rolling, which went on in connection with that Convention was perfectly scandalous. I cannot do better than quote from the report of the

  2491
  last meeting of the conference some statements made by our representative the hon. Member for West Houghton. It is a fair illustration of the difficulties, because here is a man who goes there, entirely sympathetic to the Convention, and yet, listen to some of his remarks on the subject of the various questions that were brought before them. First of all, there was the recommendation on the utilisation of workers' spare time, and the hon. Member representing this country said of it:
  "A general statement of self-evident principles."
  He hoped
  "that in future recommendations would be more practical in their intention and more limited in scope."
  On the question of night work in bakeries, he said he could not support a Convention
  "drawn in such a form that its translation into law by the British Parliament would be difficult."
  Then, again, the question of a weekly suspension of work in glass manufacture was referred to, and he said:
  "We do not think the draft Convention contains very much of use to anybody."
  These are the statements of our own representative, sympathetic to the Organisation, taken from this Report. On the subject of anthrax, probably the, most practically important question before the Conference, he said:
  "The failure of the Conference to deal with this important question is much to be regretted, both because of the injury it may inflict on British industry, and because of the damage to the prestige of the Conference itself."
  Surely the inference that should be drawn from this Report about the last Conference, in 1924, is that it was either futile or illusory—I do not think that is too hard a statement—and that where agreement was most needed, as, for instance, on the question of anthrax, it was found to be impossible. As everybody knows, a good many of the delegations were not complete, and I think that shows a growing lack of interest in these Conferences, simply because people realise that the whole thing is really impracticable. They aim at doing too much, and I very much doubt whether the expense which this country incurs is really justified. I think—and I wish to emphasise this—that the collection of in-
  2492
  formation from the different countries, about their unemployment problems, for instance, and the various remedies proposed, and also about the methods employed for conciliation and arbitration in labour disputes, is work of real utility—what I call the clearing-house work of the organisation. I believe that to be intensely useful, and I think the information gathered will be of infinite use to all the countries who send delegates to the organisation, but these attempts to legislate for the world, for that is what you are trying to do, are at present almost futile.
  I want to deal now with the question of ratification. We seem to be regarded as rather behindhand in this matter, but that is really not so at all. The position, as far as I understand it, is this: Of the great European industrial countries, France and Germany have ratified none, Holland has ratified two, Belgium six, Czechoslovakia seven, Great Britain seven, and Italy ten. Outside Europe, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, and Canada have ratified none, South Africa two, Japan five, and India eight. Our record in regard to ratification is, therefore, as good as that of anybody, except Italy and India. Now the whole scheme of the organisation surely is this: that you ought to get, in order to achieve your object, coincident ratification. Everybody ought to ratify at the same time, but this has clearly not been realised, and in the result this organisation has accentuated rather than reduced the differences in the standard of industrial legislation as between the different countries, because if you get one country ratifying and another country not ratifying, you accentuate the differences between those countries.
  I would beg of the Government to consider, and I think the time has come to consider, whether a Committee ought not to be appointed to decide whether it is advisable, or with what modification it is advisable, that we should continue to send our delegates to this Conference. As I have said before, I believe enormous use can be made of the organisation as a clearing house for international labour information, but I believe that, in these attempts to legislate for the world, we are really attempting a thing which is impracticable and, as far as this country is concerned, very often extremely dangerous. One reason has been alluded

  2493
  to already, and it is most important. We, as a nation, when we set our signature to any convention or a treaty, carry out our bond. That is what has given us bur position in the world, both commercially and in other ways, but other nations do not attach the same importance to a signature. Hon. Members opposite always seem to think that, if only you can get a thing signed, everything will be all right. Signatures, believe me, matter very little. It is the spirit in which a thing is signed that matters. You can put your signature to a thing without any intention of keeping to it. Lots of people do, as anybody who is engaged in business knows perfectly well.
  If hon. Members will only believe me, in the City of London syndicates are formed sometimes to control a certain number of shares, and everybody guarantees that they will not sell those shares before a certain date. The great difficulty is that somebody constantly, as we call it, "rats." If you could guarantee that those who sign these conventions would never "rat," it would be well, but you cannot-guarantee that. Every country will always put its own interests first when those interests are challenged, and I would beg hon. Members not to rely on these conventions, such as the Eight Hours Convention, which I believe is coming before the House, to minimise the competition which we have to meet to-day in the industrial world. We can only meet that competition by our own right arm and by hard work and efficiency. I ask hon. Members as practical men to consider this: I am a business man, and do they suppose that, because I want to work for only five hours a day—I work for fourteen, as a matter of fact, most days of the week—it would be any use my going to my competitors and saying, "Will you not agree to work for only five hours a day, because I want to do so?" They would laugh at me, and why, in these international matters, should we be less practical than we are in our own everyday business? That is the great danger of these international conventions, and I urge upon the Government to consider whether the time has not come when a select committee ought to be appointed to consider the whole question and whether we should continue to be represented on this organisation until some modification has been made in its objects and in its methods.
  Mr. T. SHAW: I am afraid the time of the House will not permit me to reply in detail to the extraordinary speech to which we have just listened from the hon. and gallant Member for Hitchin (Major Kindersley), but I must touch upon one or two points. I am sure the rest of the nations of the world will be gratified to know that we are quite satisfied that virtue resides in us alone, that we are the only people who keep our word, while they agree to things, and their signatures de not matter. I have heard many claims made on the part of my nation, but I never heard a claim of that extent made in such a way before. I venture to assert that Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and Germany have as high a standard of administration, and pay as faithful a regard to their laws as we do, and the assumption that we are such superior persons might, I think, have been left to somebody not in our nation, and a little bit of modesty shown on our part. Then we are told that the represenatives who go to these meetings do not matter. Who are the representatives who go? France sends her Minister of Labour, Germany sends her Minister of Labour, Belgium is always represented by a very prominent Belgian, who has the confidence of his people, Sweden has been represented even, I think, at one meeting by her Prime Minister himself, and yet we are told that the people who go to these meetings do not matter. Who go on behalf of the employers? Men appointed by the biggest employers' association in the country. Who goes on behalf of the workers? A man appointed by the Trade Union Congress, the only body that can claim to represent the organised workers of this country, and the British representative from the trade union side has been for years Mr. Poulton, one of the most highly respected industrial workers' representatives in this country. Yet we are told that these people do not matter. Serious insults of this kind are thrown, but I think that criticism in this House ought to have some respect for the people of other nations and for the people of our own nation. The representatives to these meetings of the International Labour Office are the most highly respected, or among the most highly respected, men in their nations.
  Then we are told that Germany has only just come into the organisation. As a

  2495
  matter of fact, Germany accepted the first invitation to these meetings that was sent, and only the impossibility of her delegates getting there prevented her being represented at the first Conference of all, in Washington. I think that the hon. and gallant Member might have paid rather more respect to facts in his criticism than evidently he has done in his speech this afternoon. Now may I trespass upon the patience of the House for a moment or two in order to call attention to certain facts and certain promises that were made to the workers when the War ended, promises which evidently some hon. Members are now prepared to treat as scraps of paper and to tear them up, if indeed they have not already been torn up. The Treaty of Peace, which was agreed to by a Coalition Government, containing representatives from every party in the House, and for which every party is equally responsible, laid down certain very definite things. It said, amongst other things, that whereas conditions of labour existed involving much injustice, hardship, and privation to large numbers of people steps should be taken to avoid that danger and to give to the workers of the world a real chance and a real opportunity of living. Those were the promises deliberately made to the workers at the end of the War, and yet the hon. Member, if his speech is to be interpreted, is one of those who would forego every pledge, and go back to the old state of things, in which everyone should scratch for himself, and nothing should be done.
  There was another thing that the Treaty of Peace laid down very definitely. In one of the Articles of the Treaty itself it is laid down that we should aim at the adoption of an 8-hours day or a 48-hours week as the standard, where it has not already been attained. I say that the Government should seriously take into consideration the advisability of keeping its word. The Government cannot escape, as hon. Members who sit on the back benches can escape, by saying it is the only Government that keeps its word. I want to know whether the Government is going to keep its word with regard to this. We were all implicated in it. Is the Government going to implement the word that was given when the Treaty was signed or is it not? Let us wash our own
  2496
  doorstep before attacking other countries. I am going deliberately to claim that, so far as the Washington Convention is concerned, if words are to be kept, if a Briton's word is going to be his bond, there is no alternative for the Government but to work for the carrying of this Convention.
  What took place at Washington? The Government delegates were a member of the War Cabinet and the highest official, or one of the highest officials, in the Home Office. The employers' delegate was appointed by the principal employers' organisation, and the Trade Union delegate was appointed by the Trade Union Congress. I happened to be the Chairman of the very committee that arranged this Convention, and I know what took place. What took place was that the workers' representatives, who could have got an infinitely better Convention adopted by a majority of two-thirds, deliberately cut out of their request many things, because they knew, from the declaration of the British Government representatives, that if they maintained them, they were not likely to get the Convention unanimously agreed, and the Washington Hours' Convention is a Convention which is a compromise, for which the British Government representatives of the time were largely responsible. Not only were the British Government representatives largely responsible for that Convention being modified from what it might have been, but the British Government itself had been largely responsible for the labour charter in the Treaty of Peace. So that we, of all people in the world, should be the last to throw stones at others, because our word needs to be implemented before we complain about any others.
  This Hours' Convention, I beg to submit to the Minister of Labour, is not an eight-hours day as the Labour movement understands it. The Convention itself leaves out of account the whole of the agricultural world. It does not contain within its framework what is known as commercial. It does not contain the sailors, although the sailors were left out with a definite understanding that a special conference would be held to deal with that question, and I blush to say, that when the sailors' question was dealt with finally, the vote of the British

  2497
  Government representatives was the vote that prevented a convention for a sailor's eight hours' day. Instead of the British Government representatives voting for a 48-hour week for sailors as France, amongst others, was prepared to do, they voted for the 56-hour week and so prevented the two-thirds majority necessary for the arrangement of a Convention. That is a country the workers in which were promised after the War that they would have a better opportunity! And we talk about our being superior to all others! If other countries had acted in the way we have acted towards the organised workers of this country, we should have reason to complain, but we have no reason at all to complain.
  After this Convention was agreed to, the German Government by decree—and remember the condition of Germany was in at the time—introduced the 48 hours, and industries in Germany generally were working less hours than our own. One industry I know very well indeed—the textile. While we were working 48 hours, the textile industry in Germany was working 46. It is perfectly true the collapse of the mark and the change of Government meant a difference in Germany, but Germany broke no bond—not at all—and the Germans are slowly getting up to a condition quite equal to curs. My information is that the German Minister of Labour is definitely prepared and has definitely stated his intention of advising the German Government to ratify the Washington Hours' Convention. France has a 48 hour week which does not conform in ail respects to the Convention, but France is prepared, immediately Germany ratifies, to ratify the Convention, and the French Minister of Labour states definitely that if the Convention be ratified, and any nation claims that France is not carrying out the Convention she has ratified, that nation has recourse to the League of Nations, where she can lay a complaint, which has to be investigated. I put the attitude of France, which, after all, was not so much responsible for this Labour Charter, and did not make so many promises as we did, by the side of our own Government's attitude, and ask the House to consider which is the country that has best kept its word given in the Treaty of Peace. Holland came back from the Conference and introduced—I am
  2498
  speaking from memory but I think I am correct—a 45-hour week. Belgium has a 48-hour week, and to talk of Belgian legislation not being applied is simply to talk moonshine. The Belgian Labour movement is as powerful a labour movement as any that exists in the world, and the Belgians are willing to ratify this Convention if they can have the asurance that Great Britain, France and Germany will also ratify.
  We have to find who has been the most backward member. Is it France? No. Is it Belgium? No, because both France and Belgium have got 48-hour Bills. Germany? We know the condition she has been in. This country, which took the leading part, and which ought to take the leading part—this country, which, before the War, was infinitely ahead of the other countries in labour conditions, has held back. I do not want to make a personal accusation, but I cannot help saying that when I meet, as I do meet frequently, representatives of industry on both sides of the table in nearly every European country, I rather blush for our capacity for putting ourselves on a pedestal, and assuming virtues that we do not possess.
  Major KINDERSLEY: Does the right hon. Gentleman maintain that there is any legal obligation on this country to ratify any single one of these Conventions?
  Mr. SHAW: That question has got nothing at all to do with what I am saying. What I do say is that this country had a legal obligation, in my estimation, and in the estimation of everyone at Washington, to give Parliament an opportunity of deciding inside 18 months.
  The MINISTER of LABOUR (Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland): Do I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say that there was a legal obligation for that Convention to be brought- before Parliament?
  Mr. SHAW: I said that, in my opinion, definitely there is a legal obligation to bring the matter before Parliament. I know legal opinion has been given to Governments that the King in Council can deal with this matter, but I want to suggest that is an extremely dangerous card to play. Let the organised workers of this country know that your opinion is that the King in Council is to deal with

