Commons Sitting of 22 June 1926

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the. Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.
PRIVATE BUSINESS.

  PRIVATE BILLS [Lords] (Standing Orders not previously inquired Tinto complied with),
  Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, namely :—
  Falmouth Docks Bill [Lords].
  Berwick - upon - Tweed Corporation (Freemen) Bill [Lords].
  Manchester Ship Canal (General Powers) Bill [Lords].
  Bills to be read a Second time.
  Pontefract Corporation Bill (King's Consent signified),
  Bill read the Third time, and passed.
  Edinburgh Corporation (General Powers) Order Confirmation Bill,
  Read the Third time, and passed.

GLASGOW EDUCATION AUTHORITY
  (JUVENILE DELINQUENCY) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
  "to confirm a Provisional Order under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, relating to Glasgow Education Authority (Juvenile Delinquency)," presented by Colonel Sir JOHN GILMOUR; and ordered (under Section 7 of the Act) to be considered To-morrow.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
  TRADE AND COMMERCE.

    CANADIAN GOODS (PREFERENCE).
    Mr. HURDasked the President of the Board of Trade if he will give an estimate for the last available year of the value of the rebate granted upon Canadian goods reaching this country under preferential duties; and what were the chief commodities thus brought under Preference?
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Ronald McNeill): The approximate amount of rebate granted upon goods consigned from Canada and delivered for home consumption at the preferential rate of duty, in the year ended 31st December last, was as follows:

    Spirits

    1,500

    Sugar

    1,200

    Tobacco

    140,000

    Motor cars

    65,300

    Other articles

    1,400

    Total

    £209,400.

    EMPIRE-CROWN COFFEE.
    Mr. H. WILLIAMSasked the President of the Board of Trade what percentage of the coffee imported in 1925 was Empire-grown and, for comparison, the percentage 20 years ago and 10 years ago?
    The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister): In 1925 about 42·4 per cent. of the raw coffee imported info the United Kingdom came from Empire countries, in 1915 about 10·5 per cent. and in 1905 about 23·9 per cent.

    SUGAR (IMPORTS).
    Mr. FORRESTasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that, by Government decree, only sugar which is produced in Czechoslovakia is allowed to be consumed in that country; and whether, under these circumstances, he will consider the effects on established British refiners who cannot export to Czechoslovakia and similar countries, and who are com-

    223
    pelled to submit to the serious effects of competitive dumping of Czechoslovakian sugar in Great Britain and the competition of subsidised beet sugar at home?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: I am not aware of such a decree.
    Mr. FORRESTasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that, according to information supplied to the commercial secretary at Prague, the price of refined sugar was fixed for the whole of the season for internal consumption in Czechoslovakia at the equivalent of 18s. per cwt. ex factory; that according to the daily commercial report, dated 11th June, Czechoslovakian refined sugar is offered in this country at 14s. 6d. per cwt. f.o.b. Hamburg, which is approximately 13s. 2¼d. per cwt. ex factory; and, seeing that this shows that Czechoslokavian refined sugar is being dumped into this country at the rate of approximately 5s. per cwt. below home prices, whether he will make inquiries into these facts and the extent to which this dumping is in progress?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: The prices given by the hon. Member are in substantial accordance with the information in my possession. In the first five months of this year, imports of refined sugar from Czechoslovakia amounted to 126,792 tons, while 147,994 tons of refined sugar were imported from other sources; and 544,224 tons of unrefined sugar were also imported during this period, none of which was consigned from Czechoslovakia.
    Sir WALTER de FRECEasked the President of the Board of Trade how many tons of Empire-grown sugar were actually imported into this country last year?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: The quantities of sugar imported into Great Britain and Northern Ireland during the year 1925 and registered as consigned from countries within the British Empire amounted to 115,305 tons of refined sugar and 333,834 tons of unrefined sugar, making a total of 449,139 tons. The information available does not, however, permit of a precise statement of the proportion of these imports which was grown within the Empire.
    Colonel DAY: Is that an increase on the 1924 figure?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: I must have notice of that question.
    Mr. A. V. ALEXANDER: Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that it is a very poor result of Empire Preference.

    MONTHLY RETURNS.
    Mr. H. WILLIAMSasked the President of the Board of Trade if he can arrange from January next that fuller information shall be given in the monthly trade and navigation returns as to the countries of origin in the case of those commodities the production of which is rapidly increasing in the Empire?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: My hon. Friend will find that a considerable amount of information such as he desires is already given in the monthly trade returns. If, however, he will communicate to me any specific suggestions for further information, I shall be glad to consider them.

    CUBA (BRITISH AND AMERICAN TRADE).
    Commander BELLAIRSasked the Secretary, Overseas Trade Department, having regard to the fact that preferential trade was established between the United States and Cuba on 17th December, 1903, if he can give the increase in total trade for the United Kingdom and the United States respectively as compared with the average of £3,314,000 for the United Kingdom and £15,117,000 for the United States in the five-year period 1899 to 1900 to 1903–04?
    Mr. A. M. SAMUEL (Secretary, Overseas Trade Department): The average annual value of the total trade of Cuba with the United Kingdom and the United States of America respectively was approximately as follows:
    (a) For the five years ended 30th June, 1904:

    Million Pesos.

    With United Kingdom

    16¼

    With United States

    81½

    (b) For the five years ended 31st December, 1925:

    Million Pesos.

    With United Kingdom

    54

    With United States

    486,½

    It appears, therefore, that the increase in Cuba's trade with the United States has been about fivefold, and with the United Kingdom about 2½ fold.

  MERCANTILE MARINE.

    LIFEBOAT LAUNCHING MACHINERY, NEW BRIGHTON.
    Colonel DAYasked the President of the Board of Trade if his attention has been drawn to the statement made by the Wallasey coroner, on the 7th June, at an inquest on four men drowned in the Mersey, when it was stated that the machinery used for summoning the lifeboat crew was not up-to-date; and will he take such action as will result in more expeditious methods of lifeboat launching being employed?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. As regards the second part, I understand that the method of lifeboat launching at New Brighton is in accordance with the Regulations which, in their experience of life-saving all round the coast, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution have laid down for all their lifeboat stations.
    Captain GARRO-JONES: Has the right hon. Gentleman taken into consideration the representations he has received about the reduction in the number of coast watchers all round the coast?
    Mr. SPEAKER: I would point out to the hon. and gallant Member that this question refers to the Mersey, and not to the coast generally.

    OIL IN NAVIGABLE WATERS.
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHYasked the President of the Board of Trade who will be the British delegates to the forthcoming international conference on the question of oil in navigable waters; whether any definite steps for the prevention of damage from such oil are being proposed by His Majesty's Government; and, if so, what is their nature?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: The hon. and gallant Member no doubt has in mind the preliminary Conference of Technical
    226
    Experts at Washington which terminated on 16th June. The delegates of His Majesty's Government were Mr. Hipwood and Mr. Laslett of the Board of Trade, Captain the Hon. A. Stopford, Naval Attaché to His Majesty's Embassy at Washington, and Engineer-Commander A. Knothe, Assistant Naval Attaché. The Canadian Government also sent representatives to the Conference. The object of this preliminary Conference was to facilitate an exchange of views on technical matters and to consider formulating proposals for dealing, through international agreement, with the problem of oil pollution of navigable waters. The preliminary Conference have made unanimous proposals as to zones within which the discharge of oil should be prohibited.
    Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: When will the main Conference take place.
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: It is just possible that the proposals which are being brought forward may be agreed upon internationally, without the need for a further conference. Until the delegates return and I get a full report I cannot say that definitely, but if an international agreement could be reached without a further conference that would save a great deal of time.
    Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the last part of my question, namely, whether any definite steps are being proposed by the Government which would lead to a solution of this difficulty? Have we any measures in mind?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: Yes, Sir, we certainly have. We agree with the proposals which were unanimously agreed to at the preliminary conference.
    Colonel GRETTON: Does the term "navigable waters" include territorial waters?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: We have already legislated about territorial waters. The present proposals go far beyond that and recommend that there should be prohibition extending over very wide zones—from 50 to 150 miles—and that is why international agreement is necessary.

    MERCHANT SHIPPING ADVISORY COMMITTEE (REPORT).
    Mr. B. SMITHasked the President of the Board of Trade whether the Report of the Merchant Shipping Advisory Committee has been published?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: The Merchant Shipping Advisory Committee advises the Board of Trade on such questions of rules, regulations or scales under the Merchant Shipping Acts as may be referred to them. Such of their reports as are considered to be of sufficient public interest are published, and if the hon. Member will let me know which report he has in mind, I will give him what information I can.

  BRITISH ARMY.

    SOLDIERS' CHILDREN (EDUCATION, INDIA).
    Mr. R. MORRISONasked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that children of British soldiers returning from service in India are found by educational authorities to be two years behind the average child in their education; and whether any improvements of the standard of education for children of British soldiers serving in India are under consideration?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Earl Winterton): I have been asked to reply. The curriculum of the Army Children's Schools in India follows that laid down for primary schools in this country. My Noble Friend is aware from recent reports that some difficulty has been experienced in maintaining the required standard, though whether to the extent implied in the hon. Member's question I am unable to say. He is at present in communication with the Government of India and the War Office on the subject, and steps are being taken to remedy deficiencies.

    RANKER OFFICERS (PENSIONS).
    Colonel Sir A. HOLBROOKasked the Secretary of State for War (1) with reference to the War Office decision that Army pensioned non-commissioned officers who were awarded the Military Cross while on active service as commissioned officers and have been
    228
    deprived of the pension of 6d. a day to which they are entitled as retired noncommissioned officers, on the ground that the gratuity for their commissioned service exceeded what they would have had if they had remained in the ranks, whether Army pensioned ranker officers who did not gain the Military Cross received the same gratuity for their commissioned service as those who gained the distinction; and, if so, whether he will reconsider the determination to deprive the latter of the small pension accompanying the award as well as of their commissioned rank;
    (2) why pensioner Quartermaster-Sergeant Robert Starling, who is in possession of the Military Cross and eligible for the grant of 6d. per day additional pension under Article 1157 of the Royal Warrant, 1914, as amended by Army Order 45 of 1917, is deprived of the additional pension because the Military Cross was awarded for services rendered as a commissioned officer, in view of the fact that he was awarded the Military Cross in June, 1918, demobilised and reverted to quartermaster-sergeant's pension in July, 1919, at which date the proviso contained in the Royal Warrant of 1922, Article 1025, that this additional pension should not be granted to a pensioner in respect of the Military Cross received for services rendered by him as a commissioned officer, was not promulgated and consequently not applicable to him?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Sir L. Worthington-Evans): Army pensioned ranker officers, like any other officers, regular or temporary, who were awarded the Military Cross while serving as officers, are not entitled to any addition to their pensions in respect of this award. The provisions of the Royal Warrant for Pay, 1914, relate to additional pensions in respect of decorations earned by men and not by officers, and the proviso contained in Article 1025 of the Royal Warrant for Pay, 1922, was inserted merely to avoid any possible misunderstanding of the intention of the previous article. The additional pension was not refused on the ground that the officers in question received a larger gratuity than they would have received had they served in the ranks. The issue of a larger gratuity is only relevant as showing that they enjoyed the benefits

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    of officers in respect of their service as such, and that they did not suffer financially through being dealt with as officers and not as soldiers. Pensioned ranker officers like any other temporary officers who gained the Military Cross received the same rate of gratuity as other similar officers who were not awarded the decoration, and I see no reason for differential treatment in their case.
    Sir A. HOLBROOK: Is it not the case that £200 a year would cover the cost of the award to the officers concerned who have been deprived of their commissioned rank and have been retired as non-commissioned officers?
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: I am glad that the grievance is not any greater than that, but I am afraid that the Regulations are as I have stated.

    MILITARY KNIGHTS OF WINDSOR.
    Brigadier - General CHARTERIS asked the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that King's Regulations for the Army, Appendix XVI, restricts appointment of Military Knights of Windsor to members of the Church of England; whether there is anything in the letters patent regulating admission to that body which justifies this restriction; and, if not, whether he will consider the removal of a restriction which discriminates between members of Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches?
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: The Letters Patent of 1909 governing the Order of the Military Knights of Windsor require the attendance of Military Knights at Divine Service in St. George's Chapel on Sundays and other specified occasions. It would not be proper to appoint to the Order any officer whose religious opinions might conflict with the fulfilment of the duties required of him. I am not prepared to recommend the removal of the restriction in question.
    Brigadier-General CHARTERIS: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that members of the Church of Scotland would find it contrary to their religious convictions to attend service in Windsor Chapel?
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: No, I did not say that.
    Mr. JOHNSTON: What are these Military Knights of Windsor? Are they paid?
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: If the hon. Member puts down a question, I shall be glad to give him a detailed answer.
    Captain WEDGWOOD BENN: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether enrolment in the Army, under Concription Acts or otherwise, is confined to members of the Church of England?
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: I believe my hon. and gallant Friend knows that that is not so.

    TATTOOS, GLASGOW AND EDINBURGH.
    Mr. COUPERasked the Secretary of State for War whether arrangements have been completed for a military tattoo in Glasgow, and on what date it will take place; and whether he will consent to a detachment of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve taking part in either or both the tattoos at Glasgow and Edinburgh?
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: The date and other detailed arrangements of the Tattoo in Glasgow have not yet been finally settled, but the Tattoo will probably be held some time in September. A display by the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve 'has been included in the programme of the Edinburgh Tattoo, which will be held from 29th September to 2nd October. The inclusion of a similar display at the Glasgow Tattoo is a matter for arrangement between the Naval authorities and the 'General Officer Commanding-in-Chief in Scotland who is responsible for the organisation of the tattoos in his Command.
    Mr, PALING: Is one of the objects of the tattoos to encourage recruiting?
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: I think undoubtedly that they do encourage recruiting.
    Mr. MONTAGU E: Will the display include a display of poison gas?

    CHILDREN'S ALLOWANCE.
    Mr. HORE-BELISHAasked the Secretary of State for War whether, as the War Office has decided not to give marriage allowance to men under 26, he will recognise any children there may be

    231
    for the ordinary children's allowance when the man in question is old enough to qualify for marriage allowance?
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to the reply which I gave yesterday to the hon. Member for Southwark.
    Mr. HORE-BELISHA: Will the right hon. Gentleman say if he is inquiring into this, and will he remove this injustice?
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: I think there is no injustice, as the hon. Gentleman will see if he looks at the answer I gave yesterday.

    INVALIDITY PENSIONS (APPEALS).
    Mr. HORE-BELISHAasked the Secretary of State for War how many men invalided from the Army in 1925, the cause of whose invaliding was considered not attributable to service, appealed to the War Office against the decision of the local surveying officers; and in how many instances was the decision reversed as the result of such reinvestigation?
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: The total number of cases regarded as non-attributable referred to the War Office, including both appeals by men and cases which, in the opinion of the Commissioners of Chelsea Hospital, warranted further consideration, is 131. In 36 of these cases the decisions of the invaliding medical board was reversed.
    Mr. HORE-BELISHA: Will the right hon. Gentleman, in view of this, consider setting up an appeal tribunal for these men?
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON - EVANS: That is a question which has been often debated, but I think that the existing arrangements do, in fact, constitute an appeal to Chelsea Hospital.

    TERMINATION OF SERVICE (UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT).
    Colonel GRETTONasked the Secretary of State for War if he is aware that soldiers returning to the Irish Free State on the termination of their service with the colours are still deprived of
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    90 days' unemployment benefit, notwithstanding his answer to a question on 16th December last; and what steps he proposes to take to remedy this hardship?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of LABOUR (Mr. Betterton): I have been asked to reply. The right to draw benefit in these cases, as in all other cases under the Unemployment Insurance Acts, is limited to persons resident in Great Britain or Northern Ireland. I have examined the point raised by my hon. and gallant Friend and regret that I see no practicable way of dealing with it.
    Colonel GRETTON: As apparently this matter has been transferred from the War Office to the Ministry of Labour, may I ask if my hon. Friend is aware that many of the men affected are long service men who for years have paid 2d. per week for unemployment benefit?
    Mr. BETTERTON: I am not quite sure whether that is so or not. I will, however, in consultation with my hon. and gallant. Friend, consider whether there is any method which is both practicable and possible which will enable us to effect what he desires.

    TERRITORIAL ARMY (ANNUAL TRAINING).
    Mr. H. WILLIAMSasked the Secretary of State for War if the annual training of the Territorial Army has been or is likely to be abandoned this year; if so, for what reason; and whether any alternative arrangements can be made?
    Sir L. WORTHINGTON - EVANS: Territorial Army camps arranged for dates on or after 15th July will be held. Camps arranged to assemble before 15th July have been cancelled. It is hoped that week-end camps will be held by the units affected.

    OIL FROM COAL.
    Colonel APPLINasked the Secretary for Mines whether any further experiments have been made in this

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    country in the extraction of oil from coal, and with what results; whether British interests are represented in the experiments now being carried out in Germany; and to what extent?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION (Duchess of Atholl): My right hon. Friend has been asked to reply to this question. Experiments in the extraction of oil from coal by carbonisation methods are being actively pursued in this country, both at the Fuel Research Station and by a number of firms and individuals. Extensive experiments on the production of oil by the so-called Bergin method of hydrogenating coal are being carried on in Germany. A number of British firms are represented in these experiments, and, by agreement, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research obtain full information as to results and a voice in determining the course the experiments are to take. Experiments on this and other processes are also being carried out in this country. It is too early to make any statement as to results.

    RAILWAY CARRIAGE DOORS.
    Colonel DAYasked the Minister of Transport if his attention has been drawn to the evidence given at a Camberwell inquest, on the 9th June, held on Terence Vernon Hyde, four years of age, of 44, Phelp Street, S.E., who fell from a railway carriage between Herne Hill and the Elephant and Castle stations; and, in view of the expressed opinion of the jury, whether any representations have been made to the railway company with a view to proper examination of carriage doors before trains are allowed to depart?
    The MINISTER of TRANSPORT (Colonel Ashley): My attention has been called to the verdict and rider at the inquest to which the hon. Member refers. I have made no representations to the railway company of the nature indicated in the last part of the question, and in this connection I may explain that I am informed by the company that the guard of the train in question asserts that all the doors of the train were securely closed and the handles turned when the train
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    left Loughborough Junction, which was the last station at which the train called before the accident occurred.
    Colonel DAY: Is it not a fact that since the strike the majority of these small stations have been very much under-staffed?
    Colonel ASHLEY: That may or may not be; I do not admit it. But whether it was so or not, the point I wish to make is that the guard of the train says that he closed the doors securely before the train left the last station.

  COAL TRADE DISPUTE.

    STEAM TRAWLERS.
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHYasked the Secretary for Mines if he is aware of the difficulties British steam trawlers are experiencing owing to lack of coal; and whether he will consider releasing greater quantities of coal for deep-sea fishermen so as to facilitate the supply of food?
    The SECRETARY for MINES (Colonel Lane Fox): In view of the national importance of the steam-trawling industry, I have made a point of allowing them the largest possible share of our limited coal supplies, and I regret that I cannot now see my way to release greater quantities for them. I am glad, however, to say that, owing to the initiative and enterprise of the trawling industry itself in obtaining supplies of coal from abroad, and in using kinds of fuel to which they are not accustomed, supplies of fish have been well maintained, and have proved equal to the demand.

    LUXURY SERVICES (ECONOMY).
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHYasked the Secretary for Mines whether he is satisfied with the public response to his appeals for a curtailment of unnecessary expenditure of light and fuel during the stoppage in the coal mines; if his attention has been drawn to the continued expenditure of these necessities on luxury services; and whether he is considering asking Parliament for additional powers with a view to checking such waste of fuel and light?
    Colonel LANE FOX: On the whole I am satisfied, but I am considering whether some further economy can be effected in luxury services. The Emergency Regulations provide all the powers that are necessary.
    Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: Would the right hon. Gentleman consider the possibility of enforcing a more reasonable hour for closing the places of amusement, especially in London?
    Colonel LANE FOX: Yes; but nobody wants unduly to curtail anybody's amusement, especially at this time.
    Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: But is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that vital industrial services are being seriously hampered, and they ought to have the first call as compared with luxuries?
    Mr. SPEAKER: That is a matter for argument.

