Commons Sitting of 18 February 1937

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

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
West Ham Corporation Bill (by Order),
Order for Second Reading read.
Hon. Members: "Object."
Mr. Thorne: May I make an energetic appeal to hon. Members. I understand they object to Clause 78, and the Town Clerk has been authorised to meet the wishes of the opposition in regard to that Clause. I hope, therefore, that they will withdraw their opposition.
Second Reading deferred till Monday next.
Southern Railway Bill (by Order),
Second Reading deferred till Thursday next.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
  UNEMPLOYMENT.

    TRANSFEREES.
    Mr. R. Gibsonasked the Minister of Labour how many of the 42 girls under the age of 18 transferred to industrial employment in Leicestershire in 1935 and how many of the 126 similar girls similarly transferred in 1936 were transferred from Greenock; how many of these girls from Greenock, in each of these years, were placed in the woollen industry; and what were the total sums spent on travelling expenses and on subsistence allowances for the girls so placed in each of these years?
    The Minister of Labour (Mr. Ernest Brown): No girls have been transferred from Greenock to industrial employment in Leicestershire under the juvenile transference scheme in 1935 or 1936. The other points in the hon. Member's question, therefore, do not arise.
    Mr. Leslieasked the Minister of Labour the number of young men sent out of the county of Durham to training centres during 1935 and 1936 and, if possible, what percentage of these trainees have secured permanent employment?
    Mr. Brown: I regret that this information is not available.

    CONTRIBUTORS' BOOKS.
    Mr. Hicksasked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that insured contributors are being discharged from their employment because of employers' failure to obtain emergency books in accordance with the requirements of Clause 9 (1) of the Statutory Rules and Orders, 1936, No. 331, caused by the illegal retention of insured contributors' regular books by employers; and whether he will consider the application of a penalty, thereby enforcing the Ministry's regulations and avoiding financial hardships to insured contributors?
    Mr. E. Brown: No, Sir; but cases have been brought to my notice in which workers are said to have been discharged because of failure to present regular unemployment books. A worker whose last employer has not returned his regular book can obtain another from any Employment Exchange, and the employer in fault is liable to a fine not exceeding £10.
    Mr. Hicks: Is it not the case that there are hundreds of workers in a mobile industry like my own who are affected in this way, and I would ask the Minister whether it is not possible for him to make it clear to the employers that they as well as the workmen have a responsibility? Is it not true that if an employer does not give a workman his old book, he loses many days in wages, and is unable to make any claim? Is it not the duty of the employer under the regulations to see that a workman has his regular book, and, if he has not, that it is his duty to get an emergency book from the Exchange and fill it in?
    Mr. Brown: I have explained the position to the hon. Member. He has had some correspondence with the Department on the matter, and perhaps he will discuss it with them further. I must make it clear that the fault is not all on one side. There is a difference between the regular book and an emergency book.

    ASSISTANCE.
    Mr. W. Joseph Stewartasked the Minister of Labour the number of persons in receipt of transitional payments in the administrative county of Durham, the county boroughs of Sunderland, Gateshead, and South Shields, each year from 1931 to 1936; and the amount paid to

    Statistics showing the numbers of separate individuals making application for transitional payments or unemployment allowances in a year in particular areas are not available. The following Table, however, shows the average weekly number of payments of transitional payments or unemployment allowances made through Employment Exchanges in the areas mentioned in each of the years 1931 to 1936:

    Year.

    Administrative County of Durham.

    Sunderland.

    South Shields.

    Gateshead.

    1931

    …

    …

    …

    39,725

    11,399

    5,694

    5,502

    1932

    …

    …

    …

    54,895

    15,037

    7,261

    5,933

    1933

    …

    …

    …

    59,132

    16,983

    7,875

    6,738

    1934

    …

    …

    …

    48,510

    15,876

    7,308

    6,212

    1935

    …

    …

    …

    43,351

    14,926

    7,233

    5,975

    1936

    …

    …

    …

    37,785

    11,419

    6,262

    5,177

    The following Table shows the approximate amounts paid in transitional payments or unemployment allowances through Employment Exchanges in the same areas in each of the years 1931 to 1936:

    Year.

    Administrative County of Durham.

    Sunderland.

    South Shields.

    Gateshead.

    £

    £

    £

    £

    1931 (7 weeks)

    …

    305,635

    86,447

    40,742

    40,640

    1932 (52 weeks)

    …

    3,100,406

    828,612

    375,509

    314,108

    1933 (52 weeks)

    …

    3,249,677

    933,460

    408,011

    358,822

    1934 (52 weeks)

    …

    2,600,196

    925,796

    409,298

    355,383

    1935 (52 weeks)

    …

    2,865,154

    976,698

    456,247

    383,933

    1936 (53 weeks)

    …

    2,581,971

    795,562

    421,438

    349,124

    Mr. Lyonsasked the Minister of Labour (1) in how many cases in the city of Leicester recipients of unemployment assistance have received increased allowances as compared with the amounts they received under the standstill agreement; and in how many cases there have been decreases in the payments made to them;
    (2) In how many cases in Great Britain recipients of unemployment assistance have received increased allowances as compared with the amounts they received under the standstill agreement; and in how many cases there have been reductions in the payments made to them?
    Mr. Brown: Information relating specifically to the city of Leicester is not available but in the Unemployment Assistance
    applicants in those areas during the same period?
    Mr. E. Brown: As the reply includes a table of figures, I will, if I may, circulate a statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Following is the statement:
    Board's Leicester area, which extends beyond the city boundaries, there were about 500 persons in receipt of more than they would have received under the standstill arrangements when all cases had been reviewed under the new regulations in December last. No person in this area was in receipt of less than under the standstill arrangements on 29th January, which is the latest date for which information is available. In Great Britain as a whole the increased assessments numbered about 230,000 and the decreases 394 on the corresponding dates.
    Mr. Lyons: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider giving publicity to the facts of which he has spoken, and put an end to the misleading propaganda which was organised against the Government when the regulations were introduced?
    Mr. Brown: I think the facts are becoming well known now.
    Miss Wardasked the Minister of Labour whether he will state, to date, the number of increases and decreases resulting from the introduction of the new unemployment assistance regulations in Newcastle-on-Tyne, Wallsend, Willington Quay, and the administrative county of Northumberland?
    Mr. Brown: In December last when all cases had been reviewed under the new regulations the numbers of persons in receipt of more than they would have received under the standstill arrangements in the Unemployment Assistance Board's Newcastle-on-Tyne and Wallsend areas were about 2,000 and 850 respectively. In the board's areas which roughly cover the county of Northumberland (including Newcastle-on-Tyne and Wallsend) the number was about 9,500. On 29th January, which is the latest date for which information is available, no person in either the Newcastle-on-Tyne or Wallsend areas was in receipt of less than under the standstill arrangements. There were, however, two such persons in the county of Northumberland. Separate particulars in respect of Willington Quay, which is included in the board's Wallsend area, are not available.
    Captain Sir William Brass: Could the right hon. Gentleman say what is the percentage of the unemployed dealt with in those figures?
    Mr. Brown: That, of course, is the review of the whole of the cases.
    Mr. Lawson: Will the right hon. Gentleman give some particulars as to the people who will receive reductions?
    Mr. Brown: The hon. Member and his friends are constantly asking for information about decreases, and there is no reason why my hon. Friend should not ask about the increases.
    Mr. Lawson: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman not to mislead the House, and is it not a fact that there are large reductions to come, which will begin to operate in three separate blocks over 18 months?
    Mr. Brown: If I am asked about that, I shall be prepared to give accurate information, as I am doing now.
    Mr. Loganasked the Minister of Labour whether he is now able to state what Coronation grant to the unemployed is the Unemployment Advisory Board prepared to give?
    Mr. Brown: I informed the hon. Member last week that I would let him know as soon as I was in a position to make a statement in reply to a further question. I expect to be able to answer him next Thursday if he will ask me then.
    Major Colfox: What allowance, if any, will be made to Income Tax payers in order to celebrate the Coronation?

    SEASONAL WORKERS.
    Mr. Roland Robinsonasked the Minister of Labour what has been the result of the relaxation of the rules regarding unemployment benefit for seasonal workers; and whether, in view of the satisfactory condition of the fund, he now feels justified in admitting these workers to benefit on normal terms?
    Mr. E. Brown: There has been a substantial reduction in the number of disallowances imposed under the provisions relating to seasonal workers since the Anomalies (Seasonal Workers) Order, 1935, came into force. I have no further amendment of this Order in contemplation at the present time.
    Mr. Robinson: Can the Minister give any figures in support of the statement that the position of seasonal workers is improving?
    Mr. Brown: Yes, in the 12 months preceding that date the number of claims disallowed by the court of referees under the regulations was 18,435, and in the subsequent 12 months the number of disallowances was only 10,853.
    Mr. Maxton: Is the right hon. Gentleman considering a repeal of these harsh provisions?
    Mr. Brown: As I have pointed out, these provisions have been greatly mitigated by the Order passed by the House.
    Mr. Maxton: Would they not be mitigated much more by repealing them altogether?
    Mr. Brown: There is another side to the case.

    SPECIAL AREAS.
    Mr. Sextonasked the Minister of Labour whether he will give the findings of the investigation by the independent expert who has visited South-West Durham to inquire into the whole question of possible development of industry in that district on the invitation of the former Commissioner of the Special Areas, Sir Malcolm Stewart, in the summer of 1936?
    Mr. E. Brown: With the concurrence of the Commissioner I am having a copy of this report placed in the Library. I should add that it must not be assumed that the Commissioner or the Government necessarily endorse the proposals made in the report.
    Mr. Sextonasked the Minister of Labour whether any progress has been made in the voluntary drainage scheme recommended in paragraph 188 of the third report of the Commissioner for the Special Areas, England and Wales, by which drainage it would be possible to set free for working millions of tons of coal in South-West Durham and give employment to many unemployed miners?
    Mr. Brown: While I must not be understood as accepting the implications in the latter part of the hon. Member's question, I would refer him to the answer given on 1st December last by my hon. Friend the Secretary for Mines to the hon. Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. W. Joseph Stewart). Since that reply was given, I understand that the Commissioner for the Special Areas has discussed the problem with the South-West Durham Development Board and certain tentative inquiries are being made in the matter. It has not, however, proved possible, up to the present, for any further action to be taken.
    Miss Wardasked the Prime Minister whether he will invite some responsible industrialists to discuss the possibility of setting up a board to advise on the establishment of works to carry out new processes in the Special Areas, the finance to be provided out of the Special Areas Reconstruction Act?
    The Prime Minister(Mr. BALDWIN): The Commissioners for Special Areas are already devoting considerable attention to the possibility of securing new
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    industrial undertakings for the Special Areas, including undertakings carrying out new processes, and my hon. Friend is no doubt aware that: the Commissioners have recently appointed industrial advisers to assist them in this matter.
    Miss Ward: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer, but in view of the fact that we do not seem to have made much progress, will he consider the matter from the specific point of view indicated in the question?
    Miss Wilkinson: Is the Prime Minister not aware that since 1932 he has been saying that these matters are being considered, and considered and considered, but that just nothing is happening in these Special Areas?

    HOYLAND.
    Mr. Palingasked the Minister of Labour whether, in view of the large amount of unemployment in the Hoyland area, any steps are being taken to provide other means of employment than at present exist?
    Mr. E. Brown: I am unable to add to the reply which I gave to the hon. Member on 17th December.
    Mr. Paling: Has the right hon. Gentleman made any inquiries in this case? Is he aware that there is a pool of unemployment in this district which does not decrease? The pits have stopped, and unless some new industry is brought in there is likely to be a constant percentage of unemployment of about 40 per cent.
    Mr. Brown: In my answer to the hon. Member I gave a full description of the situation from the exchange point of view.
    Mr. Paling: But I am asking another question—whether anything is being done to provide work for these people? The last answer did not indicate anything of that kind.
    Mr. Brown: I told the hon. Member that this matter was under the consideration of the Government.
    Mr. Paling: I am asking whether anything is being done. May I have a reply?
    Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member has had two answers already.

    UNEMPLOYMENT FUND.
    Mr. Lawsonasked the Minister of Labour whether he has yet received the report of the Unemployment Insurance Statutory Committee upon the financial condition of the Unemployment Fund; and, if so, whether he proposes to publish it?
    Mr. E. Brown: Yes, Sir. The Unemployment Insurance Statutory Committee have presented their report upon the condition of the Unemployment Fund at 31st December, 1936, and copies of the report will be available in the Vote Office at 6 p.m. on Monday next.