  2499
  a 48-hour week, and you at once place a responsibility on the head of the State that does not belong to him at all, and you are playing an extremely dangerous card in international life.
  Mr. H. WILLIAMS: Rubbish!
  Mr. SHAW: May I ask whether exclamations such as "rubbish" are in order, or shall I reply in the same terms?
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Captain FitzRoy): The word did not catch my ear.
  Captain W. BENN: Is it in order for an hon. Member to lie on the seat and put his feet up?
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: It is more usual, if an hon. Member wants to take up that position, to do it elsewhere.
  Mr. SHAW: If I may sum up, we above all other people in the world are responsible for this International Labour Convention. We above all other people have made a promise to the world on the matter. We through our Government representatives agreed to this Convention in Washington, as indeed did the employers and the workers. I would like to know the reason no attempt has been made to carry out those promises. Let me turn even to our personal interest in the matter. Is it not to our interest to do what we can to raise the standard of other peoples? We continually hear that the long hours and the low wages of other peoples prevent us from going ahead. For what does the International Labour Office exist? To raise the standard, according to the Treaty of Peace, and one of its objects is to get a 48-hour week. The nation which used to be proud to lead the world in labour conditions is the nation in Europe which is sinking most rapidly into a backward place.
  I know no nation in Europe which has not made more progress in hours than we have. I know no single nation in Europe which, comparatively, has not made far more progress since 1910 than we have done. In 1910 nearly every nation in Europe was working much longer hours than we did. In 1925 we cannot say that we are at the top of the tree, except for the unfortunate fact that our people are not working, because they have no work to do. Legally we are not
  2500
  equal to many of the nations in Europe. We are not equal to France. We are not equal to Belgium. We are not equal to Italy—nations that we thought we were infinitely ahead of before the War. I am pointing out these cold facts because, evidently, they do not seem to have percolated. We are told in regard to this Hours Convention that nobody has ratified it. That is scarcely true. Czech-Slovakia, one of the new nations, has definitely ratified it. Austria has ratified it, conditionally that the industrial States ratify it. France and Germany are both prepared to ratify it.
  Major KINDERSLEY: Conditionally!
  Mr. SHAW: I think the hon. and gallant Gentleman again is wrong. I understand that the French Minister of Labour is now prepared to ratify. That is my latest information, though I am open to correction. I understand, however, that the latest declaration is that the French Chamber will be asked to ratify it. Belgium is in the same position. The Netherlands are in the same position. Italy is in the same position. We alone, a principal nation, have neither said that we will not ratify it or the contrary. We are the one outstanding nation in Europe in this respect, and we ought to have been in the vanguard. We are the one outstanding nation in Europe that has not made a declaration conditionally or otherwise.
  Mr. W. GREENWOOD: May I point out that, though presumably the nations to whom reference has been made, are working 48 hours a week, in nearly all cases there are exceptions.
  Mr. SHAW: These countries know perfectly well what the Convention implies. The Convention implies that if it be ratified, and any nation complains that a certain nation is not carrying out the ratification, the nation complaining has the right to take the matter before the international body and get it considered. The French, it is perfectly right, have stated definitely that their 48 hours at present must not be taken as meaning ratification, but if they ratify they know the conditions under which they ratify, and that they are open to inspection, so to speak, if they are not carrying out the terms of the Convention. These things are perfectly true. I hope, how-

  2501
  ever, that this House will get rid of the idea that we in this respect are bearers of all the virtues, and that other people are the inheritors of all the sins of the world. I repeat—and I ask the Minister of Labour if I am not correct?—that so far as the Convention is concerned we are the most backward of the nations of Europe that claim to be an industrial nation. I am going to finish by trying to point out to the House that Britain had a proud record in hours, standing ahead of the other nations of Europe. I suggest that she ought to maintain her position, that it is for her to show an example of honour, truth, justice, and progress. We have seriously jeopardised the fair name of Britain in our action with regard to this Convention. Instead of being a leader we have been dragged at the tail of others.
  If anybody had said a dozen years ago that we should be in the position of having worse legislation that France on the question of hours; than Belgium and Holland, nobody would have believed it. Still, these are the things which have come to pass. We have nothing to lose by this International Convention. We have everything to gain by it. When I heard the Minister of Labour make a declaration in the House that he was not continuing the negotiations with the other responsible Ministers of Labour in Belgium, France and Germany—frankly, I was disappointed. I am going to appeal to him that this country should ratify this Convention, and keep what I consider to be our word honourably given to the world and to the workpeople of this country, to bring Britain where she never ought to have ceased to be—into the van of the nations—so to help and strengthen this side of the League of Nations, which is as valuable a side as any other.
  Mr. H. WILLIAMS: May I intervene to say that I am sorry that I used the word "rubbish" a little while ago. I had no desire to use a disorderly word, but I desired to point out to the right hon. Gentleman who implied that the action of the King-in-Council was the personal action of the Sovereign—that it is action that he takes on the advice of his responsible Ministers. When the right hon. Gentle-
  2502
  man suggested that the responsibility rested on the head of the State he is giving a wrong impression.
  Mr. SHAW: If the hon. Gentleman had done me the courtesy of listening to what I said instead of being rude he would have heard that I said it was an extremely dangerous thing to give the workers the opinion that the responsibility rested on the head of the State. The hon. Gentleman is very fond of these interruptions which, sometimes, are in rather questionable taste. The incident, so far as I am concerned, is closed.
  Mr. BUCHANAN: In raising another point which the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour has asked me to raise so that he can reply to it, I desire to associate myself with what has been said by the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. In regard to the question that we have been discussing I have some difficulty in following the reasons given by the hon. Gentleman who spoke last from the Conservative Benches. He pleaded with the Minister of Labour to set up a Committee for the purpose, as I understood, of reconsidering our whole attitude to the International Labour Office. I cannot follow his reasoning in view of what has gone before. First of all, he—and others—come along and tell us in this House when we propose to deal with a reduction of the hours of working that such proposal, or Bill, put forward is impracticable because other nations are not prepared to adopt that particular proposal. Then, when we come along and suggest that in order to wipe out that impracticable side we should work in conjunction with other nations he tells us again that this is impracticable because other nations are not quite like us- The truth is that we are told that everything is impracticable—from their point of view—because it is going to improve the condition of the mass of the people. These were the arguments put forward and which Shaftesbury and others have to meet when they tried to make progress and improve the condition of the masses of the people of this country. We are told, first of all, that it is impossible to effect improvement, because there is outside competition to face; then the moment you try to get into working order a reasonable international labour organisation

  2503
  to get over that difficulty, it is said to be impracticable because of some other particular reason or reasons. This, I confess, brings me back to another and similar aspect of the question, though in this regard, in respect to certain Members, I do not want to question their good faith. But it does seem to suggest to the minds of many of the working people outside a doubt of the good faith of those who oppose, and makes them inquire whether really it is the intention of those who say it to try to improve the conditions of the people, and to make them better than heretofore.
  May I, in this connection, say a word, as one who comes from the working people in view of what has been said by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the English Universities (Mr. Fisher). I do it with a certain amount of modesty. He pleaded with the Minister of Labour to do something to adopt this Labour Convention. But it was the Government with which he was associated more than any other Government that killed any prospect of an International Labour Convention. My predecessor in the constituency I represent here is a man with whom I disagree on many things. I have fought him bitterly from many points of view. But he is a man of character and honest intention. I refer to Mr. George N. Barnes. At the request of the Coalition Government he went to Washington. He took part in the deliberations at Washington. A short time after his coming back he placed a Motion on the Order Paper that these draft resolutions should be discussed in this House of Commons. Of all the people who opposed Mr. Barnes—I quite agree a number of his colleagues certainly backed him up—Dr. MacNamara on behalf of the same Government of which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the English Universities was a Member and, if I may say so, even a Member now of our party—though I have my doubts—I refer to Dr. Addison, who was also in the Government, like the hon. Gentleman who lately got up on the Tory Benches, did not honestly say, the Bill was a bad Bill, they looked about for other reasons! Ultimately the then Coalition Government brought out the question of legality, and put forward the plea that the Convention might not be
  2504
  quite sound. As Mr. Barnes well put it, it was a flimsy reason and one not becoming the dignity of this House of Commons. I only make these few observations because I want to see this International Labour Convention carried forward in this country at the earliest possible moment.
  2.0 P.M.
  There is no question of an international character which is of more importance to the large number of working people in this country than this one. The point I wish to raise is this: Under the Unemployment Insurance Act at the present time a working man or a working woman who goes to the Employment Exchange and makes a false statement to the manager, or to any official, is liable to prosecution, and either fine or imprisonment. I want to raise a point which I do not think has hitherto been dealt with. Recently I have had, in the city of Glasgow, not one, but a number of cases, in which working men and working women have been disqualified from benefit for five or six weeks at a stretch because the employer went to the exchange and said that such and such a man or such and such a woman had been in their employment, and he or she had been dismissed, or had left for certain reasons which the exchange thought were good enough to allow the stopping of their benefit for a certain period. Another case in which I have had experience is where a working woman left her employment to get other work. The employer informed the exchange that this woman did not want work for certain reasons which he gave to the exchange. It is true, as the right hon. Gentleman will tell me, that those people afterwards got benefit, but working people cannot afford to be without benefit, unjustly withheld, even for one week. If you keep benefit back for five or six weeks, you inflict on them a money loss which can hardly be measured by the sum withheld, even although you afterwards pay them. Let me point out what has happened in Glasgow. Assume that you hold back a man's benefit for six weeks. Immediately be borrows money, possibly from a moneylender; your action, or the action of the employer, in delaying payment is very serious to the man, because it very often

  2505
  puts him in the hands of moneylenders on a small scale and financially embarrasses him.
  I will give one or two concrete cases, and in this connection I would say that I have received every courtesy from officials of the Employment Exchange, and anything I have to complain of is not a complaint against them and their work, but against the actual regulations. Some old colleagues of mine had been working for a firm on the south side of Glasgow. They had been working overtime constantly. Their trade union said: "We have men out of work, so we will approach the firm to see if the overtime cannot be reduced." For the purpose of finding work for the men who were idle, and to save the union, who were paying unemployment benefit, and to save the Employment Exchange, who were paying unemployment benefit, they asked that those men should be given work. Shortly after the union took this step—within a few days—the men were dismissed, and the firm informed the exchange that they had been dismissed because the union had put a bann upon them. The union had not done anything at all, except to negotiate with the firm to see if some other men could be given work, seeing that overtime was being resorted to.
  The secretary of the Engineering Employers' Federation, of which this firm, the Mirrlees Watson Company, were members, wrote to the union telling them that the reason for the dismissal of the men was due to the fact that the work had been completed in its ordinary course. Here was an occasion when men were denied benefit, in two cases at least, not clue, I agree, to the Minister of Labour's Department, but due to the action of the employers in notifying the exchange. Benefit was delayed for six weeks, though they ultimately got thin benefit to which they were entitled. If a workman is to be prosecuted for making a wrong statement, it seems to me that an employer ought to be put on exactly the same footing.
  Let me give this other instance, and then I will conclude. There was a case in which eight women in my district were sent by the exchange to do work at french polishing. When they arrived, the employer started two out of the eight women at work. He told the other six,
  2506
  for some reason or other, that they were not wanted. When the women went back to the exchange they found they were disqualified for benefit because, it was alleged, they had refused to start work. The two women who were given work only received a day and a half's work, and yet the other six were to be disqualified for six weeks in respect of a day and a half's work found for the other two women. The women appeared before the Court of Referees, but they were not organised, and there was no person to put their case, and they were refused benefit. I took up the case with the Minister of Labour, and here I want to pay a tribute to the officials of the Ministry for going into that ease in a very thorough fashion. After it had been inquired into, the Ministry came to the conclusion that the women were right and the employer was wrong, with the result that the six weeks' benefit was ultimately paid, but not until five months after the date when the employer had notified the exchange that the women did not want to work. In having to lie out of this money, a sum of over £4, for five months, these women were suffering a financial hardship of the first magnitude.
  I have illustrated only two cases, but they are typical of many that have happened up and clown the country. Working men are disqualified for six weeks, and though it is true that after the union or some other person fights they get the money, there has been an incalculable loss to the workman and his family—the delay very often means a refusal of food to the family. If a working man or a working woman, if a miner, say, made a deliberately wrong statement to the Exchange regarding the number of his family, or as to his age, or anything of that kind, in many cases, possibly, you would immediately have him prosecuted. I am not asking that you should make criminals of employers, but I am asking that the Minister should at least deal with an employer who inflicts an injury on a workman in the same way as he deals with a workman who inflicts an injury on the Exchange or on the State. We ask the Minister, in his reply, to say that the Regulations shall deal with employers, in order to put an end to many of the hardships which thoughtless employers inflict on men and women for no reason at all. This is an important point

  2507
  affecting many thousands of working men and working women, and I hope something will be done to remedy it.
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: I will endeavour to deal, as briefly as I can, with the two classes of case which have been placed before me. First, I would make my acknowledgments to the hon. Member who has just spoken. I suggested that the present might be a suitable occasion for him to make the point he has done, because normally speaking, and except by the leave of the House, I can speak only once on the Motion for the Adjournment, and otherwise he woud have got no answer from me, and I did not wish him or other hon. Members to be in the position of thinking I had overlooked any point they wanted to raise. I would like to apologise most frankly to the House for a quite small slip which has occurred in this connection, a rills-print in an answer that appeared in the OFFICIAL REPORT, and also in the copy of the answer that was sent to the hon. Member. It was an answer in reply to his question on this point, and is the reason for this subject being raised to-day. My answer, in fact, was that benefit was not disallowed, but it became printed in the OFFICIAL REPORT, and was in the copy of the answer that was sent to the hon. Member, that it was not allowed. Now and then a mere typing slip will occur, and I am sorry if it misled the hon. Member or anyone else. I had between 40 and 50 questions yesterday, and the replies had to be typed afterwards to send copies both to the Members asking the questions and to the OFFICIAL REPORT, and occasionally a slip will occur.
  What the hon. Member asks me to do is to be prepared to prosecute employers when they make a statement which, as in the two cases he laid before me, was a mis-statement, but a perfectly innocent one. He compares that with the prosecutions that occasionally take place of people who make deliberate misstatements to Exchanges or to committees in order to get benefit. I say quite frankly I have, at the present time, no power to do what he asks, and, what is more, I do not propose to take power to do it. The cases seem to me to be quite different. In cases where anyone obtains benefit who is not entitled to it I have to use a, certain
  2508
  amount of discretion as to whether a prosecution should be instituted or not. Cases have come up to me where a misstatement has been innocently made, and no prosecution has followed. I remember one case where the mis-statement was not innocent, but I came to the conclusion that the man who made that mis-statement was, perhaps, not quite right in his mind, and I said: "This does not seem a case for prosecution." Cases in which prosecutions take place are cases where there is a perfectly deliberate attempt to defraud.
  In the other class of cases, what does the whole matter really amount to? I will not say that I am tired of saying to the House, but I am sure the House must be tired of hearing it from me, that all I want to do is to get justice, to see that the people who are entitled to benefit get it, and people who are not entitled to it do not get it. I follow that course with great difficulty among the bogs and quicksands that surround my course, and I do it as well as I can. In the course of our work we have, where we can, to get statements from employers as to why employés are discharged. The statement is shown to the employé, so that he or she may not be prejudiced in the presentation of the case. In the case of the Mirrlees Watson Company, there was a wrong statement. As far as I can remember the details, among those of all the cases that pass through my hands, it was a case in which they were working two shifts, and had asked certain leading hands to work overtime so as to dovetail the work, so to speak, and make it flow on continuously from the first shift to the second. That was the extent of the overtime—it was undertaken, so to speak, to marry the work of the two shifts harmoniously together. A question had arisen with the union about the overtime and the reason why these men left was written down, if I remember the words rightly, as that the union had "placed a bann on them." That was not so: the fact was that the work had terminated, and that the second shift was at an end. I think that was the mistake. As far as I remember the case, they themselves took the initiative in bringing the facts to the notice of the exchange. I am bound to say that I think it would be grossly improper and wrong to bring prosecutions in cases of that kind. Do not let it be thought