    MINERAL ROYAIMES.
    Mr. LAWSONasked the Secretary for Mines what were the conclusions of the Departmental Committee on the question of mineral royalties which sat during the year 1924?
    Colonel LANE FOX: The Committee to which the hon. Member refers is presumably an informal Committee which, I am informed, was set up by my predecessor at the Mines Department during the Labour Administration. The matters which they considered related to State acquisition of mineral rights, but they were concerned, I understand, with questions of detail and of method rather than of policy, and they made no report upon the general question.
    Mr. LAWSONasked the Prime Minister whether it is the intention of the Government to carry out the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Coal with regard to mineral royalties?
    The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Baldwin): The Commission's recommendation with regard to mineral royalties, unlike the other recommendations—the acceptance of which by the Government has been announced—raises questions which necessarily react upon national finances. The losses which the country has suffered, and is suffering at the pre-
    236
    sent time, together with conversions of public debt contemplated in the near future, create a situation which the Government are bound to examine carefully before committing the country to a financial transaction of the magnitude which is involved in this particular recommendation. I would point out that the adoption of the recommendation is not a matter which can give any immediate relief to the problem of the coal-mining industry. In any event, the Government propose to deal with its practicable objective in other ways in the Reorganisation Bill which has now been introduced.
    Mr. LAWSON: Do I take it that the right hon. Gentleman's answer means that the Government have now abandoned all idea of carrying out the recommendation?
    The PRIME MINISTER: If my hon. Friend will read the answer he will see that that is not the case. If I may put it in a sentence, it is this: that the last two months have inflicted such great damage upon the financial situation of the country that that part of the recommendation concerning purchase—but not concerned with the making of such alterations in the position as would have been feasible under their recommendations if the literal policy that they recommend were adopted—is a far more difficult one than it would have been two months ago, and, therefore, the Government must examine the whole question in the light of the financial situation as it exists to-day.
    Mr. LAWSON: The Commission recommended purchase of royalties at the market value and the taking over of the royalties in deeper areas which had no market value. May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if his attention has been drawn to the fact that the Commission said that the taking over of such royalties would make amalgamation much easier because of the capacity for renewing leases or withholding them in the coalfield? Have the Government any intention of carrying out even that portion of the Report.
    The PRIME MINISTER: That is a matter which has been very much in our minds. I think the hon. Member will see

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    that the provisions in the Bill will enable us to overcome a great many of those difficulties.
    Mr. LAWSON: May I press this point? I have asked serious questions. I have asked the right, hon. Gentleman this question—even though the Government abandon the question of the purchase of the royalties that have a market value, have they any intention of taking over the royalties on coal and minerals in the deeper areas which have no market value and consequently involve no financial burden?
    The PRIME MINISTER: That point, of course, has not escaped our observation, but in our view the whole question must be considered together, and that is exactly what we are doing.
    Brigadier-General Sir HENRY CROFT: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, in considering this question, he will carefully note a speech made on Saturday last by a. very great authority which seems to support the Government view—a speech by Lord Haldane?
    Mr. SPENCER: As it is not contemplated to transfer the whole financial burden from the industry on to the State, how is it going to affect the State to carry out the recommendations of the Commission?
    The PRIME MINISTER: That would be rather a lengthy matter to deal with by way of question and answer. It can be raised in debate, and either I or the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be very glad to deal with that question.
    It is a real question.
    Viscountess ASTOR: The right hon. Gentleman does not mean that he has abandoned all idea of some day dealing with royalties, but has only dropped it at this time on account of the financial difficulties? Is that what, he means?
    The PRIME MINISTER: Even the Noble Lady, with all her enthusiasm, would have to consider the financial aspect in dealing with it.
    Mr. HARDIE: Seeing the royalty owner has never rendered and can never render any service in the production of coal, have the Government not considered just cutting him out?
    Mr. SPEAKER: That is a matter for argument.

    WAGES PROPOSALS.
    Mr. LAWSONasked the Prime Minister whether the arrangements with the coalowners with regard to wages, which are contained in his latest proposals for the settlement of the coal dispute, are based upon the substitution of district agreements for the national minimum percentage?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I have no information as to the wages which will be offered, beyond the assurance which communicated to the House on Tuesday last. The assurances to which I then referred included the owners' offer of 30th April, which contained a uniform national minimum of 20 per cent. over 1919 standard.

    IMPORTS (WEEKLY).
    Sir W. de FRECEasked the President of the Board of Trade if he will state the weekly imports of coal into this country since 30th April?
    Colonel LANE FOX: The approximate weekly figures of the importations of coal into this country are as follow:

    Tons.

    Week ending 8th May

    50

    Week ending 15th May

    550

    Week ending 22nd May

    1,000

    Week ending 29th May

    31,000

    Week ending 5th June

    58,000

    Week ending 12th June

    120,000

    Week ending 19th

    181,000

  POST OFFICE.

    TELEGRAPH POLES.
    Mr. TEMPLETONasked the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that in the spring of last year telegraph-line poles were erected between Craigellachie and Granton-on-Spey, a distance of about 30 miles; that at present these poles are being replaced with other and stronger poles; and whether he will give an assurance that adequate steps will be taken in future to ensure that such work will be so carried out in the first instance that it will last a reasonable time and avoid waste of public money?
    The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Sir William Mitchell-Thomson): Owing to the necessity for providing additional circuits it has become necessary progressively to strengthen the route referred to. Last year some 43 poles were erected and this year 30 more have been added. None of the poles erected last year has been scrapped; but it has been necessary, owing to road-widening operations and to improve staying, to alter the position of eight poles. It may be necessary to add some further poles later. I am satisfied that the work is being efficiently performed with due regard to economy.

    TELEPHONE INSTALLATIONS.
    Mr. FORRESTasked the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that the public is still being invited to instal telephones in their houses, although his Department is quite unable to carry out current orders within a reasonable time; and whether, under these circumstances, he will discontinue the advertisements referred to until the orders in hand are cleared off?
    Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I would remind the hon. Member that each telephone requires a separate pair of insulated wires to be provided to the nearest exchange, and that there must necessarily be some delay where way-leaves have to be obtained or special engineering works undertaken. There are 13,000 orders in ordinary course of completion—which represents under three weeks' work—and in some 800 cases only are applications for service outstanding pending the completion of new exchanges or other extensive works. The answer to the last part of the question is in the negative.
    Colonel DAY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware*that in the South of England the installing of telephones takes nearly three months?
    Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I am aware, as I said in the answer, that there are exceptional cases. I am doing my best to deal with them.
    Captain FRASER: Is any delay due to the lack of apparatus?
    Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: No, I do not think it would be fair to say that
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    any delay is due to lack of apparatus, as apparatus; but there is delay owing to the difficulty of installing the apparatus.
    Colonel DAY: Is it on account of shortage of labour?
    Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: No.

    POSTAL WORKERS (WEEKLY HALF-HOLIDAY).
    Viscountess ASTORasked the Postmaster-General whether he has been approached by representatives of the postal workers with a view to securing a weekly half-holiday; whether the matter is under consideration; and whether, in view of the fact that other Departments of State grant weekly half-holidays to their employés, he will consider securing postal workers a similar privilege?
    Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I am not aware of any recent general representations. This subject 'has, however, been considered on many occasions, and was last examined by a Committee of the Post Office Whitley Council in 1922. The special requirements of Post Office work make it impracticable to arrange a general weekly half-holiday for postal, telegraph, and telephone manipulative staff on the lines normally followed in other Government Departments.
    Viscountess ASTOR: Can the Minister not give a half-holiday on lines that are not normal possibly It does seem rather hard that these should be the only people in the Government service who do not get the half-holiday Could not the right hon. Gentleman use his very inventive brain to find some other way of doing this?
    Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: There is considerable difficulty in doing that without jeopardising the general interests of the public service.

    AIR MAIL SERVICES.
    Sir HARRY BRITTAINasked the Postmaster-General (1) if he is aware that the last leaflet issued with regard to letters and parcel services by air mail is very much out of date; and when it is proposed to distribute a further leaflet throughout the Post Offices of the country;
    (2) what efforts, if any, are being made to bring before the notice of the public the

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    great saving in time effected by making use of the air mail for letters and parcels abroad, in addition to the details given in the leaflet to be obtained at Post Offices?
    Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: It will perhaps be convenient if these questions are answered together. A new edition of the Air Mail leaflet will, it is hoped, be issued next week. Air mail information is given in the Post Office Daily List, and air mail alterations of every kind are given publicity in the newspapers. A special air mail showcard is also being displayed at more than 1,000 Post Offices.
    Colonel APPLIN: Will the right hon. Gentleman adopt some more modern method of bringing this most excellent service to the notice of the public, and will he remember that Mr. Selfridge and other large traders would never have been able to sell anything if they had waited for the customers coming to their shops?

    SUGAR-BEET (LAND SETTLEMENT).
    Mr. DUCKWORTHasked the Minister of Agriculture whether he is in a position to give any statistics of the numbers of people who, as a result of the sugar-beet subsidy, have actually settled on the land permanently?
    The MINISTER of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Guinness): I am afraid I am unable to give any information on this point.

    BRITISH EMPIRE EXHIBITION (SALE).
    Mr. HORE-BELISHAasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department whether he can make a statement on the reported sale of the Wembley site?
    Mr. SAMUEL: I am not yet in a position to add anything to the reply which I gave yesterday to the hon. Members for Consett (Mr. Dunnico) and Southwark (Central) (Colonel Day).

    KENYA (DEATH PENALTY).
    Colonel WEDGWOODasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has sanctioned legislation in
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    Kenya imposing the death penalty for offences against women and children, and differentiating according to the colour or race of the victims or offenders; and whether such punishment can be legally inflicted in any other Dominion or Crown Colony at the. present time?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Amery): I have approved of the Governor of Kenya introducing legislation to make the death penalty permissible, as an alternative to the present penalties of imprisonment or fine, in the case of convictions for rape, but not for attempted offences of this nature. It is not intended that the law shall contain any discrimination in this matter according to the race of the victim or offender. Similar legislation exists in South Africa.

    TRANSJORDAN FRONTIER FORCE.
    Colonel WEDGWOODasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the cost of the new gendarmerie stationed at Amaan is borne on the Palestine or Transjordania Budget or paid for by this country?
    Mr. AMERY: The right hon. and gallant Member presumably refers to the Transjordan Frontier Force. The whole cost of this force for the current financial year will he met in the first instance by the Palestine Government, who will, however, receive from Imperial funds a grant-in-aid of a moiety of the cost, subject to a maximum of £108,000.

    LEAD PAINT (WATERPROOF SANDPAPER).
    Lord HENRY CAVENDISH - BENTINCKasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many master painters have caused waterproof sandpaper to he employed in rubbing down how many are still using it; and whether he has any information as to their views on its practical value as a substitute for dry rubbing down in the painting of houses, interior and exterior?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Captain Hacking): I regret I am unable to furnish the precise information asked

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    for in the first part of this question, but the inquiries my right hon. Friend has made indicate that the new process has not been adopted yet to any great extent. As regards the last part, I would draw the attention of the Noble Lord to the letter which appeared in the "Times" on the 10th instant from the secretary of the Painting Trade Materials Committee of Great Britain and Ireland, in which he states that a considerable number of painting trade firms have found the new process both satisfactory as a preventive of lead dust and economical in cost. I understand that this has been the general experience of firms carrying out painting work for the Office of Works which, as the Noble Lord will be aware, prohibits the use of dry rubbing down in all its painting specifications.
    Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: Have not the Home Office fairly complete information on this question, and why do they refuse to let it be known to Members—to lay it on the Table of the House, so that Members have access to it?
    Captain HACKING: As I explained on the Second Reading of the Lead Poisoning Bill, this is largely an experiment, but. a great deal of useful work has already been done; as far as the Office of Works is concerned, it has been useful experience, and in all probability the new process will be of great benefit to the working people of the country.
    Mr. A. V. ALEXANDER: Will the hon. and gallant Member furnish the House with a White Paper giving the particulars?
    Captain HACKING: I will consider that.

    FACTORIES (CHIEF INSPECTOR'S REPORT).
    Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCKasked the Home Secretary when the Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories for 1925 will be issued?
    Captain HACKING: The printing of this Report has been delayed by the strike, and I am afraid it cannot now be issued before the end of next month.

    SECRETARY TO THE CABINET.
    Captain BOURNEasked the Prime Minister whether His Majesty's Government have under consideration the desirability of combining the office of Secretary to the Treasury with that of Secretary to the Cabinet; and, if so, whether it is proposed to take any action in this matter?
    The PRIME MINISTER: No, Sir.

    DEATH DUTIES.
    Sir NICHOLAS GRATTON-DOYLEasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, seeing that the estates of deceased persons who have been resident in Great Britain have to pay Death Duties on investments in the Irish Free State and that the estates of deceased persons who have been resident in the Irish Free State have to pay Death Duties on British investments, he will, in view of the relief as regards double taxation, make it clear that there will be no levying of double Death Duties?
    The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Churchill): I would refer my hon. Friend to the relief in respect of Double Taxation (Irish Free State) Declaration, 1923 (S.R. & O. 1923, No. 406), and to the Irish Free State Double Taxation (Relief) Order (No. 1), 1923, which embody the arrangements made for relief in respect of double taxation to British and Irish Free State Estate Duty.

    EXCHEQUER GRANTS (MESTON COMMITTEE).
    Miss LAWRENCEasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer when the last meeting of Lord Meston's Committee on Exchequer grants was held; whether the chairman's draft Report has yet been considered by the Committee; whether any day for a further meeting has been fixed; and whether he proposes to take any steps to secure the early completion of the business entrusted to it?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: The last meeting of the Committee was held on the 6th March, 1923. No arrangements have been made for a further meeting. I have, of course, no power to compel the chairman to summon a meeting of the Committee.
    Miss LAWRENCE: May I ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he remembers that in March of this year he expressed the opinion that this Committee would shortly be called together, and has he seen any reason to alter that opinion?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I am always reluctant to say in regard to any transaction that a stage has been reached when hope should be definitely and finally abandoned.
    Miss LAWRENCE: Has any communication been made on the part of the Government to the chairman which might account for the unparalleled delay in this matter?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I have made several communications, and, as I have stated to the House, the Chairman has prepared a draft Report. It is a very comprehensive and able document, and the publication of that Report at present rests solely on the authority of the Chairman, who is now engaged in taking steps to ascertain what modification his Committee would wish to make in it when called together, and when they will be able to report. I have no power to hurry that process. Meanwhile, the subject of this inquiry is not remaining in a stationary position; on the contrary, we are pressing forward ourselves with all the information that is contained in the draft Report and a great deal of other information which we have obtained, and we are making an examination of the general relations between block grants and percentage grants.
    Miss LAWRENCE: In view of the highly unsatisfactory nature of that answer. I shall take the earliest opportunity of raising this question.
    Mr. SPEAKER: We had better not anticipate.

    CIVIL SERVICE (SOUTHBOROUGH EXAMINATIONS).
    Lieut. - Commander ASTBURYasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury what progress has been made with the appointment of successful candidates at the Southborough examinations for the clerical classes in the Civil Service; and whether he can give a date by which it is expected that the whole of the Southborough candidates will be appointed?
    Mr. R. McNEILL: The number of successful candidates at the Southborough examination for the Clerical Classes appointed up to the 19th June inclusive, is 1,227. I am afraid that I cannot predict the date by which all the remaining candidates (numbering approximately 7,000) will be appointed.

    MOSQUITO BREEDING.
    Colonel DAYasked the Minister of Health if he will consider legislative measures with a view to the prevention of mosquito breeding through carelessness?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH (Sir Kingsley Wood): My right hon. Friend is advised that local authorities already have power under the Public Health Acts to deal with ponds, ditches and other places where nuisance arises through the breeding of mosquitoes, and on the information at present available he doubts whether further legislation is required.
    Mr. BECKETT: Will the Parliamentary Secretary request the Minister of Health to ask the Home Office for a report on these undesirable aliens?

    CONTRIBUTORY PENSIONS ACT.
    Mr. TEMPLETONasked the Minister of Health if he intends in the present Session to introduce a Measure amending the Widows', Orphans', and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act to enable those fishermen who are not employed persons in the ordinary sense, but are paid by shares in the profits of the venture, to participate in the benefits of the Act?
    Sir K. WOOD: Fishermen who are not compulsorily insurable as employed contributors under the National Health Insurance Act may become voluntary contributors and entitled to benefits under that Act and the Widows', Orphans' and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act if they are qualified by virtue of a previous period of insurance or service in His Majesty's Forces during the late War. It would not be practicable to introduce amending legislation in the present Session even if my right hon. Friend were

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    satisfied that a ease for it had been established, but the whole question will be reviewed in connection with the Amendments of the National Health Insurance Act which will come under consideration in the near future.
    Lieut.-Colonel HENEAGE: Can the Parliamentary Secretary say whether this legislation is likely to be introduced in the forthcoming Budget, having in view the importance of this question to the fishing community?
    Sir K. WOOD: This is a matter which would be more appropriately dealt with by at. amendment to the National Health Insurance Act, and consideration will be given to this point when we are considering proposals for the amendment of that Act.
    Colonel DAY: When does the hon. Gentleman hope to consider the amendment of the National Health Insurance Act? Can he say?
    Sir K. WOOD: No, Sir.

    EMERGENCY MILK POOL (LONDON).
    Mr. A. SOMERVILLE (for Mr. LAMB)asked the President of the Board of Trade by what date all farmers who consigned milk to the London emergency milk pool will have received payment of their accounts; what action is being taken in respect to milk accepted for consignment by rail to London, but which is alleged not to have been received by the pool; whether the accounts of the pool are being audited by a Government auditor and whether a Report on the operations of the pool committee, including a detailed statement of the various sources of supply that were stopped, will be published for the information of the producers concerned?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: The accounts of farmers for milk consigned to London during the recent emergency are in process of settlement by the Milk Pool Committee, and a considerable number have already been paid. Settlement is delayed in some cases by the failure of the producers to render their accounts in sufficient detail. In cases where doubt has arisen as to the receipt.
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    of consignments of milk in London, producers are being requested to forward to the accountants to the pool copies of the original railway waybills. A firm of chartered accountants has been appointed to audit the accounts, and the Board of Trade are prepared to accept the certificate of this firm. I will consider whether a report would usefully be issued when all accounts have been settled and transactions have been liquidated.
    Mr. A. V. ALEXANDER: Is the Board of Trade insisting that the pool price for the milk should be paid by all retailers, whether they obtained their supplies from the pool or not?
    Sir P. CUNLIFFE-LISTER: I should like notice of that question.

    EMPIRE PRODUCE (MARKETING).
    Sir H. BRITTAINasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the latest Report of the Imperial Economic Committee has been adopted by the Government; and when the publicity campaign to further the sale of Dominion and Colonial produce will commence?
    Mr. AMERY: The Report in question is engaging the active attention of the Empire Marketing Board, who are considering its recommendations and are already taking steps to give effect to a number of them. I cannot yet give a definite date for the opening of the publicity campaign; but I can assure my hon. Friend that this question also is under the immediate consideration of the Board and that the campaign will be pressed forward as soon as the necessary plans have been framed.

    TREATIES (ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS).
    Viscount SANDONasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in the interests of economy, he can arrange that the English version only of foreign treaties and agreements should be published in Command Papers, as is already done in certain cases; and what the average cost is annually of this not being done?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Godfrey Locker-Lampson): The average annual cost of printing texts in foreign languages in Parliamentary Papers of Foreign Office origin is about £50. I am unable to accept my Noble Friend's suggestion that the texts of treaty engagements with foreign countries should be laid before Parliament in English only, When a governing or authoritative text is in another language than English, that text must be made generally available both for diplomatic and legal purposes.

    HOUSING, TEIGNMOUTH.
    Mr. DENNISONasked the Minister of Health whether the Teignmouth Urban District Council have yet taken any steps to formulate a housing scheme, and with what result; and, if not, whether, in view of the urgent need of houses in this district, he will approach the council in the matter?
    Sir K. WOOD: My right hon. Friend has been in communication with the council on the matter. They have formulated a scheme for assisting private enterprise in the erection of houses for letting, and I understand they are at present negotiating with local builders.
    Mr. DENNISON: May we expect that the local council will take immediate steps to build these houses?
    Sir K. WOOD: Yes, Sir; I understand that is so, and I believe they are now negotiating with the builders for that purpose.

    LOUIE CALVERT.
    Dr. WATTS(by Private Notice) asked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to the notice on the Order Paper regarding the case of Louie Calvert, who is under sentence of death, and whether it is true that this woman is in a state of pregnancy?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir William Joynson-Hicks): The statement in the Notice of Motion is mistaken. Any doubt which may have existed as to this prisoner's condition has since been dispelled, and it is now certain that there was no pregnancy.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Mr. RAMSAY MacDONALD: May I ask the Prime Minister what arrangements he proposes to make for dealing with the two Coal Mining Bills?
The PRIME MINISTER: To-morrow we propose to take the Second Reading of the Mining industry Bill, and on Monday and Tuesday of next week the Second. Reading of the Coal Mines Bill.
The Votes put down for Thursday, at the request of the Liberal party, are those of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Scottish Board of Agriculture.
Captain BENN: Can the right hon Gentleman say when the Report stage of the Finance Bill will be taken?
The PRIME MINISTER: I think probably the week after next
Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, in announcing on Friday the business for to-day, concluded by saying that "other Orders" would be taken. Would the Prime Minister say how many Orders it is proposed to take to-day?
The PRIME MINISTER: The House rises at eleven, and we shall take as many as we can get.

MR. SPEAKER (OXFORD UNIVERSITY DEGREE).
Mr. SPEAKER: I have to ask the indulgence of the House for one moment.. The University of Oxford has honoured me by proposing to confer a degree upon me to-morrow. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] As this proposal is, no doubt, due to the office to which the House has called me, I ask the permission of the House to be absent on that occasion. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"]

BILLS REPORTED.
Ministry of Health Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill,
Reported, with Amendments [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill, as amended, to be considered To-morrow.
Abertillery and District Water Board Bill [Lords],
Bethlem Hospital Bill [Lords],
Connah's Quay Urban District Council Water Bill [Lords],
Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
Tramways Provisional Order Bill,
Reported, with Amendments [Provisional Order confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
Bill, as amended, to be considered To-morrow.

PRIVATE BILLS (GROUP E).
Sir PARR GOFF reported from the Committee on Group E of Private Bills; That Mr. Beckett, one of the Members of the said Committee, was not present during the sitting of the Committee this day.
Report to lie upon the Table.

SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).

  SCOTTISH STANDING COMMITTEE.
  Mr. WILLIAM NICHOLSON reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had added the following Fifteen Members to the Standing Committee on Scottish Bills (in respect of the Rating (Scotland) Bill): the Lord Advocate, Lord Balniel, Mr. Campbell, Sir Charles Cayzer, Mr. Connolly, Lord Colum Crichton-Stuart, Mr. John Guest, Mr. Haydn Jones, Mr. Lawson, Major Alan McLean, Mr. Sandeman, Captain Geoffrey Shaw, Major Steel, Mr. Charles Williams, and Mr. Windsor.
  Report to lie upon the Table.