    INSURANCE (INCOME LIMIT).
    Mr. Lawsonasked the Minister of Labour when the Bill will be at the disposal of the House for raising the standard of income for purposes of unemployment insurance?
    Mr. E. Brown: The question of raising the limit to which the hon. Member refers is still under consideration, and I am not, therefore, in a position to state the intention of His Majesty's Government on the matter.
    Mr. Lawson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a promise was given in the House as far back as 1934 to set up a Committee when the Bill was going through, that the matter has received consideration for a long time, and that he has now had a report for several months, and is he prepared to give an early answer to this question?
    Mr. Brown: I cannot give an answer at the moment, but I note the understanding which the hon. Member has of the reforming zeal of His Majesty's Government.

    AGRICULTURAL WORKERS.
    Mr. Wellsasked the Minister of Labour whether in the view of his advisers, an agricultural worker is insured against unemployment in accordance with the work he does or whether his insurance is dependent upon the person for whom he works?
    Mr. Brown: This is a matter for legal interpretation in each case, such interpretation being governed in particular by the provision of Section 4 (2) of the Unemployment Insurance Act, 1935, as amended by the Fifth Schedule to the
    1338
    Unemployment Insurance (Agriculture) Act, 1936, that:
    "In determining any question as to whether any occupation in which a person is or has been employed, is or was insurable employment, or is or was employment in agriculture regard shall be had to the nature of the work on which he is or was employed, rather than to the business of the person by whom he is or was employed."
    I am advised, however, that where the employer of a worker who performs work of an agricultural nature is not himself engaged in agriculture, the nature of the employer's business may become an important consideration.
    Mr. Wells: Is my right hon. Friend aware that an agricultural worker who does agricultural work on an estate is not accepted for unemployment insurance?
    Mr. Brown: I would not like to accept that generally, but if my hon. Friend has any particular case in mind, perhaps he will bring it to my notice. It is really a matter for legal interpretation in each case.
    Mr. Thorne: Should it not be the Minister of Labour's duty to bring everybody he can under the Insurance Act?
    Mr. Brown: I have already brought in several Measures to do that during the last two or three years.

    BRANCH EXCHANGES (MANAGERS' REMUNERATION).
    Mr. Marcus Samuelasked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that managers of branch employment exchanges are remunerated on a sliding scale varying with the number of unemployed persons on the register at their branches, and that the result is to diminish the remuneration of any branch manager in proportion to his success in obtaining work for applicants and reducing the number of unemployed; and whether he will so modify this system that branch managers shall not, by the prospect of diminished remuneration, be discouraged from endeavouring to reduce the number of applicants on the register at their branch exchanges?
    Mr. E. Brown: The terms of remuneration of branch managers, which were revised last year, necessarily take account of substantial variations of the volume of work, but I do not think there is any foundation for the suggestion that the

    1339
    effect is to discourage branch managers from endeavouring to reduce the number of applicants on the register. On the contrary, in assessing the volume of work, account is taken of the manager's efforts to fill vacancies from his register.
    Mr. Kelly: Is it a fact that 25 hours are allocated for some of these exchanges when the work demands 80 or 90 hours a week, and are the wages at the sweated figure of £2 a week for some of the clerks?
    Mr. Brown: That is another issue. This is the basic rate which was reviewed last year, and in certain circumstances there may be increases.

  GIRLS (WELFARE).
  Major Hillsasked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that many girls come up to London without availing themselves of the facilities offered by his Ministry and that the consequent wastage is serious and what steps he is taking to make these facilities better known and to impress on parents the danger of allowing their daughters to come up to London through unregulated sources?
  Mr. E. Brown: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. As regards the second part, every practicable step is taken by my officers and by juvenile advisory committees to make known, both to parents and children, by addresses and personal interviews, as well as by leaflets, posters and films, the facilities which the Department offers, including the arrangements for safeguarding the welfare of young girls taking employment away from home. I am grateful to my right hon. and gallant Friend for enabling me to draw attention once more to these facilities.

  ALIENS (PERMITS).
  Mr. Hicksasked the Minister of Labour the number of aliens working in Great Britain under permits, distinguishing the number of extended permits, and giving the number employed in each industry during the three months ended 30th December, 1936?
  Mr. E. Brown: I regret that the Department's records do not enable this information to be given in the form asked for. Perhaps the hon. Member will have a word with me, so that I may see whether I can assist him.

  HOLIDAYS WITH PAY.
  Mr. R. Robinsonasked the Minister of Labour whether he will cause a White Paper to be published indicating the number of insured workers in Great Britain who regularly receive holidays with pay, together with the nature of their employment and geographical distribution when at work?
  Mr. E. Brown: My hon. Friend will find an account of the arrangements in operation with regard to payment of wages for holidays, under the provisions of collective agreements between employers' and workers' organisations, in a special article in the "Ministry of Labour Gazette" for April, 1936, which gave particulars, so far as available, of the industries and localities covered by these agreements. The number of workpeople concerned cannot be stated exactly, but is estimated at about 1,500,000. I am not in possession of information showing the extent to which paid holidays are granted to wage-earners in industries not covered by such collective agreements.
  Mr. Robinson: Has the right hon. Gentleman received any representations from industries or trade unions on this subject since the House approved the principle of annual holidays with pay?
  Mr. Brown: I have received some representations.
  Mr. Lunn: Can the right hon. Gentleman supply hon. Members with a copy of the article?

  SPECIAL AREAS BILL.
  Mr. Lawsonasked the Minister of Labour when the new Special Areas Bill will be ready?
  Mr. E. Brown: There is a later question to-day on this subject addressed to the Prime Minister.
  Mr. Bateyasked the Prime Minister whether he can now state when the Special Areas Bill will be introduced?
  The Prime Minister: I hope that it may be possible to introduce the Bill at the end of next week.
  Mr. Lawson: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when the Bill will be at the disposal of hon. Members?
  The Prime Minister: I think the introduction of the Bill and the supply of it go together. When the Bill is introduced it will be immediately available. But I will look into that point.
  Mr. Lawson: Will the right hon. Gentleman take note of the fact that it is really important that the House should have time to consider the contents of a Bill of this nature?

  BREAD (PRICES).
  Mr. Dayasked the Minister of Labour the average retail price of white bread per 4-lb. loaf in Great Britain, Germany, Italy and France as at the last convenient date; and has he any statistics that will show the relation which the wheat bread bears to the average weekly wage of the industrial workers in the respective countries?

  Country.

  Date to which price relates.

  Average retail price of 4-lb. of bread.

  Great Britain and Northern Ireland:—

  All districts (general average)

  …

  1st December, 1936

  8¾d.

  1st February, 1937

  9¼d.

  London

  …

  1st December, 1936

  8½d.

  1st February, 1937

  9d.

  France:—

  Paris

  …

  December, 1936.

  3·99 francs.

  Germany:—

  Berlin

  …

  16th December, 1936

  White bread (rolls, etc.), 1·22 reichsmarks.

  Rye bread, 0·60 reichsmarks.

  33 other large towns

  …

  16th December, 1936

  White bread (rolls, etc.), 1·09 to 1·67 reichsmarks.

  Rye bread, 0·44 to 0·82 reichsmarks.

  Italy:—

  Province of Rome

  …

  21st December, 1936

  2·91, 3·45 and 3·64 lire.

  The prices shown for Great Britain and Northern Ireland are for white bread of the kinds most generally bought by working-class families. For Paris, the price shown is that officially quoted for "white bread, first quality." The prices quoted for Germany are those shown, in official publications, for (a) wheat bread sold in rolls or other small sizes, and (b) rye bread, which is widely consumed in that country. The prices shown for Italy (Rome) are those officially fixed for loaves of varying sizes and different qualities of flour.

  GAMEKEEPERS.
  Mr. Walkdenasked the Minister of Labour the total number of men now
  Mr. E. Brown: As the reply contains a table of figures, I will, if I may, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
  Mr. Day: Has the Minister any information concerning the quality of the bread supplied?
  Mr. Brown: It is a very long answer of nearly a page and a half.
  Mr. Day: Does the answer deal with the last part of the question?
  Mr. Brown: Yes, Sir.
  Following is the reply:
  I am not in possession of information as to the prices of comparable qualities of white bread in these countries, but such particulars as are available are given in the following table. Statistics are not available showing the average wages of industrial workers generally in the countries specified, or the relation which the price of wheat bread bears to average wages.
  employed as gamekeepers in Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
  Mr. E. Brown: The numbers enumerated as gamekeepers and game-watchers at the Census of 1931 (in England and Wales, and in Scotland) and at the Census of 1926 (in Northern Ireland) were, at those dates, as follow:

  England and Wales

  …

  10,706

  Scotland

  …

  4,050

  Northern Ireland

  …

  151

  Mr. Walkden: Are the Government making any arrangements for these men to be more usefully employed in the event of an outbreak of war?
  Mr. Brown: That is a matter of opinion.
  Captain Heilgers: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether these men are likely to tie included in the unemployment insurance scheme at an early date?

  TRADE DISPUTE, HARWORTH.
  Mr. Bellengerasked the Minister of Labour whether he has any information as to how many possession orders have been obtained by Messrs. Barber, Walker, Limited, against their tenants involved in the present trade dispute at Harworth, Nottinghamshire; and when the earliest order is due for execution?
  Mr. E. Brown: I have no information on these matters.
  Mr. Bellenger: As I originally addressed this question to the Home Secretary, and as it has been referred to the Minister of Labour, will the right hon. Gentleman endeavour to obtain these particulars, since I ask the question for a special reason in view of the special circumstances?
  Mr. Brown: I have no responsibility for and no information on this matter.
  Mr. Bellenger: On a point of Order. May I ask why this question was passed over to the Minister of Labour if he has no information on it and no responsibility for it? To whom should I address the question?

  STAG HUNTING INCIDENT, HIGH WYCOMBE.
  Mr. Watkinsasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to a hunting incident, on the 9th instant, when a stag was chased through West Wycombe across a railway line into the main street of High Wycombe, and subsequently captured by the aid of a police patrol car and handed back to the hunt; and whether he is prepared to consider introducing legislation that will make all such acts of cruelty illegal?
  The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sir John Simon): I have obtained a report from the Chief Constable of High Wycombe, which states that on 9th February two constables were on motor patrol on the main London to Oxford road and, at a point about 1½ miles from West
  1344
  Wycombe, overtook a stag running along the centre of the road. No hounds or huntsmen were to be seen. The stag entered the garden of a house, jumped through the fence and then through a second fence on to the railway line. It travelled towards High Wycombe along the railway line for some 500 yards and, on reaching the railway goods yard, returned to the main road. Apparently confused by the volume of traffic at this point, the stag jumped a fence and landed in the adjoining stream where the water is about 18 inches deep. Having crossed the stream, it found its way into the back garden of one of a row of houses bordering the stream and entered a shed, where it was secured. The animal was in a nervous state and bleeding from both forelegs. After an interval of about an hour, six persons arrived with a box van, into which the animal was loaded. The hon. Member will, therefore, see that the constables were not taking part in hunting the animal at all.
  Mr. Watkins: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that I was not suggesting in any way that the constables were responsible for hunting the animal, but that the Berks and Bucks staghounds were the hunt? I was asking whether the right hon. Gentleman will consider introducing legislation to prevent in future occurrences such as this, which outrage the feelings of all decent people?
  Sir J. Simon: I have stated the facts, as it was my duty to do, fully and impartially, and everybody can form his own opinion on them. I am afraid I cannot take upon myself to add to the crowded programme of Government legislation.
  Miss Wilkinson: Will the Home Secretary be so kind as to suggest to certain hon. Members sitting behind him the impropriety of laughing at the idea of a bleeding animal?

  CORPORAL PUNISHMENT (CHILDREN).
  Mr. Lovat-Fraserasked the Home Secretary whether he will without delay introduce legislation to prohibit the infliction of repeated sentences of corporal punishment upon children by juvenile courts, in view of recent cases which have occurred at Aldershot and elsewhere; to which his attention has been

  1345
  drawn, and in view of the growing public dislike of the infliction of corporal punishment?
  Sir J. Simon: The question of amending the law was fully discussed in 1932 in connection with the Children and Young Persons Bill, and the proposals contained in the Home Office Bill are well known. Parliament, however, then decided that the power to order birching should be retained. The Government cannot undertake further legislation on this subject at present.
  Mr. Thorne: Does the right hon. Gentleman really think that birching a bad boy will make him any better?

  PRISON SERVICE.

    SUBORDINATE PROBATION OFFICERS.
    Mr. George Griffithsasked the Home Secretary how many subordinate probation officers failed to pass the test for appointment to the prison service at the last class at Wakefield Prison; and whether candidates generally are interviewed and their credentials examined before they are taken from permanent posts outside the service and put to needless expense?
    Sir J. Simon: Of the 51 men who joined the last class at Wakefield Training School, one resigned and 12 failed to qualify. The second part of the question is to the same effect as the question which the hon. Member addressed to me, and which I answered, on 19th November last.