  2509
  for a moment that I am denying the hardships to people which may arise from delays. I am quite prepared to do anything in my power with the object of avoiding it, and the local exchange officers are also anxious to see that any such delay is reduced to a minimum, but I think the hon. Member exaggerates when he talks of thousands of people being placed in this plight. He has just raised this point. The Insurance Acts have been in force now for many years. I am sure my predecessor was not an unsympathetic person. I do not think this matter came before him, as it would have come if it had been such a common occurrence. Therefore I will say that I will do my best in any case to try to see that delays of that kind are avoided and shortened as far as possible. I think we would be going from one bad thing to another if we were to do a thing so unjust as to try to get powers to prosecute.
  I will now turn to the other questions which have arisen in the course of the debate in regard to the International Labour Office and Conventions. The hon. Member who spoke first from the opposite benches raised certain questions about non-ratification. The questions which he raised were the Maternity Convention, the Convention about the methods of employment of seamen, one as regards the minimum age for agriculture, and then there were three Merchant Shipping Conventions, for indemnity for loss of work, for a minimum age for trimmers and stokers, and for the examination of young persons at sea. I will tell him at once what the state of affairs is with regard to those conventions.
  As regards the Maternity Convention, the reason why it has not been ratified is one that is well known to my predecessors as well as to myself. It is generally considered that the position of married women in this country under National Health Insurance has proceeded along quite different lines from the maternity conventions, but on the whole they have been secured as favourable conditions. As it is on different lines, however, they cannot be harmonised.
  As regards the minimum age of entry into agriculture, that is the absolute practice in England at the moment, but I believe in Scotland and in Northern Ireland there are a few cases which are not in harmony with the terms of the Con-
  2510
  vention itself. I will consult about that, but I think it is not a matter of very vital importance. The matters of greater importance are those which affect the Mercantile Marine and persons employed in it.
  As regards employment exchanges, the Convention which was proposed provided for joint bodies being set up by employers and employed for the purposes of engage-men of seamen in different ports. England is a country in which that is a much more complicated problem than in all the other great countries. The fact is that at this moment in certain ports the attempt is being made between the employers and the employed to have joint places where the engagements can be made, but as a matter of fact the employment exchanges of the Government in other ports really effect the same object as efficiently. From that point of view I am not at all sure that it will not be a retrograde step in all cases to try to follow out the principle of the Convention in its entirety. In some cases I think it is quite possible that the present system in force in this country and the experiments we are now making on slightly different lines are really more desirable from the point of view of the seamen themselves. As to the other three Conventions dealing with seamen, the indemnity for loss of employment and loss of pay, for the minimum age at which trimmers and stokers should be engaged, and for medical examination of young persons, those were embodied in the Merchant Shipping Bill which received a Second Reading in the House of Lords on 25th March, and I trust will come down to this House in the course of this Session, so that the legislation will, I hope, be put through in order to enable all three to be ratified before the Session finishes.
  That is the position with regard to the other Conventions which were not dealt with by the Home Secretary. As regards the right hon. Gentleman's next point, he asked, in the first place, whether all Conventions which are adopted at Geneva should not be subsequently ratified, and he also asked that anyone who goes to Geneva should have plenary powers in order to compromise. I quite agree with the right hon. Member for the English Universities (Mr. Fisher) that if it is possible for anyone to go there who has got

  2511
  full, complete, and final authority on the part of the Government, then it is possible for him to go prepared to make a compromise and afterwards to have it ratified. But, humanly speaking, it is not always possible. If you send officials there with power to compromise, the Government and the country ought to have the chance of saying afterwards whether the Convention arrived at by compromise is one which so fits in with the rest of its industry that it can be ratified. I say for myself—and here I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend—that if a Convention is adopted at Geneva by the country it ought to be on the understanding that the Government of the country intends to ratify and will do its very best to ratify it, but that it should consider itself absolutely bound to do so without any loophole for withdrawal, I think he will himself recognise is not practical politics.
  I was asked by the same right hon. Member whether we were considering getting other countries to ratify. We are considering the methods of approaching foreign countries more effectively and we are considering at the present moment how to do it. Those are some of the preliminary questions with which he dealt. Now about the eight-hours' question—
  Mr. SHAW: Will the right hon. Gentleman devote his attention, before he leaves this matter, to the statement that was made that these conferences cost £100 per week. It is a small thing, but it does make a difference.
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: As far as I know, the cost is something about £16 a week. That is off-hand.
  Sir F. WISE: It is a little more than that.
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: That is a very hasty calculation, and it is very hard to be called upon to do mental arithmetic while one is on one's legs.
  Sir F. WISE: I have not raised it.
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: No; the hon. Member is much too careful to use figures which cannot be fully substantiated.
  Major KINDERSLEY: I have not raised it either.
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: I have just been brought the information that my figure of £16 a week was precisely accurate. I divided the number of people into the cost. The right hon. Gentleman who spoke with regard to the Eight Hours Convention treated my hon. Friend behind me and my hon. Friend below the Gangway a little severely. He asked that they should stick absolutely to facts. I wonder if the right hon. Gentleman has stuck to facts quite accurately himself. He said that the French Minister of Labour was a constant attender at Geneva through the session.
  Mr. SHAW Mr. SHAW indicated dissent.
  Sir A. STEEL- MAITLAND: It whittles down then, I gather. He made statements with regard to a German Minister attending at Geneva. For how long?
  Mr. SHAW: He put in an appearance.
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: As a matter of fact then, their attendance—if it come to putting in an appearance—is a very different thing indeed from having the responsible head of the department there in attendance conducting the business. That was really the inference which I myself drew from the right hon. Member's speech, even if he did not wish to convey it. The other statement which he made was that France was absolutely ready to ratify and I gather that le said Germany was ready to ratify too. He is such a stickler for facts that he may have later information on the subject than I have.
  Mr. SHAW: I think I have.
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: It is very likely. At any rate so far as I know, the German Minister of Labour stated that he had never refused ratification in principle and was prepared to come to an understanding with the other States concerned in regard to the interpretation of the Convention and the extent of their obligations thereunder. Then he proceeded to talk about Article 14 and the difficulties of Article 14. That is not that readiness immediately to ratify it.
  Mr. SHAW: My information is clear end precise that not only the French Minister of Labour but the German Minister of Labour stated quite recently

  2513
  that they are willing to recommend ratification, and as a matter of fact in a pamphlet I have in my pocket issued by the League of Nations Union they evidently have the same information because Germany is marked there as willing to recommend ratification.
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: I am quoting from the official publication of the International Labour Office for March. I am not sure from what the right hon. Gentleman is quoting. I take the next point of the facts which the right hon. Gentleman has stated. That is that it is a definite legal obligation upon this country.
  Mr. SHAW: (passing across a paper) There it is.
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: We will quarrel as to the Minister's readiness afterwards, in friendliness. With regard to the point with which he belabours my hon. Friend below the Gangway, I think the right hon. Gentleman stated that we were under a legal obligation to submit the Eight Hours Convention to Parliament.
  Mr. SHAW: I stated that in my opinion they were.
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: I think the right hon. Gentleman's opinion is quite wrong. What the hon. Member below the Gangway said as to the constitutional position was right in every particular. The power of ratification lies with the proper competent authority. That proper competent authority differs in various countries. In some it may be the Legislature. In the United States it is the Senate, in this country it is the Crown, acting on the advice of responsible Ministers.
  Mr. SHAW: I am sorry to interrupt again, but is it possible for the Crown, acting on the advice of responsible Ministers, to pass this into law?
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: It is possible for the Crown to ratify, acting on the advice of responsible Ministers; and, of course, that means the Government of the day, on whom the responsibility really lies.
  Captain BENN: Is there any reason why the Government should not consult the House of Commons and take their view?
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: I will deal with that later. May I spend just five minutes in making this point quite clear. The proper competent authority to conclude an agreement or ratify a convention is of course the Crown, acting on the advice of responsible Ministers; that is to say, the Government of the day. There have been one or two cases in which there was some limitation in this respect, but they do not affect this question at all. There was the question of cession of territory in 1890, but it does not affect this point. The misconception which really exists in the right hon. Gentleman's mind lies in the difference between the proper competent authority to ratify a convention and the body with whom the fundamental power eventually rests. It. is as though you were taking a public company in whose articles of association it might be provided that the seal of the company should be affixed by the secretary and the general manager. They would be the "competent authority" to execute a document dealing with some other company, but, of course, the general manager and secretary would have to keep on good terms with the general board of directors, otherwise they would be removed from their office. And the general board of directors would, in turn, have to answer to the shareholders' meeting. It is very similar in the present case.
  The fundamental power, of course, lies with Parliament, or more truly still, not with Parliament, but with the electorate. But the competent authority to ratify is beyond question the Executive of the day. Then as to the question of carrying it into law. A Convention is not carried into law; it never is. What happens is this. A Convention is an obligation to other countries. No doubt to carry it out administratively and fulfil your obligations to these countries the Departments require certain statutory powers. In some cases they possess these powers already, as in the case of unemployment insurance. Consequently, the Executive was perfectly able to ratify that Convention without necessarily coming to Parliament for powers. When it comes to other conventions, then the Departments are not able to carry out these conventions unless they have new statutory powers. The result is that in this country the Executive has to come to Parliament and get Acts passed under which they know that the Departments, acting subse-

  2515
  quently, can carry out the obligations that the conventions impose. Then the executive ratifies the conventions. I apologise to the House for saying all this, but that is the mere statement of the case. With regard to conventions generally, and apart from legislation to give operative effect afterwards, of course the Government of the day presents the convention to Parliament in order that Parliament should know what the Convention is. It presented the Washington Convention and all the other Conventions since have been presented to Parliament. That is the actual position. These are the facts which I am sorry to have to press on the attention of the right hon. Gentleman. There is only one other ground on which he can possibly claim that the legal position has not been properly maintained. If he will look at the Versailles Treaty—I see he has it before him—and will turn to Clause 405—
  Mr. SHAW: Mine is in French.
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: I will hand him my English copy. In Clause 405, he will find these words:
  "Each of the Principals undertakes that it will bring the recommendations or draft conventions before the authority or authorities within whose competence the matter lies for the enactment of legislation or other action."
  The whole point of this lies in what is meant by the word "matter." It can conceivably be argued that the word means taking the legislative power which can give operative effect to conventions afterwards. But if you read the whole of this Clause you will find in the second paragraph later down, a sentence which makes it quite clear that "matter" does mean actual ratification. I do not wish to take up too much time of the House on this one point or bore the House with a disquisition on the constitutional position.
  Mr. SHAW: Is it possible to deal with these conventions and carry them without legislation?
  Sir A. STEEL-MAITLAND: Certainly not. All I have endeavoured to do is to make the situation clear, and apparently I have not yet made it clear to the right hon. Gentleman. The competent authority is the Executive, but legislation would
  2516
  be needed in order to give operative effect, and for that the Executive would have to come to Parliament. If however the Executive does not want the Convention and is against carrying it into effect, it would be absurd for it to present a Bill to Parliament and then have a vote against the Bill itself. Now, with regard to the Eight Hours Convention. The real case is this: The right hon. Member for the English Universities (Mr. Fisher) asked me whether we could pass this Convention. I think he must have had a change of heart or of head since the day when he was a member of the Government. In practice British industry in a large measure conforms to the spirit of the Convention, and to some extent is really ahead of it. That is another fact on which I should like to challenge the right hon. Gentleman opposite; I must ask him to give the hours of labour in Italy and France as compared with this country. Not only is it the almost universal custom here to fix by agreement a standard maximum normal working week and by agreement to pay' extra rates for overtime, but in almost all industrial undertakings that maximum is forty-eight hours, and in a number of important industries it is less. The general objects at which the Convention aims have been at least as completely secured in this country as in any of the countries who participate in the Convention. The Government are not aware that any representative opinion in this country desires that there should be any alteration of these agreements in the direction of raising the normal working week above forty-eight hours as at present. But the variety of British industries is very great, and they have advanced in this matter by voluntary agreement and by diverse methods, each adopting an arrangement of hours as best suits its particular needs.
  The terms of the Convention are unfortunately in this respect very precise and rigid, particularly in regard to the limits of daily working hours and the duration and arrangements of overtime. It hardly appears to have contemplated the necessity of providing a continuity of operation in certain industries, such as railways, or the fact of the British custom to observe half-holidays or in some instance whole days off in addition to Sundays. Neither the present nor any

