§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That 01,410 Officers, Seamen, Boys and Royal Marines be employed for the Sea
1593
Service, together with 865 for the Royal Marine Police, borne on the books of His Majesty's Ships, at the Royal Marine Divisions, and at Royal Air Force Establishments, for the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1933.
§ The CIVIL LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Captain Euan Wallace)It is rather difficult for another Member of the Government to make his Ministerial debut immediately after one of his colleagues has made such an excellent speech as that made by the Parliamentary Secretary. The Debate has been of enormous interest, and it has covered a very wide field. During the 10 years which I have had the honour to be a Member of this House, I cannot remember any other occasion upon which the representatives of the Admiralty have had so little criticism to answer on the first day of the Navy Estimates. It is a great satisfaction to the First Lord to feel that, at the end of this Debate, there is in every quarter of the House a very general realisation of the position in which the Board of Admiralty has been placed, and I think I am justified in saying that there has been a general appreciation expressed of the steps which have been taken by my right hon. Friend to fit the needs of the Navy into the rather Procrustean bed of the sum which has been allocated to us.
No one can complain of the tone or the temper of the principal speech from the Opposition bench which was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. G. Hall). I am sorry to think that he was disappointed in the reductions which he expected, and I regret that he regards our new construction programme for the year 1932 as indicating that we are pessimistic about the outcome of the Geneva Conference. The hon. Member's criticism on this head has been effectively answered in various quarters of the House, notably in the very serious and grave speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain). I prefer to adopt the position which my right hon. Friend has taken that these Estimates are only defensible in times of such financial stringency.
The late Civil Lord asked a variety of questions, which I will do my best to answer. I will take, first of all, the subject of Singapore. The hon. Member for Aberdare asked why there was a 1594 reduction this year in the provision for work at Singapore. The reasons are two. We have at the request of the Treasury, and as a result of consultations with the Public Accounts Committee, presented the Naval Estimates in a slightly different form, and instead of making an overhead cut for possible under-spending at the end of the time—that shadow cut has been done away with, and the cut has been distributed among certain Votes. There is in the provision for Singapore—
The DEPUTY-CHAIRMANThe Vote for Singapore will come up later, and that question cannot be raised now.
§ Captain WALLACEI have also been asked a question about a recommendation made by the May Economy Committee in regard to setting up a committee at the Admiralty to include outside experts on the subject of naval design. The position is this: We have at the Admiralty a committee on naval design consisting of the Sea Lords and their very capable advisers. That committee can call in from outside anyone they like to assist them, and probably that will meet the point raised by my hon. Friend, because no one will realise better that he does that, in the last resort, the Admiralty must be responsible for the design and the construction of our ships.
Another question was asked in reference to the Committee over which Sir Ernest Bennett presided. The report of that Committee was received just before the change of Government. No action upon it was possible by our predecessors, and we have been obliged to suspend consideration of that report because it recommended a course of action which would have involved a considerable expense. If we were to attempt to carry out the recommendations of the Bennett Committee it would necessitate the remission of fees, and that kind of thing, which, in the present circumstances we could not take into consideration.
The next point raised was the allocation of work as between the Royal Dockyards and outside firms. That question was dealt with by the ex-Civil Lord in the first instance, by the hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Sir J. Walker Smith), and it was 1595 also mentioned in an admirable maiden speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Portsmouth (Mr. R. Beaumont).
A good many of the suggestions put forward on this question are mutually destructive of each other. Those hon. Members who represent dockyard constituencies ask for a larger allocation of Government work for the dockyards in their constituencies, while other hon. Members ask for more work to be given to contractors and outside firms. Our policy has been perfectly reasonable and logical. We have, as the late Civil Lord admitted in his speech, kept the dockyard numbers absolutely stationary except for normal wastage. I do not think we could have done better than that. It is essential that we should have some naval construction in the dockyards, but it is equally essential that a certain amount of construction should go out to private firms, because it might be that we should require the services of those firms if for any reason it were necessary to speed up our construction programme. After all, it is right that, from the employment point of view, we should look upon this question nationally, and try to do what is fair as between the workmen who inhabit the dockyard towns and those who inhabit the places where there are other shipbuilding yards. We have, in other words, to try to keep both going.