  CRIMINAL APPEAL (SCOTLAND) BILL. [Lords].
  Reported, with Amendments, from the Standing Committee on Scottish Bills.
  Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 97.]
  Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed. [No. 97.]
  Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be taken into consideration upon Thursday, and to be printed. [Bill 132.]

  PUBLIC PLACES (ORDER) BILL,
  "to repeal certain laws relating to prostitutes, and to amend the law relating to order in streets or public places," presented by Viscountess ASTOR; supported by Sir Samuel Chapman, Mr. Macmillan, Sir Robert Newman, Dr. Drummond Shiels, Colonel Wedgwood, Mr. Robert Hudson, Lieut.-Commander Astbury, Mr. Gerald Hurst, and Lord Henry Cavendish-Bentinck; to be read a Second time upon Tuesday next, and to be printed. [Bill 133.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  CRIMINAL JUSTICE (AMENDMENT) BILL.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir William Joynson-Hicks): I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
  This is a very small Bill. I have to confess to a mistake in the Criminal Justice Bill of last year, and it is essential that this Bill should be passed before the 1st July, because otherwise very great inconvenience will be caused in the administration of justice. The House will remember that as long ago as 1907, when the probation system was first made a part of the law of our land, it became possible for persons who were convicted to be put on probation, but there was also a provision that, without even patting them on probation, if the offence of which they were convicted was but a very slight one indeed, the magistrate could let them off, merely ordering the payment of costs. When we came to amend the Criminal Justice Bill last year, to put the probation system on a sound basis, by some mistake—I do not know whose it was, whether it was a mistake of my Department, or the drafting department, or of myself personally—in amending the law we omitted, when reviewing one of the Clauses, to reinstate the power of magistrates to let a person off merely on payment of costs, which would generally amount to only a few shillings. That would have exceedingly inconvenient results. Every year some 47,000 people are convicted without being sent to prison or ordered to pay a fine, their offences being very minor ones. I dare say the House saw the other day that some boys in London were playing cricket in the streets. The magistrate made some kindly remarks, saying that it was not a ease in which the boys should be either sent to prison or fined, the summons was withdrawn on payment of 2s. costs, and the boys went off scot free. Unless this little Bill which I am now putting before the House to re-enact this provision be passed, the magistrates of the land, and the Judges also, will be in serious difficulties, because in many
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  thousands of cases all over the country—I have not the exact number—people are let off, and have been let off for some years past, merely on payment of costs, without being put on probation, because the cases were not sufficiently serious. That is the power which, by the main Clause of this Bill, I want the House to restore to the magistrates. I apologise most frankly and sincerely to the House for giving this trouble, because the mistake made in the Criminal Justice Bill of last year was undoubtedly made in my Department.
  Sir HENRY SLESSERL: I understand that the only difficulty is that these words relating to costs are now conjunctive in the Act, and the right hon. Gentleman wishes to have them disjunctive, because, so long as they are conjunctive, the power of the magistrates is limited. Therefore, so far as I can see, this proposal is entirely in the interests of offenders put on probation, and, so far as I am concerned, I hope the House will give the Bill a Second Reading.
  Question, "That the Bill be now read a Second time," put, and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time.
  Resolved, "That this House will immediately resolve itself into the Committee on the.Bill."—[Sir. W. Joynson-Hicks.]
  Bill accordingly considered in Committee, and reported, without Amendment,
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I desire to thank my hon. Friends in all quarters of the House for helping me in this matter. I am very glad that the Bill is passed.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.

  PUBLIC HEALTH (SMOKE ABATEMENT) BILL [Lords].
  Order for Second Reading read.
  The MINISTER of HEALTH (Mr. Neville Chamberlain): I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

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  This Bill is one of the minor Measures of the Session, but I think the subject with which it deals is of sufficient importance and interest to the House to justify the somewhat unusual procedure which is taking place now, under which we have agreed to consider a Second Reading passed without Debate as null and void, and to give the House an opportunity of debating in full this afternoon the principles which are involved in the Bill. I do not think there will be any difference of opinion as to the desirability of trying to do something to purify our atmosphere and to exercise a somewhat stricter control than is possible at present over the emission of smoke and other noxious vapours. The House may remember that in 1920 a Departmental Committee was appointed, under the chairmanship of Lord Newton, to consider the present state of the law and to advise what measures should be taken to do something to mitigate the present amount of emission of smoke. That Committee reported in 1921, and, since then, no fewer than four Bills, of which this is the last, have been introduced into Parliament, founded upon the recommendaetions of the Committee.
  This Bill embodies most of the provisions that have appeared in previous Bills, with some alterations and some additions. On the whole, the recommendations of the Committee have been followed, though in some respects we have departed from them. I would like to read to the House a few words from the general conclusions of the Committee, because I think they sum up very admirably the position as it appears to the Government. They said:
  "It is also clear that there is no hold or simply remedy which might appeal to the imagination and excite the enthusiasm of the general public.… It appears to us.… that the chief requisite is the enforcement of the provisions of the existing law, strengthened and altered as to its administration in accordance with the recommendations which we have put forward."
  That is the general idea which underlies the present Bill. It is not a drastic Measure, but it contains provisions for strengthening the law and strengthening the administration, and I think that in practice it will be found that it is upon the administration chiefly that we shall have to depend for the improvement of the conditions of our atmosphere
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  Public opinion has been progressing steadily during the last few years in the direction of a cleaner air. Perhaps the introduction of these Bills has done something to educate it, but I think still more has been done by recent advances in medical knowledge, and, in particular, by the revelation of the healing and vitalising character of sunlight. Even now, however, I doubt whether those who habitually dwell in towns fully realise the extent to which we are deprived of this essential factor by the condition of our atmosphere. It was estimated by Lord Newton's Committee that those who live in the country get 20 per cent. more sunlight than those who live in towns, and it is a matter of common knowledge that the occurrence of smoke fogs in towns is immediately followed by a rise in the death rate from respiratory diseases. The same influences that bring about this obvious and direct injury to human health must always be at work when conditions of perpetual and chronic pollution of the atmosphere prevail. We may not be able to see the result in an increase in the death rate figures, but probably the general average of the health of the people is lowered by the fact that they are deprived of their groper measure of sunlight.
  Again, from another point of view the emission of smoke must necessarily mean a waste of fuel. On the evidence given to them the Newton Committee declared that about 2½ million tons of soot escape into the atmosphere every year from domestic fires and another½ million tons from industrial works. That reckoned out in money is a very substantial sum. There was an interesting inquiry in 1918 in Manchester comparing the cost of washing per household in that somewhat dirty town—
  Sir WILFRID SUGDEN: No.
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: With the cost of washing in Halifax, and the result of the inquiry was to show that the inhabitants of Manchester, in order to keep themselves as clean as those of Halifax, had to spend every week 7½d. more in the cost of washing. The result was that it was estimated that Manchester was spending something like £300,000 a year more than it ought to have done if it had been as clean as Halifax merely in washing. There are other injuries which we can ascribe

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  to the same cause—damage done to vegetables and crops—and one only has to look round this building to see for oneself what is the effect of acid soot when it is deposited upon the most durable kind of stone. Therefore 1 think one may assume that pollution of the atmosphere in our larger towns is at once costly, wasteful and highly injurious. I do not think anyone could controvert that proposition.
  It is only when we come to consider in what way we may alter our legislation in order to diminish this evil that differences of opinion begin to arise, and in fact the present Bill has not escaped criticism. The objections come from two sources. First of all there is the objection of those we may call the smoke consumers, the people who suffer from the effects of smoke, and they say the Bill is not sufficiently drastic and that it will do little to improve matters. On the other hand, there is the objection of the smoke producers, who are represented by a number of my hon. Friends on this side of the House, and who express the fear that its provisions are so drastic as to he likely to cause serious injury to, at any rate, some of the industries of the country. Perhaps I may hope, in the presence of those objections coming from those sources, that I have succeeded in attaining the happy medium. At any rate, that is what I tried to do. I realise as much as anyone that at this time above all others we do not want to do anything that is going to put fresh obstacles in the way of industry. On the other hand, I believe it is possible to do a great deal to improve the regulation of the emission of noxious vapours without doing such injury, and if I have not entirely succeeded in the first draft of the Bill in carrying out my intention I shall he only too happy to hear in Committee such representations as hon. Members may desire to make to me, and I think I can assure them that if those representations are reasonable and a good case is made out for an alteration of any of the provisions of the Bill, I shall not be indisposed to turn a favourable ear to them.
  With that preliminary I may perhaps describe what it is that the Bill proposes to do. In the present state of the law, the definition of a smoke nuisance in respect of which a local authority can
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  take proceedings is confined to the emission of black smoke from a chimney. Smoke can be of other kinds than black, and can issue from other apertures than a chimney. I recollect very well, when I was engaged in industry myself, looking with some complacency at the chimneys of the works with which I was connected, which were emitting white smoke, thereby being entirely immune from the attentions of the smoke inspector of the local authority. As a matter of fact that white smoke was far more injurious than black smoke, for it contained poisonous metallic fumes, and it is certainly time that power was given to local authorities to deal with smoke of other colours than black. The first Clause extends the definition to include not only black but white or grey smoke, and to extend the definition of smoke to the emission of gritty particles. It also increases the penalty which may be imposed for the commission of an offence to a sum which will really make it a serious matter to the manufacturer, who has not hitherto been very much frightened by the possibility of having at rare intervals to pay a maximum fine of £ We are extending the power of the local authority to deal with smoke emanating from other apertures than chimneys.
  Now come the countervailing methods designed to mitigate any hardship or injury to manufacturers. We allow a temporary exemption from the provisions of the Bill to certain particular processes which, we are advised, cannot at present be carried on satisfactorily without the emission of smoke. I think those processes are pretty well confined to Sheffield. At any rate they have their home there. Under this Clause we have taken power to extend a similar exemption to other industries by Provisional Order, and that will give an opportunity to any industries which can make out a case similar to that of the Sheffield manufacturers to obtain a temporary exemption in the same way. Of course, we have coupled with that power to the Minister, another power, namely, at the end of a period of five years, to terminate the exemption if in his opinion the time has come when it can safely be done, and I think that is a proper provision and one which, although I cannot bind my successors, certainly if I were still holding my present office I should not allow to remain a dead letter. These

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  different processes will not always stand still. What is a standard process to-day may be superseded in the course of a few years by some other process which may not only make it unnecessary to emit smoke, but may absolutely make it advantageous for a manufacturer to consume his smoke. If such a change had taken place it seems to me it would be right and proper that the Minister should have the power to terminate the exemption and bring that new process under the provisions of the Bill, so that not one but all those manufacturers engaged in that particular industry shall come under the control of the local authority.
  In the case of smoke other than black smoke—and that, of course, includes the emission of gritty particles—it is provided in Sub-section (3) that it is a defence for the person charged to show that he has used the best practicable means for preventing the nuisance hating regard to the cost and to local conditions and circumstances and I draw particular attention to the fact that in making that defence it is expressly laid down that cost is one of the considerations which is to enter into the case. There are instances in a number of manufactures where it is agreed that it is possible to reduce the emission of smoke and at the same time save money, and yet it may not be practicable for the manufacturer at once to carry out the necessary alterations because the capital cost is greater than he is in a position to provide.
  Mr. CHARLETON: Will the employer be liable for the negligence of his workmen in this case?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I will come to that point. The employer is able to make a good defence if he can say, "This new process is one which I am adopting, but I cannot adopt it all at once. If you will allow me a reasonable period of time, I shall be able to find the necessary capital to effect the transformation." The last words of the Subsection are
  "The expression best practical means has reference not only to the provision and efficient maintenance of adequate and proper plant for preventing the creation and emission of smoke, but also to the manner in which such plant is used."
  4.0. p.m.
  That is intended to deal with precisely the point the hon. Member has raised,
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  and it is necessary, therefore, for the employer to show that he gave proper instructions to his employés and has done what he can to see that. they carry them out. Under Clause 2 it is provided that a local authority may make by-laws regulating the emission of noxious smoke. In other words, what the local authorities are expected to do under this Bill, is to set up their own standards of what is noxious smoke, and how long its emission constitutes a nuisance. It has already been done in a number of cases to great satisfaction, but, of course, there is no legal hacking for it at present, and I anticipate the introduction of this Clause will allow local authorities to deal with the conditions of their own industries and their own localities, for which, with their local knowledge, they are fitted. I do not know wether this is one of Clauses which have excited the apprehension of my hon. Friends, but if that be so, I would remind them that local authorities have a very strong interest in retaining industrial concerns within the area of their rateable value, and that, therefore, while I hope they will do their duty in regulating the emission of noxious smoke, I think it may be assumed that in this matter they will have a reasonable regard to what is practicable and v. bat is proper to ask from those who are carrying on industry within their boundaries.
  Dr. SALTER: Does the Minister intend to issue model by-laws on the subject, and also standard tests for smoke?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I will not undertake to issue the standard tests; they may be considered later. Certainly it is the intention to issue model by-laws, and that, I think, is desired by the local authorities themselves, who like to have some sort of standard before them. But that does not mean that every local authority has to have a stereotyped set of by-laws. This would only be a sort of model for them to follow, and it would be modified or altered in each case to suit the local conditions and the local industry. I do not think I need spend any time on Clause 4, which deals with the alkali works, because I believe that to be a non-controversial Clause. The effect of it is that it gives power to extend the list of works which have to be registered under the Alkali Works Regulation Act, and also the list

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  of noxious gases which come under that Act, in order that the legislation may keep pace with and be brought up to date with recent advances. The Act at present is working extremely smoothly, and I have not heard that any objections are likely to be taken to this reasonable extension of it.
  I come to a Clause which, I think, may arouse criticism, not so much for what it contains, as for what it leaves out. Clause 5 extends the powers of an urban authority in the making of by-laws requiring the provision in new buildings of such arrangements for heating as are calculated to prevent or reduce the emission of smoke, but it specially exempts private dwelling-houses from the action of the Clause. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why?"] If the hon. Member will allow me, that is what I was coming to. Of course, the criticism at once arises, why exempt private dwellings? I admit at once that it is the private dwellings which are the greatest sinners in the production of smoke. Of course, we could not make this Clause in any case apply to existing dwelling-houses. It is not suggested for a moment that that could be done. What is suggested is that we should give the authorities power to require that new dwelling-houses should not be erected unless they were fitted with arrangements for heating and cooking by means of gas or electricity. I wonder whether hon. Members realise how far matters have got already. We made some inquiries from a number of local authorities, and we found that 75 per cent. of the new houses now being erected were already fitted with gas stoves.
  I gave a good deal of consideration to this matter, and came to the conclusion that it was not wise to include private dwelling-houses with other new buildings, because I felt that in our present state of knowledge it was too great an interference with private liberty. I would point out that a very large number of these private dwelling-houses are being erected by local authorities. If local authorities choose, they can so fit those buildings that there are no open grates in them. They can provide them only with gas stoves or gas cookers, or electric cookers, as the case may be, and in many eases they do. Only last year I was in Dundee, and I saw there a collection of
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  municipal houses which were centrally heated. It was not merely cooking that was done without the emission of smoke, but the whole heating of the house was done by means of a central system, and I was informed by those who put it in that it was very popular and very successful. I did not have an opportunity of conversing with the people living in the houses and asking their opinion about it, but I dare say they found it very satisfactory. Therefore, to a very large extent the matter is entirely in the hands of the local authorities now. The only question, therefore, is—and I think the House will see it is coming down to something rather small—whether the local authorities should have power to require not only that its own houses should be built in this way, but that everybody else's house should also be built in this way. That, I think, is going too far. Many of us do not desire to have nothing but gas fires in our homes; we like the open fire. We certainly should very much resent it, if we were told that we were not to be allowed to have a free choice in the matter: and if it be open to us to do that, why should other people not have a free choice?
  Viscountess ASTOR: Would it not be possible to make some law by which open fires could be made without smoke and without the tremendous waste there is now?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I do not know whether that is so; I should hardly have thought it was possible to find a construction which would ensure that no smoke should be emitted from the chimney, whatever kind of fuel was used. I was going on to say that in some districts coal is supplied free to the occupiers. I think it is quite a common thing in mining districts, for instance, for coal to be made a sort of allowance. If by-laws of this kind were to be introduced, the miners would not be able to burn the coal in their own homes any more, but would have to burn gas. We have had it suggested that where gas coppers have been installed in houses by local authorities, they have been objected to by the inhabitants, and have had to be taken out by the local authorities. I do think it is very necessary that we should take care, in trying to cure one

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  evil, we do not produce another one. 1 do not want to do anything which is going to hinder or hamper the erection of houses, and, still more, I do not want to do anything which is going, possibly, to make houses more expensive to live in than they are, because the great difficulty about houses which are being erected to-day is that the sort of people we would like to see occupying them cannot afford them. We must see that we do not put new restrictions on these houses, which would have the effect of making them more expensive to live in, and we must not always think of big towns which happen to have big gas undertakings, and are producing gas and electricity at the lowest possible rates. There are a large number of local authorities served by small plant, and, perhaps, the production of electricity or gas, as the case may be, would compare very unfavourably with the cost of heating the houses by the use of raw coal.
  Really, I think the solution of this question lies in two directions. One is in making it as easy and as cheap as possible for people to use gas and electricity. I know from my own experience in Birmingham what an enormous effect the supply of cooking stoves on the easy-purchase system or hire system has had. That is one direction. The other direction is in the production of smokeless fuel. It was one of the recommendations of the Newton Committee that the Government should do something in the nature of a continual research into this matter, and that may be taken up. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research has a section which is especially devoted to the investigation of fuel, and they have been for some years now proceeding in their investigation, and are making tests for private individuals. Although the problem has not yet been solved, I think I can say that progress has certainly been made. If we can, in the course of a year or so, obtain a smokeless fuel which can be used in the open grate, and which is sufficiently cheap and sufficiently practicable to commend itself to the ordinary man and woman, who is very important in this matter, then, I think, we may be able to amend this Bill by putting in a provision to allow local authorities to exercise control over the burning of raw coal in grates. Until that time comes, I do suggest to this House that it is best to leave this matter to the
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  operation of those various activities which are now going on in the direction we desire, and not do anything which may hamper us, perhaps, rather seriously in another direction.
  Commander BELLAIRS: Is it not the case that local authorities have power now to deal with smoke from chimneys under the 1875 Act, but that they do not exercise that power?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: That is so, and that was the point I was coming to next. The House moves so quickly this afternoon, that there is hardly any opportunity to keep up with it. The next two Clauses about which I wish to speak are Clauses 7 and 8, and I, personally, attach a great deal of importance to them, although they may not, perhaps, at first sight look very important. I have already mentioned the view that really the thing to which we have got to turn our attention with the greatest possible concentration is the question of administration, and these two Clauses are the administrative Clauses of the Bill. Clause 7 gives power to the Minister on complaint from a county council that a local authority, not being a county borough, has failed to make by-laws or to carry out their duties under the Act to which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Maidstone (Commander Bellairs) referred, to put the county council in charge, instead of the local authority. That is, to hand over to the county council the power of carrying out the duties of the local authority. That is what we call the power concerning a defaulter authority. The provision in respect to a defaulter authority exists in respect to other matters besides smoke abatement. I do not think it is often put into operation, but the very fact that that power exists is perhaps a stimulus to the more backward local authorities, and I think there is a distinct advantage in putting it in this Bill. I rely still more on Sub-section (2), which says that
  "The Minister shall in any case where he considers it expedient to do so cause an inquiry to be held as to the manner in which a local authority have carried out their duties under the said Act with respect to smoke nuisances, and if satisfied from the result of such inquiry that the authority have failed to carry out their duties adequately, he may by Order authorise the

