§ 2.47 p.m.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGEI do not propose to continue the exhaustive discussion, which has been carried on during the last few hours. I had intended, at one time, to raise a very controversial issue, the question of the publication of Cabinet documents, but, having regard to the correspondence which has passed between my right hon. Friend the Member for Hill head (Sir R. Horne) and myself, I do not propose to challenge that position at the present moment. I might have passed it by completely in silence had it not been for something which occurred in another place. I cannot refer to the proceedings there, and I cannot refer to the discussion, but I would like to utter just two or three sentences. The question is 1301 not whether a Minister is entitled to give publicity to what happens inside a Cabinet. The question is, when a Minister or ex-Minister does publish a one-sided account of a transaction, whether the other Ministers concerned are not entitled to publish the whole of the proceedings in order to make quite clear what did happen. That issue has been raised more than once in the course of the last two years. It was raised in reference to what happened with my hon. and right hon. Friends sitting round me. There were very partial disclosures; and the whole issue is whether, partial disclosures having been made which would mislead the public as to the transaction, the others are not entitled to publish the whole of the transaction, especially if there is documentary proof. That was the issue in October, 1931, and it was more or less the issue with regard to the recent Debate.
There is no doubt at all that a very partial account of the instructions that were given by the Cabinet was published. It may be said that under those circumstances it is open to a Minister to go to the Sovereign and ask his permission. As anyone who knows the Constitution will understand, that really means going to the Prime Minister. The Sovereign is constitutionally bound to take the advice of his chief Minister, and therefore if the chief Minister, who is—I will not say more or less implicated—he is bound to be more or less partial in the matter—gives advice to the contrary, then the person who is damnified, as it were, by the partial disclosure has no remedy at all—none. Therefore, I beg to say that if partial disclosures of this kind are given again of transactions which occurred during the time I was at the head of a Government I should without any hesitation take the responsibility of publishing the whole transaction—without any hesitation.
I know a good deal was said last night about liability to two years' imprisonment. Well, it is rather a new thing when the House of Lords begins to threaten Members of the House of Commons, but, apart from that altogether, if I were sent to gaol I should be sent to gaol in company with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead. He and I might pass a very merry Christmas there. And may I just say that there are two or three Members of the 1302 present Government who would also have to go there, because I have seen no end of disclosures of Cabinet secrets by them. I therefore give fair warning that, whatever the threat may be from Peers, whether Peers I created or Peers created by my successors, it will not have the slightest influence upon my conduct in that respect, unless I am given an opportunity which I ask for the publication of the whole of the proceedings. Having regard to the last letter which came from the right hon. Member for Hillhead, which does not leave quite as much in dispute, I do not propose to continue this subject, but I was bound, in view of the discussion yesterday, just to make this statement.
I mean now to raise once more, before we part for six weeks, the very grave position regarding unemployment, and to ask Ministers one or two practical questions. There is no doubt at all that the position is definitely worse this Christmas than it was last. The total unemployed are up by another 114,000—the total unemployed men are up by 228,000 but that is not the most serious aspect by any means. A still more serious figure is the increase in outdoor relief by 250,000—that means those who cannot pay under the new regulations and who have to go outside insurance altogether to save themselves from starvation. So we are worse by about 364,000 than we were this time last year. As mentioned by the hon. Member in his speech on Monday there is the steady growth in the numbers of the unemployed who have been out of work for 12 months. He said they had grown rapidly, and were still growing. I think that is about the most serious fact of all. I would just make a reference to the very remarkable letter written by the Bishop of Durham, whose See is devastated by unemployment—probably the worst unemployment anywhere except conceivably in South Wales. He calls attention not so much to the distress there but to the effect of unemployment upon adolescence. He says:
There is a general agreement in the view that unemployment has a debilitating effect on the moral and religious life of the whole community. Its worst effect is on adolescents who tend to become listless, discontented and unruly and to fall out of good habits and drift into crime.The Bishop is talking about his diocese, and he is summarising the reports which he has had from his clergy. He took 1303 steps to ascertain from the clergy in his charge what the effect of unemployment was, and he is just summarising it in that terrible sentence. He points out that it is not so much charity that they need. It is not so much that they need even sustenance, although their condition is pretty bad. What they need is work, as the Home Secretary said when he told the House that you want, not more demonstrations, but work, and it is equally true that the unemployed do not want charity so much as work.What is the prospect? I would like to know. I have asked the question before as to whether the Government have taken the whole situation into account, and whether they have any definite plans for dealing with it. Are they relying upon the kind of thing that has been put into speeches, maybe sometimes deliberately in order to cheer people up and to create an atmosphere of confidence? A very mistaken policy. It was a very mistaken policy at the beginning of the War when things were not going well to go round and say: "Everything is going quite right. We are nearly turning the corner. We have driven them back a few kilometres, and it will be all right in a very short time." I thought then that that was a very mistaken policy, when you are dealing with people who want to be told the whole truth before they can put the whole of their strength into any enterprise. It would be far better to tell the British people exactly what the situation is and what the prospects are, and then to call upon them to do something which would be a real contribution towards solving this extraordinarily grave problem, the gravest social problem that this country has faced, certainly for very nearly 100 years.