    PARKHURST.
    Mr. McEnteeasked the Home Secretary whether he is satisfied that there is a sufficient number of officers at Parkhurst convict prison to cope with the innovations of prison reform and safe custody; whether he is aware that many officers are unable to have their complete annual leave at the time required or leave in lieu of overtime; and whether he is aware of the discontent amongst members of the staff as a consequence?
    Sir J. Simon: I know of no reason for thinking that the staff at Parkhurst prison is insufficient for present needs. The date at which an individual officer can be allowed to take his annual leave and the amount which can be taken in one instalment necessarily depends on the
    1346
    claims of others; but I am glad to say that all leave due to the discipline staff was taken last year, including equivalent leave for overtime, and I am not aware that there is any discontent.

    INSTRUCTORS (WAGES).
    Mr. McEnteeasked the Home Secretary what are the rates of wages of civilian instructors or assistants who were trained in outside industries and employed at their appropriate trades in prisons and institutions; and if, having regard to recent increases of pay of tradesmen serving under the War Office and the Admiralty, he will consider the position of similar ratings in the prison service with a view of improving their rates of pay?
    Sir J. Simon: The existing rates are from £3 10s. to £4 5s. a week. My attention had already been drawn to the considerations to which the hon. Member refers, and the question whether a revision of the existing rates is desirable is at the present time under consideration.
    Mr. Hicks: Is it a fact that when a reduction of wages takes place in a trade outside, a corresponding reduction takes place inside this service?

  COCK FIGHTING.
  Mr. Messerasked the Home Secretary whether he has considered the communication sent to him in respect to the alleged spread of cock-fighting in Cumberland and Westmorland; and whether any special steps are being taken by the police to deal with it?
  Sir J. Simon: The communication to which the hon. Member refers gives no details of any kind, but I have communicated with the chief constable of Cumberland and Westmorland who informs me that all possible action is taken to enforce the law.
  Mr. Messer: Has the right hon. Gentleman not seen Press cuttings relating to these cock fights, and the difficulty of getting information because of the fears of the informers; and will special steps be taken by the police to deal with this matter?
  Sir J. Simon: I did see a Press cutting, but it was of an entirely general kind, and did not contain any detailed information at all. As I say, I have made

  1347
  special inquiries and the chief constable is conscious of the importance which I attach to the matter.
  Mr. Messer: If I forward particulars of definite cases, will the right hon. Gentleman consider them?
  Sir J. Simon: Certainly.

  THE CORONATION.
  Mr. Dayasked the Home Secretary what arrangements have been made by the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis for the parking in the West End of motor cars belonging to seat-holders occupying seats in the stands in the Royal parks, or otherwise, on the occasion of the Coronation procession of Their Majesties on 12th May?
  Sir J. Simon: Under the arrangements contemplated by the Commissioner of Police, only cars provided with special windscreen labels will be admitted to the Coronation area on 12th May. The means of access to each section of the route will be designated on the label, each section having a label of a special colour, and setting down places will be allotted to each section. Arrangements will be made for parking to be permitted in certain streets which will be sign-posted. When the available parking space has been filled drivers will have to proceed outside the Coronation Area by the sign-posted routes. The available parking space will, of course, be very limited, and it is to be hoped that spectators and seat holders will use public vehicles as far as possible in preference to private vehicles. The question of the provision of certain additional parking space in the Royal parks for seat holders in the parks is at present under consideration.
  Mr. Day: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when there will be a notification as to where the parking places are?
  Lieut.-Colonel Moore: Will special accommodation be reserved for Rolls Royces?
  Lieut.-Colonel Mooreasked the Lord President of the Council whether any arrangements are being made to reserve an adequate number of Coronation seats in Parliament Square or elsewhere which
  1348
  Members of Parliament may purchase for their relatives or friends?
  The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Ramsay MacDonald): As I have already stated, it is proposed to allocate the seats in such a manner as to provide representation of the various aspects of the national life. The number of seats to be reserved for the two Houses of Parliament under these arrangements is approximately 2,500.

  AIR RAID PRECAUTIONS.
  Sir Nicholas Grattan-Doyleasked the Home Secretary whether, in view of the nature of the criticism of air-protection plans by the Cambridge scientists anti-war group, he proposes to take any steps to reassure the public as to the efficacy of the Government's proposals?
  The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd): I am advised that the experiments carried out by the persons referred to depend on academic assumptions and have been interpreted on purely theoretical lines. Both the experiments themselves and the deductions made from them are consequently open to grave criticism. The Government's recommendations on the other hand are based upon carefully conducted experiments employing actual war gases liberated under practical conditions, and having particular regard to the circumstances in which gas can be discharged from aircraft. My right hon. Friend is satisfied, as I stated on 15th February in reply to a question by the hon. Member for North Kensington (Mr. Duncan) that the recommended methods of gas-proofing would be effective in affording a very great measure of protection and would reduce materially the number of casualties which might otherwise occur.
  Mr. Chorltonasked the Home Secretary (1) when it is proposed to take action arising out of the recommendations of the Fire Service Committee;
  (2) what are the arrangements proposed to organise the fire service of the country in units and collectively against fires, etc., arising from hostile attack?
  Mr. Lloyd: With regard to fire brigade co-operation for emergency purposes,

  1349
  schemes on a regional basis will be submitted to the local authorities concerned for their consideration as soon as the necessary preparatory work can be completed. With regard to the extension of local fire-fighting services to meet the risk of incendiary attack from the air, the action already being taken was summarised in a reply given to the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Sandys) on 2nd December, 1936. A memorandum on the whole subject of emergency fire brigade organisation is about to be issued to local authorities, together with a circular indicating the extent to which, and the conditions under which, Exchequer assistance will be given to fire brigade authorities in connection with their emergency schemes. The memorandum and the circular will be placed on sale, and copies will be placed in the Library of the House.
  Mr. Chorlton: When will the memorandum be issued?
  Mr. Lloyd: Next week or the week after.

  METROPOLITAN AND CITY POLICE ORPHANAGE.
  Mr. Shortasked the Home Secretary whether he can make a statement respecting the future of the inmates of the Metropolitan and City Police Orphanage; whether any decision has been reached respecting the amount to be allocated for maintenance of each inmate discharged; whether members of the police forces have been consulted; and whether they are willing to contribute to enable adequate maintenance to be provided?
  Sir J. Simon: The Commissioner of Police informs me that these and other questions arising out of the decision to close the orphanage are still under consideration.
  Mr. Short: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that people have been offered £20 per annum to maintain these children in their own homes; and does he think that this is an adequate sum?
  Sir J. Simon: I do know that a committee is considering the whole question, and that it has not yet made its recommendations.
  Mr. Short: Have members of the respective police forces been consulted as to whether they are willing, if the necessity arises, to make these contributions?
  Sir J. Simon: I could not answer that question—certainly not without notice. I repeat that there is a committee considering the matter, and that their recommendations have not yet been made.

  INFLAMMABLE TOYS.
  Mr. Mathersasked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to recent cases of death through fire caused by the accidental ignition of children's toys made of celluloid; and whether he proposes to take action to prevent such articles being exposed for sale?
  Mr. R. Robinsonasked the Home Secretary how many accidents, fatal or otherwise, to children occurred in each of the last three years through the use of celluloid toys; and whether he will consider the practicability of preventing the sale of inflammable toys?
  Sir J. Simon: I have no statistics on the point, but accidents of this kind have been brought to the notice of the Home Office from time to time. I am afraid that the practical difficulties in the way of controlling the sale of celluloid toys by means of legislation would be very great.

  CLUBS BILL.
  Major Owenasked the Home Secretary whether it is the intention of the Government during the current Session to introduce legislation dealing with the registration and licensing of clubs?
  Sir J. Simon: I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to my reply to a question on this subject by the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Dr. Salter) on 25th January, to which I have nothing to add.
  Major Owen: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Crosville Motor Services, Limited, are about to establish a licensed club at their depot in Carnarvon; and in view of the danger that may arise to the travelling public owing to the

  1351
  taking of intoxicating drinks in that club, does the right hon. Gentleman not think it an urgent matter to bring in legislation to deal with such cases?
  Sir J. Simon: Of course I know nothing of that case, but I may inform the hon. and gallant Gentleman that it is not contemplated that the proposed legislation will prohibit the consumption of any intoxicants in any club.
  Major Owen: Does not the proposed legislation contemplate giving some power to licensing authorities to refuse or grant such licences?

  TWENTY-FOUR HOUR CLOCK.
  Mr. Dayasked the Home Secretary whether in view of the fact that the majority of Continental countries have adopted the 24-hour clock for official use and train services, he will consider the appointment of a Departmental Committee for the purpose of reporting on the advantages of the same for Great Britain?
  Sir J. Simon: No, Sir. I do not think that there is any wide public demand for the suggested change.

  ROAD SAFETY (POLICE PATROLS).
  Sir W. Brassasked the Home Secretary whether he has any proposals to make for more effective use of police patrols in encouraging the observance of the Highway Code by all classes of road users?
  Sir J. Simon: The answer is a very long one, Mr. Speaker, but the matter is of importance.
  Yes, Sir. I have had this matter under examination for some time, in consultation with my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister of Transport, and have formed the opinion that good results would be achieved by augmenting the personnel available, not so much with a view to more frequent penal action, but primarily for the purpose of inculcating a higher standard of road sense and behaviour on the part of all classes of road users, including cyclists and pedestrians. With the concurrence of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it is proposed to arrange for an experiment,
  1352
  involving a substantial increase in the number of patrols, to be carried out for a limited period in a few selected areas, including the Metropolitan Police District. For this purpose it will, of course, be necessary to secure the co-operation of any police authorities and chief officers of police who may be concerned, but I have no doubt that this will be forthcoming. The process of recruitment and the necessity for special training will make it impossible to put the full additional force on the roads before the autumn. It is contemplated that when the experiment is in full operation, it will allow for an increase of about 800 men. It is proposed, without prejudice to any permanent arrangement, that the cost of this experimental increase should be borne by the Exchequer, and the necessary Estimates will be presented to the House in due course.
  My right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport and myself are anxious that it should be appreciated that, whilst there is, of course, no intention of relaxing the enforcement of the law, the experiment is designed primarily to assist and educate the road user, and not to increase the number of prosecutions. The effect upon accidents will be closely watched. In order that effective touch may be maintained with the progress of the experiment and the work of the patrols generally, arrangements are being made for the appointment of a joint consultative committee which will consist of representatives of the Departments concerned and a number of chief officers of police.
  Sir W. Brass: While thanking my right hon. Friend for his very clear answer, may I ask whether he will consider impressing upon the police the importance of warnings in cases where there is a real element of danger, as against merely technical prosecutions or warnings?
  Mr. Shinwell: Will the right hon. Gentleman see that these police patrols appreciate that pedestrians still have the right to use the roads of this country?
  Sir J. Simon: I think it may be safely assumed that they will remember that.
  Mr. Cassels: Has the right hon. Gentleman considered the question of introducing legislation to place the onus of non-fault upon the shoulders of motorists?
  Mr. Muff: Will the right hon. Gentleman take steps to prevent the Minister

  1353
  of Transport from de-restricting roads in defiance of, and against the wishes of, local watch committees?
  Mr. Leach: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the education of pedestrians in road sense will include lessons in skipping?

  EDUCATION.

    PHYSICAL TRAINING.
    Mr. Burkeasked the President of the Board of Education whether he will take into consideration the work of the Lancashire keep-fit movement for women and girls, with a view to that organisation's representation on the National Advisory Council, as proposed in Cmd. 5364, and/or any of the committees set up to develop and co-ordinate the work of the National Advisory Council?
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education (Mr. Shakespeare):
    In constituting the National Advisory Council the Government have endeavoured to include on it persons possessing experience of the wide variety of problems which the Council will be called upon to consider, but considerations of numbers made it impossible to include representatives of local movements such as that referred to by the hon. Member. I have no doubt, however, that account will be taken of local achievements, when the constitution of local committees is under consideration.
    Mr. Burke: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this organisation has been in
    a

    Area.

    Net expenditure on Provisions of Meals (including milk*).

    1930–31.

    1931–32.

    1932–33.

    1933–34.

    1934–35.

    1935–36.

    £

    £

    £

    £

    £

    £

    Glamorgan—

    Area under County Council.

    5,406

    4,913

    7,514

    11,042

    13,933

    12,105

    All other areas excluding Merthyr Tydfil and Rhondda.

