§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a sum, not exceeding £12,627,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Expense of Wages, etc. of Officers and Men of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, and Civilians employed on Fleet Services, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1933.
§ Mr. T. WILLIAMSNow that we are dealing with Vote I, perhaps the hon. Gentleman will deal with the question of wages. He will find that the reduction 1606 in wages is in excess of £1,000,000. One of the Votes, that for victualling and clothing, shows a reduction of over £300,000. The reductions in wages and other items exceed the total reductions in the Estimates. There are reductions for education and various other small services. It is, therefore, clear that the total expenditure in this financial year for new construction is in excess of the amount set apart for that particular purpose in the last financial year.
§ Mr. COCKSI would like to ask for an explanation on this point. The Civil Lord accused me of making a misstatement. I said that the chief saving had been over £1,000,000 in wages, whereas the Estimates themselves showed a saving of only £1,178,000. He said that that was a mistake and that the saving was £4,000,000 odd. I am not clear from where he got that figure, and perhaps he will explain.
Sir B. EYRES MONSELLThe hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. I do not know whether he did me the honour of listening to my opening statement, hut I pointed out that the saving of £1,000,000 odd in the total Estimate by no means represented the savings that we had made, and that these automatic expenses incurred in these Estimates. I totalled up these automatic increases to the very large sum of over £4,500,000, and that is what is actually saved on this year's Estimates. It is quite wrong, therefore, to say that a cut of something over £1,000,000 represents the whole of the savings; it is only about one-quarter of it. I am sure that hon. Gentlemen did not mean to put a, wrong construction upon the matter. Probably they did not hear my opening remarks. As a matter of fact the cuts in pay represent only about one-quarter of the saving on the Estimates.
§ Mr. T. WILLIAMSThe First Lord's previous statement was quite clear to those of us who heard it. The flotsam and jetsam of building programmes, putting off this year ships to be built next year, must of necessity be cared for by the right hon. Gentleman in charge of that very important Department. Our only point is this. There is a Disarmament Conference sitting at this moment. It may be that our arrears of work must be taken in hand some time, but, from our point of view, we feel that any such 1607 work could well be postponed until we see what the outcome of the Disarmament Conference may be. As far as net expenditure is concerned, ignoring arrears of work and ignoring future requirements, the net saving this year is almost wholly due to savings on wages and clothing and victualling. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] If the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to qualify that statement, I would say that the net savings, as distinct from the expenditure in 1931, and as derived from those two items, are in excess of the total saving on the Vote for the Navy.
Sir B. EYRES MONSELLNo, I cannot allow that statement to pass. The hon. Gentleman misrepresents the facts again. I have told him that that is an entirely unfair way of putting it. He is trying to make out that cuts in the pay and pensions of the men represent the only reductions that have been made in the Navy Estimates. That is a most mischievous statement and is as I have said entirely untrue. If the hon. Gentleman will not believe the particulars which I have given him, I cannot help it.
§ Mr. WILLIAMSI should hesitate at any time to challenge any statement made by the right hon. Gentleman. I have been here long enough to appreciate the fact that any statement he makes he actually believes in, and I hope, at all events, that he does not think that I should deliberately and of malice aforethought make any statement that was either mischievous or in any way a misrepresentation of his intention and purpose. I prefer to leave the matter for the OFFICIAL REPORT to indicate whether this statement is correct or not.
§ Mr. ROSSIf hon. Gentlemen opposite will refer to the last year's statement, by the then First Lord of the Admiralty, they will find an exactly parallel situa- 1608 tion. In that statement the then First Lord prided himself on a net saving of £342,000 but he said that the gross total saving was nearly £2,000,000—that he had actually cut £1,818,000 odd, although the effect was only to make the Estimates £300,000 odd less than the previous Estimates. They will find that there was exactly the same thing on that occasion and that exactly the same type of cut as we have here to-day was made by the late First Lord.