What are the prospects? I have asked a great many people, and the answer that the best-informed give to me is that they really cannot tell. They have predicted good times coming so often, and have been disappointed that now they despair. There is no better proof of that than what the Government themselves say. I read the speech of the Minister of Labour. He said that he had underestimated the number of unemployed. He estimated on the basis of something between 2,400,000 and 2,500,000, and he 1304 found that the average was nearly 2,800,000, that is to say 2,777,000. That was an under-estimate. That means that at this time last year we were expecting far better things than have actually occurred. Are the Government quite sure that they are not making the same mistake again? There are several things which are fairly encouraging, but there are other things which are not. I do not like the decrease in the traffic returns. I am told that there is a great increase in production in this country, and then I look at the traffic returns—in the matter of passengers I can understand the decrease being an effect of motor cars and other arrangements—in respect of goods and coal. There is not a single week in which there is not a drop of something between 170,000 tons and 200,000 tons in the goods traffic. Part of that is due to road traffic, I know. I asked somebody who knows the subject very well. He was connected with a railway company, and his estimate was that 20 per cent. of the decrease was due to road traffic, and that the rest was due to bad trade. I think that he was under-estimating the amount of road traffic, but he was a man who knew the question very well. That is what is happening every week.
I ask hon. Gentlemen who say that more goods are being produced in this country to look at that index. The railway returns do not indicate it. Instead of indicating an increase in production, the railway returns are going down. There may be some trades which are doing better, naturally. I have always said that Free Trade and Protection was a question of striking the balance, and that you want to discover, as was said by the Lord President of the Council, where the balance rests in the end, and whether you are not losing more in one direction than you are gaining in another. That is the whole issue. You are losing in many trades, there is no doubt. I have been making inquiries in regard to shipping, and the answer I get is, "Perfectly appalling." The Port of London is in a very bad state; it has never been worse, or, at any rate, it has never been as bad.
If that is so, do let us face the facts and then grapple with them. The Minister of Labour said what has been said many a time before, that we are in. 1305 a better position than other countries. Then he quoted very facile figures to show how exports in other countries had gone down by 60 per cent. and 40 per cent. and how ours have only gone down 33 per cent., although in America they are really not very bad. These were not very fair figures. It was values that he was comparing. He was comparing the trade of this country—where values had gone down by 33 per cent. because they are all in sterling at 20s. in the pound as against sterling at 13s. 4d. in the pound elsewhere—with the trade of Gold Standard countries. That is not very fair.
§ The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of LABOUR (Mr. R. S. Hudson)The right hon. Gentleman will, I am sure, forgive me for interrupting. I took very great pains to avoid that very error. The figure that I gave was of the volume of British exports. I said that the corresponding period of the 1931 index number of the volume of our exports had, if anything, slightly increased.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGEI was quoting figures given, not by the hon. Gentleman, but by the Minister of Labour and I looked at them a minute ago among my notes of the Debate last Monday. I was not referring to the hon. Gentleman's speech, but to the speech made by the Minister of Labour at the beginning. I particularly marked it; in fact, I underlined it. The word he used was "values," and he used the figures. In a moment or two, I shall be able to find my notes. At any rate, I make that point now, and, if I am wrong, I shall be only too glad to be corrected. I marked it carefully; the right hon. Gentleman used the word "values." The second point is still more important. The House of Commons must remember that we never recovered our export trade. You can reduce the whole thing to 1913 values, which is the best method of doing it, or you can take quantities. I do not care which it is; I am using the same test, whether for this country or for any other country. We have never gone beyond 1913. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour said:
If you take another test, you will find that the value of the exports of this country, in the past 11 months, compared with the same period of last year, has gone down by 6.9 per cent., in the United States by 35.7 1306 per cent. in Germany by 41.1 per cent.…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th December, 1932; col. 775, Vol. 273.]He uses the word "value."
§ Mr. HUDSONPerhaps the right hon. Gentleman will look at the end of my speech, where he will see the figures for volume, which are really the important ones.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGEThe hon. Gentleman, naturally, thinks that his speech is more important than that of the Minister—
§ Mr. HUDSONBecause it deals with the point which the right hon. Gentleman is making—with the question of volume.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGEI am entitled to take the speech of the chief of the Department, and that is the figure with which I am dealing at the present moment. If the hon. Gentleman calls my attention to that point, I shall examine it, but I have had no opportunity of examining it. I have, however, examined the figures given by his chief, and I am giving the answer.
I will give another answer. Will the House kindly listen to these figures? By 1928, which was more or less the great boom year, the exports of the United States of America, in comparison with 1913, had gone up to 164½; those of France to 148½; those of Italy to 132. That is to say, they exceeded their export trade of 1913 by, respectively, 64½ per cent., 48½ per cent., and 32 per cent. I found it difficult to include Germany, because Germany has been torn up. Considerable portions of her territory have been taken away, and I find it impossible to get a comparison, but, as a matter of fact, the figure for Germany was 86, even though Alsace-Lorraine and other parts have been taken away. Our figure was 84½. When the drop came, naturally it was very much greater from that height than from the very low position which we had attained, and, therefore, a comparison with the last 11 or 12 months is not a fair comparison; you must take for your comparison comparable years, between 1913 and the last boom year, which was 1928 or 1929, and then compare with the present conditions.
What is the position beyond that? There is a great fall in re-exports. New 1307 industries have employed less than 10,000 —I think the figure given by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade the other day, in answer to a question, was 9,361. The loss in the handling of re-exports is infinitely greater. What is going to happen that is going to put things right? Whether international debts are important or not—and there seems now to be a dispute about that; President Hoover does not seem to think that so much importance ought to be attached to them, though others think differently—whether they are important or not, it is quite clear, after the declaration of the President-designate yesterday, that they cannot be handled until after March.