The hon. Member for Aberdare also referred to the substitution of Marine pensioners for Metropolitan Police in some of the dockyards, and he asked specifically what sum we expected to save. We have completed this substitution in Chatham only, of the three dockyards, and the anticipated saving this year is approximately £17,000. We propose to see how this system works before we commit ourselves to extending it to Portsmouth and Devonport. It will mean, if all goes well, an ultimate saving of something like £50,000 a year, but it does involve—and I would like hon. Members to be quite clear about this—a certain amount of additional outlay, because the Marine pensioners include more married men, and will require the provision of more married quarters, than the Metropolitan Police.
My hon. Friend also raised the question of the comparative merits of coal 1596 and oil, and he asked whether a meeting had taken place to receive a deputation which I understood was coming to show that coal was just as good as oil. I think that the best answer on this point is the admirable speech which was made by the late Civil Lord himself last year, in reply to a Motion moved by Commander Kenworthy. To pass on from this rather technical subject of fuel to something closely cognate, I should like to refer for a moment to another maiden speech to which everyone must have listened with the greatest interest, the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Platting (Mr. Chorlton). I do not know whether everyone absolutely understood it, because the hon. Member is a very great expert on the matters of which he spoke. I should like to assure him—I wish he were in his place —that the Board of Admiralty is very fully alive to the necessity for pursuing research work of all kinds. The Vote for research is only a very little down this year, and we are firmly persuaded that research has resulted in the past in substantial economies and will continue to do so in an increasing degree.
10.0 p.m.
The hon. Member for Platting went a little further, and asked us specifically whether the Admiralty recognised the value of the internal combustion engine as a propelling agency for ships; and he instanced the engines in the German ship "Deutschland." The Admiralty is alive to this matter, but, so far as these engines have been developed at present, while the Diesel engine has certain advantages in the way of economy of fuel consumption and quick starting, it has not, taking it altogether, the advantage of being so light per horse-power produced. If, for instance, a high-speed engine is installed, it has to have gearing and clutches, and, taking the whole thing together, we are advised that the weight of the complete installation for a big ship is about 20 per cent. greater than that of a, comparable steam plant. There is, however, not the slightest doubt that the high-speed Diesel engine has great possibilities, and an experimental engine of this kind, of a fast-running type, is, in fact, very near completion at the Admiralty Engineering Laboratory.
1597 I must now turn to the speech of my hon. Friend and namesake the Member for Dunfermline (Mr. J. Wallace), who asked about the sad position of Rosyth, and suggested that this great dockyard, as it was in the War, had not received fair treatment from the Admiralty in any way. He asked, first of all, whether it would not be possible to get a reduction in the rateable value—
§ Mr. J. WALLACENo, an increase.
§ Captain WALLACEThe answer is exactly the same in either case. I can only tell my hon. Friend that the Admiralty do not pay rates. The contribution in lieu of rates is fixed by the Treasury, and we do not actually know what it is. I would advise my hon. Friend, therefore, to tackle my right hon. and gallant Friend the Financial Secretary. My hon. Friend went on to say that, if we were going to put Rosyth on the scrap-heap, we ought to make up our minds as to how much we wanted to sell, and ought to push the sale of it for all we were worth. I can quite appreciate the point of view of my hon. Friend and of the people of Dunfermline, but we do not intend to sell Rosyth. We are perfectly willing that certain parts of it should be developed commercially, subject to what I think I may call the overriding claims of the Naval Staff point of view. We have done our best to meet the borough council, and we have put, as my hon. Friend will acknowledge, a representative of the Admiralty upon their development committee. It is not possible, I am afraid, for the Admiralty to give Rosyth repair work, because the dockyard is reduced to a, care-and-maintenance basis, and, if we were to try to do work in that dockyard, it would mean that the work would be done at very high overhead costs, and would probably necessitate bringing a certain number of people from southern yards.
§ Mr. J. WALLACEI pointed out that considerable overtime was being worked in the southern dockyards. My point of view in this matter has always been that Rosyth has not had a square deal. I said so in the House some time ago. Is there no method of allocating some amount of work to Rosyth, and stopping the overtime in the southern yards?