  2517
  preceding Government has found it possible to frame a Bill which will conform to the terms of the Convention in its present form and which will not involve the abrogation of existing agreements in important industries, and gravely imperil if not destroy that elasticity of reasonable freedom of self-government which both employers and employed in British industries should quite rightly prize. It is for these reasons that His Majesty's Government in 1921 suggested the consideration of the possibility of a revision of the Convention in the light of experience. His Majesty's Government, I wish to make this quite clear, are in the fullest accord with the aspirations expressed in Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles. In their view the International Labour Organisation can and ought to be organised more fully than in the past for the purpose of improving the conditions of labour in the more backward countries of the world, conditions which constitute an obstacle in the way of nations which, like Great Britain, desire to effect still further improvements in the lot of their own workers. But we are not satisfied that as much has been done by way of the ratification of conventions by other countries as could have been done. While His Majesty's Government do not at present see their way to overcome the difficulties which prevent the formal ratification of the Hours Convention in its present form it is our intention to cooperate to the fullest extent with the International Labour Office in carrying out the principles laid down in Part XIII of the Treaty. I want to make the position quite clear in regard to two final points. One is the question referred to by the right hon. Gentleman and the other is the observation that we are behind other countries in this matter. It has been said that, with the exception of France and Germany, other countries were in front of us in the matter of ratification. I put it to the House that to say that "with the exception of France and Germany" such is the case is like playing "Hamlet" without the Prince of Denmark. The attitude of France and Germany is of vital importance to this Country.
  In the next place I submit to the House that it is not a question merely of ratification. It is a question of introducing
  2518
  the necessary legislation to carry out the ratification. As the right hon. Gentleman himself has just said, perfectly rightly, and I agree with nearly every word he said, after legislation has been passed it is necessary to see that the legislation is carried into operation by administration. I would be the last, to level a taunt at any other foreign country as to its legislation, still less as to administration, but if the right hon. Gentleman will consult his own table, which he offered to lend to me just now, and which we will consider together afterwards, he will find, in the first place, that legislation to carry out Conventions is as vital as, or even more vital than, ratification itself. If he will study that chart, he will find that this country is a long way ahead in ratification and legislation together, in regard to international labour matters. The right hon. Gentleman belongs to that self-disparaging type of Englishman who does it with the best motives. I do not want to boast too much, but I do not want us not to have the credit which we do deserve. If the right hon. Gentleman will examine both lines of the chart, the first for ratification and the second for legislation, he will find that we are not behind any other of the great countries. Further, the point that was made by the hon. Member who spoke first was that we prided ourselves on being the first to ratify, but that other countries ratified more quickly than we did. The hon. Member, however, omitted to think of one very important point. In this country, when new legislation is needed, in order to make sure that we can fulfil our obligations when we have ratified, we carry that new legislation first of all, and we ratify afterwards, and that is not the universal practice elsewhere. Consequently, that is a full, complete, final and sufficient answer to the point which the hon. Member made.
  Let me just say this in conclusion. I think I agree almost absolutely with the right hon. Gentleman in his attitude towards the International Labour Office. In so far as we think that we are a country which, in regard to industrial conditions generally, is ahead of most other foreign countries, it would seem absurd not to be friendly towards an International Labour Organisation the primary, expressed object of which is to level the conditions of backward countries up to those that are more progress-

  2519
  sive. Therefore, in that general outlook, I agree absolutely with the right hon. Gentleman. I find myself here, as in the administration of unemployment benefit in a most invidious position. I always seem to be standing half-way between the enthusiasts who want to go straight ahead and sign everything, and those who hang back because they are too suspicious to go ahead at all. I do not know which are the worst—the people who want to leap before they look, or the people who will neither look nor leap.
  What I really want to do is to see if we cannot make the best possible use of the International Labour Office, and, there- fore, I want its work to be practical. I want that, so far as we can, in one way and another, the Conventions made should suit the needs closely. I want a country which genuinely wants a convention not to find it difficult to ratify it because it is so expressed that you cannot put the existing life of the country into the straight jacket which that particular Convention would provide. That is really the difficulty. We want these Conventions to fit the circumstances carefully. We want to try to see that ratification should go, as far as possible, concurrently, not necessarily in every country that is a member of the League, because that would be quite impracticable, but, at any rate, in the great countries that are concerned with the progress of one another in any particular great industry. Lastly, and here I am at one with the right hon. Gentleman, and although other work has been pressing, I have already been working on the subject, we want to see how far we can ensure that administration in countries as well as legislation is really calculated to carry out the Conventions we desire. The International Labour Office is young, and has a very difficult task before it. We have to try to combine the ideal and the real, because they are ultimately the same, and to go forward trying to see that the conventions, the ratifications, the legislation and the administration should gradually be kept up at a standard pace in the different countries. It is only in that way that you can get real, genuine progress in the end, a progress in international labour organisation which will, in the end, command the fullest consent of the different countries.
  Captain BENN Captain BENN rose—
  Mr. BATEY: On a point of Order. The Members representing mining constituencies arranged with Mr. Speaker that, when this last Debate finished, we should be allowed to discuss the closing of coal mines. This Debate has lasted an hour and a half longer than was anticipated, and we have been cut out of that time. You are now, Mr. Deputy Speaker, proposing to take another subject, which does not seem to be in accordance with the arrangement which Mr. Speaker made with us.
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Captain FitzRoy): The actual length of the Debate is a matter in regard to which I am unable to interfere. It depends upon hon. Members themselves how long they take to deal with a particular subject. As regards the question which the hon. Member has raised as to the subject now to be discussed, according to the instructions I have received there are numerous subjects which are to be dealt with under one head, and I called upon the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain Benn), who, I understand, will deal with one of the subjects comprised under that head.
  Mr. DUNCAN GRAHAM: Before you call upon the hon. and gallant Member, may I put it to you that this is not in accordance with the arrangement that has been come to? We were to come on at half-past two—
  Mr. BATEY: Half-past one.
  Mr. GRAHAM: It is now three o'clock. The Debate will finish at five o'clock, and the probabilities are that we shall not get an opportunity of dealing with this matter. I put it to you, and also to the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain Benn), that this matter is of so much importance to us that we might, at least, get an opportunity now of putting it before the House. Otherwise, it will mean that the mining Members will have to take more drastic action than they have done. I do not want to be in any way disagreeable to hon. Members, but our patience has been nearly exhausted. I hope that the hon. and gallant Member for Leith will recognise the claim we put forward, that we should have an opportunity of dealing with this question.

  ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE (EASTER).

    SHIPBUILDING AND COAL INDUSTRIES.
    Captain BENN: I would explain to you, Sir, that we on these benches have no desire to interfere with the very important subject which our hon. Friends desire to raise. We have not, so far, except for one short speech, taken any part in the Debate, and I can assure you that the remarks which I desire to make, on a subject which is also of great importance and which interests hon. Members above the Gangway as well, will not be long. I shall use every endeavour to make my remarks as brief as possible, in order that their topic may be raised at the earliest possible moment.
    Before I deal with the main subject on which I want to speak, there is one small point that I should like to put to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade. It refers to the inquiry into the lace industry. It has been represented to me that some consumers of lace—tnat is to say, individuals who actually buy lace—wish to appear before the Committee in order to lay their case before it. They want to come forward and explain exactly how a duty on lace would affect their own weekly budget. This is a Committee which has been set up, not by this House or under any Statute, but by the right hon. Gentleman. The instructions to the Committee are given by the right hon. Gentleman himself, and I want, therefore, to ask him whether he would so good as to make arrangements, before the inquiry is closed, for one or two individuals representing those who will be affected by any rise in the price of lace to lay their case before the Committee, in order that their interests shall not be overlooked in any decision to which the Committee may come.
    I want now for a few moments to speak on the question of shipbuilding. This is a large national question, which has been specially brought home to those of us who represent districts where the work goes on. There was published yesterday in the "Times" an extract from Lloyd's Quarterly Return, giving some figures as to the amount of shipbuilding that is proceeding in the world to-day, and I want to quote two sets of those figures. In the first place, it was stated that, of the motor ships being built, 135, of a tonnage of about 600,000, were being built abroad at
    2522
    this moment, and that 54, of a tonnage of about 350,000, were being built at home. As regards building in general, the figures are, for Great Britain, about 1,165,000 tons, and for foreign yards 1,231,000 tons.
    In the first place, as regards motor ships, nobody who is not engaged in ship-owning or shipbuilding can make any remarks of value as to what place the motorship holds or will hold in the carrying trade, but I would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is satisfied that this country is keeping its lead in the matters of science and scientific research and advance. In passing, I would, if he will not think I am dragging in King Charles's head, remind him that all that class of legislation which prevents intercourse between countries—whether Reparation Recovery Acts, protective duties, or Aliens Acts—all this xenophobia, because that is the class into which it falls, tends to cut off this country from world thought; and the tendency, to put it no higher, is to drive us back and handicap our free advance into the foremost position in scientific matters. That, however, is merely an obiter dictum.
    On the general question, the loss of the building of the five ships, which brought home to the minds of the public in a very vigorous way the dangerous position into which we are drifting, means, of course, not only the loss of that particular work, but the loss to a great many other ancillary trades which are concerned in providing the materials of which the ships would be constructed, ranging from coal right down to engines and instruments, and so forth. Although I admit at once that I have no high opinion of interference by politicians in industry, because I think that, as an absolute rule, industrialists understand a great deal more about it than we do here, at the same time we must ask, as politicians, whether the policy of the Government., be it their foreign policy or their home policy, is in any way affecting trade, or can be altered so that it would favourably affect the progress of trade.
    3.0 P.M.
    If we look at the foreign policy of our Government and of our Allies, we are entitled to ask how far it has contributed to the fall of the mark, and the consequent export bounty to Germany which that involves. Further, we are entitled to ask how far the occupation of the Ruhr, to which the right hon. Gentleman

    2523
    himself was very sympathetic at the time, has contributed to our defeat in this competition for the five motor ships. I
    believe one of the companies concerned had a share of that large subsidy of 700,000,000 gold marks which was paid by the German Government in compensation to the industrialists who suffered under the Ruhr occupation, and though I am aware that the shipbuilding company in question, and I think German official sources also, deny with vigour that any subsidy has been paid in respect of those five ships, we may ask whether they have not in fact been subsidised in an indirect way, namely, by participation in the Ruhr subsidy, which itself was a consequence of the policy of one of the Allies.
    There is another question. It was a favourite cry during the election of 1918 that we would exact ton for ton from the Germans for the ships they destroyed of our mercantile marine, and we took a great deal of mercantile tonnage from them. It. was stated two years ago that the German Government had paid no less than £13,000,000 to the shipowners of Germany in compensation for the ships which had been taken from them in reparations. I further observe that in this shipbuilding firm which got the order for the five ships one of the participators is a shipowning line, which no doubt drew part of the benefit of this £13,000,000 which was paid in consequence of the reparation policy of the Allies to the German shipowners to put them in funds in their work and no doubt to help to equip them to meet us successfully in competition.
    I say no more about the foreign position, but I turn to the home aspect. There is no question of wages nor is it in any way the fault of the Unions. At present conferences are proceeding between the shipbuilding workers and the shipbuilding employers, and if there is any way in which the right hon. Gentleman could assist that conference I think it is highly desirable he should do so, but at any rate we are entitled to say that all those engaged in the industry have shown the greatest readiness to face the difficulties and do their best to put the industry on a better footing. At the first of these conferences Mr. John Barr,
    2524
    the President of the Shipbuilding Employers Federation, put out five points as the reasons for their present difficulty. I want to take these five points and indicate where I think the policy of the Government may be so adjusted or directed as to assist the industry.
    Mr. D. GRAHAM: If the hon. and gallant Gentleman is going to take these five points, does he mean to take a quarter of an hour over each of them? Our patience is about exhausted, and I warn Members of the House.
    Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The hon. Member must not raise points like that.
    Captain BENN: If the hon. Member will have patience I will not exhaust the time of the House. I fully realise the importance of what he wishes to raise, but I also represent a constituency where tens of thousands of men are walking the streets because they cannot get work in the shipbuilding yards. He will understand that I have my duty also to discharge to those who have sent me to this House. The first of these five points was the price of coal. This touches the matter in which the hon. Member is interested. I am not aware that the Government has any policy in regard to the coal situation at all. We are drifting, as far as I can see, to disaster. Months are passing and I ask the right hon. Gentleman in reply to me and to the hon. Members above the Gangway what policy has the Government? The second point was the price of steel. Of course the price of coal is a factor, and perhaps a dominating factor, in the price of steel. The only information we have as to any Government policy touching the price of steel is that the industry is asking the right hon. Gentleman for a duty. We do not know whether he is going to grant it. He will not tell us officially, though one can find out in conversation outside, whether he has had such a request. The only indication he has given in the matter of steel is that he is sympathetic to the idea, where necessary, of giving a duty. The third point that Mr. Barr put was the weight of local rates and taxes. I am glad to see the Government has introduced a Rating Bill to-day, and I hope it may do something to prevent the concentration on the poorer districts of the heavy burden of unemployment, which means high rates, of course,