    13,117

    13,306

    15,437

    20,903

    22,994

    26,500

    Merthyr Tydfil County Borough

    4,216

    4,398

    3,558

    3,101

    3,558

    3,703

    Rhondda Urban District

    5,625

    6,763

    10,550

    9,755

    6,511

    9,222

    Monmouthshire—

    Area under County Council

    7,701

    7,354

    9,476

    9,922

    12,028

    12,502

    All other areas

    12,579

    11,659

    13,826

    12,734

    13,067

    13,220

    Totals

    48,644

    48,393

    60,361

    67,457

    72,091

    77,252

    * Excluding milk provided on payment under voluntary arrangements in connection with the Milk in Schools Scheme.

    existence for many years and has been doing a lot of work among mill girls and people of that kind who might be missed by the Government's scheme, which, I feel, will attract clerical workers more than these other workers?
    Mr. Shakespeare: It will be one of the first duties of the National Committee to get into touch with those who have been doing this work in the localities, and I think, the hon. Member may rest assured that this organisation will be taken into account.
    Sir John Haslam: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that this work has been going on for a number of years and that vast experience has been accumulated? What Lancashire thought of three or four years ago the rest of England is thinking of today.

    MEALS (SCHOOL CHILDREN).
    Mr. Johnasked the President of the Board of Education the amount of money spent in the feeding of schoolchildren, including the supply of milk, in the counties of Glamorgan and Monmouth for each year from 1930 to date, giving the amounts separately for each county and for Merthyr and the Rhondda?
    Mr. Shakespeare: As the answer contains a number of figures I will, with the hon. Member's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Following is the answer:

    GYMNASIA.
    Mr. Whiteleyasked the President of the Board of Education how many secondary schools there are in the country; and what number are fully provided with gymnasia equipment?
    Mr. Shakespeare: On 1st October, 1936, out of a total of 1,393 grant-earning secondary schools in England and Wales, 980 were fully provided with gymnasia equipment.
    Mr. Whiteleyasked the President of the Board of Education the number of elementary and central schools there are in the country; and how many are partly and wholly supplied with gymnasia equipment?
    Mr. Shakespeare: The total number of public elementary schools (which include central schools) in England and Wales is 20,875. As regards the second part of the question, the board have note of 60 cases since 1929 of new public elementary schools where the plans as finally approved included the provision of a separate gymnasium. In the absence of a gymnasium, school halls have in many cases been equipped for gymnastic work.

  BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY.
  Mr. Manderasked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the importance of securing national unity in support of our Defence programme and foreign policy, he will issue a definite invitation to the leaders of the parties in Opposition to consult with him on the subject?
  The Prime Minister: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer which I gave to a question which he addressed to me on 10th November last, and to the supplementary question arising therefrom.
  Mr. Mander: In view of the extreme gravity of the situation, does not the Prime Minister think it worth while to make the attempt at any rate to achieve unity rather than that we should remain a disunited nation?
  The Prime Minister: As the hon. Member knows from the supplementary answer I gave him last November, I think the initiative should come from hon. Members opposite. There is no one more accessible than I am.

  DEFENCE (IMPERIAL CONTRIBUTIONS).
  Mr. Manderasked the Prime Minister whether he has any statement to make with reference to the proposals of the Government to be laid before the Imperial Conference respecting a greater share in the cost of Imperial Defence being borne by the Dominions?
  The Prime Minister: While welcoming the opportunity afforded by the Imperial Conference for the discussion of defence and other common problems, I would remind the hon. Member that the defence expenditure of the Dominions is entirely a matter for His Majesty's Governments in the respective Dominions.
  Mr. Mander: Did not the Prime Minister see the speech of the First Lord of the Admiralty on this subject, which created widespread comment throughout the Empire, and will he not give us some information on this subject?
  The Prime Minister: Perhaps the hon. Member will put that question down.
  Mr. Mander: Can the Prime Minister say whether the First Lord of the Admiralty was speaking on behalf of the Government on that occasion?

  JARROW (STEELWORKS).
  Miss Wilkinsonasked the Prime Minister whether he is now able to accede to the request of the Lord Mayor of Newcastle to receive an influential deputation from Tyneside with regard to the steelworks at Jarrow?
  The Prime Minister: I assume that the hon. Member is referring to the deputation which I was asked to receive following a conference held at Newcastle-on-Tyne on 5th February. I regret that the pressure upon my time makes it impossible for me to receive this deputation, but I have informed the Town Clerk of Newcastle-on-Tyne that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade would be prepared to do so.
  Miss Wilkinson: As the Prime Minister has just assured us that he is the most accessible of all the Ministers, may I ask why he continually refuses to hear the case of this Special Area, in view of the fact that on his own suggestion we have already exhausted all the departmental

  1357
  channels, and the steel situation is now becoming so serious that Cabinet action is obviously required?
  The Prime Minister: I should perhaps have said "necessarily accessible" In regard to a deputation like this, the Board of Trade is the proper Department to see. I would remind the hon. Lady that all Cabinet Ministers are co-equal but, fortunately, not co-eternal.
  Miss Wilkinson: While regretting, of course, this suggestion of political mortality on the part of the Prime Minister, may I ask him whether he is aware that the Departmental channels concerned have said on certain matters which were put forward "This needs Cabinet action," and is not the Premier the only person who can decide upon Cabinet action?
  The Prime Minister: No, that is not in accordance with the constitutional practice. If the Prime Minister were to undertake to see deputations which might come to him from all over the country on subjects which are exciting interest, he would be able to do nothing else. The Departmental Minister brings the subject to the Cabinet. That is what he is there for.

  MEMBERS' MEETINGS (MINISTERS' ADDRESSES).
  Mr. Garro Jonesasked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been drawn to the indulgence by Ministers in the practice of addressing unofficial committees or meetings of Members within the precincts of the House during the time the House is sitting; and whether, having regard to the fact that such meetings seriously deplete the attendance at other important business in the Chamber and provide sections of Members, such as, for example, the Conservative Air Committee, with information not vouchsafed to the whole House, he will recommend Ministers to avoid this practice?
  The Prime Minister: I think it is well known that many meetings are held in committee rooms upstairs while the House is in session, and, so far as I am aware, such meetings are not confined to Members of any one party in the House. My Noble Friend the Secretary of State for Air informs me that, in addressing a meeting upstairs recently he
  1358
  did not do more than amplify and explain information which has been given in Parliamentary Debates. The main purpose of these meetings is to enable Members to keep themselves informed on various aspects of public affairs, and I do not propose to take any step to interfere with the discretion of those hon. Members who call these meetings in asking whoever they consider most qualified to address them. I am sure that my Noble Friend the Secretary of State for Air would welcome an opportunity of addressing Members of the Opposition if the hon. Gentleman would make the necessary arrangements.
  Mr. Garro Jones: While appreciating the remarks which the Prime Minister has just made, may I ask whether he has observed the strange contrast between the reluctance of the Air Ministry to give information from the Treasury Bench with the readiness of the Secretary of State for Air to give that information before unofficial meetings of Members upstairs.

  HEALTH INSURANCE AND CONTRIBUTORY PENSIONS.
  Mr. Westwoodasked the Minister of Health whether he can now state what action he proposes to take on the representations made by the Joint Council of Qualified Opticians against the draft regulations for the administration of ophthalmic benefit which were issued on 27th November, 1936?
  The Minister of Health (Sir Kingsley Wood): I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which was given on 26th January to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Captain Macnamara). The substantive Regulations will be issued without any avoidable delay.
  Mr. G. Griffithsasked the Minister of Health the approximate number of persons between the ages of 60 and 65 years who are at present insured under the National Health and Contributory Pensions Acts?
  Sir K. Wood: In the middle of 1936, which is the latest date for which information is available, the number of persons between the ages of 60 and 65 who were insured under the National Health Insurance and Contributory Pensions Acts was, estimated to be 850,000.
  Mr. Griffiths: Does the Minister know that when the majority of these people reach 65 years of age, if they are unemployed and if the wife is not 65 years of age, they suffer a reduction in their incomes of 16s. per week, and will he do something to relieve this kind of distress?
  Sir K. Wood: I think that is a question for another Department.
  Mr. Griffiths: I thought it would be.
  Mr. Leachasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can give any hope that he will at any early date introduce provision for a scheme of contributory pensions at 55 years of age for spinsters, in view of the large support for this proposal in all parts of the House?
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Chamberlain): I understand the hon. Member to refer to a non-contributory addition to the benefits of the contributory pensions scheme. In that case the answer is in the negative. Similar proposals have been made in the past, and it has not been found practicable to adopt them.
  Mr. Leach: Can the right hon. Gentleman say, for the comfort of those hardworking women who are pressing for this very just reform, that the attitude of the Government is at least friendly?

  HOUSES (NUMBERING).
  Lieut.-Colonel Sandeman Alienasked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that complaint has been made by representative organisations of traders of the difficulty and delay caused to their members in the delivery of goods to householders in urban areas through the absence of numbers on the houses in many streets; and whether he will issue a circular to urban and rural district councils calling their attention to the duty imposed upon them by Section 64 of the Towns Improvement (Clauses) Act, 1847, to cause the houses in a street to be numbered?
  Sir K. Wood: I have recently received representations on this subject from two such organisations. I am not aware that there has been any general failure on the part of local authorities, who have a discretion in the matter, and in the circumstances I do not think it necessary to issue a circular.
  Mr. H. G. Williams: Will the right hon. Gentleman also consider sending a circular to those snobbish people who like to have names on their houses, pointing out that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have numbers?

  HOUSING.

    BUILDING MATERIALS (PRICES).
    Mr. Leckieasked the Minister of Health whether, in view of the considerable advances now taking place in all kinds of building material and the consequent increased cost of municipal houses for the working classes, he will set up machinery to control prices and so prevent profiteering?
    Sir K. Wood: The building of houses by local authorities is only one factor in the present demand for building materials. My hon. Friend can rest assured that the cost of these houses and the prices of building materials are being closely watched by my Department, and where tenders have been unduly high I have asked for them to be reconsidered.

    RURAL WORKERS (DEPWADE).
    Mr. Palingasked the Minister of Health how many houses have been reconditioned in the area of the Depwade Rural District Council under the Rural Workers Housing Act; how many applications under the same Act have been refused; in how many cases has the assistance been given by way of loan, and how many by grant; what is the biggest grant made; and will he inquire as to the necessity of a £100 grant just given to recondition a cottage on the application of Mr. E. J. Mann?
    Sir K. Wood: Up to 31st December, 1936, the latest date for which figures are available, one house had been reconditioned with assistance by way of loan; two houses were in process of being reconditioned on the; promise of a grant of £100 in each case: applications for grant in respect of 12 houses had been refused and applications in respect of three houses were under consideration. Administration of the Acts in accordance with the scheme approved by me is vested in the local authority. I understand the application for the particular grant referred to has been withdrawn.
    Mr. Paling: Has the right hon. Gentleman made an inquiry into the application of Mr. Mann, and is he aware that a grant was made in this case where demolition took place rather than reconditioning? Is he satisfied in this matter?
    Sir K. Wood: If the application has been withdrawn, I should not think it necessary for me to take any action, but if the hon. Gentleman thinks it is particularly important, I shall be glad to do what he wants.
    Mr. Paling: Will the right hon. Gentleman inquire whether demolition has taken place, and may I ask, in addition, whether it is wise to give £100 grant in a case like this to people who are rich enough to pay for their own?
    Sir K. Wood: I would say, in answer to the last part of the question, that the hon. Gentleman is under a misapprehension as to the intention and value of the Act. Under the Act, the full benefit of the period of 20 years goes to the tenant. I am glad to be able to dispel that misconceived idea which is hampering us, so far as this Act is concerned.
    Mr. Paling: Is not the applicant in this case very well able to give the benefit to his tenant without seeking assistance from the State?
    Sir K. Wood: I will inquire.

    SLUM CLEARANCE.
    Mr. Rostron Duckworthasked the Minister of Health how many reports from his inspectors in respect of slum-clearance orders were considered by him during 1936; and whether, in any of these cases, he ordered an inquiry by an independent tribunal?
    Sir K. Wood: 4,064 reports were made by housing inspectors during 1936 in connection with slum clearance operations: all the inquiries which I direct for this purpose are held by officers of my Department.

    HELPRINGHAM, EAST KESTEVEN.
    Mr. Palingasked the Minister of Health what steps are being taken to improve the housing conditions in the parish of Helpringham, in the East Kesteven rural district council; how many houses have been condemned under the slum-clearance scheme and how many
    1362
    built; whether there is a shortage of houses in the parish; and, if so, whether any new cottages have been built to meet the shortage?
    Sir K. Wood: I will ascertain the position in the particular parish mentioned in the question, and inform the hon. Member.