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  county council to carry out those duties either for a definite period or until the Minister otherwise directs."
  In Clause 8, the Minister has power to require the local authority to furnish him with such information as he may from time to time require as to their proceedings with regard to the abatement of smoke nuisances. If these two Clauses are worked by the Ministry of Health with a real genuine desire to improve the administration of health authorities they will be very effective. We know that in these matters we depend very much upon the nature of the local authority. We often find that some local authorities are active and enterprising, while perhaps other authorities adjacent to them go to sleep and do not move. Here is a power under this Bill to stir them up. They will have to give information as to what they are doing, and if they are not doing what other authorities are doing, or what the Minister thinks they ought to do, he will, in the first instance, call their attention to their defects, and endeavour to secure that they shall carry out their duties, and if they still fail to do so he will fall back upon the provision respecting a defaulter authority, and put in the county council to carry out the duties.
  Clause 9 removes from the ambit of the Bill any ship or vessel. This Clause has been criticised in some quarters. The Clause does not take away from the local authorities any powers which they now possess in regard to the emission of smoke by ships in port or harbour; but we are advised that it is impossible to prevent a ship from emitting black smoke at certain times and, further, we cannot distinguish between British and foreign vessels in this matter. If we are to make a provision which is to apply to foreign vessels as well as British vessels, we run a danger of some retaliation against British ships in foreign ports, and as we have more ships than other nations we aways stand to lose by any retaliation of that kind. On the other hand, it would be obviously unfair to British shipping to make a regulation to apply to them which did not also apply to foreign ships. Therefore, on the whole, and at the strong request of the Board of Trade we have decided that this Bill shall not apply to shipping.
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  Clause 10 applies for the first time the provisions of a Bill of this kind to Crown property. A local authority will have power if they consider that a smoke nuisance exists on Crown property in their area, to make a report, but it really means that they can make a complaint to the appropriate Government Department. The Minister will then have to make an inquiry, and if he is satisfied that a nuisance exists he must abate the nuisance and prevent a recurrence thereof. If he does not do that, the remedy lies in Parliament. The Minister must always be responsible to Parliament, and Parliament is the best medium for regulating a proceeding of that kind and seeing that the Minister does not in any way take advantage of his position to escape the responsibility which certainly ought to lie upon a. Government Department, just as it is being laid upon private people and local authorities
  This is not a revolutionary Bill. It is an attempt to carry out the recommendations of the Newton Committee, to strengthen the administration of the existing provisions. to strenghten the law where it is found to be weak and, at the same time, to see that. no undue hardship or injury is imposed upon manufacturers in carrying out the provisions of the Bill as enforced by local authorities.
  Mr. THOMAS SHAW: From this side of the House we shall offer no objection to the Bill, but shall confine ourselves in Committee to trying to strengthen its provisions. We are extremely doubtful about the last Sub-section of Clause 1. We are afraid that the discretion of the Minister in other hands than those of the present Minister of Health may tend to accepting excuses rather than insisting on health-providing facilities for the public. It mist he definitely understood that we reserve to ourselves the right in Committee to try to strengthen the Bill in every way possible, in order not only to give effect to the intentions of the Minister but to carry those intentions further than they appear in the Bill.
  It must be evident to anybody who observes conditions in this country that it is badly spoilt by dirt and grit sent into the air from our factory chimneys and from the chimneys of private dwellings. There is an old saying in Lanca-

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  shire which I am afraid still holds good
  among quite a number of manufacturers that:
  "Where there is plenty of muck, there is plenty of brass."
  If I may translate that saying, it means that where there is plenty of dirt there is plenty of money. That was the idea that was very prevalent when I was a boy. There are still employers who hold that view, and I think a little touch of it has got into the Amendment on the Order Paper. Surely we have grown out of the days when we were prepared to accept anything in order that money might be made, to refuse to accept scientific discovery, invention and progress, and to continue on old lines, because of the fear that it might cost a trifle more if we adopted new methods. I am convinced that the abolition of the emission of smoke, as far as is humanly possible, would not only be a good thing for the country, hut would be economical
  to the manufacturer himself.Let us
  think of some of our cities and towns
  which suffer the worst. Let me take Sheffield. Anyone who has had the experience of running into Sheffield in the summer time with the windows of the carriage open, will have seen himself and everything he possessed covered with grit. It is impossible to believe that air which is literally saturated with grit can he healthy for the people, and the result has been that Sheffield is known to its people as a dirty picture in a golden frame. The frame is golden, for Sheffield is surrounded by some of the most beautiful country in England. We want to make the picture itself worthy of the frame, and the only way to make Sheffield a picture worthy of its frame is to clear its atmosphere as far as is humanly possible. Because we believe these things, we shall help the Minister as far as we are able not only to realise his ideals in the Bill, but to go a little bit further and to make absolutely certain that cities like Sheffield get a chance.
  Lancashire, my own native county, was intended by nature to be one of the most beautiful parts of the world. Around the dirty manufacturing towns of Lancashire there is some of the prettiest scenery in the whole world. I have seen a good slice of the world. There is beautiful country around cities like Manchester and towns like Oldham,
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  Bolton, Preston, which is comparatively clean and wigan which is not at all a dirty town in comparison with most Lancashire manufacturing towns. There is a joke in Oldham that the town council sends its men out in the spring to paint the trees green in order that the inhabitants may know that spring has come. What earthly reason is there for these towns to be so black? Everybody knows the reason. The reason is that coal is thrown into the air instead of being burnt, not only from our factory chimneys but from our domestic chimneys also. Nature is beautiful enough in this country, and I am one of those who welcome every effort made by the Minister of Health in order to give nature a chance, and to prevent man from spoiling her. That is the position we take up. We want to get rid of dirt and grime which make our industrial towns abominations, in the wet and muggy weather especially. The mugginess is due to the smoke and the frightful waste of coal, which causes both mugginess and dirt.
  I believe that sometime it will he necessary for the present Minister of Health or some future Minister to tackle the question of our domestic fires. We all know, and I should he one of the first to admit it, that it will be no easy matter for any Minister to tackle that problem, however urgently it needs to be tackled. The Report of the Committee to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred assumes that quite a considerable part of the problem is due to the consumption of coal in domestic grates. We have to recognise that the open fire in this country is an institution and also a sentiment. There is no workingman who does not like to sit by a cheery open fire. Therefore, the open fire as an institution, with sentiment associated with it, is a question with which we shall havedeal whenever the problem is tackled. I do not minimise the problem. We know how sentiment is attached to our open domestic fire. Those Members who like myself, have read Shakespeare, can recall how Falstaff sat in his inn "by a sea coal fire." Charles Lamb refers to the open fire. We can understand how the institution of the open fire has entered into the sentiments and hearts of

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  our people when Lamb speaks of one of his characters loving
  "a clean hearth, a clear fire, and the rigour of the game."
  Here is a problem that has to be tackled by some Minister of Health inside the next few years in connection with domestic fires.
  There has been a great improvement -during the last few years by reason of the more scientific grates which have been put even into the small cottages that have been erected. We should be prepared to give a reasonable length of time in order to make alterations and improvements and to back the Minister up to the point of tackling the domestic fire, which add so much to the dirt and discomfort of the workers in our big towns.
  I do not want to make a long speech on this subject. I could give evidence from page after page of the Report of the Committee to prove the injury that is done by smoke, and the improvement that is likely to accrue if we could abolish it or could cut it down to minimum. These things, however, are perfectly obvious to everyone. I hope the Minister will not place too much reliance 'on the statement made in the Amendment on the Order Paper as to the cost it will involve to the employers. The Minister of Health himself has been in business, and during my life I have had to negotiate for many years with a hardheaded set of employers. I never knew the slightest suggestion that was going to cost a farthing which was not going to ruin the industry; which was not most undesirable. Frankly, I am a little cynical as to the great injury which would be done to the employers. I rather think it is a case of the old-fashioned employer, who objects to any change as much as the Devil is supposed to object to holy water. He does not want to be worried. He is content to let people live in the smoke and grime, though he often takes the opportunity of getting out of it. A proof of that can be found by anyone who visits Manchester on a market day. The employers may have their mills in Oldham or Bolton, but many of them live at St. Anne's-on-Sea. We on these benches want the atmosphere to be as pure for the man who has to live near the factory
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  as for the mail who lives on the seaside, and we shall certainly not offer any objection to the Bill, but in Committee will try to strengthen it to the utmost of our power.
  Mr. H. WILLIAMS: I am certain we have listened with great interest to the speech just delivered, but we have not been so much impressed as interested. Some of the views of the right hon. Gentlemen opposite are a little behind the times. Every Bill with a good name is not necessarily a good Bill, and every Bill which has a good object does not always achieve it. There are many people in this world who think that they have only to apply the word democratic to something and that the thing is of necessity good. It is, of course, agreed by all that a great deal of smoke in the atmosphere aggravates all the respiratory diseases, that the elimination of the actinic rays of sunlight are a cause of rickets, and we all know its effect on our laundry bills. We know all about that, but we want to consider to what extent this Bill will bring about an improvement. I have certain doubts in that direction. I would point cut that this Bill definitely extends the law beyond the old black smoke which is dealt with by the existing law—and it is black smoke which causes most or the troubles outlined to us this evening. I am acquainted with the air of Lancashire and I agree with much that has been said about its pestilenc. That is the impression I formed as I travelled through it. But I think a great deal of the trouble in regard to Lancashire is that the people who live there are proud of it and until you can shatter a Lancashire man's pride in his county you will find a little difficulty in your efforts to improve it.
  In this Bill we are proposing to make the word "smoke" include ashes, grit and gritty particles. I want to direct the attention of the House to the fact that new methods of coal combustion are now being adopted. There is a method of pulverising coal adopted now which gives a much higher efficiency than any other method. Coal is pulverised until it is practically an impalpable powder like flower. It is blown into the combustion chamber in the same way as oil fuel. The combustion is complete. But all coal contains a certain amount of incom-

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  bustible matter which is not burnt. A certain proportion of it depending on the strength of the air blast, on the design of the combustion chamber and on the height of the chimney, is blown into the air and would come under the description "grit or gritty particles." I am afraid by this Bill you are going to make an offence of one of the most modern methods of fuel combustion. It is not a question of party; it is purely a scientific question, and we have to consider the balance of advantages. It may be that the prohibition of some of the things provided for in the Bill will be an advantage to our health, but nothing like the advantage that is suggested. On the other hand, it may impose a real disability upon some of our industries. I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman opposite that it is quite conceivable that some of the things told him by his hardheaded colleagues in Lancashire are true, judging by the distressful case of the cotton industry in the recent years.
  After all, if we lower the prosperity of the people of this country we limit our financial capacity to deal with other aspects of public health, such as sanitation and proper water supply, which are just as important as the power to restrict smoke. If you hamper your industry, you may be doing more harm to your public health than the good you will be doing by giving effect to this Bill. In addition to the kind of fuel I have been describing, there is a great deal of fuel to-day burnt under forced blast, a method which greatly assists smokeless combustion. On the other hand, there is a danger of ash and gritty particles being thrown into the air. I am afraid this Bill will make a crime of modern practice, and it is because I am a little nervous in this direction—[A laugh.] —I am not surprised that the Noble Lady the Member for Sutton (Viscountess Astor) laughs, because she is a little lacking in industrial experience and may not appreciate, the point. We are all aware of the importance of good firing. Anyone knows that a boiler furnace which is fired at frequent intervals, in which a good level fire is maintained of uniform brightness, is the kind of fire that gives you efficient combustion, and, to a large extent, smokeless combustion. Unfortunately, there are sometimes bad stokers; but they can be cured. But what
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  cannot be cured is this, There are certain industrial processes which call for intermittent firing, therefore you will get a period, say, half-an-hour or three-quarters of an hour, during which you will get considerable emissions of smoke which we should like to eliminate. It is clear, however, that until our scientific developments are level with our desires, it would be absurd to impose restrictions which might have a very bad effect upon our manufacturing capacity.
  Then there are certain metallurgical processes which, in the present state of science, do involve, unfortunately, the production of a. great deal more smoke than we would like to see. I am a little afraid that some of the provisions of this Bill are, apparently, going to extend the existing law to metallurgical processes. If the Bill provided that the Minister of Health should have power to lay down certain standards from time to time, and adjust those standards as scientific development goes on, I should feel much more friendly towards the Bill than I do. Take, for example, the possibility of using the great quantities of inferior coal which are now mined and which are not used at all because of their very large content of incombustible matter. A great deal of stuff is brought up from the mines which is practically useless. The methods of pulverisation may render it economic to burn a great deal of the rubbish, as we call it, in the future. I hope it will come about, because it will have a very beneficient economic effect as far as the coal mining industry is concerned. It will give a real value to something which now has no financial value at all. If we can use this waste material in this way, it is certain that. the proportion of grit and gritty particles that will be produced will be rather higher, but by this Bill you may restrict development on these lines. I have put down the Amendment which stands on the Paper in my name, and in the names of other hon. Members, but after the statement of the Minister of Health as to the attitude he would adopt in Committee, an attitude of sweet reasonableness, I feel it would be a little ungracious to move it, and I do not intend to do so.
  I regret very much finding myself in opposition to the Minister of Health for many reasons. In many cases in which I

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  have held opinions different from his, events have proved him to be right and me to be wrong. On this occasion we are dealing with a matter which is fundamentally a technical question and not one of sentiment, and it may be worth while later on that the points I have raised should be carefully considered by the Committee upstairs, because it is of real importance, at a time when many of our industries are suffering, that these matters should be considered with great care. Since I put the Amendment on the Paper I have received a copy of a resolution passed by what the right hon. Gentleman opposite would call a hardheaded body of gentlemen—the administrative committee of the National Union of Manufacturers, which I should like to read. It is as follows:
  "The Administrative Committee of the National Union of Manufacturers, having given careful consideration to the Public Health (Smoke Abatement) Bill now before the House of Commons, are unanimously of the opinion that in the present state of industry it is most undesirable to pass into law a Bill of this nature, which may result in materially increasing the expenses of manufacturers. Moreover, they consider the provisions of the present law, if properly administered, are adequate to prevent any serious abuses in regard to the amount of smoke."
  I had no knowledge that the National Union of Manufacturers bad taken any action on this subject, but their resolution is substantially on the lines of the Amendment I have put down, and I feel that a great deal might be achieved by a more efficient administration of the present law. We all realise that the domestic chimney is responsible for a great deal, but we equally realise that the great mass of the democracy has no intention of allowing the fireside to be done away with. We must realise that fact, and also that in the case of the ordinary household the cheapest way of warming a room is by an open fire. Other methods of heating are a luxury of the well-to-do. There is no getting away from the fact the open fire is the cheapest way of warming a room. So far as the health of those in the room at the time is concerned, it is the healthiest method because of the efficient natural draught which it produces, and as long as that is the case, we have to realise that any progress in that direction must be slow and on the lines indicated by the Minister of
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  Health. For the reasons I have mentioned, I do not propose to move the Amendment in my name, in the hope that the Amendments which I and others will put awn will receive the right hon. Gentleman's fullest and most sympathetic consideration in Committee.
  Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: I am disappointed that the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. H. Williams) has not moved his Amendment, and I am reminded thereby of the story told by the right hon. brother of the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health, where a Jew was reported to have recanted when threatened with being burnt as an infidel, and the crowd shouted: "Stand fast, Moses." You and I, Mr. Speaker. know that the Member who moves Amendments but does not press them and does not fight them to a Division does not get much consideration from the Treasury Bench. The hon. Member for Reading has been less time in the House than either you or I, Sir, and perhaps he will allow me to give him that advice. With one exception, my only criticism of this Bill is that it does not go far enough and does not in any way touch the domestic fires and permit the local authorities to introduce by-laws, as they may in their wisdom wish to do, in order to encourage the use of smokeless methods of heating and so on. The only exception I make, on the lines of the attitude of the hon. Member for Reading, is with reference to cement works. I have reason to believe that where cement works can use smokeless methods for firing their boilers, the actual dust thrown up by the machinery itself may come under the provisions of this Bill, and it may be impossible to do away with a certain amount of nuisance from cement works. I think that will have to be examined by the Minister of Health, and I daresay he can give instructions to local authorities to exempt cement works, apart from their bailer smoke, as regards their cement dust.
  With regard to the domestic hearth, the Interim Report of Lord Newton's Committee, which I think is for our purpose perhaps the most valuable, gave evidence showing that at least 50 per cent. of the total smoke nuisance is due to the open domestic hearth, and this matter is being funked

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  by the Minister. The Government are afraid to tackle it. I do not suggest that they should give a time limit for the abolition of the open grate—that would bring about a revolt in the legions—but they could carry out the recommendations of the Government Committee along certain very practical lines. For example, why should it not be made legal for local authorities to differentiate the rates on new houses where smokeless methods are introduced? There are available, of course, gas, electricity, and smokeless fuel itself. I was very astonished to receive a reply from the Minister of Health, whom I interpellated on this question a little time ago, to the effect that certain Departments were still experimenting on actual smokeless fuels, but I believe I am right in saying that there are several smokeless fuels suitable for burning in existing grates, and others suitable for burning in special grates, that are not more expensive. The hon. Member for Reading said that the cheapest method of warming a room was by burning coal in an open fire, but I believe it is even cheaper to put in the cheap forms of grates and use smokeless fuel, and the only disadvantage is that you do not see the flames which we are used to seeing, but there is a more steady glow instead, to which, I suppose, we shall get used in time, and the generations coming after us will love their smokeless fires as much as we love our smoky fires. I must say that the open fire has the advantage that it does not matter much if you knock your pipe ash into it or burn up incriminating documents, which, of course, you cannot do by a gas fire.
  It would he possible, I believe, to give a great deal of encouragement towards the building of houses with smokeless methods of heating, and I am very surprised indeed that the Government have not tackled this matter. The least they could have done, I should have thought, was to allow the local authorities, in their discretion, to give some encouragement to smokeless houses. The right hon. Member for Preston (Mr. T. Shaw) used an expression that did not surprise me. I knew it was coming. He spoke of Lancashire and used an expression which is also used in Yorkshire, namely, "Where there's muck there's brass." I daresay that is true up to a point, and we got an echo of it in the speech of the hon. Member for Reading. There may be
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  brass, there may be money, there may be wealth, but the whole medical faculty are united in pointing to the evil effects on the health of the people of the shutting out of sunlight from our cities, and the terrible wear and tear on the unfortunate housewives, who have to try to keep themselves and their houses and their children clean when this unconsumed coal is being deposited in the atmosphere the whole time.
  There may be "brass" where there is "muck," there may be money where there is dirt, but it means lack of health, sickening children, housewives whose lives are made a burden, and an immense material loss. In fact, this continuance of the use of raw coal is not only wasteful, it is the using up of wealth that we shall appreciate in the years to come, when we know how to deal with coal scientifically. The loss of health and happiness and the general inefficiency and muddle caused by our present methods are distinctly checking the progression of human kind. Then we get this Bill from the Minister of Health. I believe that by far the greatest cause of all this dirt and inefficiency and muddle is the domestic fire, and no attempt whatsoever has been made to tackle it. I hope we shall, at any rate, do something in Committee to remove this great blot on an otherwise excellent Bill, which I shall support.
  Sir ALFRED MOND: I want to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health in occupying a position which I might well have occupied myself, for I remember very well that this Bill was one of the Measures which my Department was considering when I was still in office, but I am glad that he has found the opportunity, denied to me, of bringing it before the House of Commons. It is said, on the other hand. that it will ruin every other industry and, on the other, that it does not go far enough to do anything in particular. To that I can only say that I think on the whole the Bill goes as far as it can usefully go in a very imperfect world. It is scarcely sufficiently realised that if the existing legislation against black smoke were only enforced more vigorously, the terrible pall of darkness which we see hanging over our industrial country would enormously diminish, and the only thing that one fears about any

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  new legislation on the subject is that unless more energy is shown in its enforcement, hardly any practical result will accrue. I am personally not terrified about the results of legislation of this kind being a serious threat to industry. As a matter of fact, I think the result, as a rule, has been the other way. I have been for many years now connected with factories burning some thing like a thousand tons of coal, with practically no smoke at all, and I remember the days when we used to see the black smoke of the chimneys as a sort of landmark when we came home from hunting. That improvement was not brought about merely to make life more pleasant or to preserve the amenities, but to save an enormous waste of fuel.
  The methods to-day of dealing with the firing of boilers by mechanical and other means of reducing smoke are so well known that it is almost incredible to me, as I go about the country, still to see chimney stacks belching forth clouds of black smoke, wasting endless money, and polluting the atmosphere. You can see in this very town volumes of black smoke coming from large electric light stations and ruining all the surrounding districts. The trouble with the existing legislation really is that the definition "black smoke" is so meticulously argued and it is so narrowly defined that it practically became inoperative, and if a Bill of this character gives greater elasticity and does not confine us to one shade of colour, which does not exist in nature at all but only exists on paper, local authorities will not be discouraged from taking any action. I am very glad that my right hon. Friend has found it possible to introduce this Bill, and I hope it will pass through the House without too much meticulous opposition, so that we can get it on the Statute Book. There are no doubt points that want safeguarding, some points of difficulty. The hon. Member for Reading (Mr. H. Williams), who spoke with great expert knowledge, pointed some of them out, but I would point out that solutions are very often found only when problems become acute, and very often it is merely the necessity of finding some solution which causes it to be adopted. There are to-day methods of smoke consumption which are adopted in other countries where they
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  do not allow people to poison the atmosphere by pouring their fumes into the air, and these methods, which work in America, in Canada, and, I believe, in Germany, ought to be made to work here. This offensive smoke is not really a necessity, and if this Bill has one fault it is that it safeguards a little too much, and is a little too much in favour of what I would call the reactionary manufacturer.
  5.0 p.m
  I am a little disappointed that my right hon. Friend has not, gone any further in regard to the domestic aspect of this problem. I must point out that the right hon. Gentleman seemed to assume that there are only two forms of smokeless fuel in this country, one gas and the other electricity. Far be it from me to say anything against either of those extremely important methods of modern heating, but Britain produces something like 5,000,000 tons of anthracite, which is the best smokeless fuel in the world, and there is no reason to wait for somebody to invent a superior smokeless fuel when you produce in this country an unlimited amount of smokeless fuel already. The right hon. Gentleman has, I believe, been in New York, which has been made a smokeless city simply because no soft coal is allowed to be burnt there, and hard coal is the only coal consumed. It is, therefore, quite unreasonable to argue that you cannot do anything at all because you cannot compel people to do without an open fire. In South Wales everybody burns anthracite in an open fire, and it is about the only fuel that you can burn there. Hon. Members might have found that out at Wembley. I do not wish to compel the Minister of Health to promote the Welsh anthracite industry, nor to compel local authorities in putting up any new houses to put in coal burning grates which give no smoke. But why should not the Minister of Health, at any rate, allow an option? It is not merely a question of workmen's cottages. We are dealing with the whole range of houses, including large blocks of flats that are going up in London every day, and creating just as much smoke as great chimneys. There are instances where such buildings pollute the atmosphere as much as factory chimneys. Unless you deal with this on