    2525
    for the employers. As regards taxes, the only part of the Government policy which touches this is the heavy charge they propose to incur in such matters as the Singapore base. They may very well be building a base in the mud at Singapore at the expense of the shipbuilding operatives in the ports of this country. The fourth point of Mr. Barr was the excessive cost of living. That, of course, is touched by the whole burden of taxes, and also by the burden of indirect taxation. The fifth point Mr. Barr made was the longer working hours abroad. On that subject we have had a lengthy Debate to-day, and I would suggest, following what has been said by hon. Members above the Gangway, that a more energetic attempt to level up the labour conditions abroad would itself be a very serious and useful step towards assisting our workers, who are the best in the world by the admission of everyone, to hold their own in this competition. I have made the points I desired to make, and I hope I have opened a discussion touching also on the coal trade which may lead to some fruitful result. In particular, when the right hon. Gentleman has time—it is outside the ordinary scope—I ask him to answer the special question about the witnesses coming before that inquiry.
    Mr. WHITELEY: While not minimising the serious position in the shipbuilding industry, I wish to call attention to the very serious position with which the mining industry is faced. As a matter of fact, it has become a real national problem, and no real attempt is being made, either on the part of the colliery owners or of the Government, to endeavour to bring this industry back to a real economic basis. We have collieries being laid down in every part of the country. In Durham we have 40,000 men and lads unemployed in the mines. We have thousands more who are just working three or four days per week, and in many cases they are having to apply to the boards of guardians in order to secure relief in that way, and it is a strange thing that we are going through the old process that we have gone through so many times when the coal trade has been in a serious condition. A colliery is laid down, and as soon as the employer gives the men notice he says, although there is a depression in trade, although they cannot get a sale for their
    2526
    coal and there are no buyers to be secured, if the men are prepared to accept a reduction in wages or to extend their hours, he is prepared to keep the pits open, although he says it is impossible to get rid of his coal.
    Captain ARTHUR EVANS: At the present price.
    Mr. WHITELEY: I know all about it. If you will keep quiet I will tell you something about it. The question of price is the real thing, and the question of price can only be dealt with, it would appear, by asking the workers in the industry to bear further reduction in their wages, or to have their hours increased so that they may increase the production in order to cheapen the price. I want to say to the House and to the Minister of Mines, that the miners of this country cannot give away anything more in wages, or consent to any increase of hours, and that there must be something given from the other side. All along the history of the coal mines, or in other industries, it is simply the workers every time who have been called upon to give away something. We have now got beyond that stage in the coal mining industry.
    We have been told in this House time and time again that the British miner believes in a system of ca'canny, but figures were given to this House a week ago by the Minister of Mints which show that the British miner is the most productive miner in Europe. We have a maximum shift of seven hours in the mines of this country. In Germany they have eight hours per shift and in Belgium and France they have a 48-hours week, and yet with our short hours the figures from the Mines Department show that we are producing 17¾ cwts. per man shift, as against Germany's 17½ cwts., the French miner 11 cwts., and the Belgian miner 9 cwts. The French and Belgian miners, about whom we do not hear so much in debates in this House, are only able to produce that small quantity because they have a lower wage, of about 5s. 5d. per shift. On these facts, the British miner has no need to be ashamed of the part he is playing in the production of coal.
    Some time ago Mr. Lovat Fraser made a statement that the War has so developed our improvements in machinery, and that machinery has been

    2527
    so brought into the industries of this country that we are producing too much to-day, and the world cannot consume the production brought about by this increase of machinery. We know and we believe that the world never produces too much. If the production of the world was so distributed that the consumers were getting a fair share and were able to live decently, everyone would be employed. That is one of the difficulties we have to face to-day.
    Is any serious attempt being made to bring the mining industry back to a true economic position? The Mines Department ought to be making suggestions to the employers in that direction, because we have reached a stage when the miners cannot give anything more away. Various suggestions have been made, and perhaps others will be made to-day, that will assist us in bringing the industry back to a normal position. If we have made up our minds that the coal industry is essential to the national well-being, we ought to tackle this as a real problem, and not tinker with it in the way we have done in the past, and in the way that is being sugggested, that miners should be asked to take over a single pit that is uneconomic and try to work it. That kind of thing is no use; it leads us nowhere, even if we are successful in making a single pit pay on these lines. The nation ought to tackle this matter in a national way, because coal is a basic asset. We should tackle it as a national problem, and not allow it to be dealt with along these insignificant lines.
    We have advocated in the past that the coal industry is so important to the nation that it ought to be dealt with as a unit and the whole proceeds ought to be pooled. Durham County does not want to have any special privileges over Cumberland. The men in Cumberland and in Kent, as in Yorkshire and Durham are giving the best they can under the conditions of mining life there, and we say that all these men should be treated in exactly the same manner, once we have made up our minds that this material is necessary to be worked in the interests of the nation. We have suggested from time to time that in order to cheapen the price of coal we should tackle the question of distribution from the national point of view. Let us get rid of the coal factor, the coal merchant and all the
    2528
    intermediaries between the pit-head and the consumer, so that we may cheapen the price of coal to the consumer and the workers in the mines may have a better wage.
    In February, 1919—the Minister of Mines may have the document in his Department—there was a verbatim report of an interview that took place between the Miner's Federation and the then Prime Minister on the question of carbonising of coal, and there was a promise given on behalf of the Government that the matter should be dealt with from the national point of view. We suggest that that should be taken up seriously and that everything that has been suggested along those lines for making use of coal should be gone into by the Government with a view to the industry being put upon an economic basis.
    Evidence before the Sankey Commission proved conclusively that there is much watered capital in the mining industry. Bonus shares were given during a period when dividends were so high that the colliery owners did not want to get public opinion against themselves by paying such high dividends. Therefore, they paid the money out in bonus shares, and afterwards they paid ordinary interest and dividend on the watered capital that had been created by the bonus share. We suggest that the share capital in the industry ought to be brought down at once to its normal point by eliminating the watered capital caused by the bonus shares, and that, if necessary, the remaining share capital should be written down to the lowest possible point, to enable the industry to be brought back to a true economic condition. It is no use a shareholder having £2,000 worth of shares in a colliery which is not working and giving no return. He had far better have £1,000 worth of shares at 5 per cent. in a colliery that is working. On these lines something must be done in order to bring the industry back to something like a normal position. If the colliery owners refuse to examine these avenues, with a view to bringing the industry back to a normal position, the Government ought to take over the industry and deal with it on national lines in the interests of the community, and stop this closing of pits simply for the purpose of reducing wages and increasing hours.
    Sir PHILIP RICHARDSON: Perhaps a back bencher may be able to express views which may be useful later on. I wish to refer to the subject of shipbuilding, which affects the great ports of the Clyde, the Tyne, the Tees and elsewhere. I wish to urge upon the Government, that at the earliest possible moment they should give a better opportunity than is afforded by the Motion for Adjournment for the discussion of this subject, which is of such vital importance. One industry depends on another. There is no use in anybody claiming that the mining industry stands only by itself. The question of shipbuilding is, to my mind, not as well understood as it might be, so that it becomes all the more urgent to have it fully discussed in this House.
    The hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain W. Bonn) referred to the question of Germany. I have here particulars of contracts, amounting to something like £3,500,000, which have been given, not to Germany, but to France and to Holland. These are contracts from other countries. I have, in shipbuilding, a subject which I could discuss for the space of two hours, but I am only going to give a few headings. I would be glad to discuss it in detail, but that cannot be done in the short time at our disposal. I understand from friends, who deal with a, firm of which I am a director, that last year, work to the extent of £3,500,000 has gone elsewhere for various reasons. Work has gone to France, for one reason because of the exchange. That is a question which should be explored. Work has gone to Holland, and we want to know why. It has gone for a variety of reasons. I am not one who says that the workmen should be asked to work longer hours. I have always said that we should put our heads together to get the true reason.
    There is far too much of hon. Gentlemen opposite and hon. Gentlemen on this side making party politics out of that which is a national question. The shipbuilding industry is vital to our nation. Let us get down to an understanding of the business part of the question, not merely throwing accusations at each other, but trying to find out the truth. I have referred to France and the question of the exchange. In the case of Holland the hours of labour are supposed to be
    2530
    regulated, but the regulations are not observed. The question in Germany is in a different position. I am not going into details, because I cannot enter into all these matters in 10 minutes. There wages are also a difficulty. I have particulars of all the wages at my command. They are roughly as five is to three. I should like to see all workers getting the best wages, but we have to compete at present with German wages, which are very much below ours. Next we have the incident of taxation. Taxation is a toll on products, and products are merely labour plus profit, if there is any. At the present time there is not any. If you have a deduction from labour in the form of taxation, obviously the cost of the product must be greater. That is what is happening at present. It is not only the general taxation, but you have the local rates, which have gone up enormously. Our shipbuilders have to bear these heavy rates, so that they cannot offer in the markets of the world a price which will be accepted.
    Then there is the question of the sheltered trades. I have particulars of the City of Newcastle, where the corporation joiners and plumbers are paid higher rates of wages than similar men in the shipbuilding industry. The result is discouragement to those who are in the shipbuilding industry. Incidentally a large number of the most skilled men on that account are leaving our country, and going elsewhere where their industry may be more profitably sold to employers. There are various other points that arise. For instance, referring to Germany, I take it from a Hamburg paper that Germany recently voted a sum of 50,000,000 gold marks to be advanced to shipowners up to the 1st of June next, upon certain terms. These are that the shipowners will pay for the first year interest at a rate of 1½ per cent., for the second year at the rate of 4 per cent., and for the third year at 6 per cent., always provided that the rate of interest shall be 1 per cent, below bank rate. That is a subsidy to the industry of shipowning, and therefore to the industry of shipbuilding. That is a subsidy which, I think, is worth the Government's consideration.
    The next question is that of trade union restrictions. These may be divided into, first, the number of unions, second, the demarcation restrictions, and, third, labour-saving devices. We know that

    2531
    in Germany and Holland we have still semi-skilled and unskilled men, and we know that the semi-skilled men perform jobs which would be given in this country to fully-skilled men, and which consequently cost lower there. Also, in those countries there is a minimum wage, it is not shown individually, but to the class. That is again an avenue that should be explored, because it is important to recognise that the Germans and Dutch approach the business, whether as employers or employed, from the point of view of getting the best results. We all want to see wages at the highest possible level, but wages surely mean the results of products, and the whole of the products are merely the result of labour plus profit, if there is one. Consequently, the more we can produce the greater the product and the higher the wage. Where the wages are highest you get the best product.
    Nobody is in favour of low wages, least of all those in the industry with which I am connected. I hope that on some future occasion these matters may be dealt with more fully. We have in the shipbuilding industry 84,000 men unemployed, and we have in the allied industry, engineering, 86,000 unemployed. These men have to depend on the other industries of the country. One industry is interlockedd with another. I am at present concerned as a member of a large shipbuilding firm in presenting headings for a discussion of matters affecting the shipbuilding industry because at present we are subject to most severe foreign competition, which is largely subsidised, that is to say, the competition of Germany. We are also subject to competition where there are longer hours, largely by the Dutch, and to foreign competition influenced by the exchange, largely by the French. It is no use in getting up academic arguments as to what is to happen with regard to conventions and other things which we hope may happen in the future when our shipyard will be closed and our work will be ended before these things ever come to pass. I hope that we may have an early opportunity of getting down in debate to the bedrock facts as to why shipbuilding is leaving this country so that we may be able to benefit those for whom we are most immediately interested.
    Mr. GEORGE HALL: While we agree as to the situation of shipbuilding in this country, and that the figures given by the hon. Member for Chertsey (Sir P. Richardson) are appalling, still we find that the mining situation is even worse from the point of view of unemployment. In February this year there was an increase of 100,000 unemployed in the mining industry as compared with February of last year, and unfortunately that does not only apply in a direct sense only, because indirectly dependent upon the mining industry you have railways, docks, shipbuilding and a large number of other industries, and I am wondering whether the Government are really seriously considering the situation as it applies to this great industry with 1,100,000 who are employed, all producers of wealth, and 131,000 who are at present unemployed and who ought to be producers of wealth if they could only get the opportunity of that employment which they are seeking at the present time. The situation in most of the very large exporting coal districts of this country is certainly very serious. In South Wales we find that in February of this year, compared with February of 1924, the increase in the number of unemployed men is not less than 40,000. It is only fair to compare the figures for January of 1924 as well. Then we had something like 26,000 men unemployed, whereas in February and early March of this year we had not less than nearly 50,000 unemployed. We have had our Blainas and Abertillerys and Merthyrs in South Wales, and there is an extension over almost all the older portions of the coal fields in South Wales, and they are suffering as Blaina, Abertillery and the other districts suffered for some time. I received a letter from my own constituency this morning informing me that 2,200 men were given notice owing to the depression, and that depression is not diminishing but is really extending.
    I would like to deal with the position from the point of view of its great national importance. We all know that coal is the basic industry of the country. The output of coal for the year 1913 was a record one of 287,000,000 tons. Last year the output was 10,000,000 less than that of 1913, and it was some 9,000,000 tons less than that of 1923. Last year was a very bad year. From the figures that have been given for 1925 we find that until

    2533
    21st. March of this year the output of coal for Great Britain was something like 4,000,000 tons less than it was for the same period of last year, whilst in South Wales the output was 1,000,000 tons less for the same period. This matter is of vital importance, and as one who represents a very large mining area I feel that the discussion of this very important question ought not to be dragged in at the last hour of a very short sitting just before the House adjourns for the holidays. I am sure that hon. Members who represent mining districts, whether they be on the Government side or on this side of the House, would have preferred to have had a day given for consideration of all the aspects of the mining situation of the country. We have 130,000 men unemployed. There are their wives and families dependant upon them. The Minister of Labour this morning in reply to a question from Blaina, said that the position was such that out of 100 men who were being examined for work at a neighbouring colliery, only a very small percentage were accepted by the employers' representative who conducted the examination. If this condition is to continue, we shall have a similar experience in almost every mining area of the country.
    I appeal to the Prime Minister. He was very fair to the miners in a, speech which he made in June of last year. He asked the people of the country not to regard the miners as a disgruntled lot of men, because they and the employers in the industry had made the greatest sacrifices to bring this country, back to its former economic position. Whatever sacrifices were made before June of last year, the sacrifices since then have been even greater. We can see that there is going to be an extension of our difficulties. I am sure that the Prime Minister and the President of the Board of Trade must be quite concerned about the condition of the coal export trade of this country. Last year something like 20,000,000 tons less were exported than were exported the year before, representing a value of some £27,000,000. Already this year there is a. reduction in the export coal trade of nearly 3,000,000 tons. Coal is so very important in the interchange of trade between this country and the other nations of the world, that if we
    2534
    lose this export trade we shall have seriously to consider what the financial position of this country is to be.
    While we are very concerned about the export trade, we are also concerned about the consumption of coal in this country. The export trade is one-third of the total output of coal. Something like 182,000,000 tons of coal were consumed in this country last year. We say that if this coal is required, as it is required, we must see that the men who are employed in obtaining the coal in what is now the Cinderella of our industrial life have an opportunity of something better than the deterioration which we know is going on. The conditions in the coal industry to-day are really breaking the hearts of strong men and brave women. Had there been more time available I would have dealt with the question of the scientific treatment of coal, and the inroads that oil is making on the coal industry, but inasmuch as so many of my hon. Friends wish to speak, I merely appeal to the Government to do something on this very important question. I have very little hope that the inquiry which is now being held will do very much good. We want the Government to take a very bold step. Coal is still the very basis of the industrial life of this country. We want the men and women who are dependent upon this industry to be given the chance that they have a right to expect. Unless they are given that chance, it will mean the end of the coal industry as we see it, and the beginning of the end of the industrial life of this country.
    The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister): It will probably be convenient if I speak now. Although the subject raised is so wide, I want to be as brief as possible so that other Members may have a chance of speaking after me. May I, in a few words, dispose of the point made by the hon. and gallant Member for Leith Burghs (Captain Benn). He asked me, in regard to the lace inquiry, whether I will give instructions for special witnesses to give evidence. The answer is "No." In the first place, I have no intention of interfering with the discretion of that Committee as to the evidence that they shall take. I am perfectly satisfied that the Committee are fully competent to conduct the inquiry, and it is for the Committee