§ Captain WALLACEI do not think that my hon. Friend mentioned overtime, 1598 but, as a matter of fact, there is really not a great deal of overtime worked in southern yards. The overtime worked is overtime which is absolutely necessary, and it would be extremely expensive, and would be taking money from other services which are much more essential, if we were to attempt to work Rosyth as a dockyard. I think that what I have said really answers at the same time my hon. Friend's question in regard to trained lads, although I should be perfectly prepared to look into it.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Battersea (Commander Marsden) made, in his very interesting speech, two statements to which I want to refer, because I think he will see that they were really mutually destructive. He pointed out, first of all, that in his view the reduction of the strength of the Mediterranean Fleet and the allocation of those ships to the Atlantic or Home Fleet was a bad thing. He went on to say that there were too few men in barracks at home and that the men have too little time with their wives. One of the reasons for reducing the Mediterranean Fleet and increasing the number of ships based on home stations is so as to give the men more time at home. I entirely sympathise with him, because we had exactly the same trouble when I was in the Army. We never had any men in barracks to do anything. They all seemed to be allocated to courses or something else.
The hon. Member for Barrow (Sir J. Walker Smith) made, as far as I was able to comprehend it, what I may describe as the stock criticism of the Admiralty. He drew attention to the disparity in the reductions made since the War in the numbers of the Fleet and the reductions in the Admiralty offices. I should have been perfectly prepared to answer that challenge except for the fact that he answered it completely himself. He told us that he realised that the Admiralty were keeping a skeleton edifice on which they could build up a much larger fleet. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South Portsmouth (Sir H. Cayzer) asked a question about men, and I am glad to be able to tell him that the scale of manning is not to be reduced. The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Cocks) made a statement which I think should be contradicted at once, and which he will probably be the first to retract. He 1599 stated that the greater part of the economies that had been made in these Estimates were made out of cuts in pay and pensions. That is not right and it is not fair, and it would be a great pity if such a statement went out from the House. In point of actual fact, £1,175,000 represents the economy in pay and pensions out of a total economy of £4,500,000.
I now come to the speech of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South Paddington (Vice-Admiral Taylor). He raised a question which must be of immense interest to all those, and particularly to ex-naval officers, who have expressed anxiety as to how we shall stand in 1936 in regard to our cruiser programme. The position is this. Under Part III, Article 20, of the London Naval Treaty we are allowed 91,000 tons replacement of cruiser tonnage between let April, 1930, and 31st December, 1936. In 1929 we had the cruiser "Leander"—that is 7,000 tons. In 1930 we had "Neptune," "Orion" and "Achilles"—that is another 21,000 tons. In 1931 we had two of the "Leander" class and one "Arethusa"—19,500 tons. As announced by my right hon. Friend, 1932 has a similar programme. That makes a total of 67,000 tons already put on our programme, leaving 24,000 tons for the cruiser programme for 1933. My hon. and gallant Friend will not expect us to say how that tonnage will be allocated.
§ Vice-Admiral TAYLORThe point is that the 1932 programme cannot be laid down till March next year and it will leave 44,000 tons altogether to be constructed after the Estimates next year and before December, 1936. That means seven cruisers to be laid down and actually put into construction very soon after the Estimates of next year in order that they may be completed by 1936. It is no good juggling with figures. There they are. They may be in the programme now but they will not be laid down till March at the very earliest.
§ Captain WALLACEThe hon. and gallant Gentleman is under a misapprehension. The figures that I have read out are incontestable. We have the 1933 programme still in hand and, provided that the programme can be completed by 1st January, 1937, we shall be quite all right. Of course, if the 1933 programme 1600 is not completed by 31st December, 1936, we shall not have the tonnage for which he is asking, but at present there is no reason to suppose that it will not be. My right hon. Friend the First Lord said that, in any event, they would be built in the normal time. In regard to the destroyer programme, by right hon. Friend said we were deliberately building one flotilla and one leader a year in order to get a steadier rate of construction.
§ Vice-Admiral TAYLORThere are so many destroyers that it would take, I think, something like 20 years to replace them.
§ Captain WALLACEThe whole object, for the moment, of holding our fire and only building one flotilla and one leader a year is to try to spread out our construction evenly.
§ Vice-Admiral TAYLORSurely we could build two flotillas instead of one. There would be no harm in that.
§ Captain WALLACEIf we did that, if my hon. and gallant Friend looks into the question of the life of these flotillas, taking the average at 16 years, we should soon get to It point where we should have too many built at one date. In regard to the possibility of a threat of submarine construction by some other Power, Article 20 in the Treaty, which is known as the escalator Clause, could be put into operation if necessary.