A far more important question is the instability of the exchanges. It is not so much that we are 13s. 4d. It is that we are 13s. 4d. to-day, we were 13s. yesterday, and we may be 14s. to-morrow, and no one is able to base his contracts upon any stable assumption. The other is undoubtedly the fact that you have built up these high tariff walls everywhere and that, therefore, international trade has gone down throughout the world. Those two items are probably far more important than international debts. When are you going to deal with them? I have heard the Prime Minister, who seems to know less about what is taking place than anyone in the House, affirm most emphatically that we were going to meet immediately and that before Christmas we should have six week's discussion of general principles, which would have been very useful. Where is that meeting now? Are we going to meet before the dog days? Is there any anticipation that we are going to have a meeting before June to consider these vital issues? You will not settle them in a day if you settle them at all. When you have settled them and begun to build up your trade, you may be able to reduce the tariffs of the world by common agreement and to stabilise things generally with regard to security, but you may not. Great conferences have not been a very great success in achieving definite practical results.
That is where we are, and I should like to know how we are going to deal with the situation. We had a discussion here on Monday. I read it very carefully—I think I read it twice over—because it was 1308 very important. I also read what the Prime Minister said. I think we are entitled to make a protest about that. If he was really ill, no one will have a word to say about it, but, if he was well enough to travel all the way to Lossimouth, which is a pretty long distance I understand, and speak on unemployment on the very night when there was a discussion in the House of Commons, to which he owes his first responsibility, I think it is an insult to the House. But it is a little worse than that. It is proof that he has no sense of the great responsibility of his position in reference to the worst crisis that the country has passed through in times of peace, I will not say within living memory but almost within historical memory. He said that the problem of the better use of enforced leisure is a practical one of supreme importance.
The thing that is of supreme importance is to provide work. What does the Prime Minister propose—the creating of small handicraft industries and turning land into allotments and playing fields, without any indication where you are going to get the land or how you are going to do it, reclaiming slag heaps, making a paddling pool, restoring an old Roman bridge, and making mats out of bits of old rope. That used to be called picking oakum. That is the work of the unemployed. That is what he calls the problem of the better use of enforced leisure, which is one of supreme importance for 3,000,000—and over 3,000,000, because the 250,000 black-coated have to be added to your 2,800,000—and your black-coated man is not even in the list. The right hon. Gentleman went to Lossiemouth to file his petition in bankruptcy and to declare that there were no assets worth realising. What is £10,000 worth of charity? Where we have 50 or 100 people, as we have in some of our little villages in Wales, we can deal with them quite easily. By means of subscriptions we are fairly able to cope with them. In Guildford, near where I live, we have very great encouragement arid enterprise, but after all there is no great unemployment there compared with what there is in Durham and South Wales.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGEThat is right. There is no great unemployment in the 1309 Guildford district, and there are fairly wealthy people who are showing extraordinary enterprise and who can afford to do it. But when you come to those districts where you have almost half the population out of work, where there are no wealthy people, and where the municipalities are bankrupt, what is this £10,000 to spend on charity'? Ten thousand pounds is £80 for each county and county borough in England and Wales. Glamorgan, with nearly half its people out of work, will get, under this beneficence, the sum of £110 to provide work for the unemployed. It is really trifling with the problem. I do ask the Government during the coming six weeks to think out something upon a greater scale than this.
We have put forward our schemes. I am told that they are no good. What are your schemes? Do let us have them. You have had your Tariff. You put a false bottom on your economic structure. It may have been necessary. I am not arguing that. That is beside the mark at the present moment. You have it there, but why do you not build something upon it? What are you going to build upon it? Other and poorer countries are making a real effort. The "Times" has already been advertising what Signor Mussolini is doing in the way of reclamation. He was opening yesterday a town built upon a waste swamp which has been reclaimed. Italy is a poor land. It is a poorer land than ours. That is what he is doing. He has shown courage. He is facing his difficulties. He has reclaimed hundreds and thousands—and, I am not certain that there are not millions—of acres. He has put, at any rate, hundreds and thousands of people upon the land. In Germany they are going to take 1,300,000 acres in East Prussia alone in order to settle the population upon the land where 30 per cent. of the population is already on the soil. All the towns there are doing exactly the same thing—in one area alone 1,300,000 acres—and we are only talking about reclaiming waste land. We are treating the matter as though we were bankrupt. In Germany the difficulty is that they have very little land to spare. They have 10,000,000 people on the soil there. They have very little land to spare, and practically no money. In this country we have £1,800,000,000 of depreciated money rusting in our hands, worth less by one-third 1310 to-day than when the Government came into power. Every sovereign that was worth 20s. then is now worth 13s. 4d., and if you go on leaving them rusting there, what guarantee will you have that they will not go down and down again?