    2535
    to decide what evidence is relevant and necessary.
    Captain BENN: Will the right hon. Gentleman empower them to hear evidence?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: The Committee are fully empowered to hear all the evidence that is relevant; certainly they are. They have complete discretion as to what evidence they shall hear, and it will be for the hon. and gallant Gentleman, when the Report of the Committee comes before this House, to challenge it if he thinks fit. I am certainly not going to interfere with the discretion of Committees as to the way in which they conduct their inquiries. I would remind the hon. and gallant Gentleman that the matter was very fully investigated by the same Committee on a previous occasion. Therefore, I should say it is probable that evidence regarding many aspects of the question will be heard by the Committee twice. Other questions that have been raised relate to shipbuilding and coal. It is not at all a bad thing that the two subjects should have been raised together in a single Debate.
    Let me deal briefly with one or two points about shipbuilding. The hon. and gallant Member wanted to know whether we were satisfied with the technical research in our industries, and he suggested that certain legislation, to which I am partial, but which he does not like, militated against research. I rather deprecate the decrying of British research. I think it is good. I think it is keen: I think there are firms showing not only a desire but an anxiety to foster research to the fullest extent of their power. May I point out, however, that even if we were behind other countries in the matter of research, it does not help the hon. and gallant Gentleman's argument, because the countries which we are behind are themselves protected countries. He raised the question of subsidies in German shipbuilding. I have gone into that question closely, and I have not been able to find any subsidy in operation at the present time. There is this loan, but it is only for limited periods during and after construction at rates of 4 or 5 or 6 per cent., and the guarantees are on a much smaller scale than those under our own Trade
    2536
    Facilities Acts. He asked me did I think that the Ruhr occupation, and the compensation which was paid by the German Government after it, was likely to operate as a subsidy to these firms? It is true that the firm of the Deutsche Werft, or the Gütehoffnungs Hütte at Oberausen, did receive compensation out of that fund, but I should not 'have thought that really operated as a subsidy and I think, taking it broad and large, the occupation of the Ruhr did German industry more harm than good. Compensation has been paid by the German Government to German industry in respect of stocks seized and so on, but I doubt whether in any way it operates as a subsidy. Of course, if German industry had been left by its Government to bear its own losses through the occupation of the Ruhr, it would be in a worse position than it is in to-day when it is receiving some compensation, but I can hardly believe that such compensation acts as a material subsidy. The most it can do is to compensate for losses incurred.
    Then the hon. and gallant Member quoted Mr. John Barr as to certain factors which were relevant to the question of cost. I agree with all of them. The hon. and gallant Gentleman mentioned the item of Singapore, the expenses of which he knows this year and next year are practically negligible to this country. I would ask him and hon. Members on our own side of the House, as well as on the other side of the House, to recognise this fact. I quite agree that economy is absolutely vital. There is hardly anything you can do that will help trade more, whatever view you take of the social system, than the bringing down of the rates and taxes. But it is impossible to do that if at the same time any of us on any side are pressing for expenditure which can only come out of the rates or taxes. I wish to say a word about the bearing of that matter. Various palliatives are suggested for one thing and another. Some of them we have tried, some we originated, some were carried on by the Labour Government, and some were added to by them. We are ready to consider any practical scheme that can be put to us upon its merits and I ask the House not to think that we are not considering these schemes, because we are

    2537
    not putting a new one forward every day. I suppose that dozens of proposals have come before the Prime Minister and myself which we are trying to test with the help of practical men, only to turn them down one after another as likely to do more harm than good. Even if you can get a palliative which will hold water you must remember that it cannot be regarded as a permanency. It really means the spending of public money. That public money has to come out of taxation either immediately or by deferred payment, and that taxation must in itself be a charge upon industry. That is what makes it so extremely difficult to devise palliatives, which in the long run are not going to do more harm than good and put more burdens instead of less upon industry.
    I agree with all that has been said about the difficulty of the situation, and as to the hardship which it creates. I do not want to go into the question of nationalisation except to say that that itself would be costly, but apart from that I think hon. Members opposite themselves have found out how difficult it is to devise a scheme which is going to do good either to one industry or to industry generally and at the same time is not going to involve a heavy charge. It is said that we are competing against others who work longer hours and that I think is common ground. It is said that we should try to level up the working conditions elsewhere. Certainly that is what we are trying to do. But until the other countries have levelled up, I say do not put a heavier burden upon your own industry because that is really cutting your own throat. May I now come to some of the detailed points raised with regard to coal. One which I find myself at once in agreement with is the vital importance of research. One hon. Member opposite referred to a promise which had been given—I am not quite sure by whom—as to national experiments in carbonisation.
    Mr. WHITELEY: By the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George).
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: Whoever it was, it was a suggestion, I think, that was common to all parties. We have gone on with that work in the Fuel Research station. The experiments have been helpful and we have not stinted money in connection with them and we
    2538
    shall not do so. We are doing whatever is required to assist those experiments. We have good men at work-, and we have already with regard to carbonisation proved certain things which have been in dispute among people who were working at it for 30 years. I need not go into the details such as the importance of having a metal retort as against a brick retort and so on, but I believe this is one of the most helpful things we can do and it is one of the things the Government can do.
    Sir H. BRITTAIN: Will the right hon. Gentleman as soon as possible try to carry this out on a commercial scale?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: That is exactly what we are going to try to do, but there is no good trying to go in on a commercial scale until you have tried out your experiments. All we have done is to snake the experiments and then to co-ordinate them and try to get the thing going on a sem commercial scale from which it will pass on to the commercial scale. I go further and say we would like to get firms to cooperate with us in carrying out these experiments and in adopting and making the fullest use of our experiments. We are going to put this knowledge as we get it at the disposal of the whole industry.
    Mr. G. HALL: Has the right hon. Gentleman invited the Mining Association to co-operate with him in this work, and, if so, what has been the result?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: As regards this particular experiment, it is quite recently that we have gone to the point which I have indicated. We are going certainly to call on mineowners and others to come in and co-operate. The object of these experiments and of the further experiments which we will be undertaking is to get scientific knowledge, and as far as we can to test its commercial value and then to put it at the disposal of the coal industry so that as far as possible it may be one contribution which the Government has made to the coal industry. We wish to try to get the industry to take up the results of our experiments and to make the fullest possible use of them. With that certainly we will go on, and we want the co-operation, and the knowledge, and the sympathy of, and we welcome the

    2539
    fullest information from, every section in the mining industry, both the Mining Association and the Miners' Federation.
    The hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Whiteley) raised the question of distribution, but that only applies to domestic coal which is, I am sorry to say, a very small part of the aggregate sales. I am speaking from memory, but I think it is only about a ninth, and the hon. Member remembers the Report which was made upon that. Even assuming that there is some margin somewhere—and it is a much smaller one than I hoped to find—it is not a big section of the trade, and it is a small proportion even of that section. I do not want to argue the controversial point as to whether, if you had a nationalised system of distribution, you would get it done cheaper, because that is not the big thing in the coal industry. It would not affect what is so vitally important, namely, our capacity to export coal, to which the hon. Member drew attention, because it is the competitive price in the export of coal that is the problem.
    Mr. WHITELEY: But it would help. It may be small, but if you can eliminate some of the waste in distribution in our inland trade, it will help us to go into the export market with our coal at a less price than we do now.
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: I agree; where you have a pit that is producing both for the one and for the other, that would be true. In any case, that is only on the domestic side, and the great bulk unfortunately, is industrial coal. If anybody can make a suggestion to us of practical methods, which do not raise great questions of controversy or party issues such as nationalisation, by which a practical thing could be done, either generally or in a particular instance, we are only too anxious to endeavour to help. The bulk of the export trade is so often done by pits which are doing that trade alone and relying almost exclusively upon it, and there you come down to the world conditions, to the price at which the other people can sell. There are railway rates and other things that must react upon the coal industry and its capacity, but there is more than that. Every other trade reacts upon coal, and coal reacts upon every other trade. It is for that
    2540
    reason, I think, that we have to look much further afield than a mere statement of the fact that pits are closing down, at general causes which are world causes, causes which, whatever circumstances we have here, we cannot control—I did deal with the matter in the Debate on unemployment the other day—such as the lesser capacity of the world to buy, its greater productive industrial power, the hours, and the wages conditions, and so on, in these countries.
    Therefore, no mere palliative applied to one industry is any cure, and it does come, not so much, I think, to a question of what you are going to do for the coal trade at this moment; it comes to the much bigger question as to whether the whole of your policy is designed to make trade generally better and to give manufacturing generally better facilities. The big thing to work for is world peace. Then there is the development of new markets, because even if you have the world settled, and are getting your share of the existing markets, you have to develop new markets. In cases of emergency you really have got to reserve the right to yourself to safeguard your own industry. I am always struck by some of the points put by the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. T. Thomson), who is so anxious about the position of the steel trade. You cannot take a position of pure laisser faire and say that no variation of the present doctrine is right, and then at the same time ask for special treatment of one industry. If it is right on principle to oppose subsidies in aid of sugar beet, if it is right on principle in any circumstances to oppose a safeguarding inquiry, if it is right to oppose any direct assistance or protection to any industry, then really the hon. Member cannot be right to get up and say: "What will you do to help the steel trade?" when he will not allow us to do anything to help any industry at all.
    If he departs from that position, let him depart from it with an open mind, and let us try and face this problem without regard to what may have been the academic theory in which we were brought up. Let us deal with practical politics, with the general economic position of the country as it is, and with the general economic sense

    2541
    of the country as it is, not wanting a tremendous turnover of the social system. Within those limits, cannot we agree as much as possible on what in an emergency are the right courses to adopt? Finally, I would say that perhaps the most important thing in a policy of that kind is to try to create conditions here, and to maintain conditions here, in which each industry can fight its own battle and work out its own salvation. It is only the particular industry itself which can do that. Only the industries themselves can work out their own salvation, and they really can only do that if they try to get down together and face their common problems with the determination to see them through. Any help that we can give them in that direction, we shall be only too happy to afford.
    4.0 P.M.
    Mr. LAWSON: I hope the Secretary for Mines will answer the point put by my hon. Friend with reference to unemployment in mines. The President of the Board of Trade has spoken about unemployment generally, but the points raised by the hon. Member are not at all comparable with the general position in regard to unemployment. This is not merely an extension of depression to another industry; it is the collapse of an industry—the collapse of the most important industry in the country. Yesterday the right hon. Gentleman informed us that in the county of Durham alone 75 collieries out of nearly 200 have been closed, but the House will be interested to know this fact—and I think I am well within bounds when I say—that 60 of those 75 collieries have closed within the last few months. That is going on up and down the country in various coal mining districts. There is another fact which the House will do well to understand. When you have unemployment in a mining area, it is not the same as unemployment in a great town, where there are different types of industry. Everybody is unemployed. You have a chain of collieries in every area closed down with an abruptness that is leaving the people almost hopeless, and what we want to know from the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Secretary for Mines is when is his Department going to get to grips with this question? It is quite clear, as you go about the country, that there is a vagueness as to the cause of
    2542
    this unemployment and collapse. I meet men who are working on the coal-face, and men who take an active part in the industrial life of the country who are asking what is the cause of this collapse in the mining industry. I ask the House to note the fact that in the most fundamental industry in this country, you have men in one of the most highly organised unions in the country, men whose lives are vested in the industry, who have given their brains, their time and their thought to the welfare of that industry, men who have met the managers and been told that the colliery is finished—those men are asking what is the cause of the colliery closing.
    I submit that it is not a state of things which ought to be allowed to continue in an industry of this kind. If I said anything, I should say the owners, from their own point of view, made a very great mistake 12 months ago when they refused to grant the operation of Part 2 of the Mines Act. Therefore, I want the Secretary for Mines to make a statement with some authority as to what is the cause, or what are the causes that are affecting the mining industry at the present time. Various people have given us their opinion. We have skilled men on both sides of the table who have their opinions about the cause of this collapse, but no one in authority has spoken. I believe the Miners' Federation at the present time is meeting the coalowners for the purpose of investigating the trouble, in order to try and arrive at the causes of the present collapse in the industry. I am wondering myself if the coalowners know what are the causes of the trouble, because they are individual companies. They are conferring with the men as to the troubles in the industry. I sometimes feel there is greater need of their conferring among themselves as to what are the real causes of the present trouble. Apart from that, there is more than the miner's side, and there is more than the coalowner's side. There is the nation's side, and from that point of view alone, we say it is time the Secretary for Mines was beginning to do business. I would venture one opinion upon this matter, and that is that the companies are trying to fight in 20th century competition with 19th century machinery.
    When the Department of Mines and carious other bodies which are investigating the causes of what is going on at