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  broad lines, you are not going to get any of the results we wish to obtain.
  It is scarcely conceivable to me that if you allow local authorities to exercise some control over the fire and heating introduced into new private houses, it will be used in such a tyrannical or foolish way as to cause the trouble that is feared. After all, the local authorities are elected just as we are. All the arguments I have heard advanced about the "hearth and home" and the "sacred open grate" contain a sentiment that applies just as much to municipal and local elections as to Parliamentary ones. I do think that power ought to be given in the direction in which I have suggested. Unless you do it now in this Bill, you will never get it done. We cannot deal with this kind of legislaton except at rare intervals, as we know from experience. The whole development is in the direction of greater use of by-products, domestic coke and anthracite; and all forms of heat and fuel more and more do away with the idea of the present wasteful burning of coal in the domestic establishments. I urge my right hon. Friend to put a permissive Amendment in the Bill, which, after all, does not commit the Government to putting the responsibility on the local authorities, but does allow a large part of the building of this country to go up with a due regard to the consumption of smoke in the domestic fire. It is not suggested that the total abolition of smoke is the aim of this Bill, but we might, at any rate, see that such fires are more smokeless than they are at present. The right hon. Gentleman, I know, is a man of great courage and not easily moved by opposition. Therefore, I urge on him to take the unique opportunity, that might not occur again for long years to come, of accepting an Amendment on the Committee stage that will enable us to move along the lines of smoke abatement.
  Mr. J. BAKER: I am in favour of smoke abatement and purifying the atmosphere, but I am a little concerned about paragraph (e) of Clause 1. This is legislation by reference, and I have not had time yet to make the necessary reference. Also, I did not hear the Minister's speech, as I was called out of the Chamber when he rose. If this paragraph (e) is adding this list of trades to a list that might be penalised under this
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  Bill or a previous Act, then I suggest that you cannot make pig iron without blowing into the atmosphere clouds of steam and smoke, poisonous fumes and grit. You cannot make Bessemer steel without blowing into the atmosphere particles of steel dust and gas. You cannot puddle iron without having some means of cooling your heat. The ironmasters of this Country have spent some £20,000 in research work to get rid of manual labour in connection with the puddling of iron and to get a substitute that will not pollute the atmosphere to the same extent as coal. They have not succeeded. Therefore I hope that these trades are not going to be added as industries that are to be penalised. If they are, I am afraid I shall have to vote against the Bill, although I am very much in favour of doing all that we can to try to purify our atmosphere.
  Captain WATERHOUSE: I think it is is impossible to over-emphasise the importance of the subject that we arc discussing to-day. Of all things that are ruining the life of our towns, I believe that smoke and the accompanying degradation are by far the most important and the most difficult to deal with. This Bill is a real step forward but it is not a very large step, and I do hope that the Minister really means what he said when he promised to consider in Committee suitable Amendments. In another place there have been Amendments, but they were entirely legal and drafting Amendments which did not make the least difference to the Bill in principle. I hope the Minister will consider whether he cannot meet us on some points of principle. When it is suggested that other smokes than black smoke should be included, we are only doing what was done in Leiester just 58 years ago by the Leicester Improvement Act of 1868, under which all smoke was included. Similar steps were taken by Bradford, Leeds, and Nottingham years ago. Unless the Minister can see his way to extend the compulsory powers in this Bill, I do not think we shall look back on the year 1926 as one of great progress in this direction. The Bill does increase the penalties, and that is all to the good, and I believe that the provisions of the Bill give adequate safeguards to industries that might be affected.

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  One point of the Bill frankly I do not like. The Minister has got a most awfully soft place in his heart for county councils. These county councils are absolutely above reproach. If anything goes wrong anywhere, refer it to the county council. We have seen this transfer of powers under the Rating and Valuation Bill, and we are expecting a similar transfer when the Poor Law is reformed. My experience of county councils is not such a happy one. They are guaranteed to spend money but not to do much else. I should also like to ask why shipping is excluded from the Bill? In New York they have a very definite law on this point:
  "No person shall cause, suffer, or allow dense smoke to be discharged from any building, vessel, stationary or locomotive engine or motor vehicle, place or premises within the City of New York, or upon the waters adjacent thereto, within the jurisdiction of said city."
  I do not think it has ruined the shipping of New York, and I do not think it would ruin that of this country, but. I do not want to stress this point. People who live in ports may enjoy sea breezes, and no doubt soot and dirt do not matter so much. It is the great industrial cities that we have got to think of. I expect it will be said that His Majesty's Services are quite distinct from any ordinary service or from ordinary undertakings, and that. therefore Clause 10 is a perfectly natural Clause to put in this Bill. But I believe I am right in saying that His Majesty's chauffeur would come under the criminal law and be fined if he transgressed the law. Why should not State factories come under the law. Why should the Minister make provisions to protect his colleagues from the action of a law that he considers necessary in the public interest? State undertakings should be an example to others, and it is cowardly to take this protection.
  The most important thing of all is with regard to dwelling houses. Lord Newton's Committee said that at least 50 per cent. of the smoke and grime came from the fires of dwelling houses. In Birmingham. I believe, something like 54 tons of smoke and grit is deposited each year. That makes one realise, that if it is true to say that no less than 27 tons of this comes from dwelling houses, the problem ought to be tackled. I remember once looking down on a Yorkshire valley on a
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  day like this, when it was quite clear and bright. About a quarter-past four everyone thought it was tea time, and by half-past four you could not see a single house. There was a blue haze that came entirely from domestic smoke. There is a very considerable difference between the high chimney of the factory and the chimney of a dwelling house, and also between the action of the wind on smoke that comes from these chimneys. If you have smoke being belched from 150 chimneys in a narrow street, how can you expect to get self-respect and clean, healthy families and healthy children in these districts?
  The Minister has told us that there is a difference of 7½d. a week as between Manchester and Harrogate in the cost of washing alone. That is a considerable item, but the Minister must also consider the woman herself who has to be scrubbing from Monday morning until Saturday night just because the right hon. Gentleman is afraid of the unpopularity which might attach to bringing in a stronger Measure. Unless this Government do so, no Government in England ever will do it, because I believe that this Government more than any other have at heart the well-being of the people. One of the factors most important for health is sunlight, and according to Lord Newton's Committee, in the ordinary industrial towns—not the worst—20 per cent. of our very scanty supply of sunshine is screened from us, and never reaches. The people living in these towns. The Minister, I think, needs no convincing about the necessity of dealing with this problem, but apparently he does need convincing about the possibilities of dealing with it. I believe that somewhere not far from Birmingham there is a village called Northfield, and I am told in that village there are no fireplaces. They have a system of general central heating, and so far from it having been expensive, they actually saved £30 per house in the construction. That is something which the right hon. Gentleman and the officials of his Department ought to consider very carefully. The Staveley Ironworks have supplied hot water to a large portion of Staveley, and in many other private undertakings one finds the same sort of effort being made. If it can be done economically by private firms, surely it

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  can be done as a saving and as the provision of a real asset, by municipal authorities, The Minister says it can be done. I think he should put in a Regulation that it must be done, not only in municipal schemes, but in all large schemes.
  Some arrangement should be made for a central supply of hot water, just as we now have a central supply of cold water. It is absurd to say that you cannot do these things because they restrict liberty. At present we are hemmed in with restrictions. We can only build a house of a certain size; we can only have rooms of a certain height; we must have a bathroom, whether we like bathing or nat, and I do not see why we should not be compelled to have a gas stove whether we like gas stoves or not. I urgently ask the Minister to consider whether, at a later stage in the progress of this Bill, he could not introduce a Regulation making it compulsory on any person building a house in an area where there is a service of gas, to put in the necessary pipe lines. I do not think it is asking too much, and I am sure the country as a whole would benefit from it. In a matter such as this, the Government must lead, and not follow. As long as the Government only follow they are never going to make any progress at all, because the people of this country are inherently conservative—and thank goodness for it. I hope when the Minister gets into Committee he will give effect to the promise which he made earlier in the Debate and will make this Bill into a far-reaching and a vital Measure to improve the amenities of life for the people of this country.
  Dr. SALTER: I rise to give a general support to the Bill, but, as I think the Minister will assume, I do so with no great degree of enthusiasm. We, on this side, regret the numerous omissions from the Bill, and the numerous loopholes and opportunities for evasion which it provides. I hope the Minister's promise that he would favourably consider Amendments in Committee does not refer merely to Amendments which will have the effect of weakening the Bill, but that he will give equal consideration to Amendments aimed at strengthening the Bill. We on this side feel that the Bill will make some tiny improvements, yet we also feel that it leaves untouched the large problem of
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  smoke abolition. We recognise that it is a small advance, and I suppose we ought to be grateful for small mercies in these times. I need not refer to the menace to the health, the lives and the happiness of the people which the smoke problem creates in this country, particularly in our great industrial centres.
  The two biggest scourges of working-class life to-day are chronic rheumatism and chronic bronchitis. These two groups of diseases cause a greater loss of working time than almost. all other diseases put together. Tuberculosis is fast receding into the background as one, of the great disabling influences in working-class life, but chronic bronchitis and chronic rheumatism remain. Chronic rheumatism is at length being tackled and encouragement is being given by the right hon. Gentleman's Department to efforts for its prevention. The great discovery that most forms of chronic rheumatism take their origin in dental sepsis, has led to the greatly increased dental attention now being given under the National Insurance Act, and in other ways, with a view to the prevention of chronic rheumatism. But absolutely nothing is being done for the Prevention of chronic bronchitis. The disabling effect of this group of diseases and the loss of working time which results from it, grow worse every year according to the figures of the right hon. Gentleman's own Department. Great groups of respiratory diseases have been clearly traced to the influence of dirt, dust and soot in the atmosphere, and however small an advance this Bill may mean, one is bound to welcome it, if only for that reason. We hope that a a result of it these terrible diseases to which I have referred will be to some extent mitigated. It is admitted that the greater part of the smoke evil is due to the domestic chimney, and I join with others who have spoken in appealing to the right hon. Gentleman to accept in Committee an Amendment to Clause 5 which will give effect to the recommendations of the Departmental Committee. The right hon. Gentleman, in his opening remarks, said this Bill followed the recommendation of that Committee. One of their recommendations is as follow:
  "That the central housing authority"—
  that being the right hon. Gentleman's own Department—

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  "should decline to sanction any housing schemes submitted by a local authority or a public utility society unless specific provision is made in the plan for the adoption of smokeless methods of supplying the required heat as suggested in the interim Report."
  When the provisions of the Bill were being considered in another place the right hon. Gentleman's Department accepted an Amendment by which private dwelling-houses were included and the word "cooking" was added, and the Clause in question was made to read:
  "It shall be the duty of local authorities submitting proposals for the provision of houses for the purposes of the Housing Act, 1920 to 1924, to satisfy the Minister that such suitable arrangements are to be made for heating and cooking, as are calculated to prevent or reduce the emission of smoke."
  On this side we should like to see that Clause which a previous Conservative Government adopted, while the right hon. Gentleman s Department accepted an Amendment in such terms on the previous Bill. It is said that such a provision is not practicable, but that was not the view of the Departmental Committee, and the right hon. Gentleman himself said that he had seen a scheme for the provision of working-class houses at Dundee, where a form of central heating had been adopted, and that it was entirely satisfactory. That particular scheme consisted of maisonettes and the Committee reports that a similar system is practicable and is, indeed, already in operation with regard to bungalows and isolated houses. They refer to the Austin Motor Company's village at Northfield, which the last speaker mentioned, and their summary of the position is as follows:
  "The dwellings are smokeless, are popular with the tenants, are economical of fuel, and are well ventilated."
  The Ministry of Health are extremely keen on compelling local authorities in London to put up block tenements rather than bungalows. This Committee also report that as far as tenement houses are concerned, the system is perfectly practicable. They give an illustration from a set of 60 tenement houses built by the Liverpool Corporation in 1913. There they say the central system proved economical, thoroughly satisfactory, and that the tenants were very pleased with it. Apparently schemes are already in
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  operation in this country which relate to bungalows and isolated houses, to maisonettes and to block tenements. I would also refer the right hon. Gentleman to the extremely important report issued by the medical officer of health for Salford some time ago, in which he emphasised the necessity of experimenting with different types of grates. He showed that by these special grates you could effect a saving in relation to heating purposes and radiation, get a greater percentage of heating value from the fuel and also arrange for a completely smokeless chimney. The Departmental Committee also pointed out that grates of different kinds were now available which, if they did not lead to the complete abolition of smoke, would reduce it by one-third or even in some cases by 50 per cent.
  Many years ago the London County Council issued a report called "The Smoke Nuisance in London." It is dated June, 1904, and in that report is described an experiment which was made in the building now occupied by the Ministry of Health. The report deals with tests which were carried out by His Majesty's Office of Works showing that when certain types of grates were installed in different rooms in the building, many of them were found to be practically smokeless, they gave greater economy in fuel, and greater heating power and were thoroughly suitable. Those tests undertaken under the auspices of the County Council and the Smoke Abatement Society have shown that it was a perfectly practicable thing to do a good deal of what has been suggested, and if not to abolish, at any rate to diminish seriously, the radius of the smoke nuisance. I would suggest to the Minister that he should accept an Amendment in Committee which would have the effect of strengthening Clause 5, and doing away with the exemption to new houses at present being built or about to be erected.
  There are other points which we on this side of the House would like to see altered in the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the exemption of ships. He gave his reasons why they should be exempted. Those of us who live on Thames-side and in the neighbourhood of the docks are subjected to very considerable annoyance, not for short periods, but for four, five and six hours at a time

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  while the vessels in the docks are getting up steam. It is not fair or just that the people who live in these areas, and who are drenched daily with the smoke for hours at a stretch, should have no legal remedy whatever. Then there are the tug boats in the Thames. I myself have been covered with soot on more than one occasion by the emission of smoke, yet I am given to understand by people who are thoroughly familiar with the mechanism and machinery of the tug boat that this is an entirely preventable thing, and ought to be prevented.
  Reference has also been made to locomotives. Those who live in the scattered areas of towns, or a city like London, are subjected to very considerable annoyance and prejudice by reason of the smoke from locomotives. I understand that in New York steam locomotives are not allowed to go beyond a certain radius, that while inside that area they have to pull up dead, and that electric power must he used inside that particular area. I am not suggesting anything of the sort for this country at the present time, though I ask the serious attention of our railroad people to what may become a possibility of the near future. At any rate, something further should be done with regard to the black smoke issuing in quantities in the various ways that have been mentioned, and I trust the Minister will see his way to strengthen the provisions of this Bill in the directions that, have been indicated; that he will be prepared to consider Amendments which will have the effect of making the Bill better from our point of view.
  Viscountess ASTOR: I, like many other Members in the House, welcome this Bill as a fulfilment of the pledge of the Government, but confess I am greatly disappointed with certain omissions. Hon. Members know far better than I do, but the Coal Commission's Report says that about 2,500,000 tons of potential fuel in the form of smoke escapes into the air from domestic fires, and 5,000,000 tons from industrial establishments. Leaving out that part which is producing most of the smoke—
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The Noble Lady does not suggest total prohibition, does she?
  Viscountess ASTOR: I do not say go in for total prohibition, but when you are abating, abate as much as you can. The Minister used the argument that you ought not to interfere with individual liberty. There is nobody in the world who interferes with individual liberty more than the Minister of Health, and the interference of the Ministry of Health has saved the lives of thousands of children in this country. Hence it is a very poor argument, this argument of interference, to come from the Minister of Health. I think it must have come from another section of the Government—some other person pushing him. It may be that the voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hand pushing the right hon. Gentleman is the hand of Esau. One wonders, indeed, whose voice it was, because the right hon. Gentleman to-day did not seem to be speaking either with a full heart or a convinced head. I do hope that he will in Committee allow as to deal with this matter. As the hon. Member opposite has said, we did not think that people in the other House would accept the Principle of this Bill. Some of us never expected to see that. But in 1924, when a similar Bill was being considered in the House of Lords, an Amendment was accepted by Lord Onslow which included dwelling houses. We ask for some sort of freedom in dealing with this matter. As the right hon. Gentleman is aware, most of the people on this side of the House want the Bill, and certainly all on the other side.
  There is another thing about which 1 should like to say a little, and that is the waste of the domestic hearth. We cannot afford to do it. There is nobody on earth who enjoys a bright fire more than I do. I should be very sad if I had to do away with it, but there arc now gas fires, and for the sake of the women of the country who are amongst the soot and the dirt and the work, one would be willing to make sacrifices. Not only is it the small domestic fires, but there are the other buildings, the clubs, the hotels and the rest of them. Yet there is opposition to remedial measures on the score of interference with individual liberty! It has been shown in one or other of the Reports which have been quoted that Manchester spends £290,000 a year on unnecessary household washing due to smoke pollution, and if Manchester spends that, what must

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  London spend? What, also, must it cost every household in the country? But apart from the cost, I do not think that any man who endeavours to appreciate what all this means to women, living in this endless state of confusion, would do other than wish to see some remedy applied.
  I have had very many letters on the subject, letters even from people who looked forward to some little release from continual work they have now from the time of getting up to the time of going to bed. I do hope, therefore, that the Minister of Health, for the sake of the women, will brave what opposition he has got to face. I do not know where it comes from, because, after all, the Members who put up that opposition have gone out of the House. They used the arguments which the Minister of Health knows so well and has heard for years, that this is going to be a great calamity for industry. It really will be a tremendous disappointment to many of us who have worked in this cause if we do not make some progress in this matter.
  There is another point about which I want to speak. We do not get as much sunlight as they do in America and Canada, and these countries might be able, therefore, to afford to shut out the sun. It seems to me, however, that if there is one country in the world which cannot afford to shut out the sun, it is the British Isles. From that point of view, we ought to do all we can to reduce domestic smoke. I can tell the Minister of Health that in our housing at Plymouth we have put in gas cookers and fireplaces which are up to date and made in a modern way, so that very little smoke escapes. All these things are perfectly possible and perfectly reasonable. I do hope that the Minister will listen to his own supporters, and not be put off by those few people who say that this will be a shock to industry. I have sat in this House for seven years, and I have never known the time when anything which meant a little more cost to industry was not going to cripple that particular industry. After all, if that be the case, if some of these things are so bad for industry, why not deal with the domestic side of the smoke nuisance, and leave the industrial side alone? I speak for
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  thousands of women in the country. You ought not to put into a Bill of this kind that the thing is permissive only; you ought to encourage all the new houses to have smokeless heating and cooking. The right hon. Member for Carmarthen (Sir A. Mond), with his great knowledge of New York, told us that they are only allowed to burn a comparatively small quantity of some kind of coal.
  Mr. SPENCER: Anthracite coal.
  Viscountess ASTOR: So I do hope very much that the right hon. Gentleman will let us have our way in Committee, and not disappoint many of those of us who are his most ardent admirers; that really he will look at the matter snore favourably as becomes so strong a Government.
  Mr. SPENCER: There is one question in this connection to which I wish to draw the attention of the Minister, and which, I think, demands far more attention than has been given to it. I refer to the coke ovens in the colliery districts. Anyone who has lived in close proximity to any colliery company must know perfectly well that there is a radius of half a mile or a mile where the effect of these ovens is apparent. The bad effect is not in the form of dense smoke, but of gas. I am certain that these ovens ought to have more attention from the local authority, whose hands should be strengthened, so that the nuisance may be minimised as far as possible.
  The second point applies to pit heaps. I know nothing more devastating than a burning pit heap. The question has been referred to the local authorities, but the local authorities have very little power to abate a nuisance of that character. You have probably a little community living round a colliery where there is a great pit-head. You will see it every night in winter time blazing away smoke and gas, disseminating it right throughout the village, and there is little or no power to put an end to it. It is not, I know, an easy thing. I know there are difficulties. I think the Minister ought to give sufficient power to local authorities to make colliery companies abate the nuisance as far as possible. I admit there is difficulty, because when there is spontaneous combustion the whole heap gets on fire, and it is not an easy thing to put