I hope I have dealt with most of the points except that raised by the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. Logan). It is not possible to give him the Assurance for which he asked. We can only pay pensions at the rate laid down by the Statute. We have no authority to make compassionate payments of the sort that he wishes. I wish I could give him a more satisfactory answer. I can only say, in conclusion, that I am sure that my right hon. Friend, who is not going to speak again, sincerely appreciates the tributes which were paid to him from all quarters of the House, and I should like to thank hon. Gentlemen in all quarters of the Committee for the very courteous hearing which they have given to me in what has necessarily been a somewhat disjointed speech.
§ Mr. DAVID GRENFELLI wish to congratulate the hon. and gallant Gentle- 1601 man the Civil Lord of the Admiralty and his two colleagues of the Department upon their full and clear explanation of the programme of the Admiralty for this year. They have fulfilled the expectations of all who looked to the Department for an easy and breezy expression of the business of the Department. The Noble Lord the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty has caused me to rise to my feet to-night because he assumed that everybody in the House was of like mind. He included us on this side in the wide circle of people for whom he claimed the hereditary and traditional qualities of our race. We were proud to hear those words, and to be described as being included among those who possessed incomparable indomitability. We bow to the Noble Lord for bringing us within the circle of British people to whom he attributes such qualities, but he forgets, and I think most people in this House forget, that at the same time that sort of speech is made by the French Minister of Marine, and by the Italians, and probably the Germans, who make the same claims on behalf of their seamen and nationals. I feel sure that the American naval people also make the same kind of claims. This sort of thing should not go forward. We must realise that each nation has its own qualities. We delude ourselves and the people of this country in regard to naval requirements, if we assume that we are the only people who have the qualities of a maritime race and have the courage and other attributes associated with naval warfare. That kind of thing should be dropped.
Suggestions have been made to-night that the Government are not facing up to the situation. I do not believe what the right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) have told us to-night. They have tried to get the business through with the least provocation and have stated that they are not satisfied that we are maintaining a due standard of efficiency at the present time. They all say in effect that we should have more ships and more men if we could afford it. Do they believe that? It would be a criminal act on their part if they expressed pious opinions and believed otherwise. Hon. Gentlemen know well that our standard of naval efficiency is as high as can justly be maintained, 1602 especially in view of the fact that the right hon. Gentleman is only just back from Geneva—he has still the tan of the sunshine on his face—where he has been discussing the possibilities of further reduction of armaments on sea and land. I hope that when he goes to Geneva, he will not say that we should have a larger Army or Navy in Britain if we could afford it. I hope that he will tell the people with whom he has to deal at Geneva, and also say to this House, that we are trying to give an example to the world to reduce armaments.
I do not agree that we have carried the example as far as we can. I think that we should still further reduce the number of men required on these Votes. Hon. and right hon. Members had better ask themselves who it is we are preparing to fight. Unless they have that fact in their minds they can never know whether we are strong enough. I do not know whether I can meet an opponent unless I have some idea of my opponent's strength. In the old days naval Debates in this House and naval controversy outside circled around the question whether we were strong enough to fight three other nations. Afterwards, it came down to a question whether we could fight two nations, the two biggest. nations, and now we are supposed to have arrived at the one-Power standard. We still have the largest naval force controlled by any one country. We are supposed to be strong enough to fight any one country. What country is that? When we have come to a conclusion on that point, why not go to that country and say: "Cannot we stop this business? Cannot we join together and cut down our armaments simultaneously? Cannot we reduce the burden of armaments, the number of men, the tonnage, and the size of our guns?"
The Noble Lord said that charges have been made that they were too pessimistic in their attitude towards the Disarmament Conference. I think they are. It is pessimism and hopelessness in regard to Disarmament that has brought about this very large estimate of £50,000,000. This is no reduction of armaments. Apart from the cuts that were made in the Economy Act, we are going to spend more on naval preparations than before.