  PAPWORTH VILLAGE SETTLEMENT.
  Mr. Ritsonasked the Minister of Health whether or not annual accounts are published in connection with the Papworth Village Settlement and sanatorium?
  Sir K. Wood: I understand that the Papworth Village Settlement, whose objects include the sanatorium hospital as well as the settlement at Papworth, is incorporated under the Companies Act as a company without profits to members, and that copies of the accounts are forwarded annually to the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies, in addition to being circulated to all members of the association.
  Mr. Rowsonasked the Minister of Health whether the Papworth tuberculosis sanatorium is under the supervision and control of his Department; whether the Ministry of Health inspectors make periodical inspections there; and whether there is a hospital board or committee in connection therewith with powers of supervision and control?
  Sir K. Wood: The sanatorium-hospital at Papworth is approved by me as an institution for the treatment of tuberculous patients sent by local authorities, and is inspected from time to time by my officers. It is to this extent under the supervision of my Department, but it is not, of course, under my Department's control. The articles of association of Papworth Village Settlement, whose objects include the sanatorium-hospital, provide for the affairs of the settlement to be conducted by a committee of management.
  Captain Heilgers: In view of what I hope are the unfounded allegations made against Papworth, could not the Minister arrange for a deputation of Members of all parties to visit the institution?
  Sir K. Wood: I shall be very glad to do that, but I do not think that any notice has been taken of these allegations.
  Mr. Sextonasked the Minister of Health whether the Papworth Village Settlement and tuberculosis sanatorium is registered as a private charity?
  Sir K. Wood: I understand that Papworth Village Settlement, including the sanatorium-hospital, is registered as a War charity under the War Charities Act, 1916.

  PUBLIC HEALTH.

    MATERNAL MORTALITY.
    Mr. Thurtleasked the Minister of Health when the district reports on maternal mortality, etc., are likely to be published?

    Year.

    Expenditure on revenue account on maternity and child welfare services by local authorities in the geographical county of

    Expenditure included in column 2 of the Council of

    Glamorgan

    Monmouth.

    Rhondda Urban District.

    Merthyr Tydfil County Borough.

    (1)

    (2)

    (3)

    (4)

    (5)

    £

    £

    £

    £

    1930–31

    …

    …

    102,798

    31,986

    14,856

    4,919

    1931–32

    …

    …

    110,002

    33,669

    16,202

    5,072

    1932–33

    …

    …

    116,726

    28,011

    21,394

    4,934

    1933–34

    …

    …

    114,741

    27,444

    20,819

    5,004

    1934–35

    …

    …

    131,195

    30,156

    22,263

    5,761

    [Note.—The figures include the expenditure of voluntary bodies only in so far as it is met by contributions from local authorities.]

  NATIONAL FINANCE.

    EXCHANGE EQUALISATION FUND.
    Mr. Bellengerasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether there is any considerable profit standing to the credit of the Exchange Equalisation Fund?
    Mr. Chamberlain: I would ask the hon. Member to await my Budget statement.
    Mr. Bellenger: Has the right hon. Gentleman considered the possibility of utilising the profit, which he said in his last Budget statement was there, for the
    Sir K. Wood: I assume that the hon. Member is referring to the report on the special investigations recently made by my officers into maternal mortality in various parts of the country. This report is now being printed, and I hope to be in a position to present it to the House at an early date.

    MATERNITY AND CHILD WELFARE.
    Mr. Johnasked the Minister of Health the amount of money spent in maternity and child welfare services in the counties of Glamorgan and Monmouth for each year from 1930 to date, giving the amounts separately for Rhondda and Merthyr and for each county?
    Sir K. Wood: As the answer involves a number of figures, I will, with the hon. Member's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Following is the answer:
    purpose of the Government's rearmament loan?
    Mr. Chamberlain: No, Sir.
    Mr. Bellenger: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider it?

    CUSTOMS AND EXCISE DUTIES (FOODSTUFFS).
    Sir Joseph Lambasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the total amount of revenue raised during the last financial year for which figures are available, by means of Customs and Excise Duties upon foodstuffs of the same description as those produced in the British Isles?
    Mr. Chamberlain: It is difficult to give a firm figure, but the answer is approximately £28,000,000 for the year ended 31st March, 1936.

  COMPENSATION BROKERS, LIMITED.
  Mr. G. Straussasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that the declared object of the recently established company, entitled Compensation Brokers, Limited, is the financing of barter trade between Germany and the British Dominions; and, as this involves the granting of new credits to Germany, do His Majesty's Government intend taking any action in the matter?
  Mr. Chamberlain: I understand that the company referred to is a brokerage firm and does not give financial credits. The answer to the second part of the question is in the negative.
  Mr. Strauss: Is the Chancellor of the Exchequer aware that the whole object of this firm is to enable Germany to purchase goods from the Dominions by a system of barter financed by this company, so that Germany will not have to pay for the goods which become available, and that thereby credit will be given to Germany for materials which can be used for armament purposes; and does he intend taking any steps?
  Mr. Chamberlain: The statement I made in my reply covers that question.
  Mr. Bellenger: Will it be necessary for the right hon. Gentleman to give his approval to any loan that may be necessary for this purpose?
  Mr. Chamberlain: I understand that no loan is contemplated.

  ROYAL COMMISSIONS.
  Lieut.-Colonel Mooreasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether he will furnish details of the Royal Commissions appointed since 1st November, 1931; the number still in being; the number which have completed their investigations; and their cost to date?
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lieut.-Colonel Colville): As the reply contains a number of figures, I will, with
  1366
  my hon. and gallant Friend's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
  Mr. Stephen: Is the Financial Secretary aware that the Royal Commission on Palestine is not publishing the evidence given before it; and will he make representations to the Commission to have the evidence published?
  Lieut.-Colonel Colville: That is a separate question from the one on the Paper.
  Following is the reply:
  Ten Royal Commissions have been appointed since 1st November, 1931, of which seven have completed their investigations and issued their reports. The names of such Royal Commissions and the cost are as follow:

  Cost.

  Royal Commissions which have reported:

  £

  Lotteries, Betting and Gambling

  3,400

  Newfoundland

  2,530

  Durham University

  1,868

  Tithe Rentcharge

  1,899

  Despatch of Business at Common Law

  699

  Private Manufacture of and Trading in Arms

  7,341

  Merthyr Tydvil Local Government

  597

  Cost incurred to 31st January, 1937.

  Royal Commissions which have not reported:

  £

  Tyneside Local Government

  …

  1,143

  Safety in Coal Mines

  …

  3,933

  Palestine

  …

  3,128

  CURRENCY (SHILLING COINS).
  Mr. Leckieasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware of the considerable shortage of one-shilling coins in circulation; and whether he will take steps to supply the deficiency?
  Lieut.-Colonel Colville: The supply of new silver coin from the Mint is made through the Bank of England to the joint stock banks, whose demands in turn reflect the demands made on them by the public. Where shortages of coin of any particular denomination exist, the remedy, therefore, lies in the first instance with the private customer, who should make his wishes clearly known to his local bank.
  Lieut-Colonel Moore: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is a very considerable shortage of all other denominations of currency also?
  Lieut.-Colonel Colville: No, Sir.

  AGRICULTURE.

    CATTLE (STATISTICS).
    Mr. Priceasked the Minister of Agriculture whether, in view of the importance of obtaining information on the number of cattle coming on the markets of the United Kingdom, he is in a position to publish the statistics, collected by the Market Supply Committee from tanners and hide merchants, of hides prepared from slaughtered animals at different periods of the year?
    The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. W. S. Morrison): The Market Supply Committee's arrangements for obtaining information regarding hides and skins are still largely experimental, and it is too early to say to what extent the results afford a reliable indication of the total slaughterings of cattle and sheep in this country. The question of publication, which would require the consent of the interests concerned, will be considered in due course.

    POULTRY INDUSTRY.
    Mr. de Rothschildasked the Minister of Agriculture whether, in view of the representations he has received on behalf of the poultry industry that legislation should be introduced to improve the marketing of eggs, including the restriction of the designation new laid to home produce, the marking of all imported eggs with the country of origin, and the amendment of the Food and Drugs Act with reference to the sale of eggs, he proposes to take steps to implement any of these recommendations?
    Mr. W. S. Morrison: I would refer the hon. Member to recent replies with regard to the proposals to which he refers, and in particular to the reply given on 8th February to my hon. and gallant Friend, the Member for the Chatham Division of Rochester (Captain Plugge) and to that given yesterday to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Sir P. Hurd). I am sending the hon. Member copies of these two replies. The administration of the Food and Drugs Act is a matter for
    1368
    my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health, who is to-day replying on the subject to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Newbury (Brigadier-General Brown).
    Mr. de Rothschild: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for his reply, may I ask him whether he is making any progress with the promise he gave to Members of all parties that, on the question of eggs, he would consult Members of all parties on that subject?
    Mr. Morrison: My offer remains open, and if hon. Members care to invite me to address them I shall be delighted to do so. I might say, in answer to the hon. Gentleman's question, that the importation of eggs in the three weeks ending on 6th February last was 25 per cent, below the level of the corresponding period of last year.
    Mr. Turton: Is the Minister aware that, unless some action is taken very soon, many small men will be forced into bankruptcy?
    Mr. H. G. Williams: Can my right hon. Friend say what was the reason for the substantial increase in January?
    Mr. Morrison: It was due entirely to the abnormal weather.
    Mr. Kennedyasked the Minister of Agriculture whether he has considered recent communications circulated by the representatives of the poultry industry asking for protection against the importation of cheap foreign and Dominion eggs into the British market, and the substantial increase in the wholesale cost of the principal feeding-stuffs used for poultry; and whether the Government propose to take any action?
    Mr. Morrison: I would refer the hon. Member to recent replies on this subject by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade and myself, to which I have nothing to add.
    Captain Heilgers: Has there been any substantial fall in the imports from South America?
    Mr. Morrison: I could not say without notice, but, as I said just now, the importations recently are 25 per cent, lower than they were last year.

    HORSE-BREEDING INDUSTRY.
    Mr. Morganasked the Minister of Agriculture whether his attention has been drawn to the anxiety of horse breeders as to the possibility of the extension to Birmingham of the regulations prohibiting the use of horse-drawn vehicles; and whether he will take steps to protect the interests of the British horse-breeding industry in this matter?
    Mr. W. S. Morrison: My right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport has no knowledge of any proposal on the part of the corporation of Birmingham to restrict the use of horse-drawn vehicles in that city. If application for confirmation of an Order should be made to my right hon. Friend, he will give attention to any representations made to him.

  TITHE RENTCHARGE (ARREARS).
  Mr. Spensasked the Minister of Agriculture whether his attention has been called to the increasing pressure being put upon tithe-payers by certain tithe-owners to pay up in cash all arrears before 1st April next, thereby depriving the tithe-payers of the benefit of the provisions relating to arrears contained in the Tithe Act, 1936; and whether he can, and will, take steps to prevent the continuance of such pressure?
  Mr. W. S. Morrison: Section 20 of the Tithe Act, 1836, applies only to arrears outstanding on 1st April next, until which date tithe-owners are entitled to take proceedings for the recovery of all debts due to them. I have no authority in any way to interfere.

  FISHING INDUSTRY.
  Major Owenasked the Minister of Agriculture when it is proposed to put into operation the recommendations made by the Committee on the Fishing Industry of the Economic Advisory Council in its report in 1932, particularly in relation to inshore fishery harbours?
  Mr. W. S. Morrison: Since the issue of the report to which the hon. Member refers, the position of the British fishing industry has been surveyed by the Sea Fish Commission which was set up for that purpose in 1933. Some of the recommendations made by the commission
  1370
  have already been acted on, and others are still under consideration. The Development Commissioners are always willing, within the limits of the funds available, to examine on their merits and in relation to the requirements of the inshore fisheries, applications which may be made for advances from the Development Fund in aid of individual harbours.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Mr. Attlee: Will the Prime Minister be good enough to state what will be the business for next week?
The Prime Minister: Monday: Committee stage of Supplementary Estimates, beginning with Votes for the Coronation of His Majesty and for Colonial and Middle Eastern Services; Report stage of outstanding Supplementary Estimates and of the Defence Loans Money Resolution.
Tuesday: The Adjournment of the House will be moved for a Debate on the report of the inquiry into the Gresford colliery disaster.
Wednesday: Second Reading of the Local Government (Financial Provisions) Bill, and Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution.
Thursday: Second Reading of the Defence Loans Bill.
Friday: Private Members' Bills.
During the week, as opportunity offers, other Orders will be taken.
Mr. Attlee: May I inform the right hon. Gentleman that we propose to put down a Motion on the subject of the Gresford colliery disaster; and may I ask him how far he proposes to go on Monday with the Supplementary Estimates?
The Prime Minister: I am afraid I could not answer that question. We must see how we get on; there are a good many Estimates down.