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  it out, but by the use of sand and other things they can to some extent abate the nuisance.
  Lieut.-Colonel ANGUS McDONNELL: I rise to say I hope the Minister will give earnest consideration, as he said he would, to the difficulties facing certain industries. Though I do not often find myself in agreement with the hon. and gallant Member for Central Hull (Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy), I do want to support his contention with regard to the cement industry, in so far as it concerns the gas which issues from the kilns used in the burning and calcining of minerals in the manufacture of cement. In my own Division, about a third of the population live on the manufacture of cement, and it seems to me that, as the Bill stands, a county council might put obstacles in the way of the manufacture of cement. Therefore, I ask the Minister to give earnest consideration in the Committee stage to the question of the smoke issuing from kilns used in the calcining of minerals in the manufacture of cement.
  Lieut.-Commander ASTBURY: The Noble Lady the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Viscountess Astor) remarked a few moments ago that all the manufacturers had left the House. I happen to be a very humble manufacturer, and I should like to point out to the Minister of Health the very great issue which this Bill raises for many manufacturers, especially small manufacturers. It is a Bill for the abatement of the smoke nuisance. I have listened to every speech made this afternoon, but I have not heard a single one which showed us how the smoke emitted from a manufacturer's chimneys can be abated. For years past patent appliances have appeare claiming to be smoke-consuming and smoke-abating, but there has never yet been a patent on the market in this country which would enable a factory to consume or abate its smoke. There are many ways in which a slight abatement can he made. A manufacturer may have a chimney which is not high enough or wide enough to give sufficient draught to the boilers, and by remedying that defect he may abate the smoke to some extent; and cases where the boiler power of a factory is too low, and more smoke is made in that way, could also be dealt with; but as regards the general run of
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  cases, I say there is not an appliance on the market by which smoke can be very greatly abated.
  We are all in agreement with what has been said about the value, from a medical standpoint, of a smokeless atmosphere; but the real point is whether it is practicable to get any greater abatement of the smoke nuisance. Every factory works on its own system.A
  cotton mill, for example, is run practically from one beam engine, which has only a small load on it throughout the whole of the day, and it is very easy in a case like that to ensure that very little black smoke is emitted. In contrast with that, there is the case of a print works, where there may be 100 to 150 small engines. Perhaps 50 of those engines may be running for an hour and then all of a sudden all the 100 or 150 engines will be brought into use, causing the steam to run down to the boiler. The furnaces have to be coaled to get steam up again, and in a ease like that I would defy anyone—and I am speaking from practical experience—to avoid emitting black smoke while restoring the head of steam in the boiler. Under the present law a factory has been allowed to emit black smoke for a period not exceeding two minutes; and it has been held that where an observer could see through the smoke it was to be regarded as light smoke and the manufacturer could not be summoned. Under this Bill, however, light smoke is to be taken into consideration. Who is to be the judge of whether the amount of light smoke emitted from a chimney is a detriment to health? As far as I can see, the judges will have to be sanitary inspectors. Is it fair to place in the hands of a sanitary inspector a power which may have the consequence of closing down a factory?
  The point I am coming to as regards smaller manufacturers is this. They started their works years ago, they have no room to expand. Undoubtedly they are emitting more smoke than they ought to, hut when they cannot expand their boiler power and cannot extend their chimneys then, if these Regulations are to be carried out, there is only one thing to be done—the place has got to be closed down. If no reservation is to be made to meet these hard cases it means that smaller works, and in some cases larger

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  works—I do not want to exaggerate—will be closing down, throwing a great many men out of employment.
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: Did I understand the hon. and gallant Gentleman to say that a sanitary inspector would have the power to decide whether black smoke was emitted?
  Lieut.-Commander ASTBURY: Perhaps I did not put it clearly, but I was asking who would be the authority. [An HON. MEMBER: "I hope every policeman."] Up to the present time the only man with authority—subject, of course, to the council—to say whether smoke is black or not is the sanitary inspector, and I thought that system was to apply under this Bill. Clause 2 of the Bill states:
  "Noxious smoke' means smoke of such colour, density and content as the by-laws may specify."
  How on earth can one draw up a by-law on those lines? I think it will be found impossible; and in the end it will come to its being left to the sanitary inspector. I shall be very glad if the Minister will say whether or not the sanitary inspector will have the power of saying whether or not a certain chimney is emitting black smoke.
  I did not get up for the purpose of opposing the Bill, because I think we are all in favour of securing the best conditions possible, but I am very much afraid that if some alteration is not made, this Bill will have the effect of closing down certain works. Not so very far from my own constituency there are works I know' of which are underboilered and with chimneys not high enough, and if the provisions of this Bill arc to be carried out without reservation, I can say, without the slightest fear or hesitation or exaggeration, that those works will have no option but to close down. I hope when the Bill comes into Committee means will be devised of dealing with those cases over which the people concerned have no control.
  Mr. TREVELYAN THOMSON: The hon. and gallant Gentleman has drawn a very doleful picture of what may happen under this Bill. Surely he has forgotten that it rests with the local
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  authority to take action, and all the factors which he has mentioned will be well known to the local authority.
  Lieut.-Commander ASTBURY: I quite understand that, but the man who reports the facts to the local authority is the sanitary inspector, and they take his advice.
  Mr. THOMSON: The local authority have the onus thrown upon them of weighing the evidence submitted, and they are not the deciding factor. They are only the prosecutors, they can only send the case to the Court; and it is the experience of most local authorities that, as a rule, a Court does not forget to consider the interest of the manufacturers in a particular district. Therefore, there is the double protection of the local authority, which knows the needs of the district, and of the Court, which in the past has not been found to act in an arbitrary manner against manufacturers. I would ask the Minister to note the almost universal opinion in favour of making the provisions of the Bill more drastic when it gets into Committee, particularly Clause 5. When the Minister was defending Clause 5, he seemed to speak as though it was not merely a permissive power which the local authority was to have. Surely there is no reason why the local authority should not have a permissive power to deal with smoke prevention in new buildings, including private dwellings. I do not want to recount the tremendous injury done to the health of the community by the emission of smoke from private dwellings, and it would be a thousand pities, now that we have this Bill for which local authorities have been clamouring for many years, not to give them permissive power to deal with private dwellings constructed in the future.
  Clause 10 is an improvement, but it does not go far enough. I do not think the Minister convinced the House that the various Government Departments ought to be treated differently from manufacturers. If the Office of Works, or any other Department, are guilty of emitting black smoke, their officials should be as much amenable to the ordinary law of the land as any private factory. To exempt them is to put them into a privileged position which is very unfair. I hope the Minister will consider Clause 5 and Clause 10 to see

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  whether he cannot amend them in the Committee in the direction of an advance. Generally speaking, this Bill is an improvement on the legislation which has preceded it, and no doubt it will receive the support of the whole Horse, but it could be strengthened, and I am sure the Minister, with his own local experience and his personal knowledge of the evils of the smoke nuisance, will feel that he will be well advised to secure more drastic powers.
  6.0.p.m.
  Mr. A. V. ALEXANDER: I should like to say a word or two on behalf of the City of Sheffield. The hon. and gallant Member for West Salford (Lieut.-Commander Astburv) seemed to think it would be very difficult to work the Bill. I cannot see anything in this Bill which will make it more difficult to work than the Act which it seeks to amend. While we complain very bitterly about the nuisance caused to the public by the emission of smoke, there can be no doubt that in places like Sheffield a great improvement has been effected even under the existing enactments by the officials of the local authorities. I agree with my right hon. Friend that the condition of things in Sheffield in this
  respect is still very bad, although there is no doubt some improvement has already been effected. We are, however, very anxious that this improvement should go on. From the same point of view the county councils are very much concerned about Clause I, Sub-section (1), paragraph (e), which deals with the processes of reheating, annealing, hardening, forging, converting and carburising iron and other metals. I suppose the Minister has probably been very much impressed by the deputation of Sheffield manufacturers which waited upon him in regard to this particular point. The same argument also applies to other centres of the iron and steel trade who are asking for immediate drastic powers to deal with these particular trades. After four or five years of depression, there is a feeling in the mind of the corporation that there is some danger, if this Clause goes through, that the question of dealing effectively with the very bad nuisances arising from these processes will be shelved for a considerable period, and I hope some attention will be given to this particular point.
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  Another administrative point I wish to raise is in Clause I, Sub-section (3) which deals with the defence which may he set up by those found to be committing a nuisance and I think some words should be introduced which will not exempt employers altogether because they have a. negligent employé. In the general form in which this Clause is drawn it seems to me that it would be a good defence for the employer to say, "I left a stoker in charge and gave him instructions." The working of the Clause is very general in its character. I think the Ministry of Health, more than any other Department has devised such excellent forms of words for dealing with milk regulations and things of that kind, clearly showing what is the liability of the employers and a negligent employé, that it ought to be possible to devise a proper form of words which would secure the effectiveness of this Measure when prosecutions or any legal proceedings take place. I agree with what has been said about those manufacturers who have to instal a large number of boilers before they can get the necessary power they require. I think the Minister will recollect what was said on the Second Reading of the Electricity Bill, and I hope he will have some regard to what is being said in Committee on the Electricity Bill. Up to the present time there has been a very conservative attitude adopted by manufacturers towards the introduction of electrical powers into their mills and works. But for the attitude in the past of those representing power companies and electrical undertakings, it would now have been possible for many of these mills and factories to have obtained electrical power and they would have had an electrical supply at a very cheap rate.
  Lieut.-Commander ASTBURY: I only wish we had au electrical cable going past my works because I am sure I should find it more economical to run my machines by electricity.
  Mr. ALEXANDER: That statement has been made freely by those who are interested in the Electricity Bill, and I hope the hon. Member for West Salford, instead of hindering the Electricity Bill, will help the Minister to pass it into law by getting his associates in Lancashire to make a larger use of electrical power.
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH (Sir Kingsley Wood): I wish to reply to some of the questions which have been put by hon. Members and to make one or two observations on the points which have been raised. I think the House will agree that most of the points which have been raised can be more properly dealt with in Committee. Speaking generally with regard to the principle of the Bill, most of the new methods of administration proposed have received practically a, unanimous endorsement by the House and my right lion. Friend the Minister of Health and myself are very grateful for the reception which this Measure has received. I will say a few words with regard to trade and industry as well as the position with regard to dwelling-houses.
  My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for West Salford (Lieut.-Commander Astbury) seemed to be somewhat concerned as to the position of industry, and I think he has considerably misapprehended the actual position both under the law as it stands at present, and as it will be under this Bill if it is carried into law. The hon. and gallant Member raised the question as to the power of local authorities who had to judge whether a nuisance was committed and matters of that kind. If he consults the Public Health Act of 1875, he will find that in order to commit an offence, not only must the chimney send forth black smoke, but it must be sent forth in such quantity as to be a nuisance. The tribunal to settle whether a nuisance has been committed or not is not the sanitary inspector or the local authority, but the competent Court, and all that the sanitary inspector or other officer has to do is to report to the local authority whether or not he thinks there is a primâ facie case, and the local authority has to decide whether they think the evidence is sufficient, and then the whole matter has to be decided by the Court. The manufacturer can put his point of view as well, and then the Court decides whether a case has been made out.
  That position is quite unaffected by this Bill except that there is a Clause which says that the local authorities may set up a standard. One advantage in
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  making that proposal is that each local authority will have regard to the circumstances which may arise locally, and particularly the peculiar local conditions. When the local authority has set up that standard, the onus of proof is shifted, and if there is an offence against that particular standard then the manufacturer is driven to prove that what he has done was not a nuisance as defined under this Bill. I do not think the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down had the advantage of hearing what my right hon. Friend said as to what was the exact meaning of Clause I, Sub-section (1) which deals with certain processes set out in the Clause. It is perfectly true that that exception was largely made on the representation of people from Sheffield, who undoubtedly would be very adversely affected, and it is with a view of meeting that difficulty and to enable them to carry on their businesses successfully at the present time that this provision has been inserted. If the hon. Member for the Hillsborough Division of Sheffield (Mr. Alexander) wishes this Clause to be altered or strengthened. I hope he will make his suggestions during the Committee Stage when they can be dealt with.
  The question has been raised with re. Bard to the position of the cement industry and other industries. The House will observe that the Minister of Health is given power by means of a provisional order to include any other industrial processes. Therefore, it is open to other industries to come forward and ask for a provisional order. Of course they will have to show that their industry ought not to be subjected to the ordinary law if this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament. If they come forward there will be an inquiry, and if it is determined that they should be exempted then my right hon. Friend will have to make an order to that effect, and that would have to be confirmed by this House, and we could decide whether a particular trade or business should be so exempted. A case has been put forward this afternoon on behalf of various trades and industries and the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. H. Williams) has brought forward the ease of the biscuit industry. If the hon. Member looks at Clause. I, Subsection (3),hewill observe the

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  defence which is available in a case in which legal proceedings are instituted. It says:
  "It shall be a defence for the person charged to show that he has
  used the best practical means for preventing the nuisance."
  Two other conditions are set forth which are considered a very fair and reasonable defence in such circumstances. It says:
  " Having regard to the cost and to local conditions and circumstances."
  I think my lion. Friend the Member for Reading mentioned a process ;n which a particular manufacture' had to spend a very large sum of money, but the defence which he set up would be a good defence under the proposals of this Bill, and therefore it very largely meets the case which the hon. Gentleman has in view. The second defence is a very wide one, and has regard to the cost and to local conditions and circumstances. Therefore, I do not think there need be any anxiety so far as that is concerned. Of course, it should be stated that these defences are only open in regard to smoke other than black smoke. As I explained a few minutes ago, the position as regards black smoke is unaffected by the provisions of this Bill, except in so far as I have mentioned. I think the House will generally agree that the extension of this Bill to soot, ash, and gritty particles is a wise step, because people are affected by matters of that kind as much as they are by smoke itself. That follows out the recommendations of the Departmental Committee.
  The only other observation I desire to make is in reference to the chief criticism which has been advanced against this Bill, and that is that we have not made provision to deal with domestic smoke, and have exempted from the Measure private dwellings. Perhaps I may recall to the House the circumstances in which the last Bill dealing with smoke abatement was brought forward. It was a somewhat similar Bill to this one, but not quite so good and not quite so strong. It was introduced by the Labour party when they were in office. It was introduced in another place, and an attempt was made there to include private dwelling houses, but the opposition was so strong on that occasion that the member of the Labour Government who was then in charge had to agree, in order to get a
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  Second Reading for his Bill, that private dwelling houses should be omitted from the Measure. I give that as an illustration of the difficulty and opposition that may well arise.
  I myself look upon this problem with very serious concern, but I think I may say that a very large number of people in this country would greatly resent an attempt on the part of the Legislature at this time, particularly in connection with a special class of house, to insist that the open fire should be taken away from them. If one looks at the recommendatons of the Departmental Committee, one finds it suggested that the central housing authority should decline to sanction any housing scheme put forward by a local authority or public utility society unless specific provision is made in the plans for the adoption of smokeless appliances for supplying the required heat. If that recommendation were carried into effect, it would mean, so far as municipal and State-assisted houses are concerned, practically the prohibition of the open fire. I believe that, whether hon. Members like it or not, that would be very much resented by a large number of people in this country.
  I do not mind confessing that I am one of those who like the open fire. I have heard a good many enthusiasts this afternoon, but I venture to think that, if they abandoned the open fire in their own homes, if a large number of people in this country were anxious to prove their contention by simply putting an end to the open fire so far as their own homes are concerned, that would at any rate be a beginning. I have very vivid recollections of the fires in this House, and I have never known Members of this House send a petition to you, Mr. Speaker, or to anyone else, that anthracite and nothing else should be burned in the fires in this building. I think a very large number of people prefer the existing arrangements which have prevailed in this country for so long.
  Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: That would be an argument against wearing clothes. In the first place, when clothes were proposed, people often found them uncomfortable, and did not like them. In Central Africa people object to wearing clothes now.
  Sir K. WOOD: When the hon. and gallant Member brings that view forward, I will give my answer, but I venture to say that far more would be done in the first place by education than by any attempt to prohibit a certain section of the community from using open fires. After all, I believe there are something like 20,000,000 coal fires already in private houses in this country, and I would only say to hon. Members who are enthusiasts, and for whom I have a high regard, that I think they are putting a very great task on even this Government in asking them to begin prohibition in a matter of this kind, and not to endeavour to use what I think is the best means of getting people to adopt a new system, namely, encouragement and education. I do not think that anyone will ever really succeed in doing away with the domestic fire in this country until we obtain a really reliable smokeless fuel, and I think that that is the direction in which the Government should move, as they are moving at the present moment. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research has already made very many inquiries, and a considerable sum of money has already been expended with that object and in that endeavour. In 1926, something like £76,000 was spent in that connection, and in other matters as well, and in the forthcoming year that sum is to be increased to £96,000.
  Major CRAWFURD: Are there any results?
  Sir K. WOOD: I think it can be said that at any rate certain favourable results are in sight. I do not say they have been discovered, but there is no doubt that the researches that have already been made are promising. There is also another aspect of the matter. If you are going to impose some kind of new heating arrangement—either gas, electricity or some special kind of grate—for use in housing schemes, it must inevitably, in my judgment, lead to an increase in the cost of housing. If you are going to add still further to the cost of State-assisted houses in this country, that means that you are going to add to the rents, which are already too high, in my judgment, in very many cases, and I do not believe that people in this country would be prepared to pay an increased rent on that account. I am only expressing my own personal
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  views in this connection. I need hardly say that my right hon. Friend will gladly consider in Committee any Amendments which may be put down by hon. Members with a view to improving the Bill in this particular. It is only right, however, to point out to the House what this really means, and how attempts which have been made previously in this connection have had to be abandoned. I think I have dealt with the most important of the points that have been raised this after-noon. A large number of other points have been raised which are really Committee points—
  Mr. T. THOMSON: Would the hon. Gentleman deal with Clause 10—the exemption of Government factories?
  Sir K. WOOD: There, I think, the hon. Member might have done credit to this Bill by saying that this is the first time an attempt has been made to deal with the position—
  Mr. THOMSON: I did say that.
  Sir K. WOOD:—of Government Departments. This Clause says that, if a nuisance is being committed within any premises occupied for the purpose of the service of the Crown, the Minister who is responsible for that particular Department shall be answerable to Parliament if he does not abate the nuisance when it has been brought to his notice. What is the alternative? The alternative is that any Minister of the Crown should, I suppose for the first time in the history of this country, be liable, at the suit, say, of a local authority, to be brought before a police court, or, on the other hand, that the local authority should, under another provision of the Public Health Act, 1875, have the right to enter the particular premises belonging to a Government Department, and sue for remedies in connection with that. I do not think that any Member-of the House would consider that to be a proper way of dealing with offences which may be committed by Government Departments. For the first time a definite duty is laid upon the Minister responsible for the Department concerned, and it says that if he is satisfied after due inquiry that an express duty has been laid upon him, he shall cause such steps as may be necessary to be taken to abate the nuisance. The other alternative is that which I have mentioned.
  Mr. A. V. ALEXANDER: What is the remedy if, after communication has been made to the Minister, no change takes place?
  Sir K. WOOD: As my hon. Friend knows perfectly well, it will be open to him to bring the matter forward here on the ground that the Minister is not carrying out his duty, either on the Vote for his salary or by question and answer in this House. I think my hon. Friend would admit that that should be sufficient, but, at any rate, I think it would be a more proper method than, say, issuing a summons against my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer if such a thing happened at the Treasury, and hauling him before the local police court to answer a summons for a nuisance in one of the chimneys of the Treasury. I do not think that most Members of the House would desire to see him put in that position. [HoN. MEMBERS: "Oh! yes, we do!"] I think the proper remedy is to make him responsible in this House.
  I think it can be claimed that this Measure, which has been attacked on the one hand for not going far enough, and on the other hand for going too far, is a moderate and sufficient Measure, recognising the difficulty and complexity of the problem. It will do something, at any rate—I think a good deal—to achieve the object which every Member in the House has in view, and I want to emphasise, as my right hon. Friend emphasised it, that really a good deal of the progress that we all desire can in the first place be effected by good administration of the Measure itself, and, secondly, I think a great deal can be done, as I have already indicated, by research and scientific methods on the part of the employers and manufacturers of this country, and on the part of the local authorities by giving good technical advice to manufacturers on the difficulties with which they are confronted. I think one of the best features of the administration of the law at the present time has been the co-operation in many ways between manufacturer and local authority with a view to abating particular nuisances. II believe a great deal more can be achieved by education, both of the public and of the manufacturers, and it is because I believe that many of the provisions in this Bill will help very
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  largely in that direction that I desire particularly to commend it to the House, and hope they will now give it a Second Reading.
  Major BIRCHALL: As one of the Members for the City of Leeds, one takes an almost paternal interest in the subject of smoke abatement. Very few cities in the country have suffered more in the past in this respect than the City of Leeds, and when we have an opportunity of welcoming what. I regard as a social reform such as this Measure, one hardly likes to give a silent vote upon it. The condition of the City of Leeds, which I will not describe at length, may be summed up in this way. In one part of the city there is a deposit per month of seven tons of smoke per square mile. In another part of the same city, there is a deposit, in the same period, of 53 tons per square mile. The part which has upon it the deposit of 53 tons of soot is the poorer part of the city, and what it means is that the children who live—and many of them die—the children who are supposed to live in that poorer part of the city have exactly eight times the handicap of the children who live in the other part of the same city. It is eight times as difficult for them to live, it is eight times as difficult to educate them, and, in addition, they have all the other drawbacks and hindrances which are almost inseparable from their lives.
  The smoke evil, however, is a remediable evil, which 1 believe could be very largely removed by means of the present Bill. The only objections we have heard to it—and they are objections which we who represent industrial cities must weigh very carefully—are based on the additional cost to industry. If it were conclusively proved that those costs would be excessive, and would further handicap our already trembling industries, I, for one, should be doubtful how to vote; but I am convinced that the advantages of a Bill like this will far outweigh any possible cost to manufacturers. I believe hat the costs of the public services in connection with health, housing and education will all be reduced, and that, therefore, although there may he some additional cost to manufacturers in installing different machinery, there will be, as a set-off to that, lower costs for the public services, from which they will undoubtedly benefit. Therefore, I say that on purely