I wonder how many hon. Members read that very remarkable article by the agricultural correspondent of the "Times," in November, as to the conditions in the East of England. He said:
One landowner told me that he has 1,200 acres on his hands for which he cannot find tenants. The farms lie in five different parishes and he will have to make shift to get the land cultivated somehow, so that it does not become derelict. Where forced sales have taken place farms normally worth £20 an acre have sold for £4 an acre and even as low as 35s. an acre. There are no buyers.There is land there, and you need not use compulsory powers to take it. Can the Minister of Agriculture name any country in Europe where you can buy 1,500 acres of land at 35s. an acre, or £4 an acre or £20 an acre, with farm buildings attached, except in this country. Why is that? Because we are not making proper use of the land as they do in other countries. That is the real reason.I hope that we shall get something from the Minister of Agriculture. I put this suggestion to him. If they cannot borrow money at the present moment, why do not they do what the Mayor of Godalming, who is a business man and has been a farmer, suggests. I heard him say at an agricultural dinner the other night that he had made money out of his farm. That shows that he is a very exceptional man. He suggests that you should say to the locality, "We will lump the dole and pass it on to you, providing you employ people on tasks which do not enter into competition with ordinary industry." I thought that an admirable suggestion. What kind of things are there that would not enter into competition with ordinary industry—public improvements, reclamation of waste, drainage of land, allotments, smallholdings, slum clearance, opening up roads to environments of cities with a view to garden cities. None of these things would enter into any sort of competition with ordinary industry. Therefore, you would not be subsidising one class of business as against another and you would undercut nobody. You would pay them the ordinary trade union rate 1311 of wages, and their dole would go towards that. If you were to do it in the case of anyone who had a leather factory or an iron and steel factory it would be helping one business as against another, but if it is for the purpose of the reclamation of land, and things of that sort, you would not be helping any industry. You would be giving the dole as a contribution towards getting work in that particular neighbourhood.
Instead of that we prefer to ladle out all this money in sheer idleness. The Mayor of Godalming told me that if he could do this he could provide work for every man in the area. There are a considerable number of towns in this country where this policy could be adopted, and by this means you could reduce the number of unemployed by at least 25 per cent. I ask the Government to consider this possibility. May I remind the right hon. Gentleman that no legislation is necessary. There is an Act of Parliament on the Statute Book; you can do it by an Order in Council ordering that the machine should go. You can reclaim land, set up small holdings and allotments, cottage holdings and schemes of that kind, under this Act. There is another point I wish to put to the Government. The Minister of Agriculture can order a thorough survey of two or three typical counties to show the possibilities. The Home Secretary made one or two good surveys in Scotland, and he could have gone further, but at that time it was not linked up so much with unemployment.
There is a new situation. Why should you not take two or three typical counties and have a thorough survey by practical men of the conditions to see whether there is land which is derelict which can be reclaimed. I think it is possible to reclaim in some counties tens of thousands of acres, perhaps more in larger counties with a view to land settlement. First of all, there is the pure waste, the swamp area. I could give the right hon. Gentleman instances where the soil is good, but no individual landlord can possibly spend the money upon it; and it is difficult to get the combination which is necessary. You may have 50 landlords adjoining a particular swamp, but they have not the money. In the next place, there is the land which is under-cultivated, large areas in 1312 this country, and an area which is growing. Why could we not have a survey of two or three counties to see what are the possibilities? If those who talk about reclamation and under-cultivation, and the reconditioning of land are talking nonsense then the sooner it is shown to be nonsense by careful examination by experts the better. We could then turn our minds to something which is more practical. But let us find out first whether there is anything in it, and whether this is the only country in the world where you cannot reclaim land and settle people upon it.
I come to the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health. During the last Government I pressed the Minister of Health and the Lord Privy Seal to have a survey made. In this matter I had the advice of some of the ablest town planners in the Kingdom. It was not my suggestion at all. I say that in order to avoid undue prejudice against the suggestion, which came entirely from practical men whose politics I do not even know. Right hon. and hon. Members opposite cannot, therefore, say it is merely a Radical stunt. The suggestion was that there should be a survey of the possibilities of opening up the suburbs in London—the Lea Valley was one of the places indicated—with a view, not to pulling down the slums in the East End of London and rebuilding new slums, but with a view to getting the population right out into the country so as to give them the same advantage of good healthy country air as the middle classes and the well-to-do have at the moment. It is done in all the well-constructed towns and cities of the Continent, everywhere, with access to the docks and to places of business through broad avenues, sometimes by light railways, sometimes by tube, sometimes by tram—what New York does for a uniform five cents fare. I am not asking the right hon. Gentleman to commit himself to the policy. I am asking him whether what was undertaken by the late Government in the way of investigation can proceed. It cannot possibly cost more than a few pounds. The last Government also undertook to examine these possibilities in some of the distressed towns of the north, to see whether something could be done. The Government fell before I knew what had happened to these 1313 schemes. Perhaps they had no time to put them into operation, but they did agree to do so.
Those are the suggestions which I put forward to the Government. I have heard many a time that the present Government have pulled us through. Pulled us through into what? Into over 3,000,000 of unemployed, maintained at a cost of £130,000,000 a year, and nothing to show for it. The Employment Exchanges are fuller, the docks are empty, the factories and workshops and railways empty. The weekly returns for goods traffic are down; the unemployment figures are up. There is land lacking drainage, more water-logged than ever; there are more labourers leaving the soil, more ships rotting for want of cargoes. We have the same old slums getting shabbier and more and more overcrowded, and nothing done to improve them. The Prime Minister leaves all this to the Department, and with a fine gesture to charity. I wonder how long the nation will stand it.
§ 3.35 p.m.