    2543
    present in the mining industry with a view to arriving at a conclusion get to work, venture to think, and hope, that, when they get down to what the Liberals call "unification," the capitalists call "trustification," and we call "nationalisation," then we arrive at some conclusion by which the people will get the benefit of the operation of that principle in the competitive market. It is due, at any rate, to the people who take part in the industry to know what is the real position. We are entitled to ask the Department of Mines to be a Department of Mines; to get to business, to get to grips with the facts as they see them. It is not good enough to let this thing drift. My hon. Friends and myself have been waiting, week after week, like Macawber, to see if anything was likely to turn up, and have waited to see what the Department of Mines was going to do—if anything! If the Department of Mines in the present state of the mining industry, in the hopelessness and despair that is before those connected with it, cannot get to grips in some practical way, then it is about time that the Deparment of Mines was cut altogether.
    I believe, with my right hon. Friend, that economic events are driving this country towards national ownership. I believe, too, that what has been said to-day is right—that there is some, hope in the adoption of the scientific methods mentioned, the carbonisation of coal, and so on. But we cannot wait, something ought to be done now. The longer we go without something being done, the worse things will get. We are always told about the coming use of oil, of the generation of electricity by water, and other things which are likely to have their effect upon the British coal industry. But these things have not affected any other coal industry in the world—just the British coal industry! They have not even affected those coal areas in the world where they work for export—just ourselves! It is certainly very strange, if these are fundamental facts that we alone should be affected in the field of the world. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. Whiteley) has said, it is a well-known fact that long before the mine closes down, the men are asked to suffer a reduction of wages. That is a very awkward fact for the employers to meet.
    2544
    But all these things should be examined. I think it is high time that someone spoke with authority. There is no greater authority at the present time than the Department of Mines, and I submit that it is time they got to business.
    Colonel CROOKSHANK: Possibly my experience, which has taken me into a good many parts of the world, may justify me in putting forward another point of view. I have been connected with mining more or less for the last 35 years, after doing my first course in mining. In addition to that, during the Great War I trained miners in the pioneer work of the new armies, and later took part in the work of transferring the men back again from France. I have, therefore, been brought into close contact with miners. In addition to that I have been in mines in most parts of the world; in Africa, where you get down to deep levels amongst the gold mines; the Dundee collieries, and visited that remarkable hill called Hlobane. Anyone who has seen that hill realises that one cannot possibly compete with coal got under those conditions. There is a hill where the seam runs right through—I do not know what the thickness is—but it is worked by a direct drive, saving all the expenses of a shaft or any other trouble.
    Generally speaking, I think one can see that things as they stand now make it impossible for the mining industry to pay, which accounts easily for why pits are shut down. In the case of Scotland one sees that one company cannot pay a dividend, in fact more than one, and the total loss on working, according to the last returns, was about £220,000. On that basis I do not see how one can do very much on the spot to improve matters. A good deal is said about the miners working longer hours. Anyone like myself, who has been on the coal face of a pit with a 2 ft. 6 in. seam, can realise that a seven-hour shift is quite enough for a man to do there. If anyone feels at all sceptical on that subject, he ought to go down and try it. I think the mines carry too many surface men and perhaps too many drawers. I attribute that largely to what happened at the end of the War, when men were sent back rather freely from France. Those who did not understand sent hack a very large number of surface men in proportion to face men. These are details, however, which must work themselves out.

    2545
    The main causes for the depression I shall consider, outside the use of oil and the internal combustion engine and the growing use of water power. The last speaker thought these had not materially affected the case, but I believe they do to the extent that they reduce consumption very considerably. First there is the industrial depression, chiefly in the engineering and shipbuilding trades: secondly the practical cessation of exports, and though they may not be very lucrative compared with home consumption, exports enable a larger output to be kept up. Another factor is the reduced consumption. This of course tempts one to say that we must encourage that so-called waste which the hon. Member for Morpeth (Mr. Smillie) referred to when he was dealing with low temperature carbonisation, because until we get that on a commercial basis the more coal we use the better. Then there is the question of the high cost for railway and other transportation services—the wages of certain classes like dockers and trimmers and the cost of wharf services—which are altogether out of proportion to other charges.
    The question of industrial depression has been dealt with very fully by speakers opposite and by others connected with the shipbuilding industry, so I will not go into that. On the question of exports, I think it is a little difficult for us with our older pits, which are often rather deep, to compete with other countries. There is one pit I have been down, the William Pit, in Westmorland, where the workings run seven miles under the Irish Sea. It stands to reason in a case like that that you cannot compete on the same terms with new pits on the Continent where they have shallow workings and, generally have been able to put in the latest and newest machinery. The third question is the rather delicate one of the increased cost of railway services and of certain other branches, like the dock workers, owing to the wages paid. This point appears to me to be very material. I do not want any of the railway people to think I am particularly criticising them, because I have had a great deal of personal railway experience myself, but I ask anybody to compare the lot of the miner working his seven-hour shift in one of those 2-ft. 6-in. seams with the lot of the
    2546
    railway porter doing his eight-hour shift on a country-side railway platform, waiting for a couple of trains, and smoking his pipe. I think the comparison will not be in favour of the miner, and that there ought to be some redistribution in that respect. I do not criticise the railway wages on the whole, because nobody grudges drivers and members of certain other branches their pay. But anyone who compares the rate of wages paid to cleaners, porters, and dockers with those paid in the mining industry will see they are not very fair to the mining industry. We shall have to arrive at some better solution of that. It must be recognised, of course, that there are capital difficulties. A great deal of capital has been sunk in the mines of this country, and the apparatus and equipment of many of them are out of date. In Scotland we are ahead of England in this respect; we are more progressive with coal cutters and are opening a certain amount of new ground. In older pits this is, of course, rather difficult, and whether we can get more capital into the industry is another matter. Compared with foreign mines, and the mines in America, many of our mines are not up to date in regard to handling gear and pit head baths.
    I cannot see how nationalisation is going to produce any cure. How would it have been possible to develop the Thorne End pit under a scheme of nationalisation? After many years it has only just struck the Barnsley seam. And this brings me to the remarks we often hear from hon. Members opposite. We must reorganise the whole of our industries, not only the mining industry, but the shipbuilding, engineering and transport industries as well. These generally work together. We must deal with them all in a very drastic way if we are going to make them work on an economic basis. We must get down to a revision of the methods under which they work and to a consideration of the position as between each of them. We have heard a great deal about the International Labour Convention. Surely it would not be impossible to have a British or Empire Convention which might do a great deal of good in the way of correlating one industry to another and in relation to population. Industry is distinctly over-populated and I do not

    2547
    understand the objection to transferring some of our population. We had a very interesting speech from the Labour Prime Minister of Western Australia the, other day, who said that Western Australia would be able to take 10,000 men a year for many years. Surely it would be much better to encourage some of those who are unemployed, and those who are working on a low wage, to go in search of better employment in these new fields. I myself have served abroad in different parts of the world for many years and I have never regretted it. I really think this is a point worth considering by hon. Members opposite, who have perhaps more persuasive power and would be able to recommend it to the attention of those whom it is designed to benefit. If we can institute a League of Industry then perhaps a British Labour Convention might do a good deal of good in the way of re-distribution and correlation of one industry with another. Socialism seems to me to bring no cure whatever, and when we get that interesting experiment, so wittily referred to by an hon. Member opposite—the day when the social revolution comes off—I am sure he will find it very difficult—
    Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. James Hope): The hon. and gallant Member speaks of the day "when the social revolution comes off"—that will require legislation, and is out of order.
    Colonel CROOKSHANK: I apologise. It would mean the conscription of industry and individuals as well, and I for one should prefer to take on the porter's job rather than the coal miner's job at the face. These are some of the difficulties against Socialism as a cure. I ask hon. Members opposite to consider whether a great deal could not be done by establishing some sort of body, which the Government might encourage, which would enable industries to be correlated with one another.
    Mr. TINKER: I want first to apologise to the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain Benn) for interrupting his speech. We regard him with admiration on these benches, and all we desired was that the position in the mining industry should be discussed before the House adjourned. As recently as Tuesday last I asked the Secretary for Mines a question
    2548
    as to whether the Government had anything in mind with regarding to the mining industry, and pointed out that we were nearing the termination of the agreement—that is in June—which is subject to one month's notice on either side. I wanted to know whether the Government had made up their mind what they were going to do. The answer was, no; they were leaving it to the mining Members, or the Mining Asociation and the Miner's Federation before they interfered.
    The SECRETARY for MINES (Colonel Lane-Fox): The answer was that the Government were not going to assume either that notice will be given, or that, if it is given, it will be beyond the power of the coalowners and miners to negotiate a new settlement in the ordinary way.
    Mr. TINKER: The point I am on is this. Last year, when we had a mining dispute, certain hon. Members on the other side of the House asked how it was that we got into that dispute before the House of Commons took a hand, and I determined that, in future, so far as it lay in my power, I would draw the attention of the House whenever the miners were nearing a fight. The time has got quite close now. The miners have had meetings, and have determined that they cannot carry on under present circumstances; the wage is too low. On the other hand the employers have had meetings, and they say that they cannot carry on under the present wages. There is almost certain to be a struggle. What is the position? Under the present agreement we are owing the employers millions of pounds. They are paying us a certain wage, 33⅓ per cent. over the 1914 standard, which is certainly not a living wage; and even then they are not able to clear their books. In Lancashire and North Staffordshire alone we are owing the employers £500,000. One can readily see that when June comes the employers will say that they cannot carry on under these circumstances, and I can tell the House, from the miner's standpoint, that we cannot carry on under the present wage. There is a climax impending, and I put it 'to the Government that in a basic industry like this they cannot stand aside and let us get to grips; as we shall. No Government can afford to do that. The Government must take a hand in the situation. If the mines cannot pay under

    2549
    present circumstances, the Government will have to say that something more must be done with them. It is up to them to deal with it immediately. We on these benches would not be doing fairly by our people if we allowed them to drift where they are drifting at the present time. There are certain conditions, I agree, which will have to be dealt with. In the first place, our exports are falling off, but that is not the fault of the mining community. The mining community cannot work for less wages to get our trade back. In 1923 the mine-owners said to us, "Let us work hand in hand and try and get back our markets," and we were complimented by the mine-owners on having sacrificed more than was sacrificed in any other industry. That has come to an end now; we have got right to the bottom, and, if we mean to get back our foreign markets, either the miners must work longer hours, which we are not going to do, or must accept lower wages, and we are not going to do that. So far as the export trade is concerned, under the present conditions, we cannot hope to get any better trade than we have now.
    The second point is that oil, of course, is superseding coal. Many vessels now are being driven by oil that used previously to take coal, so that there again there is a falling off in the demand for coal, but it is not the fault of the miners. It is a question for the Government to take a hand and see if anything can be done. Hon. Members on these benches have mentioned that the mining industry is the basic industry of the country, and so it is. Until something supersedes mining in this country, it is up to the Government to see what can be done to make the industry pay. Reference has been made to the question of supplies in time of war. Britain cannot afford to be left in the position of not being ready as regards coal supplies should war occur. If war occurred, coal would be required more than ever, because there would be no supplies obtainable from overseas, and from the point of view alone of the security of the country it is up to the Government to see that our coal mines and our coal miners are well looked after and kept in readiness for any emergency that might arise. The Government say that they cannot interfere, and I agree
    2550
    up to a point, but when the men are not getting wages, and the employers say they cannot afford to pay, the Government must take a hand and see that the industry is carried on. It has been said that Governments never lead, but only follow. I believe that that is true, and that Governments have to be forced to do anything. We want to tell the Government that they should not wait until the very last moment. We want to lead them on this matter, quietly if we can. We want them to take notice of what is happening. They will only be following, even now, but do not let them wait until they have to be forced to do something. Let them get hold of the situation. It needs it, imperatively.
    I would make one final appeal to the Government, if I may put it in the form of an appeal, to realise the position in which we are now placed. We get sympathy every time a disaster takes place in the coal mines, for the horrors and dangers that we have to go through, but, immediately we come for something practical, we are told that the Government cannot interfere, but that the thing must go on as the laws of nature have laid it down. We say that the question cannot be dealt with in that way. It is unfair to the miner to be always praising him, and saying what a great man he is—the best of his kind in a great country—but, when the time comes to offer him anything, to say nothing at all. Even the last speaker said how much he felt for us, but he could not see any way out of the difficulty. That means that we have to be left exactly where we are, but it cannot end there. We are determined quietly, but it is grim determination for all that, to have better conditions for our men, and we appeal to the Government, with its great majority, to take this matter in hand and try and do something before that time arrives.
    Mr. TREVELYAN THOMSON: I am afraid that the shipbuilding and iron and steel industries will have heard with regret the pronouncement of the President of the Board of Trade, which contained so little that appeared to be helpful to them in the tragic circumstances in which they find themselves. The Lloyd's Register Returns which appeared yesterday show that the amount of tonnage under construction at the end of the March quarter was 132,000 tons less than at the preceding quarter, 308,000 tons less than a year