GENEVA CONVENTION BILL [Lords].
Reported, without Amendment, from Standing Committee B.
Bill, not amended (in the Standing Committee), to be considered upon Monday next.
Minutes of Proceedings to be printed.

MEDICINE STAMP DUTIES.
Report from the Select Committee, with Minutes of Evidence, brought up, and read;
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

ARMY ESTIMATES, 1937.
Estimates presented,—for the Army for the financial year 1937 [by Command]; referred to the Committee of Supply, and to be printed.

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS.
First Report from the Committee of Public Accounts, brought up, and read;
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to amend the law relating to trade marks." [Trade Marks (Amendment) Bill [Lords.]
BILLS REPORTED.
  NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE CORPORATION (TROLLEY VEHICLES) PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
  Reported, without Amendment, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills; to be read the Third time To-morrow.
  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (EALING EXTENSION) BILL.
  Reported, without Amendment, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills; to be read the Third time To-morrow.

  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (SOMERSET AND WILTS) BILL.
  Reported, with Amendments, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
  Bill, as amended, to be considered To-morrow.

  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (EAST HERTFORDSHIRE JOINT HOSPITAL DISTRICT) BILL.
  Reported, without Amendment, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills; to be read the Third time To-morrow.

  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (WISBECH JOINT ISOLATION HOSPITAL DISTRICT) BILL.
  Reported, with Amendments, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
  Bill, as amended, to be considered To-morrow.

  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (COLWYN BAY) BILL.
  Reported, without Amendment, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills; to be read the Third time To-morrow.
  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (BEDFORD) BILL.
  Reported, without Amendment, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills; to be read the Third time To-morrow.
  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (WALTHAM JOINT HOSPITAL DISTRICT) BILL.
  Reported, without Amendment, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills; to be read the Third time To-morrow.

  LANCASHIRE ELECTRIC POWER BILL.
  Reported, with Amendments, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills (with Report on the Bill).
  Bill, as amended, and Report to lie upon the Table; Report to be printed.

  LIVERPOOL EXCHANGE BILL.
  Reported, with Amendments, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
  Bill, as amended, to lie upon the Table.

SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES)

  STANDING COMMITTEE A.
  Colonel Gretton reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had discharged the following Members from Standing Committee A. Lieut. Commander Agnew and Mr. Brooke; and had appointed in substitution: Mr. Riley and Mr. Louis Smith.
  Colonel Gretton further reported from the Committee; That they had discharged the following Member from Standing Committee A (added in respect of the Annual Holiday Bill): Sir Robert Aske; and had appointed in substitution: Mr. Richard Russell.

  STANDING COMMITTEE B.
  Colonel Gretton further reported from the Committee; That they had discharged the following Members from Standing Committee B: Mr. David Adams, Mr. Adamson, Lieut.-Commander Fletcher, Mr. Gardner, Mr. George Hall, Mr. Lee, Captain Macnamara, Mr. Potts, Mr. Remer, Mr. Thorne, and Lieut.-Colonel Windsor-Clive; and had appointed in substitution: Mr. Bromfield, Mr. Brooke, Mr. Frankel, Mr. Gibbins, Major Oscar Guest, Mr. Hepworth, Mr. Arthur Reed, Mr. Ridley, Mr. Silkin, Mr. Viant, and Mr. Welsh.
  Colonel Gretton further reported from the Committee; That they had discharged the following Member from Standing Committee B (added in respect of the Factories Bill): Sir Eugene Ramsden; and had appointed in substitution: Mr. Lewis Jones.

  SCOTTISH STANDING COMMITTEE.
  Colonel Gretton further reported from the Committee; That they had discharged the following Member from the Standing Committee on Scottish Bills (added in respect of the Harbours, Piers and Ferries (Scotland) Bill): Sir Servington Savery; and had appointed in substitution: Mr. Baxter.
  Reports to lie upon the Table.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  WAYS AND MEANS.
  Considered in Committee [Progress, 17th February].
  [Sir DENNIS HERBERT in the Chair.]

  DEFENCE [LOANS].
  Question again proposed,
  "That it is expedient—
  (1) to authorise the Treasury, during the five years ending on the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and forty-two, to issue out of the Consolidated Fund sums not exceeding in the aggregate four hundred million pounds to be applied as appropriations in aid of the moneys provided by Parliament for the Navy, Army (including Royal Ordnance Factories) and Air services for those years:
  Provided that the amount so issued in respect of any service for any year shall not at any date exceed the aggregate of the amounts proposed to be so issued in respect of that service by the estimates upon which this House has, before that date, resolved to grant sums to His Majesty to defray expenses for that service for that year.
  (2) to authorise the Treasury, for the purpose of providing money for the issue of sums as aforesaid or for replacing sums so issued, to raise money in any manner in which they are authorised to raise money under and for the purposes of Sub-section (1) of Section One of the War Loan Act, 1919, and to provide that any securities created and issued accordingly shall be deemed for all purposes to have been created and issued under the said Sub-section (1):
  (3) to authorise the old Sinking Fund to be used in the said five years for providing money for the issue of sums as aforesaid instead of being issued to the National Debt Commissioners.
  (4) to provide for the repayment to the Exchequer, out of moneys provided by Parliament for the said services in such proportions as the Treasury may direct, of the sums issued as aforesaid with interest at the rate of three per cent, per annum as follows:—

  (a) until the expiration of the said five years interest only shall be payable;

  (b) thereafter the sums so issued shall be repaid, together with interest, by means of thirty equal annual instalments of principal and interest combined;

  (5) to provide for the application of sums paid into the Exchequer under the last foregoing paragraph, so far as they represent principal, in redeeming or paying off debt, and, so far as they represent interest, in paying interest otherwise payable out of the permanent annual charge for the National Debt."—[Mr. Chamberlain.]
  3.48 p.m.
  Mr. A. V. Alexander: The Debate, which is lasting for two days, on the Government's policy in raising £400,000,000 as a loan to deal with the rearmament programme, is an event of unusual importance, because it marks in the sharpest possible way the dividing line between the policy of the post-war years and that which is now being adopted by the Government. Anybody who speaks in the Debate in the course of these two days must necessarily feel almost oppressed by the importance of it, and with the responsibility that one has to constituents and to the country. But that ought not to prevent whoever speaks in the Debate from stating very plainly and exactly what they feel about the very great and sinister implications of the Government's policy. During the Debate yesterday most of the time, at any rate, was given to an examination, more or less in a technical sense, of the financial merits or otherwise of the new proposals of the Government for financing their policy. It is true that at times there was a little of what I might describe as "infighting" in a political sense, and, although the Chancellor of the Exchequer essayed to reply to the very able exposition and technical arguments of my hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence), he could not resist his usual partisan outlook on the general political situation to enter into what Mr. Speaker called the cut-and-thrust of debate.
  I endeavoured in my own simple way to warn the House on two occasions in 1936 of the very serious general financial position created by the Government's policy as it was then known and as I thought then it was likely to be. The Chancellor seemed to think it was perfectly all right for him to borrow money in very large sums and, with a wave of the hand, to say, "Of course, it is not a final sum; it may be less or more." It did not seem to matter much if it was going to be more. It is all very well for him to put that position and to object when he is checked by Labour Members on the grounds of 1931. I am always interested in trite quotations, and I was very interested in the quotation from his daily calendar. I did not know that that was his general basis of reading and getting his quotations. He quoted from Ellen Terry:

  1399
  "There is all the difference in the world between departure from recognised rules by one who has learned to obey them, and neglect of them from want of training, or want of skill, or want of understanding."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th February, 1937; col. 1214, Vol. 320.]
  I have always understood that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was supposed to be recognised in the last five years by his supporters as the great high priest of capitalist finance, the one who had restored the country, the one who, in fact, knew all the rules. In my experience those who are usually brought to judgment, who know all the rules, are worthy of greater condemnation when they are found guilty. Take a solicitor to court for a breach of confidence under the law that he is supposed to know and he gets a heavy sentence. Take an accountant—the right hon. Gentleman is in a sense the nation's accountant—who has been guilty of misfealty to his clients. He gets pretty heavy treatment. If the Chancellor's claims for the last five years have been correct as to what he and his colleagues have done for the Government, he is all the more worthy of condemnation for the direction in which he is now leading the country's financial policy, and it seems from the reaction on the gilt-edged market yesterday that that policy is already having its effect. Of course, really and truly when he is speaking with a little more anxiety about his actual Budget balances, he is not unprepared to give us the main case that my hon. Friends put up yesterday. I am sure he has not forgotten, and would not wish us to forget, because it was a very true and general statement of the case, what he said to the Unionist Association at Birmingham on 29th January, the day when the policy of the Government had brought us to such a state that he almost had to make a more or less abject appeal to Herr Hitler as to what he was going to say and what contribution he was going to make to European peace. This is what he said:
  "As I watch the figures"—
  that is the increased cost of rearmament—
  "mounting up, as I reflect upon the growing cost of the maintenance of this vast panoply when we have completed it, I cannot help being impressed by the incredible folly of civilisation which is piling these terrible burdens on the shoulders of the nation, burdens which, if something is not done to reduce
  1400
  them, are bound to pull down the standard of living for a generation to come."
  That is the real case, and I know the Chancellor knows it is the case, and I could not for the life of me understand the light boxing, the quick dancing about the ring, on the real case presented yesterday as to the cost of this, as to the effect on the cost of living and the general argument put up by my hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh, for we know from his own lips that this policy of rearmament on this basis and with this method of finance is going to reduce the standard of living of our people for a generation.
  The financial policy and programme submitted to us bring to our minds once more—I hope none of my hon. Friends will ever let our people in the country forget this—the contrast with the general financial position of 1931. I repeat what I said nearly 12 months ago, that if any one of us stood at that Box and presented these proposals to the country, the City of London would be organising to throw us out on the ground of profligacy and unorthodoxy in finance. We were thrown out on three main grounds. The first was that our Budget was not balanced. What does the Chancellor say about that? On two separate occasions in the last 12 months he has said, "I know I cannot hope to meet expenditure out of revenue this year. There bound to be a deficit. The only question is how much the deficit is going to be." Fancy if we had put it in that way to the country! The second reason why we were charged with crimes which they said deserved our resignation was that there was a growing adverse balance of trade. I prophesied last July an adverse balance in 1936. It reached £347,000,000, and it reached that figure in totally different circumstances to 1931. The figure is higher and more serious than in 1931, and it is in spite of an increase of £90,000,000 per annum in fiscal impositions with a view to keeping goods out, and in spite of having given a hidden subsidy to exports by going off the Gold Standard. Apparently they will not have any new remedy to deal with this adverse balance of trade, and, unless I am mistaken, when the Board of Trade publishes its assessment of the situation next week or the week after, there will be an adverse balance of payments as well as an adverse balance of trade. The third

  1401
  reason was that we were spending too much money. Who is spending the money now? Here is a Bill presented to us for £400,000,000 of loan, unbalancing the Budget for the next five years. What a comment that is upon the Treasury Minute to the Labour Government in January, 1931:
  "These vast Treasury loans"—
  small loans in comparison with this—
  "are going to represent in effect State borrowings to relieve current State obligations at the expense of the future. This is an ordinary and well recognised sign of an unbalanced Budget."
  That was the Treasury Minute to the Labour Government. I wonder what the Treasury Minute is to this Government. Certainly their expenditure to-day is profligate. It is in no sense really coordinated, and it is far higher than was the case with the Labour Government in 1931. On that ground I should say it will be a very good thing if the Chancellor, before he comes to the next stage of the Debate on this very serious and important question of rearmament, will look a little more closely into the financial facts of the situation before he fires his shots at us across the Floor of the House with regard to 1931.
  There is one other aspect of the financial implications of this matter to which I should like to refer. It is that I am convinced, whatever may be the argument for or against the actual physical volume of the rearmament programme, that it could be obtained, even to the maximum physical provision which is aimed at, at a much cheaper rate than the Government are obtaining. We have every right, in checking this request of the Government for power to borrow £400,000,000, to insist that in the ordinary interest of State economy we should not be giving a blank cheque to the Government to spend how it likes. The quotation that the Chancellor of the Exchequer made yesterday from the speech of the late Mr. Asquith in 1906 was a very apt comment on this fact. It meant in effect that if you allow the provision of arms from loans it always leads to precipitate and wasteful expenditure.
  Of course I know that it has been traditional, and I think undeniable, that Tories when in office always look after their friends, and I suppose that in consequence we can hardly expect them to do as we should like them to do in really
  1402
  checking the profits of those who are now engaged in carrying out this rearmament programme. So far as we have been able to gather, from the questions we have put to the Ministers of the fighting Services as to the steps taken to check the profits of this business, we have had no indication whatever that there is any effective control of the profits. One has only to look at the first balance sheets of some of the companies—perhaps not new companies, and in some cases companies refloated with new issues of capital—to see the extent to which profits are being made out of what the Government say is the extremity of the nation— something which you must do, say the Government, in order to secure the future security and safety of the people.
  Although it is an easy and a short answer for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be able to get up and say, "Do not be misled by quotations on the Stock Exchange. No one can prevent the fool from his folly in speculating," if a long period of quotations month after month on the Stock Exchange is taken, the Chancellor of the Exchequer knows that things find their level pretty well. You may get booms and slumps for six months, but take a period of 12 months and take the average prices, and the rise or fall in the profits of an industrial company are pretty well liquidated in advance by the jobbing on the Stock Exchange. The prices of these armament firms' shares for the last 12 months are a good index of the extent to which the orders are being placed without any adequate check upon the rate of profit. I see that the Chancellor is mentioning this point to the Minister for Co-ordination of Defence. I hope he will tell us, because we have never yet had the information, what effective steps are being taken to check the profits. We have heard about costings departments, not new ones, not special ones organised to deal with this huge and unusual armament programme, but costings departments in the service Departments. I am afraid that we are entitled to say, until the Government have proved the contrary, that we could obtain the actual physical requirements of this rearmament programme at a much more economical figure than that which is at present likely.
  One other point. I notice that in the course of the various Debates on this