§ Mr. LAWSONBefore the Minister replies there is one point to which I wish to draw attention. I wonder if the House clearly understands the fact that during the last year unemployment has entered upon a new and a terribly menacing stage. It was my gloomy duty on Monday to draw attention to those figures which have been mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) and emphasised by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour, that during the last 12 months the number of unemployed who have been out of work for 12 months or more, has increased from just over 100,000 to 480,000. I ask the House to mark what that means. Before the War there were what were called cycles of unemployment. Since the War we have had persistence of unemployment, but up to now the elements of that unemployment were changing and, until the last year or so, we could say that there were no more than 100,000 or so permanently unemployed in the sense that they had been idle for 12 months or more. Within the last year that figure of 100,000 has leapt up to nearly 500,000.
The Government may do as they did on Monday last, I do not suppose that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for 1314 Carnarvon Boroughs expects any reasonable answer to the suggestions of schemes which he has put forward. If he does he shows even more optimism than we expect from his own optimistic self. All this kind of thing was debated in this House for three days. Members of the House were supposed to pool their ideas on this subject and even Members supporting the Government pleaded with the Government to do certain things. What happened? The Government have not been decent enough even to give us an answer. Now, as I say, unemployment has entered on a new and menacing stage and we have this terrible corps of men permanently unemployed.
The Government gave £10,000 for the work of the National Council of Social Service and on Monday we pointed out the danger that this would be taken as a Government policy. The Government said, "No!" but they did not tell us what was their policy. They have no policy. But the Prime Minister went to Lossiemouth and almost at the very time when the subject was being debated here in this House he made a speech to the country which gave the impression that he was stating Government policy. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition as well as the right hon. Gentle man the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs criticised that speech, in terms which I felt were weak, as an insult to the House. It is more titian that; it is a very grave danger to this country for the Prime Minister to do things of that description. I said on Monday—and I confess that the idea has got hold of me—that there is at present in regard to this matter throughout the country a kind of brooding quiet. It is what I should describe as a terrible quiet, a dangerous quiet, one of those quiets which history speaks of as preceding very dangerous human upheavals.
The Government may state nothing here to-day, they may have no policy of their own, they may think that charity will suffice. But the Government will get the surprise of their lives unless they are prepared to face this problem, particularly in some of the areas of which we know. It will not be the Home Secretary who will reply to it, because if it does happen, there will be no Home Secretary to reply at all. I do hope that the right hon. Gentleman will at least have something to say. The Prime 1315 Minister, I think, has destroyed the scheme of the National Union of Social Service doing anything at all effectively. We on this side of the House want to see that work successful, and want to see the splendid work done in almost every part of the country continued. These men and women are labouring all over the country, and have been for some years doing first-class work in their own humble way. They have never pretended that they could be a substitute for active Government work. They do not do so now, and say so definitely. But by the gift of £10,000 they have been linked up with the Government, and by the speech of the Prime Minister not only their future possibility of good work has been torpedoed, but it looks as if even the good work that has been done has been endangered, That is what has been done by a speech on Government policy from Lossiemouth. Now that we are going to adjourn for six weeks, and when up and down the country there are great masses of people, very patient, very decent, some of whom are at this Christmas time, as the Prime Minister himself said in that speech, wanting the very elements of covering, I hope the right hon. Gentleman is going to have something more to say than his predecessors at the Ministry of Labour have had. If not, I can only finish by repeating the warning that there is in this country grave possibility of trouble, which will not be handled easily.
§ 3.43 p.m.
§ The MINISTER of AGRICULTURE (Major Elliot)It is not easy in the Debate on the Adjournment Motion before the Christmas Recess to respond to all the appeals which have been made. It is quite true, as the right hon. Gentleman the Father of the House said, that it would not be possible for me to touch on any projects involving legislation. Yet the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) seemed to expect that this afternoon I should develop some great Government programme, which certainly could not be done without legislation, and which, therefore, would be out of order. He seemed to take exception, and so I regret to say did the Father of the House, to the Prime Minister not being here to develop some such programme on the Estimates of a Department. But as everybody knows, it would have been totally out of order for the Prime Minis- 1316 ter, or any other Minister, to develop on such an occasion any scheme involving legislation of any kind or description.
§ Mr. LANSBURYDoes the right hon. and gallant Gentleman say that with the consent of the House the Prime Minister could not have made any statement, and has the House ever refused that consent?
§ Major ELLIOTI say, without a. moment's hesitation, that the consent of the House would not have made any difference whatever. The consent of the Chair is what is necessary, and the Chair would have ruled—as the Chair always rules—that on Departmental Estimates it is utterly impossible to introduce any subject demanding legislation. Well, the Leader of the Opposition has a right to his own opinion, but I have heard, and we have all heard, Members and Ministers called to order at this Box, and forced to resume their seats, because on Departmental Estimates they were broaching on subjects requiring legislation which would have been out of order in the circumstances.
§ Mr. LANSBURYNot when there has been consent asked and given.
§ Major ELLIOTI do not wish to enter into a Debate upon rules of order with my right hon. Friend, more especially as on more than one occasion recently I have found myself involved in a controversy with him which has threatened to flare up into something worse, and for which I was, as I said at the time, sincerely sorry, and I certainly do not wish to be led into such a controversy again. I think it is within the general knowledge of the House that Estimates which involved £20,000,000 of new money required close and accurate examination from the point of view of Departmental Estimates, that these Estimates were so examined, that the Prime Minister would have been out of place in such a Debate, and that the Prime Minister himself had gone home, as surely he was entitled to do, for the benefit of his health, which surely any man is entitled to do after an autumn of work which has not been surpassed by any man in this House, engaged upon the very tasks which the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition most vehemently demanded, for the sweeping away of barriers between nation and nation, for the stabilisation of exchanges, and for the cause of international peace.