    2551
    ago, and 725,000 tons less than 1913, a sad story of declension of the shipbuilding output. What is almost more disquieting, the returns from foreign countries show an increase in the amount of ton-age which they have under construction. Almost for the first time in our industry history the shipbuilding in this country is less than that abroad.
    Mr. D. GRAHAM: That is not true.
    Mr. THOMSON: There may have been in 1922 a period when there was a slight difference, but there is a bigger falling off to-day than there has ever been in our previous history. When you remember that before the War shipbuilding was between 60 and 70 per cent. of the world's tonnage it is unfortunate that we should be in this position. One does not want, in a serious matter of this sort, to bandy words as to which industry is in a worse position. When the House remembers that in the shipbuilding industry 33 per cent. of the men are out of work and over 30 per cent. have been out of work for two or three years, we have surely got into a, most desperate position, which demands more attention from the Government than it has had up to the present. In reply to a question from me yesterday the Minister of Labour seemed to suggest that things were improving on the North-East Coast. I find from Lloyd's Register Returns that whereas at the end of December there were 423,000 tons under construction the figure had fallen to 351,000 tons at the end of March, or a declension of 17 per cent. The question is, what is the remedy? We have had nothing suggested at all from the President of the Board of Trade. In regard to rates and taxes he said we must see that we do not increase this burden, but it is not a question of not increasing it. It is a question of altering the incidence of the burden. One of the most serious features is the very heavy increase in the charge of rates on the local industries.
    To illustrate my point may I give one or two figures so that the Government may see how serious the position is. The Chairman of the Shipbuilding Employers' Federation recently gave these figures, that whereas in 1914 the local rates were equivalent to 12s. 6d. per workman, in 1924 they had increased to 48s. per workman, or fourfold. The Member for one
    2552
    of the divisions of Swansea got out some figures with regard to shipyards which are very instructive. He mentioned one yard where in 1915 the local rates amounted to £3,317, and in 1924 that amount had increased to £13,241. In 1915 six vessels were launched, making a burden of £550 per vessel, whereas in 1924 only three vessels were turned out, imposing a charge in respect of local rates on each vessel of over £4,000. That, surely, is a burden which renders competition almost impossible, especially when in foreign yards, particularly in Hamburg, I understand their method of local taxation is based rather on Income Tax than on local rating. It is worthy of consideration how far it is possible to vary the existing incidence of this burden by making it rather a tax on profits than a standing charge as it is at present, because the cost of rates is a burden on production. It is a first charge. It is there whether there is a profit or not, and it is a very serious handicap to the shipbuilding industry and the iron and steel industry that this incidence should go on. I am glad the Government have introduced a Rating Bill, and I 'hope within the four corners of it they may find it possible to deal with this question, which is acting as a very serious detriment to our production and our competition in the world's market. It is not merely a question of shipbuilding. A leading steel manufacturer the other day gave figures which show exactly the same thing. Whereas in 1913 the local rates amounted to 1s. per ton of steel produced, today they amount to 6s. 3d. per ton of steel produced. With these heavy increases it is impossible to compete in the world's markets. I do appeal to the Government that they should examine this question very carefully. It is not a case of asking for a subsidy or a protective tariff, but of asking for protection against these heavy burdens of local rates which are crippling and killing the industry.
    Mr. CONNOLLY: I understand that the Minister of Mines will wind up the discussion, and I will only keep the House for a few minutes. I desire to continue the Debate on shipbuilding initiated by the hon. and gallant Member for Leith. The Debate has gone on somewhat controversial lines, and it will have to be continued, but I wish to turn to one non-

    2553
    controversial matter which has not been touched upon in the Debate this afternoon. This is the first time in living memory that the British Naval Estimates presented to this House have contained no new orders for ship reconditioning or ship repairing, and I consider it my duty as a representative of a large and important shipbuilding district to draw the attention of the House and particularly of the Government to this unprecedented feature in the British Naval Estimates. We have had a small amount in some past years, but this is the first year that the industrial areas outside the Royal Dockyards have had no new orders whatsoever.
    The re-allocation that will take place afterwards may give us something, and it is in that hope that I am appealing to the Government that something should be done. I see from the Estimates that there are five cruisers, 12 mine-sweepers, three flotilla leaders, 19 torpedo-boat destroyers, and 13 submarines, which are not yet allocated. I submit that those important industrial areas on the Clydeside and the Tyneside, which have responded in past years so adequately to the requirements of the nation, should receive a fair allocation, and that they ought to have some of the vessels which are not yet allocated. From these benches we do not advocate an increase in naval armaments, and I am not putting that, but I say that, as a national arm and as a national defence, those who contribute by service and contribute towards expenses ought to participate on something like an equitable basis.
    The point I want to put to the Government is that there is national responsibility in a special sense, apart altogether from the question of Naval Estimates. The men on Clydeside, and the men on Tyneside would have been employed upon merchant shipbuilding work had it not been for a, deliberate national act upon our part, as a Government, apart altogether from any action of employers and workmen in the industry. I am referring to the provision in the Treaty of Versailles which allocated over 1,000,000 tons of German mercantile shipping to this country. That made a provision of 200,000 tons for five years from the signing of the Treaty. The Government as a Government, not as a Conservative Government, but as a Government in the abstract, has, therefore, some special responsibility in regard to this matter,
    2554
    and I suggest that, as far as possible, in the re-allocation of naval work this year, something should be done for the men on Tyneside and elsewhere who have been thrown out of work in consequence of a national act on our part.
    I might continue the Debate with regard to the future of shipbuilding generally, but these points have been enumerated by the hon. and gallant Member for Leith and other points have been enumerated by the hon. and gallant Member for Chertsey (Sir P. Richardson) and they will require to be discussed on some future occasion under their separate heads. They are very important heads, and they will require full discussion when the subject of shipbuilding comes on for general consideration. I put one or two of them in the House. So far as watered capital is concerned that will enter into our deliberations in future with the shipbuilders. Overhead charges which the Federation of British Industries put at 37 per cent. over what it should be will enter into discussions upon the restoration of shipbuilding. The question on costs that has been touched on hastily will have to be gone into.
    The hon. Member for Chertsey (Sir P. Richardson) mentioned this afternoon that shipbuilding was a national industry. That is a new attitude on the part of shipbuilding employers. That is an attitude which they refused to take up seven six, and even five years ago. They would not recognise that the employés had any interest in the industry, and were entitled to discuss such matters as the five points that were mentioned by the hon. and gallant Member for Leith. They never admitted that we had any right or title to discuss these matters with them, but at last they have come to a remarkable frame of mind and they have asked the shipbuilding employés to meet them. I was present at a meeting last Friday in London here. As the time is getting short I will merely say with regard to the shipbuilding industry that what has happened is an indication that the period of secrecy is over. It is now agreed that the workers have a right to discuss these matters with the employers. That is a very hopeful sign. I believe that it marks a new epoch, so far as the shipbuilding industry is concerned, and I am quite ready always to respond to appeals such as those made by the President of the Board of Trade that we should consult

    2555
    together with regard to these things which will bring advantage to the industry and prosperity to the nation.
    Colonel LANE-FOX: I am sorry that I cannot reply on the points which have been raised in reference to shipbuilding, but I will pass them on to the proper quarter. That observation applies also to the remarks by the hon. Member for East Newcastle (Mr. Connolly) about Admiralty orders. That is a matter which I cannot go into, but I will pass on what he has said to the Minister concerned. I am sorry that I have not got a longer time to deal with the points which have been raised, but I was anxious to give hon. Members opposite every possible opportunity of speaking to the points in which they are interested. To me the disappointing thing in this Debate—and I have listened carefully to every speech which has been made—is that there has been no concrete suggestion from the other side. Hon. Members will give me credit for perfect sincerity when I say, let them by all means argue that the Government are incompetent, but they would strengthen their case if they would go on to suggest something definite themselves.
    Mr. TINKER: We say that co-ordination of the industry will improve it.
    Mr. LAWSON: We know nothing about inside affairs.
    Colonel LANE-FOX: That is an argument which the hon. Member is quite entitled to use, but they go on saying in speech after speech, "What is the Government going to do?", "Are the Government going to get to grips with this?", "It is time that the House of Commons led the Government and forced them to do it." The Government will be very glad to know what it is that hon. Members want them to do.
    Mr. MAXTON: That is your responsibility.
    Colonel LANE-FOX: Yes, but I am going to point out that, in my opinion, the only suggestion that hon. Members have made is absolutely unsuited to deal with the particular difficulties of the industry at the present moment. Let us get back to the origin of the Debate. The main reason why so many pits are being
    2556
    closed, and why so many men have been thrown out of work in consequence, is the curtailment of our export trade owing to the very great development of foreign production, and because coal is more cheaply produced abroad than here. Whatever view one may have as to a remedy, that is the main fact from which we are suffering now—that foreign countries are producing more coal and are producing it more cheaply and are pushing us out of the export market. Hon. Members say, "You have to deal with that." How is that going to increase the export trade? One hon. Member wrote off the export trade as absolutely dead and done. Does he really believe that any system of nationalisation is going to make up to this country our loss of the export trade?
    Mr. TINKER: You can export 7,000,000 tons a year to Russia.
    Colonel LANE-FOX: I am sorry that I have not time to deal with interruptions. Our main difficulty is that our export trade has contracted. Whatever internal remedies may be suggested, that is the main fact which is causing the closing of pits and the throwing out of employment of large numbers of men. Ever since German production increased, when the Ruhr became open, and ever since the pits in France and Belgium began to recover from the devastations of the War, this competition has developed, and it is getting worse. There is no getting away from that fact. Hon. Members suggest such internal remedies as nationalisation, unification, or whatever it may be called. Considering that every country in the world has found that the carrying on of State coal mines is a far more expensive business than the running of mines by private enterprise, considering that in no instance that I know of has nationalisation made the cost of production lower, how is that to be a remedy for the trouble that our foreign competitors can produce more cheaply than we can?
    Mr. LANSBURY: What is the remedy of the Government?
    Colonel LANE-FOX: I must decline to be drawn away from my arguments in the very few minutes that are at my disposal. We have had suggestions made to-day. One was cheaper distribution. That will not do anything to reduce export prices. We have been told that the

    2557
    Government should put pressure on the coal owners. No employer will deliberately close a pit if he can make it work at a profit. Pits are closing at present owing to the owners' inability to make them pay. It is no use suggesting remedies such as those indicated The question of watered capital may be one which needs exploring, but that does not affect the actual cost of production. I need not deal further with the question of carbonisation. I can only reiterate what has been said by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, that every effort is being made to carry it forward, and I hope before long we shall be able to produce some results of real value. Meanwhile, I hope that hon. Members of the House who are interested in the question will be able to come down to the Fuel Research Station and see the experiments going on. I had already made arrangements for this before this Debate, and after the Easter Recess I hope we, shall be able to get a party to go down there, because the more interest is taken in the matter, and the more knowledge there is of it, the better. Again I complain that we have had no concrete suggestion which seems to me to meet the real difficulty of our position.
    Mr. TINKER: You will not accept our suggestion.
    Colonel LANE-FOX: The hon. Member's suggestion does not deal with the real question which we are up against in the case of cheap foreign production. His suggestion may deal with other points, but it, does not deal with that. [HON. MEMBERS: "What is the Government's suggestion?"]
    Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. James Hope): The hon. and gallant Gentleman should be allowed to continue his argument. I hope hon. Members will listen to him without interruption.
    Colonel LANE-FOX: The Government will certainly do all that is possible by research and inquiry to investigate the conditions and to see what they can do, but it is idle to suggest that Government action alone is going to help the industry. This is a matter which the industry must settle for itself.
    Mr. LAWSON: It is settling it now. It will be soon out of existence.
    Colonel LANE-FOX: Hon. Members opposite have compared the output in France and Belgium with the figures for this country. They are quite right in saying that the output of these countries has been less per man shift than ours, but they must remember that France, and to a certain extent Belgium, are only recovering from the effects of the War, and that must be taken into account. I hope that nothing which has arisen in this Debate will give the industry any suggestion that the Government can, like a fairy godmother, come to its aid. The Government will do all it can to help to secure agreement and to assist in other ways. That is the duty of every Government. Hon. Members opposite quite sincerely ask that the Government should do something, but I would remind them that the late Government were in exactly the same position as we are in and they were not able to do more than any other Government. It is far better for the House, the country, and the industry to realise that that is not the way in which salvation can be found. Other industries like engineering and the railways have had to settle their own affairs, and that is the way in which I hope this difficulty will be dealt with. An hon. Member has asked me what the Government propose to do when the agreement is terminated. I reminded him in the answer that I gave that the agreement would not necessarily terminate. It is not terminable before the 1st July, and after that date it is up to either side to give a month's notice to terminate, and so far, I am glad to say, we have had no indication from either side of any termination.
    Mr. TINKER: We have decided.
    Colonel LANE-FOX: I do not think the hon. Member can tell me, with any authority behind him, that any definite decision has yet been taken, and he had better be careful before committing himself to any statement of that kind. So far, no definite termination has been notified, and I hope that no definite termination will be notified, because I am certain that it is possible for the industry to settle its affairs by, possibly, some modification of detail, but on the general line of the two parties agreeing together and sharing out what profits the industry can yield. It may be necessary that some pits shall continue and others close, but on the whole I do not believe that the

    2559
    very black picture drawn by hon. Members opposite is really justified. I hope it is not, and I can only say that the Government will help in every direction they can, by research, and so on. If hon. Members will give me some definite and really competent suggestion, when we can discuss it more freely than we can now, and if they will come to my room—I wish they would come more often—and talk it out together, I shall be very glad. I believe that is the best way to get at it, and if they can convince me that they really have a useful suggestion that will help the industry in this very dangerous and difficult time, I am certain they will not find me unready to do my best to carry it out and to explore every avenue that offers itself.
    Mr. MAXTON: I do not know whether the hon. and gallant Gentleman is going away home satisfied that he has deserved his Easter holidays, but after listening to to-day's Debate, and hearing his speech on mining, and the speech of the President of the Board of Trade on shipbuilding and engineering, I am going home most profoundly dissatisfied with the five months that have elapsed since the present Government came into office. All that they have said to-day is that hon. Members here will have an opportunity after Easter of seeing the researches that
    2560
    are being carried out with regard to fuel consumption. Of what use is that to the miner, the shipbuilder, or the engineer? Our ships are going right away abroad, and every week a new order is going abroad, and hon. and right hon. Members who were elected by the country with the sweeping majority that they never forget to remind us of to solve the country's difficulties are now telling us that each industry must work out its own salvation. I am not going out for any holiday. I am going out for a fortnight's hard agitation, and I am not going to preach that gospel that each industry must save itself. I am not going to tell the miners they are to fight the mineowners alone, nor the engineers and shipworkers that they have to fight their employers alone. I am going out during the Easter Recess to ask the whole of the working classes to unite together, not to save any individual trade, but to save the working classes, because here we are told by a responsible Minister that great fundamental industries like coal-mining and shipbuilding cannot afford—
    It being Five of the Clock, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Resolution of the 8th April until Tuesday, 28th April, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of this Day.