  1403
  matter, and particularly yesterday, hon. Members opposite, who in their hearts are quite clearly appalled at the prospect of this very heavy expenditure, use was made of the argument that after all it may not be so bad because this programme is going to put money into circulation. One hon. Member said yesterday that it was going to attack the hard core of unemployment, although I have not noticed very great enthusiasm yet on the part of the Government for diverting into the depressed areas any adequate expenditure of a kind that will really tackle the hard core of unemployment there. But if we look at the question from that point of view we see how easy it is for the country to be misled. I guarantee that if I could take some of the people from residential and rural areas into parts of the city of Sheffield to-day and let them look at them, and then tell them the history of Sheffield since 1919, they would have some doubts to express about the effects of expenditure on armaments of this kind. In 1920–21, after the last great armament boom, we were in such a dire position in Sheffield that we had to borrow £1,250,000 in 15 months from the Ministry of Health for Poor Law assistance to be given to those who could not be assisted out of the rates, and we are still paying a special 6d. rate to liquidate that debt.
  Instead of this programme being a really effective contribution to the permanent employment and security of the industrial worker, it is going only to add to the boom and then to provide a slump. I say to my workers in Sheffield, as I am entitled to say to the Government, that the way in which this thing has been engineered and carried out can be stated thus. "Come in and help us with this armament campaign. 'Eat, drink and be merry'"; but they leave out the last few words of the scriptural injunction "for to-morrow we die." That is the position, and with regard to the effect upon the life and homes and security of the workers at large, I can find nothing about this armament programme specially to enthuse over or praise.
  I now come to a brief examination of why we have come to this situation to-day. It is a melancholy occasion. The nation is being asked to pay a bill which represents the collective ineptitude, the folly, and in some instances the dishonesty, of
  1404
  a Tory Coalition Government in foreign policy. I agreed entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton) when he said last night that in 1931 the foreign prospect, not of course without its difficulties, was reasonably promising. Ever since this Coalition Government—it has no claim to be a National Government—took office in 1931, things in the international sphere have gone from bad to worse. I know that we ought to say that this country is not the only country concerned with foreign relations. Of course it is not. But right hon. Members opposite are supposed to be the Government of all the talents, leading the principal country at the heart of the greatest Commonwealth in the world, and they ought to give the greatest lead. Yet if we look at their record in the past few years we can find case after case of the folly and ineptitude, and I say the political dishonesty, of this Government in foreign affairs. Take the first subject, in which we are all interested now. As I am talking retrospectively I am very glad that I speak in the presence of the Home Secretary, who had full and long responsibility for policy at the Foreign Office. Take the Government's attitude to the Disarmament Conference. The more I read about it, the more I take notes of the actual records—they are very voluminous and one cannot get through them all in a hurry—the more I study them, the more I am convinced that we had a large measure of responsibility for the comparative failure in the first year of the conference and ultimately for its failure. When one thinks to-day of the immediate danger to our people here, perhaps now the country most vulnerable to air attack of any country in Europe, one realises that but for the folly of representatives of the party opposite at the Disarmament Conference, we could have abolished the use of the bombing plane.
  Hon. Members: No.
  Mr. Churchill: There is not one word of truth in that statement.
  Mr. Alexander: The right hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity of addressing the Committee, I am sure, as he often does on these questions, and perhaps he will demonstrate then that there is no word of truth in it. I believe the evidence of my own eyes when I read the words of Lord Londonderry, former

  1405
  Secretary of State for Air, after he came out of office. Take the question of Manchuria, the first wavering from this country's known allegiance and leadership in respect of collective security. In August I was talking to a leading Chinese gentleman in California. We had been debating with Japanese representatives and others, and I asked him how it was we could not get them to take a better view and to get into conference with the Japanese. His reply was "Because they will not be controlled by the League, and we have now no faith in the League, and no faith in your promises." It was that gentleman who reminded me of a speech made by the Foreign Secretary in this country in 1933, in which he said:
  "I am sufficiently a pacifist, at any rate, to say that my country ought not to get into any trouble about it."
  The scorn with which the Chinese who were left to face the situation now regard this country in this matter is, I think, deserved, because of the position then taken up. Take the Stresa Conference, which has had a great effect on the armaments position. We come away from a Conference in which there is practically agreement amongst representatives of the War Allies that they will not separate but will act together, and in a few weeks we have the Anglo-German Naval Treaty, virtually white-washing Herr Hitler for reverting to a policy of armament on a basis of more than four times the strength, in the Naval sphere, that Germany was allowed under the Versailles Treaty. Take the experience of Abyssinia. I do not know yet whether the Government realise, when they talk about the defence of the Commonwealth, how much their policy has undermined the feelings in the Dominions—very seriously undermined it. Take the Hoare-Laval Pact and the betrayal of the policy of sanctions. When we think about the Chancellor of the Exchequer coming down to the House and asking for £400,000,000, we cannot forget 10th June, 1936, his speech about midsummer madness, his revelation in advance of what he hoped would be the position of the Government in the scrapping, before the other Powers knew of the policy, of sanctions, and the full retreat from the policy of support of the Covenant of the League.
  I have met some very influential representatives of the Dominions in the last few weeks. On the other side of the
  1406
  Atlantic one of them said to me a few months ago, "We have had a very severe set-back in regard to collective security within the Commonwealth. If Haile Selassie had stayed with his troops and Mr. Anthony Eden had resigned when his Cabinet would not accept his policy, Canada would still be in favour of collective security." [Interruption.] I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman will get it before long. I do not think that it is beyond the intelligence of so able a representative of journalism as the one who says that he cannot quite follow. I say that to-day, but for this duplicity in regard to collective security and but for the political dishonesty of this Government in foreign policy, we would not have been faced with a situation such as that with which we are faced. Nor can we let the Prime Minister escape from his personal responsibility. I am told that he is a great student of Disraeli, and reading the other day of "The Gentleman in Downing Street," I was very much interested in this passage by Disraeli, because I think that it explains a lot of the attitude of the Prime Minister:
  "Frame and explicit'—that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the minds of others."
  We have had a good many speeches of frankness from the Prime Minister during the last few years. We had the one with regard to the menace of aerial warfare. When I listened to some of the statements which were made yesterday, I remembered one statement that was very frank, and that is, that the bomber will always get through. We had his explanation with appalling frankness on 12th November of why he put safety and security and the hope of the peace of the country second to the desire which he had of winning the General Election. I remember that after hearing that speech, I looked again at the copy of the appeal which the Prime Minister made on the wireless to the country, and at the manifesto of the Conservative party, for which he was, no doubt, responsible, and I found only the frankness of which Disraeli speaks—to conceal what was in their mind and to confuse the mind of the electorate. The electorate had no idea in October, 1935, that the Government intended to spend £1,500,000,000 in five years—not the slightest idea. If I might refer the Prime Minister to Disraeli once again, there was a great occasion when Disraeli came back from

  1407
  Berlin and was greeted with great applause by his fellow-countrymen for, he said he had come back with "Peace with Honour."
  It may be argued by some hon. Members opposite that the policy of the Government in the last few years has prevented any special entanglements. That is what they may argue. They may say they have kept the peace for a year or two. But in doing it they have lost their honour. They will not receive the applause that came to Disraeli when he came back with peace and with honour. We have to face the circumstances created, in large part again, by the Government. If I may again quote this statesman, he once said that man is not the creature of circumstances; circumstances are the creatures of men. The position with which we are faced to-day has certainly deteriorated—I am not going to hide this for a moment—and we need in certain circumstances a certain measure of rearmament. I have never shut my eyes to that necessity, but when we come to look at the basis upon which rearmament is to be built and the methods to be applied to carry it out, I am appalled to think that we are likely to have to suffer under the leadership of a Government like this while it is being put into operation.
  What is the teaching of the last White Paper about the Government's policy? What is the basis of rearmament policy? It was pointed out yesterday that it does not contain a single mention of the League of Nations. I know quite well that the Minister, in replying, may say "We did refer to general security in a previous White Paper, and we have referred to it once more." But is it not true to say that the Government are not planning their rearmament programme on the basis of security? If they are, I cannot understand some of the references which have been made in the past. In May, 1936, the present First Lord of the Admiralty was speaking, I believe, to a corps of Unionist canvassers, and he said that certainly, in future no British Government ought to have its hands tied; it ought to be able to choose the vital questions on which it would fight. Does not the right hon. Gentleman recognise his views?
  The First Lord of the Admiralty (Sir Samuel Hoare): Any democracy has to choose the issue on which it is to fight.
  Mr. Alexander: I thought by his interruption the right hon. Gentleman was not recognising the passage, but I looked it up this morning in a historical book on international affairs, where the speech is quoted. He said that no British Government ought to have its hands tied, and that it ought to choose the vital issues on which it would fight and to choose them on their merits. That may well be argued. But taken to its logical conclusion, that does not mean working within a great international scheme of collective security. It means that this country must always be judged in its own case, and use armaments for purposes of national policy. If that is the attitude of the Government—and I gather that it is from the interruption of the First Lord—the sooner the country knows that it is for that that this expenditure is being asked, the better. As far as I can see, that is the real position to-day.
  Take the actual plan of carrying it out. I have looked in vain for any real evidence of co-ordination, apart from some nice and pleasing speeches from the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence. We are to-day ordering capital ships at a price unprecedented in the history of the building of capital ships in this country. They have been ordered at that price long before this House has had a chance of checking the price. The "Nelson" and the "Rodney" cost round about £7,000,000. We are told in the White Paper that the ships which are being ordered will cost £8,000,000 each, although, compared with the day when the "Nelson" and the "Rodney" were ordered, prices, and in some instances wages, an; lower. And the calibre of the gun has been reduced from 16 to 14, a very important influence in cost, not only in the costing of the gun, but in the ordering of the equipment of armament for the gun. What sort of co-ordination was there for the fighting Services before these ships were ordered at that cost? Some were ordered even before they had had a report as to whether the capital ship was justified on that basis or not. What sort of decision has been arrived at as between the Navy and its Fleet Air Arm and the Air Force control? We have been pressing and