1317 Those were the tasks upon which the Prime. Minister had exhausted himself, and the Prime Minister surely had a right to say, at such a time, "I will go home." I have known the right hon. Gentleman the Father of the House, when he had great international tasks to perform, when he was involved in great international conferences, when he was Prime Minister, paying little enough heed to those who said that he should be nailed to his place at this Box. I have known him live in foreign capitals for months at a time carrying out schemes which no doubt, he sincerely hoped, would lead to great improvements in international affairs.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGEI never passed any criticism on the Prime Minister because he had spent his time either at Geneva, Lausanne, or Paris, or any other place where he was discharging his duty. That is a very different thing, but I think it would be difficult for the right hon. Gentleman to find a single case where there was a most important issue of the moment, say, the War, being discussed in this House, when I was not in my place.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGEI can hear that observation. The House was not sitting then. That was very unworthy of the hon. Member. He ought to apologise, and he would if he were a gentleman.
§ Major ELLIOTIt is surely unnecessary and undignified for the House of Commons to enter into a criticism of the personal motives of any Member or any officer of this House. The House of Commons as a whole has always freely and generously extended its consideration towards either Members of the House or Members of the Government who have had to be absent for duty or for reasons of health, and I am sure that any of us who heard, as I heard, the broadcast speech of the Prime Minister will not deny that that was the voice of a man who would be greatly improved by a short holiday in his native air. I think everyone who heard that speech certainly would agree that the Prime Minister, when he went home for reasons of health, was going home for reasons that were manifest to anyone who heard that speech delivered.
1318 An engagement entered into long before with the British Broadcasting Corporation, an engagement on the radio, is an engagement with millions of persons, and it is inaccurate in the extreme to say that he was there developing Government policy. He was carrying out an engagement as one of the speakers in a series of talks which the British Broadcasting Corporation was giving to direct the nation towards various aspects of the great problem of unemployment, and the fact that the Prime Minister thought that that was a reasonable thing, and that even on his holiday and while not in full health he could give up an evening to make such an address, is obviously an action for which he should be commended, and not blamed. The fact that even on his holiday in Lossiemouth he directed the attention of others towards the problem not merely of Governmental action, but of personal action and social service, and to the relation between man and man which transcends all the problems of Governmental action, State grants and legislation, is surely an example of the fact that not by one avenue only must we attack this problem of unemployment, but by every avenue, not merely in the House of Commons but in the country as well.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street seized the opportunity to make a few remarks which he doubtless felt would be of great advantage to the House of Commons. He indicated that, in his view, the problem of long-term unemployment had suddenly bounced up from 100,000 to 480,000. He is aware, however, that during the Debate on the unemployment Estimates that point was made, and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour pointed out that the increase in those figures was due to the fact that they had first been enumerated at one period, and then enumerated at another period much later. It is not a sudden phenomenon. If it were, it would be easier to deal with. The problem was here before the hon. Gentleman's Government came into power, and before the period when he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour. The problem was nearly as great when he was Parliamentary Secretary as it is to-day. The problem showed the same menacing features during the period he was Parliamentary Secretary as it is showing 1319 to-day. It is not a sudden leap; if it were, it would be, as I have said, more easily dealt with. It is part of the manifestation of the phenomenon of unemployment which no single Administration in this country can cast up against another. No sudden leap has taken place. It is the development of a trend which was developing in the past as it is to-day.
§ Mr. LAWSONI did not make this as a party point at all. The fact is that in 1931 at Geneva figures were brought out by the Minister of Labour himself showing that there were only 100,000 people who had been unemployed for 12 months or more. That was in June, 1931. I asked the hon. Gentleman for figures, and he himself told me that between 1931 and 1932 the figures had gone up to 480,000. That is the official answer which the hon. Gentleman gave me. I am not making a party point that this Government are responsible for it at all. The point I am making is that the figure has gone up by a sudden leap to five times the previous number.
§ Major ELLIOTIt would be ungracious of me not to acknowledge the statement of my hon. Friend that there is no party point in it, but that he was merely drawing attention to the general trend. As to the actual discussion and analysis of the figures between two Parliamentary Secretaries to the Ministry of Labour, I will certainly stand aside in that controversy, because it is clear that I must know much less than either taken singly, and very much less than both together.
I want to come back to the main problem, raised more particularly by my right hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). He spoke of the difficulty before the House in adjourning for Christmas with the unemployment figure still as high as it is to-day. He indicated that he wanted to know whether the Government had any plans, and said that while tariff barriers were as high as they are to-day and the exchanges were as unstable, it was impossible to expect any permanently good results to world trade. I do not wish to enter into the controversy with him on these matters save to say that I believe that those who seek to put affairs right by putting right the whole world at one time are trying 1320 to undertake too great a task. In putting right affairs region by region, in establishing an area over which the exchanges would be stable—the sterling area—and in establishing areas in which tariffs would be stable and would tend to go lower rather than to go higher, as within the British Empire, we are embarking on a more hopeful field than if we were to attempt to put right the whole affairs of the world in one or two great sweeping conferences, wherever they might be held. But that is my own view, and I am no more entitled to dogmatise than anyone else. The right hon. Gentleman did me the honour yesterday of indicating that he would raise certain points regarding the utilisation of land, the drainage of land—
§ Major ELLIOT—upon which he indicated he would press for a reply to-day. I have done my best in the time available to satisfy his demands. I would like to say, in the first place, that I think he was perhaps a little cavalier in his dismissal of allotments as merely playing with the problem.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGEI spoke of playing-fields. I never spoke of the provision of allotments as playing with the problem. I am strongly in favour of them, and if I did convey another impression I am sorry.