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  financial grounds there is a great deal to be said in favour of this Measure, even from the point of view of the manufacturers themselves.
  Much can be done even without the Bill; much can be done when the Bill is passed outside its scope. We have already experimented in Leeds with instructional classes for stokers, which have been well attended and from which much good has resulted. We are at present experimenting on the question of domestic fires. The Parliamentary Secretary has just spoken in favour of keeping the home fires burning. I am in favour of keeping the home fires burning, but I am not sure that we shall not soon be sufficiently educated to regard an electric fire as quite as enjoyable as a fire which sends a large proportion of its beat and smoke and coal up the chimney. I can assure my hon. Friend—no doubt he knows it already—that we are building houses now without the ordinary coal fire, and they seem to be quite as comfortable as those which are provided with the ordinary expensive coal fire. Therefore, I desire most heartily to support the Bill. I believe it really will be a social reform, and, beyond that, I believe it will do a great deal to lessen the handicap of those who are already sufficiently handicapped in life's race.
  Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE: I should just like to raise one point, because it seems to me that the question of the domestic fire does need to be put on a different plane. Although I strongly sympathise with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North-East Leeds (Major Birchall) in other respects, I dispute absolutely the idea, which the Ministry seems to have accepted, that the ideal to work towards is to have a closed fireplace and closed systems of heating. There is no question, in the first place, that we do know that the open fireplace is far more comfortable, and sanitation has also learned quite recently, by bitter experience of closed fires in constant use abroad and across the Atlantic, that the open fireplace is infinitely healthier. In the first place, it provides ventilation, and, in the second place, it is adaptable to individual needs as nothing else is. The individual who wants heat can get it by crouch-
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  ing over the fire, while the individual who wants coolness can get away from the fire and near a window that may be a bit open.
  The open fireplace to be used in the future must be one that burns its own smoke, and, from that point of view, I should like to know whether it would not be possible to insert in this Bin in Committee some provision allowing local authorities to make by-laws under which grates put into new houses shall be such as consume far more of their smoke than the ordinary grate does at the present moment. The arrangement required is a sloping back which conserves the heat and consumes the smoke, and if local authorities were allowed to provide these ranges in new houses, it would, practically speaking, not increase the cost at all, while it would get over the difficulty which the Government apparently find in dealing with domestic smoke. Domestic smoke, after all, is the bugbear of the whole matter. It is the chief cause of the smoke, and it is being left out of this Bill. It is the chief cause of that melancholy condition of 53 tons per square mile on the constituency of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North-East Leeds—[HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] It is the chief reason for it. No blame attaches to anyone, but that is the chief reason, and it is a pity of we cannot take some step towards meeting it. In the hope that I may be able to get some such provision inserted in Committee, I wish otherwise to support the Bill.
  Mr. PALIN: I sympathise with previous speakers in their demand that the law should be efficiently administered, and I desire to support the Minister this afternoon in attempting to deal with this terrible evil in industrial centres. It is all very well to talk about the domestic fire, but I live in a manufacturing district where the atmosphere is so thick that we can tell when the manufacturer changes the type of coal by the taste of it, where we have on our doorsteps every morning dposits, not only of soot, but of solid coal which has been forced out of the chimney tops, no matter how high they are, by forced draught, and which has done no good at all because it has never been properly burned. In the desire to get more steam with inefficient plant, a large proportion

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  of the coal is forced out of the chimney top and deposited on our doorsteps, having done no good either to the manufacturer or to anyone else. It is perfectly true that a great deal may be done by administration.
  I would refer to three cities in this country, all practically identical in size, though I will not say in importance, because I might have someone on my track at once. You have Nottingham, Bradford and Newcastle each with about 300,000 inhabitants. You have one city where the manufacturers never had a very great say on the magisterial bench —that is Nottingham—where there is practically no smoke nuisance, though there are the same number of chimneys practically as Bradford. You find a pure atmosphere in one place and a bad one in the other because in one place it has been £ s. d. for the persons who sat on the bench and administered the by-laws while at Nottingham we had every policeman a smoke inspector and at Bradford we only had one smoke inspector. The local authority for many years would not appoint anyone else who could possibly say an offence had been
  committed. It. is absurd. Any policeman would have enough common sense to say whether a chimney had been smoking, or that the smoke had been thick enough to cause a nuisance.
  You will never get the law properly administered unless you have people on the spot, because all the chimneys do not smoke at the same time, and you cannot place a man on top of a hill to say a chimney has been smoking. We want the law strengthened, and if this Bill is passed and is stringently administered it will be a boon and a blessing. It will no doubt put money into the pockets of manufacturers who are more conservative than any Conservative that has ever been thought about in this House. To say that their boilers could not possibly he made so that they did not emit black smoke is unthinkable. The country is not going to he ruined by legislation of this kind, because legislation of this kind recognises that lives stand before money. I trust the Minister will press the Bill, and is going to see that the local authorities administer it as it was intended to be administered. There may he some particular process of manufacture which can prevent the emission of black smoke,
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  but I have never come across one yet. You have dealt with the manufacture who turns the soot out in tons. You can leave the domestic fires out of account for the moment. We will soon deal with the domestic fires. You have to deal with this terrible thing which is suffocating the young life of our great cities.
  Question, "That the Bill be now read a Second time," put, and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee.

  LEGITIMACY BILL [Lords].
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
  This has become almost a hardy annual. It has been before the House now for five or six years in succession. It has passed this House and passed another place, and I think it receives general support. Its object is to legitimise those children who are born out of wedlock if the parents subsequently marry. There is a very strong feeling that this should be the case, and the Government have come to the conclusion that the Measure is in the interests of the well-being of the people of the country. The first Clause simply makes legitimate the offspring of an illegitimate union, provided the parents subsequently marry, as from the date of the marriage. There is a Sub-section, which is the only subject of controversy in the Bill, that a child born of an adulterous union is not permitted to be legitimated. There is, I know, difference of opinion in regard to that Clause, but feeling is so strong against children who arc the result of an adulterous union being made legitimate that the Bill, I am certain, would not have any speedy passage through the House, and would not get through another place if this Clause had not been inserted. I think there are grounds, particularly the ground of religious feeling, which cause me to say it is right to include this Sub-section. After all, the House of Commons cannot, and it would be very wrong, indeed, if it did disregard the religious feeling of the country, and there is very strong religious feeling in regard to this point.

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  Of course it will be open to Members in Committee to debate the Sub-section, but I am going to ask the House to let the Bill pass with this Sub-section in it. The Clause is so determined upon by the religious feeling of the country, which we must respect, that if it were not in the Bill I am certain it would not be possible to pass it this Session. It has passed through this House two or three times and now, at the end of five or six years, I hope the House will allow it to pass.
  In Clause 3 we deal with the question of property. When an illegitimate child has been made legitimate he will be legitimate for all purposes. He will be entitled to succeed, on the intestacy of his father or his new relations, to property, and he himself will have relations to whom his property may go if he dies intestate.Under the present law if an illegitimate man dies intestate, his property goes to the Crown, because he has no relations at all. Under the existing law the illegitimate child has no legal relations, and therefore there is no one to whom his property could possibly go if he dies intestate. Under the provisions of the Bill, therefore, he becomes fully legitimate with the exception of one point. That is to say, if his new legal relations die intestate, he will share with the legitimate children of the marriage, and if he himself dies intestate, instead of his property being swept away and going to the Crown it will go to his legitimate relations.
  There is only one other Clause with which I need trouble the House, that is the question of honours. On full consideration I hope the House will agree that we have done right in that respect, that legitimation should not extend to hereditary honours. There are, of course, two sides to that question, but on the whole it would be a very serious thing indeed. Let me submit one illustration. Here is a man who has a hereditary title. He has an illegitimate son. He has not married, and he has brothers who are looking forward to succeeding to the title. If it were possible, by permitting that man to marry the mother of his illegitimate child, perhaps on his deathbed, if this Clause were not in the Bill, that child would be made legitimate for the purpose of succeeding to his hereditary honour, and I think on the whole the House will
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  agree that that would not be right, because the honour is not his to leave. His property is his own to leave, and he can do what is called the right thing, the honest thing, by his legitimate son by marrying the mother and making the son legitimate for the purposes of property. But I think the House will agree that it would not be right that we should in that way make it legitimate for the purpose of succeeding to hereditary honours. The Bill is very short and very clear. Anyone who has read it will agree that it is not what is sometimes called confused legal jargon.It sets out the new proposals very clearly. I hope we may at last have the privilege of placing the Bill, which has long been demanded throughout the country, on the Statute Book.
  Mr. MITCHELL BANKS: This Bill will be welcomed with sympathy in all quarters of the House. We realise that it is a commonplace to say that if heaven visits the sins of the fathers upon the children, at any rate it is not for the fathers themselves to go out of their way to make that visitation more serious. But no Members of the House will receive the Bill with a greater degree of approbation than those who happen to be members of the Catholic Church, which for centuries past as, in its canon law, proclaimed these humane principles which are only to-day conceded by the Parliament of England. Everyone remembers that more than 600 years ago the Bishops of the Catholic Church asked the Barons of England to agree to the terms of the Canon Law, and received the famous answer which was the mcdieval equivalent of, "My right hon. Friend does not see his way to proposing legislation this Session." If an institution which has so often been denounced for its reactionary tendencies as the Catholic Church gets an opportunity once in 600 years of saying, "I told you so," I do not suppose anyone will grudge it that satisfaction.
  Even now we are not as up-to-date, from a humane point of view, in this Bill as the Canon Law of the Church, and I desire to make a few observations on Sub-section (2) of Clause 1, which is perhaps the most important matter in the whole Measure. I do not know whether there should really be any limitations imposed at all, because after all, the object of the Bill is to give parents an opportunity, by matrimony, of redeeming

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  their children from the consequence of what is ex hypothesi a sin, whether it be the sin of adultery or one perhaps less serious. But if there is to be a proviso, I hope the Committee will consider the claims of the Canon Law. The Canon Law allows you to look, when you are considering whether the parties might or might not be married, not only to the date of the birth, but to any date back to the date of conception. Observe the strange consequences that arise if the date of birth is the only time at which you are entitled to look. You have John Smith, who is living with Mary Brown, and while he is living with her she becomes with child. Before the child is born he marries Kate Robinson, then Kate dies, and he cannot repair his fault by marrying Mary and making the child legitimate because under this Clause it was born at a time when he was married to a third party. Yet in that case there was no adulterous intercourse at all, and the child is not the result of an adulterous union. I think that is just the kind of case for which provision should be made. Here is another case. John Smith is married, and he commits adultery with Mary Brown and she conceives. Then the wife dies. Under this Clause he can marry Mary and legitimise the child, though in fact he committed adultery, and the child is the result of an adulterous union. Such cases will arise so long as you do not take the more logical, more moral and more humane test of the canon law for the purpose of deciding whether the parents were or were not free to marry, either at the date of birth or the date of conception. If there is to be a proviso I hope the Committee will not decide as the barons did 600 years ago. but will consider the canon law of the ancient church which, in my submission, is less anomalous and fairer than the Sub-section of Clause 1 of the Bill.
  Mr. HARNEY: I agree with a great deal the last speaker has said, and I think the Home Secretary was quite right when he pointed out that the only controversial Clause is the one that has just been referred to. The Home Secretary put it as a justification for making an exception, when one or other of the parents is married at the time, that the Church will not countenance in any way an adulterous union. That is open to the
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  two answers which have just been given us. There is no reason why at the date when the child is born one or other of the parents might not be married, though at the date of the union they were both free. There is the other which has been put by the last speaker. It might well be that the intercourse was adulterous, and at the time the child was born the parties were free. So either way you look at it it is an entirely anomalous Clause. But I should like to go a little deeper. I am strongly of opinion that the Bill with this Clause in it will be practically useless for the purpose all of us have in mind. Look at the categories, broadly, into which these unfortunate illegitimate children fall. Take an illegitimate child the result of promiscuous intercourse. What good is the Bill to that child? These people never meet again, so as far as that class of children are concerned, you might as well not pass the Bill at all.
  Take children born from the intercourse that comes about from a young man and girl walking out. The Bill does harm there. At present there is a limited period within which the man has to make the girl an honest woman or not do so at all. There is the pressure of the parents, affection is still there, and in the great bulk of cases the man does the right thing. But the Bill says, "Young man, do not hurry, you have years and years—not months—within which to make her an honest girl." Then comes along the devil's advocate and says to him, "I will wait till I get older. I will wait until I fall in for some money." Time goes on, affection weakens, new ties arise, and the result of the Bill will be that many young fellows who now are forced by the urgency of the limited period to do the right thing will take advantage of the extended period and do the wrong thing.
  Take the third category—and it is in that category that are found all the illustrations which have turned humane peoples' minds to the introduction of the Bill at all. Take the husband or wife whose wife or husband is a convict, a lunatic, a drunkard, a person with whom it is impossible to live, but who is not in the position to get a divorce. Alliances are contracted there, children are born and are brought up respectably and decently and not until after years do they discover the stigma of

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  illegitimacy. That is the real class whom, if the Bill is to be of any use, it must benefit, and it is the very class that is excluded. I respect, as much as the Home Secretary—and no one is more diligent in trying to do the right thing —the reverence we all pay to the Church.
  7.0 p.m.
  I happen to be a Roman Catholic like the last speaker. What is the Church objection? The Church says, "We will not recognise in any way, or condone in any way an adulterous union," but without the Clause the Bill says we condone fornication. If you are going to condone fornication for the sake of the child, why not also condone adultery for the sake of the child? If you are going to be theologically logical, why not say you cannot touch the subject at all? Because if we legalise the result of this immoral intercourse,we recognise the immoral intercourse, and cannot do it. The Bill without the Clause says, "We do recognise the immoral intercourse," and when the immoral intercourse has added to it the breach of the civil duty, which is the difference between adultery and fornication, it seems to me an impossible position to take up. The truth is, you are not condoning fornication; you are not condoning adultery, but what you are doing is this. You are saying, "Whatever the sins of the parents, here is a poor child, perfectly innocent, brought up in the world with a brand upon it, deprived of civil privileges." If, therefore, you are going to relieve the innocent children from the civil disabilities and from the social stigma that attaches to them, why are you going to say, "Child, though your parents did wrong, you are to be relieved is the wrong happened to be only fornication." It is a distinction that a common sense man cannot tolerate. I respect the Church, but I have a contempt for ecclesiastical pedantry. That is the ordinary style of argument which has been brought against us. When one hears the style of argument used in the other House, it makes one almost thank God that he is not a theologian. One of the arguments put forward was this—
  Mr. SPEAKER: It is well known that we do not reply here to speeches made in another place.
  Mr. HARNEY: One only learns the Rules of this House by breaking them. I will not pursue it any further. For these reasons, while, of course, I shall support the Bill, I do trust that when it comes to the Committee, the Home Secretary, or whoever is conducting it through, will not too strongly oppose the ecclesiastical view to what I put forward as being the practical, the intelligent and the man-in-the-street view. We, really, are not dealing now with questions of theology at all. We are faced with the very heartrending fact that there are children in the world who go through life suffering disabilities which we say they ought not to suffer, and it is futile to look back and say, "You, child, ought to be free, because though we dislike what your parents did, we do not very much dislike it ; but you children ought not to be free, because if we dislike what your parents did, we dislike it a bit more than the other."
  Sir H. SLESSER: I speak with great diffidence for this reason, that I want to make it quite plain that in what I am going to say I am speaking entirely for myself. I do not consider that this Measure is at all a party Measure. On previous occasions, when the matter was discussed in another place, two members of the Labour Government expressed different views on the same matter. I can only say how the matter appeals to me. I think that the omission which was made by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Swindon (Mr. Banks) in his account of the Canon Law was this, that we have in this country to-day, by secular legislation, divorce; and divorce produces a state of affairs in which marriages take place recognised by the State following on adulterous intercourse such as is guarded against under this Bill. As I understand, however, this second Sub-section is necessitated by that possibility. Consider adulterous intercourse and legitimation where divorce may subsequently happen. One has to take into consideration that some recognition must be given to the fact that you may get a case where, first of all, the man seduces the wife of another, subsequently there is a divorce, and then there is a child, and lastly these people become married. All those cases, I understand, are guarded against in this particular Sub-section.

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  Therefore, it is not quite right to take the Canon Law simpliciter in this matter, because the Canon Law does not accept the view that marriage is dissoluble by divorce at all. I agree that this discussion to-day represents a great triumph for the Canon Law. thoroughly and heartily sympathise with what the hon. Member said. It may not he generally recognised that it was in the time of Henry III, when the last occasion occurred, apart from this particular Measure, when the matter came to be discussed. The Bishops came down with a specific proposal of legitimation. The barons of that time, representing the Common Law, being extremely suspicious of all suggestions coming from civilians and canonists, refused to allow legitimation in England, because it bad been proposed by the canonists. It was very much in the same way as happens in this Parliament. When an excellent suggestion comes from this side of the House, the other side think it their duty to vote against it. To-day we are admitting by this Bill that the canonists were right and the common lawyers were wrong. I think those who speak for the canonists should have something to say in these matters of theology. An hon. Member who has spoken says this is not a theological question. Theology must have some province left where it can work, and if it be not allowed to work in the province of marriage and. legitimacy, what province is there left? I think that the exact voids here suggested in Sub-section
  (2) are a little too wide. I see another set of words was suggested in another place which would be to the effect that, instead of the words here inserted, the words should be
  "Provided that, at the time of the birth, or at some time during the period of ten calendar months preceding the birth of the illegitimate person, the father and mother of such person could, lawfully have married with one another." [This is to be found in the Codex Juris Canonice Canon 1116.]
  That would cover the case of divorce to which I have referred. That would exactly represent, as I understand it, the Canon Law position on the matter. On the other hand, one does not want to jeopardise this Bill at this time, and these words are very much the same in substance. These words were accepted
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  in the Bill in another place last year as a substitute for the words proposed.
  Mr. BANKS: I do not know whether the hon. and learned Member quite apprehended. The substance of the Canon Law which I regarded as important, was that it permits you to look at any date, either birth or conception, which ever is more favourable to the point of view of the child.
  Sir H. SLESSER: That must be taken in conjunction with the fact that now you can obtain marriage after divorce; persons who brought about the divorce by seducing one of the spouses and became married.
  Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman whether that really increases the facilities for divorce? I want to avoid that.
  Sir H. SLESSER: Perhaps I am not very clear. I am saying that is a reason why this Clause should remain in this Bill. For that reason I have argued against the hon. and learned Member for Swindon (Mr. Banks). I say you have to regard the fact of this possibility, and therefore words in the Bill or similar words, in my view, are necessary.
  Mr. BANKS: The whole point is this. The case the hon. Member puts of one of the spouses committing adultery, getting a divorce and afterwards legitimating a child, is the very case that under this Clause could happen, and I am only asking that, if you are going to permit that loophole, you should be able to consider the date most favourable to the child.
  Sir H. SLESSER: I am sure if it could happen under the Clause, the Home Secretary would stiffen up the Clause so that it could not happen. I have been wondering what the view of the Canon Law would have been on this matter if divorce had been allowed by the Canon Law. I believe the Canon Law would have taken the view which the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary takes of this matter. There was a ease in which this problem arose when a clerk in Minor Orders which permitted marriage married a woman who had already borne him a son, and he applied that the general principle of legitimation should apply in this case. They said "No." Although normally the

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  mere fact of wrongful intercourse will not make the child suffer, yet when the party does something over and beyond that, something which is otherwise wrong, such as the person being in orders in that case, the Canon Law decided that he could not legitimate his son. It is the nearest analogy I could find.
  Mr. BANKS: What is the date?
  Sir H. SLESSER: The date of the decision is 1321. It is argued by John of Ayton, cited by Repertorium Canonicum (1680). It was decided when the Canon Law was flourishing as it never flourished before. Personally, I think there is every justification for the Sub-section.
  Question, "That the Bill be now read a Second time," put, and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee.

  SECRETARIES OF STATE BILL.
  As amended (in the Standing Comrnittee) considered: read the Third time, and passed.

  EXECUTION OF DILIGENCE (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords].
  Order for Consideration, as amended (in the Standing Committee) read.
  The SOLICITOR - GENERAL (Sir Thomas Inskip)rose—
  Mr. BUCHANAN: On a point of Order. In Committee on this Bill we discussed with the Lord Advocate the points dealt with in the Amendments which, presumably, the Solicitor-General is about to move. The Lord Advocate gave a promise that he would amend the Bill on the Report stage, and I suggest, without any intention to be disrespectful, that the Solicitor-General cannot take the place of the Lord Advocate on this very important technical matter of Scottish law.
  Mr. SPEAKER: Perhaps until the Lord Advocate arrives, the hon. Member will move that Consideration of the Bill, as amended, be adjourned.
  Mr. BUCHANAN: I beg to move, "That Consideration of the Bill, as amended, be now adjourned."
  Mr. BUCHANAN: I beg to move, "That Consideration of the Bill, as amended, be now adjourned."
  I was never in favour of the Bill, because I think it gives to certain people
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  additional powers which ought not to be granted. I take a serious view of the matter. Under the scheme, according to the definition given by the Lord Advocate, the Bill has for its object the allowing of certain people who are creditors to have easy access to a debt due to them from a particular debtor.
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member cannot on this Adjournment Motion discuss the Bill in general. He must give reasons for the desirability of having the Lord Advocate here.
  Mr. BUCHANAN: I was about to do that.
  At this juncture the Lord Advocate entered the Chamber.
  Mr. BUCHANAN: Now that the Lord Advocate is present, I will not proceed with my Motion.

  EXECUTION OF DILIGENCE (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords].