§ Mr. GRENFELLIt is true. In proportion to our national income we are spending more this year than ever we have spent before. The House of Commons, which is responsible for Government policy, ought to take some risks. In the Debate to-night reference has been made to the qualifications for promotion in the Navy. One qualification was the power to take risks and the other was the ability to take the initiative. We want that quality in the matter of Disarmament. We want someone who will stand up in conference, with the readiness to take risks, and to say to the other nations: "We have cut down our naval force by 10 per cent. or 20 per cent. We have shown the way. Will you follow us?" Instead of doing that the Government come here and ask for a larger estimate than last year, and then go to Geneva with the pretence that we are striving for Disarmament, while we are fooling and deceiving ourselves and those whom we meet in conference. The Spanish delegate at Geneva, Senor Madariaga, made a statement requiring frankness from everyone concerned with Disarmament, especially naval disarmament. He said, and I heartily agree with him:
If we are not gathered here finally to arrive at total disarmament, what do we want at this conference? Article 8, however, surrenders Disarmament to certain precautionary measures, regarding which I shall refrain from going into details, but there can be no doubt that the aim of all civilised peoples is with a view to ruling the world without the application of force.I commend that statement to the right hon. Gentleman, and his friends. If they are satisfied with an Estimate of £50,000,000 for maintaining naval armaments, I must leave them to make peace with their own conscience. Speeches in this House ought to be couched in different terms, and the greater possibility of Disarmament ought to be made more prominent by Ministers. We as Members ought, seriously to consider whether the time has not come to make a gesture to the whole world by reducing our armaments for this year, in the hope that we shall get the concurrence and co-operation of all nations.
§ Mr. ROSSThe last thing I had expected to do this evening was to make any sort of speech but the speech of the hon. Member for Gower. (Mr. D. 1604 Grenfell) requires an answer. His attention must be drawn to the subject on which he was speaking. He was speaking on the Navy Estimates, and he made statements which bore no relation whatever to them. Having a respect for the hon. Member I listened with attention to what he said, and I was amazed by some of the things I heard. He said that we were spending more on the Navy this year than before. May I refer him to page 9 of the Estimates? If he will look at the total expenditure in 1927 he will see that it was £58,000,000 odd. The next year it had dropped by about £1,000,000, and in 1929 it was £55,000,000. In 1930 it had gone down to £52,000,000—I hope he is following me because this will enable him to publicly correct the statement he has just made. In 1930 it had gone down to £51,500,000, that was the estimate introduced by Mr. Alexander, a colleague of the hon. Member, who was First Lord of the Admiralty in the last Government. If he will look at the total for this year he will see that the Estimates are a reduction on those figures of about £1,500,000. How he can make the statement he did just now with any sense of responsibility to the House or to the country I cannot imagine. He made another statement which was equally and obviously unsound and unjustified by the facts. He said that these Estimates were a larger proportion of the national income than ever before. He must know that a larger sum of money has had to be raised by the country this year as a result of the second Budget, than was raised last year, and, therefore, even if the Estimates had not been reduced they would have been a smaller proportion of the total expenditure of the country than the Estimates of the previous year.
§ Mr. D. GRENFELLI said the national income.
§ Mr. ROSSThat is a little less precise. When the hon. Member said the national income I thought he meant the income which the Government collects as revenue. He means a larger and rather more indefinite sum, the national income of every member of the nation. That is a figure almost impossible to check, but I still challenge his conclusion. As to the other it is demonstrably misleading.
§ Mr. T. WILLIAMSMay I also remind the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Ross) that the statements he has just made are not quite in accordance with the facts as set out in the Estimates. If he will look closely at page 9 he will find in the last column that the Estimates are down by about £1,130,000 this year as compared with 1931. But if he will look at Vote I for wages he will observe that the reduction—
§ 10.30 p.m.
§ Mr. WILLIAMSI do not wish to pursue the question further if that is your Ruling, but as the last two hon. Members have referred to the total expenditure on the Navy during the year I thought that I was entitled to state that whilst the net reduction is something over £1,100,000, the actual reduction in expenditure on wages, victualling and clothing is in excess of £1,300,000, leaving, therefore, the actual expenditure upon new construction more than it was in the year 1931.
§ Mr. ROSSThe statement of the hon. Gentleman's predecessor was not confined to construction. My right hon. Friend the First Lord, in his original speech alluded to the necessarily increased construction as a constant programme inherited from the Labour Government.
§ Mr. D. GRENFELLIf the hon. Member will wait until to-morrow I will confirm my statement, that apart from reductions in wages there is no reduction in the Estimates.