§ Major ELLIOTI did my best to take down the words of the right hon. Gentleman.
§ Major ELLIOTI took down very carefully the words of my right hon. Friend, and he referred with great scorn and derision to the statement of the Prime Minister.
§ Major ELLIOTHe said the Prime Minister had spoken of the reclaiming of waste land, of allotments, of playing-fields and of handicrafts. Those were the four specific things which he mentioned as having been discussed by the Prime Minister, and I do not think he will suggest that he excepted any of the Prime 1321 Minister's remarks from the vials of scorn which he poured upon the announcement.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGEI asked with regard to allotments how land could be obtained merely by private charity? That is all. If I conveyed the impression that allotments were a matter of derision, I did not intend to do so; but I do regard the mere acquisition of land by private charity as playing with the problem.
§ Major ELLIOTAt any rate we are agreed upon one thing, that allotments are a very useful way of dealing with the subject—
§ Major ELLIOT—and that in so far as the Prime Minister referred to allotments he was referring to a way of handling the problem which had the heartiest approval of my right hon. Friend. Therefore, there is one ewe lamb, one brand snatched from the burning and the general conflagration.
§ Major ELLIOTWell, after all allotments are obtained by good will and by personal service as much as in any other way. The facility of access of land is as much a, case of personal service, as much a case of the kind of relationship which the Prime Minister was pleading for, between those more fortunate and those less fortunate citizens as any example which can be given. All round our great cities, and in many of our smaller towns and villages, these allotments are made available to the unemployed and other people by the good will and the friendliness of those, who, if they stood on the strict letter of their rights, could certainly exclude the unemployed from that land, and do a good deal to hold up a movement which, we all admit, is of the utmost value and help to the unemployed.
Let me give the House one or two figures as to the extent which the movement has already reached. At the end of 1930, the total number of allotments in England and Wales was approaching 1,000,000. It was 960,000, and the available figures for Scotland showed 16,000 more allotment holders, making a total for the country as a whole of just over 1322 981,000. That is a figure which is not merely very remarkable, but which holds out the greatest hope for the future. I say again, speaking from this Box, that I plead with the nation as a whole to take up the challenge for social service which the Prime Minister issued, and I will reiterate that there is no more helpful way in which that challenge can be taken up than by facilitating allotment holding by personal assistance, even by the giving of charity—although the word may not be liked by the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs. It is not charity when you give a man seeds or tools or an allotment, whereas if you gave him money it would be so regarded. The 981,000 allotment holders in this country represent a great factor which we should build on and understand, when we are dealing with the situation as it is at the present time.
§ Mr. LAWSONIt is the local authorities who are doing it.
§ Major ELLIOTIt is the combined effort of the nation, and not merely of local authorities. The result would be poor enough if we were trusting merely to county councils and local authorities. If it were not for help and service given by individuals, all the regulations passed by local authorities would be of little avail. The allotment movement is not a whole-time movement. The right hon. Gentleman asked if there were not cases where surveys could be held for land which would be available for reclamation which, by reason of being water-logged, could not be employed for the benefit of the smallholdings.
§ Major ELLIOTOr allotments. The Act which was passed in 1930 for the setting up of the catchment boards is the type of legislation which he has in mind. No doubt he knows the figures as well as I do. They show that there were something like 4,000,000 acres in England and Wales which were dependent for their productivity upon efficient drainage. The catchment boards have been set up, and they are now reasonably ready to go ahead. They are making surveys. I think the surveys which the right hon. Gentleman has in mind are more properly carried out by means ofad hocauthorities working for areas, like the catch- 1323 ment areas of rivers, than they would be by special inquiries undertaken in county areas, such as were carried out in Scotland by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland.
We have, of course, large areas where drainage can be carried out, and where, if great improvements were made, land would be made available for smallholdings and allotments which is not available now. But of what avail would it be to bring land into cultivation if land already in cultivation is running out of cultivation? Of what avail is it to set more men on smallholdings if men in other areas are driven off the land? We have set up on smallholdings, 20,000 or 30,000 men since the war. During that time, 170,000 people have left the land, and the population is poorer by that amount. It is no advantage to the country to lose 10 ploughmen and gain one smallholder. That is a disadvantage to the country, and not an advantage. To put on 30,000 smallholders and lose 170,000 farm workers would be folly.
We on the Conservative side of the House have every reason—[HON. MEMBERS: "The Conservative side?"] There are many Conservatives who sit on this side of the House. I do not say that there are not others who sit here, but, on the whole, the Conservatives on this side are in the majority. We have every reason to look at my right hon. Friend with a little chagrin when he inveighs against us because so many people have left the soil of this country. Who has fought more vehemently than he for the cause of free imports into this country? Who, time after time, has brought down Governments because they showed signs of moving towards the very methods of protection, the very methods of restriction of foreign imports, which he now admits are necessary if we arc to continue a programme of settling people on the land? My right hon. Friend has said repeatedly that, whatever was true of the past, now we have our chance, now we have got our conditions as to imports restriction, and we should go ahead and develop them and see what they can do. It is all very well to say that now, but why could he not have said it years ago, when we were struggling against the tremendous weight which he and many of his friends represented? It is useless to 1324 turn round upon us now and ask why this condition of affairs is not put straight in the twinkling of an eye. Men have left the land because they have lost confidence, because they have lost heart, because they did not believe that the towns were with them, because they did not believe that they would get support. When they begin to see support, they began to return to the land themselves.