    CLAUSE 2.—(Execution of arrestment or charge by registered letter in certain cases.)
    The LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. Watson): I beg to move, in page 3, line 9, to leave out the words "or on behalf of.'
    I apologise to the House for my absence. Certain distances are rather difficult to cover. In Committee I undertook to consider a similar point arising on two Sub-sections of Clause 2. The first point arises in paragraph (e), line 9, which is the subject of the Amendment which I now move. I have attempted to do what I hope will meet with the wishes expressed in Committee. We are introducing here a method of what we call the execution of diligence, that is, the enforcing of a decree in Scotland in the case of small debt processes by registered letters. It is obviously right that it should be made certain that a registered letter should be received either by the debtor himself or by somebody who was properly receiving it on his behalf. The words in the Bill as it stands are:
    "received by or on behalf of the arrestee or the debtor."
    I need not go into the technical meaning of the word arrestee. The arguments that apply in the case of the execution of a debt, equally apply to the case of an arrestee. Objection was taken that the words
    "or on behalf of the arrestee or the debtor"

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    were too wide, and might include such a case as that of a landlady or a, servant who really had no right to acknowledge the receipt of a registered letter on such a serious matter. It is equally clear that if you leave it to acknowledgment by the debtor himself you would afford opportunities for evasion which should not be given to the debtor. Since the Committee sat I have been considering the matter, and I have mentioned it to several hon. Members, with the result that I have put down the present Amendment, which I hope will meet the views of the House. It is, if anything, rather stricter than what I had in my mind previously, but I have been anxious to meet what I think is a legitimate criticism. The Amendment I am proposing, which is contained in the three Amendments which stand in my name on the Paper, will make the paragraph read:
    "receiver by the arrestee or the debtor or any person with his authority, express or necessarily implied."
    Whether it is "necessarily implied" or not will be settled by the Court, because this point only arises on a challenge when the matter is before the Court. Therefore it is a matter for the decision of the Court at the time the question arises.
    Mr. JOHNSTON: I take it that the first, second and third Amendments which stand in the name of the Lord Advocate all hang together and that discussion on the first Amendment will cover all the Amendments. The point which is not clear to me is raised by the words "necessarily implied." What does that term mean? Let me give, as I sought to do in Committee, an instance of the difficulty which arises, and which will be a very common one. Take the ca-se of a family in one of the outer islands, far away from a county town and far away from a Sheriff Court. The people will never go to the Sheriff Court and will never appear at the Sheriff Court to contest any charge made under this Act. Take the case of a family where a debt has been incurred, say, by the wife, for clothing paid for on what we call the tick system: the long credit system, under which unconscionably high priors are paid. A month or two may, elapse and it may be that in consequence of bad weather or a hundred quite legitimate causes the wife cannot meet the instalment on the debt Then comes a challenge to the Court and a registered
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    envelope is sent to the husband, who is the legitimate head of the family. The challenge is sent quite legitimately to the debtor or, according to the Bill as it would be amended by the Lord Advocate's Amendment:
    "any person with his authority, express or necessarily implied."
    Suppose that the envelope were accepted by the man's wife. Is authority necessarily implied there? The man may know nothing whatever about the debt. He may never have heard about it. In thousands of cases he would be the last individual who would be told of it. That is a very common practice. If the man's daughter accepts the envelope from the postman, will service have been proved in that case? His express consent cannot necessarily be implied in that case. I would like to know from the Lord Advocate what set of circumstances or relatives are covered by the phrase "necessarily implied." It is no good the Lord Advocate saying that this question would be settled by the Court. As he knows, there are thousands of cases where it is absolutely impossible for people to go to the Sheriff Court. It is impossible for them to go to the Sheriff Court to defend themselves, because the Court is so far away. The debt may be for a few shillings. There are parts of Scotland where it would cost pounds to travel to the Sheriff Court. The taking of witnesses would be absolutely impossible. In reality these cases will not be tried by the Sheriff Court. We are really trying the question now. The words put into the Bill will settle whether or not the service has been legal or otherwise. We are anxious to get from the Lord Advocate a definition of what is meant by "necessarily implied." Is it a limited term or a term capable of very wide interpretation. If it is capable of very wide interpretation, I submit that this Clause will do a very great disservice to thousands of poor men, service against whom is very difficult. It will make it easy to levy diligence upon them, and I do note think it is right that this Parliament should lightly pass legislation without Members of this House knowing what is implied.
    Mr. BUCHANAN: I associate myself with what has been said by the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston). I raised this point in Committee and

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    endeavoured to get the Lord Advocate to meet our point. To his credit, he has made some attempt to narrow the issue, but the words "necessarily implied," which may be clear to the mind of the Lord Advocate, who is learned in the law, are not understandable to us. The hon. Member for Dundee raised the case of a person living a long distance from the Sheriff Court. I would like to draw attention to the case of the town dweller. Take a case of moneylending. A man may be served with a summons by registered letter. That man may be employed in a shipbuilding yard. I remember once working in a shipbuilding yard when a notice was served on a certain person, although there were a number of men of the same name in the same works. I do not know whether the Lord Advocate includes in his definition, the employer of the man. In industrial towns a summons on a man is often served upon the employer. Does this Amendment necessarily mean that the employer may accept the registered letter on behalf of the man? If the man gives permission to his employer to accept any letters op his behalf consent would be necessarily implied in connection with the acceptance of a registered letter, which would not be differentiated from any other letter. If that is understood to be the case, it meets my point as far as an industrial town is concerned. The Lord Advocate has gone some way to meet the point I raised, and if I have the assurance I have asked for, I shall be perfectly satisfied.
    The LORD ADVOCATE: I can only speak again with the consent of the House. It should be realised that at the present moment the sheriff officer, who carries out the particular process we are considering now, does not require to see the debtor at all, and, therefore, in giving an alternative method, by registered letter, the Amendments I propose are making it a far more limited matter than the ordinary method. It is true that the safeguard or protection which the debtor has at present is the not very legitimate protection of the excessive expenses which would necessarily be incurred by a creditor in recovering the money, and it should not be forgotten that the creditor who will mostly benefit by the provisions of this Bill will be the small creditor who is trying to recover small sums.I have
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    gone further than I originally felt inclined to go in the Amendment I have suggested. The words "necessarily implied "are perfectly clear as a matter of legal construction. You cannot assume that express authority is given in all these cases to acknowledge the registered letter, and, therefore, you must get something which is equivalent to an express authority before the Court will hold that there was necessarily implied authority to receive the letter. That means something different from the casual daughter, who has no authority of any kind to acknowledge that letter, or the employer, or the servant girl. It excludes all those cases, and it was with the object of meeting that suggestion that I have given what in my view was a limited restriction of the working of this provision. In a sense it is an experimental provision, and I would rather keep it tighter now than looser. I hope hon. Members will be satisfied with the proposal.
    Sir ROBERT HAMILTON: After hearing the explanation of the Lord Advocate I am sure the House will be satisfied that the issue is narrowed down as far as possible so as to make as sure as we can that the letter is handed to the right person or to some person authorised by him.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Further Amendments made: In page 3, line 10, at the end, insert the words,
    "or any person with his authority express or necessarily implied.''
    In page 3, line 18, leave out the words "on his behalf," and insert instead thereof the words,
    "by some person with his authority express or necessarily implies."—(The Lord Advocate.)
    Bill read the Third time, and passed, with Amendments.

  POST OFFICE (SITES) (Re-commilted) BILL.
  Considered in Committee.
  [Mr. JAMES HOPE in the Chair.]

  POST OFFICE (SITES) (Re-commilted) BILL.

    CLAUSE 1.—(Incorporation of Lands Clauses Acts.)
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the
    Bill"
    The ASSISTANT POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Viscount Wolmer): It may be for the convenience of the Committee if I explain the object of this Bill. It will enable the Postmaster-General to acquire land to enlarge the post offices at Blackpool, Swansea and Doncaster. It has been before the Examiners and they are satisfied that the Standing Orders have been complied with. It has been before the Select Committee and passed by them, and there is no opposition to it. In those circumstances I hope the Committee will pass the Bill.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    Clauses 2 to 12, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Bill reported, without Amendment; read the Third time, and passed.

  WAYS AND MEANS.
  Considered in Committee.
  [Mr. JAMES HOPE in the Chair.]

  MONEYLENDERS (EXCISE).
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That, on and after the first day of January, nineteen hundred and twenty-seven, there shall be charged on a licence to be taken out annually by a moneylender an Excise Duty of fifteen pounds, or, if the licence be taken out not more than six months before the expiration thereof, of ten pounds."
  The SOLICITOR - GENERAL: This Resolution is necessary in order that the Committee may be able to consider the Moneylenders Bill to which the House gave a Second Reading a few weeks ago. Hon. Members will recollect that one of the provisions of that Bill is that moneylenders in future would pay as Excise licence a sum of £15. No serious criticism is directed to that proposal, except from the point of view of pawnbrokers, who already have to pay £7 10s. The Government is quite prepared to accept an Amendment, if it should be moved upstairs, reducing the £15 to £7 10s. in the case of pawnbrokers, so that the amount of the duty they will have to pay will be the same as moneylenders. That course is open to the Committee to consider.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Resolution to be reported To-morrow; Committee to sit again To-morrow.
  The remaining Government Orders were read and postponed.

  BROADCASTING (BOOT TRADE CONCILIATION SCHEME).
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."— [Commander Eyres Monsell.]
  Mr. T. SHAW: I desire to draw the attention of the House to a reply which was given me by the Postmaster-General a few days ago. I asked if it was a fact that the hoot and shoe trade, employers and employed, and the Chairman of the National Board of that body, had agreed to broadcast a statement as to the organisation which existed in the trade, and which had for 31 years prevented any dispute of a general character taking place, and if it was true, what reason the Postmaster-General had for refusing the broadcast? The facts are admitted, and the action of the Postmaster-General seems to me to be quite inexplicable. There can be no question at all that this was a matter of great public interest. When a big trade has secured some arrangement whereby it can absolutely avoid general disputes, whatever our individual opinions may be as to the arrangement made, there can be no doubt of the public interest in the matter, and the public has a right to know, through broadcasting or by any other means, exactly what the arrangements are. The British Broadcasting Company, if my information is correct, agreed to accept this message for broadcasting, and it was only through the exercise by the Postmaster-General of his censorship that the message was not delivered. Let me briefly describe some of the features of the arrangement which exists in the boot and shoe trade.
  For 31 years there has been no general dispute in the trade. The local disputes that have arisen have been short in their duration and very rare in occurrence. The scheme itself is based upon conciliation and arbitration. The organisation of this scheme took place after the big dispute 31 years ago, and the machinery employed is a national conference, on which there are equal numbers of employers and employed, with a chairman appointed by the Minister of Labour, local conciliation or arbitration bodies,

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  which sit locally and determine and settle cases of grievance and difficulty which arise in the trade. These organisations have to settle delicate questions that arise in the boot and shoe trade, which is an extremely complicated and technical trade, where piecework rates vary according to the type of work done. The organisation settles questions of prices and conditions, and even deals with the holidays of the operatives, and it is arranged generally that the operatives shall have one week's holiday every year, with pay. Breaches of agreements are dealt with by this organisation in a very interesting way. I am expressing no opinion at all as to whether the organisation is good or bad. My case is that the people of this country, when important industrial experiments are made, have a right to know the facts, and how any trade, whatever it may be, has succeeded in keeping peace in its industry. I want that to be definitely stated.
  Whenever there is a breach of an arrangement this trade has a system of action which I think is absolutely unique. The employers' organisation and the workers' organisation jointly deposit a sum of money into a pool. When a breach of an arrangement is alleged the matter is submitted, if the local arbitration committee and the national conference cannot agree, to an umpire who decides, and if the lock-out or strike which has resulted owing to an alleged breach of an agreement lasts more than three days, the party which is aggrieved, according to the decision of the umpire, has a right to demand a payment from this fund, jointly subscribed, as damages for the losses sustained. I think that is absolutely unique in negotiations between employers' and workers' organisations. This trade is not a trade in which the possibilities of dispute between employers and employed are smaller than in any other trade. It has to face a fairly intense international competition as an exporting industry, and also it has to face competition, because boots and shoes are imported into this country, so that in neither the external market nor in the home market has the trade any peculiar advantage which would give it, so to speak, a favoured position among other trades, and a guarantee of peace
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  and good understanding more than any other trade could hope to have.
  It was to the broadcasting of this scheme that, for a reason which was given but which I fail to understand, the Postmaster - General objected. It is rather important in these days, when liberties seem to be a diminishing quantity, that we should avoid all methods of censorship which, in the hands of a less courteous and accomplished Postmaster-General, might lead to some little tin Napoleon censoring news that was really of public importance, simply because he wanted to assert his little, individual, momentary authority. That would be a thoroughly bad thing in this country. Broadcasting on matters elpublic interest has been a fairly common procedure. For instance, the Prime Minister has broadcast, and many other political leaders have broadcast, and surely there ought to be an overwhelming case to refuse to allow a message of this kind, absolutely non-political and non-controversial, to be broadcast.
  What becomes of all our talk of the necessity for industrial peace when an organisation which has secured industrial peace is not allowed to tell the rest of the country how it has done it 7 It is a thing that, to my mind, is simply beyond comprehension, and I am raising this question on the Motion for the Adjournment in order that the Postmaster-General may have an opportunity of telling us exactly why the censorship has been exercised in this case. Liberty of expression in this country is, has been, and ought to be a very precious possession, and if once we have this kind of governmental censorship in broadcasting there is always a danger that broadcasting will finally become, not an instrument for distributing knowledge of a useful character to the people, but a means of conveying ordinary party propaganda according to the nature of the Government that is in office, and I think that any Postmaster-General ought to be very chary indeed about exercising a censorship on matters of public interest that have no concern at all with party politics and that raise no question, I think, of controversy.
  It seems to me that the Postmaster-General has strained his inventive resources to the fullest extent when he claims that this message was not allowed to be broadcast because of the danger

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  that somebody might take it as a suggestion for the ending of the mining dispute. It may be that that is the way in which the Postmaster-General looks at it, but I feel quite certain that there are very few people in the country who will look at it in the same way. I think it is against the public interest to censor messages of this kind, and I think the Minister made a great mistake in doing it. I hope the House may have an assurance that in future it is not the intention of the Minister to attempt to censor declarations which are of public interest, unless he has a very clear case indeed that the message will lead either to disturbance or to some serious public inconvenience. It will be simply insufferable if broadcasting is to be subjected to the censorship, possibly, of officious rather than official persons—I draw a distinction—and if broadcasting has to lose all its liberty and has to be censored on things that have no more to do with party politics than I have to do with the throne of China.
  This is a case in which, at the present moment, a declaration could have been made to the country of very great interest. This scheme is a matter that the country ought to understand and know about, and I have taken this opportunity of trying to give to some part of the public the information that the Postmaster-General refused the public through the broadcasting service. I hope he will reconsider his decision, and in view of the fact that, if my assurances are correct—and I have them from the highest authorities—there is not a word in this proposed message that has to deal either with politics or with parties or with suggestions to others, and in view of the fact, if my information again be correct, that the declaration is simply a description of very interesting machinery that has been devised and that has been successful, I hope the Postmaster-General will drop this, if I may say so with due respect, rather petty interference with an organisation that ought to be beyond politics, and give to the people of this country information which is of value, as I suggest this information would have been.
  The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Sir William Mitchell-Thomson): I make no complaint whatever, either of the fact that my right hon. Friend the Member
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  for Preston (Mr. T. Shaw) has raised this question or of the tone in which he has raised it. On the contrary, I am glad to have this opportunity of speaking on the question, and the House will understand that it is no part of my duty as s Minister to express either approval or disapproval, on behalf of the Government, of any particular method of settling trade disputes or dealing with trade matters. That lies in the province of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour, and he, of course, is the proper channel of communication for the Government in these matters. But I may observe that, personally, I have never concealed, in this House or elsewhere, my own very strong advocacy of conciliation and arbitration as a means of settlement, and I have not concealed my view that the party opposite were not paying enough attention to the experiments that were being made in the Dominions in regard to this particular method of dealing with trade disputes.
  I am very glad to hear what the right hon. Gentleman said about the methods of this particular trade, the boot and shoe trade, and I do not differ in the slightest degree from him. I do not join issue with him at all upon that point. The fact that these methods have secured peace in this trade for over a generation is the best testimony to their efficacy, and I will only add to what he has said that if hon. Members in all parts of the House are interested, as I hope they will be, in seeing a fuller description of how the methods are worked, they will find one in the publication which has just been issued in the last Report of the Balfour Committee on Trade and Industry, in the volume entitled "Survey of Industrial Relations," the new volume. They will find on page 276 of that volume a full description of the methods of conciliation in force, and they will see there how the principle of district settlements enforceable under a guarantee has worked out in practice. [An HON. MEMBER: "Is a copy available?"] If the hon. Member asks the Minister of Labour or the appropriate authority, I have no doubt whatever that, if it is not already available for the use of Members, a copy will be made available for their use in the Library. Personally, therefore, I am glad to hear what the right hon. Gentleman has said, and I would

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  only add that I hope that at some time or another the resolution which was passed by the Trade Union Congress in 1923, I think it was, at Plymouth, is going to be regarded as open for reconsideration.
  My right hon. Friend asked me whether at this moment the broadcast by the British Broadcasting Company of a description of this machinery, which, as I said, could not fail to be a eulogy, is or is not a transgression of the rules which ordinarily govern the operations of the British Broadcasting Company. I would like to say plainly—although the suggestion was not made by my right hon. Friend, it was partly made by implication by the Leader of the Opposition the other day—in regard to the suggestion that in taking the view that this would be a transgression of our practice I was acting rather as Chief Civil Commissioner than as Postmaster-General, that that is not the case. Since the general strike was over—the right hon. Gentleman should take this from me, and I know he will—the Government have exercised no control whatever, under the Emergency Regulations, over the operations of the British Broadcasting Company. This action which I took was taken in the ordinary way, in my ordinary capacity as Postmaster-General, and I was enforcing the understanding under which there is a rule that topics which relate to matters of political controversy shall not be broadcast by the British Broadcasting Company.
  Could this proposed broadcast be held to be related to a matter of political controversy? I judge that the implication would be, at a moment when all our minds are full of the dispute in the mining industry, that the suggestion was underlying that it would be a good thing if this or similar methods were applied to the mining industry. The right hon. Gentleman says I am wrong, and that that is not a fair implication that could be drawn. He says that in fact the broadcast has no relation to the existing dispute in the mining industry. I say to him, as I said the other day, that if that be so, then what is the particular hurry about a broadcast at this moment? This is not a new thing. It has been in existence 31 years, and it will not hurt if the broadcast has to wait a little while
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  longer—we hope, only a very little while. But is it so that that implication would not be drawn? Am I wrong in thinking that it would? I am perfectly certain that it would be drawn. Of course, it would be drawn. It was drawn. The question was hardly put before, as I was answering supplementary questions, I heard some of the colleagues of the right hon. Gentleman—I could not help hearing them—making interjections from that bench, and saying "Government control of broadcasting. The Archbishop over again." Unless those hon. Members who made that interjection thought that this broadcast was capable of being related, and intended to be related, to the mining dispute—
  Mr. BATEYIt was.
  Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON:—it was absolutely devoid of all meaning whatever, and if that inference was drawn, and is being drawn now by hon. Members in this House, how much more certain is it that it would also be drawn by listeners outside? How can I say that this could not be held to relate to topics of political controversy? When I reflect that the whole of this question of the legalisation of the joint industrial council decisions divided the Trades Union Congress itself from top to bottom, in spite of the fact that it was pressed on the Congress by the whole of this trade, masters and men alike how can I say the subject is not related to political controversy? I have no animus whatever in the matter. I have only to exercise what is rather an unpleasant discretion to have to exercise. I have to try to administer the understanding and practice as fairly as I can, having regard to all the interests concerned, and taking that into account I could not do anything else than give the decision which I did give.
  8.0. p.m.
  Mr. HARRIS: I just want to say one word. I, like the Minister, was rather attracted by this interesting public experiment. The more publicity the experiments have the better it will be, but I do think it is important that wireless should be kept free from any taint of political propaganda. From its very nature, wireless is propaganda. Anyone really keen on its use in the proper way should support the Minister in keeping as far as possible broadcasting to two things—

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  (1) amusement and (2) news—news pure and simple. As soon as you allow wireless to be used for any kind of propaganda, so soon arises the danger of its abuse. The Minister is on very safe ground in keeping out anything of a con troversial character. If there is a difference of opinion, the right way to thrash it out is not through the wireless but through the Press and on the platform. I hope the right hon. Member for Preston (Mr. T. Shaw), who brought this matter forward, will not think I am unsympathetic to the particular machinery to which he referred for settling industrial disputes, but I do say that the Minister is right, and will be right, to keep that machinery from being used for anything of a propaganda nature.
  Mr. J. BAKER: I think the Minister is wrong in suggesting that this message had a political implication that might last for ever. He might be wise in avoiding the present situation, with all the disturbed atmosphere in the minds of the workers of the country. As he was speaking he led me to believe for a moment that after this dispute was over we might get the message broadcast, but he ended by saying that it was of a political nature. To my mind it is not of a political nature and is not to be classed with the resolution that was before the Trades Union Congress. It is a voluntary arrangement entered into between the workers and employers—a contract between two parties, that can be set aside at any moment. Arbitration
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  is nut compulsory, and if they did not like the settlement, neither side was compelled to accept it. Fortunately, there has been a large measure of agreement and it has been accepted. These people have actually had reductions of wages since the commencement of the dispute in the coal trade amounting to 4s. a week. I have never brought myself to the point of agreeing that we should make a deposit and pay a fine for any breach of agreement, although that is done in certain trades. This agreement under discussion has been broken half a dozen times in the 31 years and the fines, if my memory serves me, total some £3,000 but they have been paid in the spirit of the agreement. The fine comes out of the common fund but has got to be made good by the delinquent. Personally, I think the more information of that description that we get the better. The cotton trade itself has similar machinery, minus the fine. The iron and steel trade has similar machinery. One of the regrets of the recent trouble was that we smashed up all the machinery we had built up in 50 years, but like common-sense people we have got together again and have agreed to restore that machinery from a given date. I hope this message will be distributed when we get calmed down.
  Question, "That this House do now adjourn," put, arid agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at Six Minutes after Eight o'Clock.