Reference is made to the Lea Valley. The figures have been given before in this House, and I could give them again. They show that, when the Lea Valley growers got a reasonable modicum of assurances, they pressed on, they built glass-houses, they brought capital back on to the land, they brought labour back on to the land, they increased production, and they increased the purchasing power of those who live in that area. At the present moment I am working to try and get a pig industry established in this country, but what do I meet on every side? I am met with the questions, "Do you mean it?" and, still more, "Does the Opposition mean it? "We admit that no Government can remain in power for ever, and at some time some Opposition—it may be this Opposition, or some other Opposition, or some combination of Oppositions—will come in. Will they implement the promises that we are giving to the farmers now? If the right hon. Gentleman himself could give us such assurances, he would do more to bring about confidence and get people on to the land than all the speeches that I can deliver or all the programmes that I can bring forward.
I can bring forward programmes and make speeches, but these are programmes for half the nation, for the Government which is in power. What about the next Government, and the Government after that? Can the right hon. Gentleman say, can the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street say, that, if we put people on the land, the nation is determined to see that they have a chance on the land? Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to say that, if we start a policy of that kind, it will be acknowledged by the nation as a whole? Mere criticism will not remove these difficulties. Let hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite come along with such assurances on this day of the Motion for the Adjournment- for the Christmas Recess. 1325 We are having these problems examined by skilled men, by conscientious men. Reports such as the Pig Industry Report have been brought out which have been considered by the industry concerned, not with any political or party bias, but by every section of the industry and in every aspect.
One thing only is necessary for success, and that is confidence—confidence not merely for a period of one year or two years, but for a period of five years, 10 years, 20 years. Can we have that assurance from my right hon. Friend? Can we have that assurance from the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street? He asks, what are the Government's plans? The Government have put forward plans. There is the plan for the development of our pig industry. We have just appointed a committee to examine the case of the meat industry—an examination of which the key and centre is that the committee has powers to recommend the regulation, that is to say, the restriction, of imports. Do hon. Gentlemen opposite stand for that or do they not? Will they back us up in that in the future, or will they not? These are the questions which we and the Government have a right to ask. It is no use merely saying, "What are your plans?" We have a right to say, "What is your support?" [Interruption.] The industry of agriculture has more hope because of the events of last year and the last few months. It is in a much more hopeful mood this Christmas than it was last Christmas, and certainly the Christmas before. I appeal to every hon. Member whether that is not so.
The Government, says the right hon. Gentleman, have pulled us through to what? They have pulled us through to a fighting chance. No one says the victory has been won. No one says the end of the depression has arrived, or is even in sight. There are great and terrible trials for the country still before us. There are budgetary trials and trials of unemployment. We demand from the Opposition that, if they ask for national effort they should give us national support. On these fundamental questions, the question of the land, the question of the people of the country in their relation to the soil of the country, will they back us up? When the House reassembles, if the Government develops a land policy which will help the people of England to settle on the land of England, will they do every- 1326 thing in their power to back that up? If they can give us that pledge, we shall have done a great deal, even in this one year, towards the settlement of people on the land and towards the settlement of the problems with which this nation is faced. The father of the House has a great reputation. He has done much for this nation in the past. Let him put the coping stone on it, and let us see that, the next time he speaks in the House, he takes the plunge and definitely says, "As for Protection or Free Trade, a plague, if you like, on both your houses, but as for settling the people of England on the land of England and making sure that they get the advantage of reaping the fruits which they extract from the soil, I am with you now and my descendants are with you."
§ 4.10 p.m.
§ The MINISTER of HEALTH (Sir Hilton Young)I only rise to answer a single specific question which the right hon. Gentleman addressed to me. It is on the subject of regional development with a view to the extension of garden cities. May I remind him, in the first place, that there is a great extension of the power of regional planning in the Town and Country Planning Act that we passed last year. Secondly, the aspect of work arising from town-planning was dealt with by the Departmental Committee on Regional Development which reported in July, 1931, and which said:
While we are attracted by the possibilities of this new form of development, we regretfully have to accept the fact that no immediate employment can he found on a large scale in these works.That Departmental Committee recommended further investigation in regard to garden cities and their possibilities, and it was accordingly arranged by my predecessor to examine the experience already gained in regard to the establishment of garden cities and villages and to make recommendations as to the steps, if any, which should be taken by the Government, or by local authorities, to extend the provision of such garden cities and villages and satellite towns, and, in particular, how the location of industries in them can be stimulated, and other similar matters. That Committee is still sitting, and I expect to receive its report before very long. I should make it clear that the Committee was rather concerned with the amenity 1327 aspect of the garden city movement than with any question of the provision of employment, or public works, upon which the decision of the first and major Committee was unfavourable. There is only one other point to which I am asked to refer, in reference to the quotation from a recent speech of the Minister of Labour, and I desire to point out that the Minister of Labour said:If you look at the volume of exports from this country during the last nine months you will find that they are slightly greater than they were for the corresponding period of 1931."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th December, 1932; col. 775, Vol. 273.]So my right hon. Friend's statement was exactly accurate.