  1409
  pressing, and we have obtained no information. Certainly, there is no evidence of real, scientific co-ordination, but when it comes to organising the administration of this rearmament programme, I confess that most of it seems to be conspicuous by its absence.
  I have heard hon. Members opposite press, and press again, for some statement of fact to be made with regard to the defence problems in relation to the Vote. A Supplementary Estimate has been issued for the sum of about £6,000 which will be the token which will be expended on the Vote for the Defence Department by 31st March. Nobody has heard very much about it, or would have hoped to have heard. I heard only in the last few days of another example of how co-ordination has not been reached. I understand that some of the Departments particularly concerned with the rearmament question have urgent need, in view of their expansion of work, for people of experience who are in the Civil Service and have been in the Service or equipment Departments before. I heard this morning of a circular being sent from the Air Ministry to the various Departments asking for volunteers from really experienced men? What is happening? The Departments concerned, even when the men are not engaged on particularly important work, but because they know a particular job and they do not want to lose them, are refusing to release them. Perhaps the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence will say what he is really doing to effect any improvement in that regard.
  Let me take the question of recruitment and see if there is any co-ordination there between the Government Departments. I see the Secretary of State for War seated on the bench opposite. He is anxious about recruiting, and I have no doubt he has cause to be anxious, having regard to the calls upon him by the Government. It is said in the White Paper that they are going to arrange for somewhat better conditions to be offered, but is the Minister doing everything really to enthuse the democracy of this country for military service in defence not merely of their country, but of the principles of collective security and justice? What sort of co-ordination is there in the Government's policy in that respect? The more I look into this matter the more I feel
  1410
  that the Government are just letting things drift.
  My time has gone much more rapidly than I expected, and, before I sit down, I must spend a moment or two upon the position, as I see it, of the Labour party in Opposition. The Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday referred somewhat scathingly, I think, to what he felt was the general attitude on these benches. I do not know that there is anything of which to be ashamed in being sufficiently pacifist to seek peace. There is nothing of which to be ashamed in that, but when it comes to hurling canards at the Labour party with regard to it being unwilling to provide the necessary armaments for the defence of this country, I say that such a charge is completely unfounded. I do not want to be unfair to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The last reference I made was not to an actual quotation of his speech, but I was speaking on the more general question. The Member of the Labour party whom I meet day by day is no less a lover of his fellow countrymen and no less desirous of peace, happiness, and safety in all circumstances than anybody else in this country, and when it comes to the defence of them, he will not be backward in defending them. What he is concerned about is. What are we doing to prevent defence being necessary?
  We say that the Government have let this country down badly. They had the greatest opportunity of any Government of modern times in 1935, when they might have had the great majority of the working classes as well as other classes in the community behind them in supporting collective security, and yet how did they treat it? When the Labour party, by a majority of 20 to 1 at the Brighton Conference in October, 1935, came down in favour of sanctions, and sanctions properly carried through, we were told on all the platforms right up to the time of and through the General Election that we were war-mongers. [An HON. MEMBER: "You are."] I hope hon. Members opposite will say whether, when we were being charged with that because we supported collective security, they were telling the nation at that election that they proposed to introduce in 1935 a loan for £400,000,000, making £1,500,000,000 for armaments, and to have on their Front Bench Ministers like the First Lord of the

  1411
  Admiralty who were prepared to use those armaments for national policy and not collective security. That is the case, and that has to be answered.
  Our attitude here on this matter will be that we are prepared to support whatever Vote may be required for collective security within the system of the League of Nations, and we have never wavered in our official policy on that matter. We shall oppose at all stages any attempt to stampede this country into wholesale armaments for the purpose of use for national policy.
  Mr. Henderson Stewart: Will you defend your own country?
  Mr. Alexander: If the hon. Member wants an answer to that, I will say to him that those who are in the Labour party to-day have no more need to be ashamed of how they have defended their country than has anybody else. What we are concerned to do is to adopt a policy which is going to prevent war, and not to precipitate it, and if the hon. Member, with his Liberal traditions, examines the days before the War and from 1914 to 1918, and sees what the expenditure on armaments was then, how much security that competitive race brought, and how much it cost in life, in misery, and in financial ruin to the working classes after the War, he can hardly blame us for saying that when we vote for armaments to-day, we want them for collective security and not for a national policy for capitalists.
  Mr. Stewart: Had it not been for the fact that we were adequately armed in 1914, there would not be a Labour party to speak at all in an independent nation.
  Mr. Alexander: That seems to me to be ridiculous in the light of the experience of the War. The real fact was that although we built the largest Navy in the world at that time, we had to turn practically the whole of the citizenship of this country into a war camp before we could deal with the matter effectively; and if you are really trying in this policy to arm this country on a unilateral defence basis, and suggesting that we can vote the money and organise to defend the British Empire, all that I say is that you are exceedingly foolish. You have never fought a major war yet without allies, and powerful allies, and you have no
  1412
  hope of defending the whole of the far-flung stretches of the British Commonwealth with unilateral defence. If that is the line that hon. Members take when they say, "Will you defend your own country?" they are backing a very poor horse indeed. I say that we will vote at any time for anything which is really required for defence provision in this country under collective security, but we shall refuse, and I think rightly refuse, to vote a blank cheque to this Government at any time to provide unlimited national armaments to be used for national policy and mainly for national policy alone. We propose, on our side, to use all our time and endeavours to rehabilitating the League and to restoring the confidence of the people in a process which leads to international justice, for without international justice there never will be peace.
  4.36 p.m.
  The Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence (Sir Thomas Inskip): The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Hillsborough Division of Sheffield (Mr. Alexander) in his opening sentences referred to what he described as the partisan speech of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I think, after hearing the right hon. Gentleman, I prefer my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his role of partisan to the right hon. Gentleman opposite in his role of impartial commentator, for he has exhausted himself in his efforts to find epithets with which suitably to be labour the Government and everybody connected with them. Of course, that is what we should have expected from the right hon. Gentleman, and that part of his speech gave much more satisfaction in the ranks behind him than did the closely knit arguments which followed it. Yesterday we were assured by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton) that it was improper to discuss any other question than that which is indeed the question in this Debate, namely, the particular method of raising a sum of about £400,000,000. He said that this was not a vote for or against any armaments at any particular level, and he insisted upon the fact that the Labour party were not going to vote upon that question. He had, I think, forgotten that the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence) had, in almost the opening sentence of his

  1413
  speech, declared that it was impossible to discuss the financial questions involved in vacuo, and he proceeded to examine the performance of my task and the responsibility of the Government in that connection.
  Whereupon the GENTLEMAN USHER OF THE BLACK ROD being come with a Message, The CHAIRMAN left the Chair.
  Mr. SPEAKER resumed the Chair.

  ROYAL ASSENT.
  Message to attend the Lords Commissioners.
  The House went; and, having returned,
  Mr. SPEAKER reported the Royal Assent to—

  1. Consolidated Fund (No. 1) Act, 1937.

  2. Beef and Veal Customs Duties Act, 1937.

  3. India and Burma (Existing Laws) Act, 1937.

  4. Unemployment Assistance (Temporary Provisions) (Amendment) Act, 1937.

  5. Public Works Loans Act, 1937.

  6. Firearms Act, 1937.

  And to the following Measure passed under the provisions of the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919—
  Queen Anne's Bounty (Powers) Measure, 1937.

  WAYS AND MEANS.
  Again considered in Committee.
  [Sir DENNIS HERBERT in the Chair.]

  DEFENCE [LOANS].
  Question again proposed.
  4.51 p.m.
  Sir T. Inskip: After the preliminary statement of the views of the Opposition, expressed in the discussion yesterday, I thought that the most interesting feature of the speeches from their side was the complete absence of any sort of attack upon any of the main items of the programme which are set out in the White Paper. The programme was not attacked as a whole—I shall speak later about the
  1414
  right hon. Gentleman's reference to its relation to sound foreign policy—nor was it attacked in part. If any one is well qualified for attacking that part which forms a very formidable factor in the position, namely, the cost of the Navy, it is the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, and yet the only criticism that he made was that we are engaged in building capital ships at a higher cost than immediately after the war—in 1921. The statement that these capital ships were laid down or were ordered before the Committee had had an opportunity of considering the case is not accurate, if the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to say so. Certain preparatory steps were no doubt taken by firms who expected to receive orders, but no contract or binding obligations were entered into before the House had a perfectly proper opportunity of listening to the statement that was made.
  The right hon. Gentleman is also inaccurate, and I am sure that he must realise it on a moment's reflection, in describing the Government's demand to-day as that of a request for a blank cheque. Is he not aware, as stated in the White Paper and by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that every single penny which is sought to be expended by the Government will be submitted in the ordinary way in Estimates to the Committee for examination? The right hon. Gentleman can be assured that he will have an opportunity of making the most meticulous examination of those Estimates when they are submitted to the Committee. I listened to the right hon. Gentleman's observations about the effect of this programme upon a boom and a slump, with a little mystification. I find it very difficult to reconcile what apparently are his theories about boom with the satisfaction that is felt in every town, county and community with which I have become acquainted in the last 12 months where there is any prospect of receiving an order in connection with the Government's programme. Apparently, if the right hon. Gentleman's theories are right, they are all of them like the Gadarene swine every time they invite a Government contractor to enlarge his activities within the area of their boundaries.
  The Government are asked what is the reason for the very large total? I will make one general proposition which will commend itself to every Member of the

  1415
  Committee, and that is that you never can calculate safety upon a narrow margin. It is quite impossible to arrive at some mathematical figure of certainty and say: "That is just enough to carry us into safety, and we will ask for no more." It is conceivable, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer pointed out, that in the course of the next five years it may be necessary to ask for even a higher sum or a smaller sum, but the general magnitude of the programme and the sum involved depend upon what I have stated, namely, the necessity, if you are going to be safe and if it is worth while at all to provide for safety, to be quite sure that you have achieved your object. I cannot help thinking that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite appreciate this fact as well as I do, perhaps better.
  The hon. Member for East Edinburgh in a revealing phrase at the beginning of his speech, which was very significant, in spite of all his financial philosophising, declared his opinion that the co-ordination of Defence is essential in safeguarding a country against a foreign foe. The hon. Member has the root of the matter in himself when he realises that this country must always be safeguarded against a foreign foe, and all this talk about the ambiguity of the Government's foreign policy falls into its proper place when once we realise that, talk as you may about collective security and pooling your forces, in the end the task of any Government worth its name must be, to use the hon. Member's own phrase, the task of making certain that no foreign foe will prevail against you.
  My observations this afternoon will be directed mainly to questions which have been asked me, with great courtesy and fairness. I do not complain of any of them. I do not even complain that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland thought it necessary to tell me to my face that he had no confidence at all in me or in the performance of my duties. It is true that he went on to say that he had no confidence at all in the staff which is associated with me. I propose to say something on that subject which I think will perhaps meet his criticisms. May I presume to say, as a very ordinary man, what I understand about the financial position? The Government to-day, fortunately, enjoys in the financial world
  1416
  an unassailable credit. It is an asset. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to feel some annoyance that this Government after five years of sound administration can borrow without impairing its credit, whereas in their case it was disastrous. That was the whole point of the Treasury Minute to which he referred; they were seeking to borrow upon the security of a fund without any prospect of repaying. The Government have this unassailable asset of credit. Is it to be supposed that we are to wrap this talent in a napkin, bury it and not use it? The right hon. Gentleman knows the fate of those who did that—outer darkness and gnashing of teeth.
  I turn now to the matter which has loomed so large in the speeches so far— the relation of this programme to our foreign policy. I think the right hon. Gentleman, if I may say so, would have done better if he had omitted—I do not want to be censorious—if he had omitted the references to the policy of the Dominion Governments. We shall soon have an opportunity of full meeting and conference with the Dominions' accredited representatives. Let them speak through their representatives in their own way. We do not want to involve them in our discussions in this House.
  Mr. Alexander: You ask us to pay for their Defence.
  Sir T. Inskip: No, we do not. We ask this country to pay for the Defence of the Colonies and Dependencies and those parts of the Empire from which we obtain so much of our raw materials. The Dominions are conscious of their relation with this country. They are making arrangements concerning their own territory in their own expenditure for their own Defence. In so far as the Dominions Governments have to express any opinion on our foreign policy, let it be expressed by them and not by people in this House. Now let me say what is the foreign policy of this country. I am very glad to have this opportunity of educating hon. Members opposite. The right hon. Gentleman who spoke for the Liberal party and is associated with the Opposition in his criticism, takes the Foreign Secretary as the exponent of a policy which commends itself to him. Let me read what the Foreign Secretary said on 19th January:

  1417
  "His Majesty's Government are at present engaged in the active prosecution of the re-equipment of their three fighting Services. Though we are convinced that this is an indispensable means to our objective, it is not our objective. This remains, as I have previously stated, the negotiation of a European settlement and the strengthening of the authority of the League of Nations. We are prepared to co-operate in the common work of political appeasement and economic cooperation."[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th January, 1937; col.106, Vol. 319.]
  Is the right hon. Gentleman going to ask us to print that in the Preamble of every White Paper? The Committee will remember the criticism that was made earlier that there was not a word in this White Paper about the League of Nations. If we had referred to it, then would it have satisfied right hon. Gentlemen? Do they really mean that if we had put in the Preamble a quotation from the White Paper of 1936 or of the Foreign Secretary's speech that they would have said, "That is all right, this programme is intended for a laudable purpose"? We know that if we had re-quoted it in this White Paper it would not have made a pin of difference to the speeches made this afternoon. There is no doubt of the intention and wish of the Government so far as the use of the forces which are intended to be equipped up to their proper strength is concerned. I have heard a great deal in this Debate about the relation of our defences to the question of collective security. What does it mean? I do not think that collective security means that we should abandon the duty of national security. Supposing nobody else puts its forces into the pool into which we are to put our forces. Supposing nobody does that. Does it mean that we are not to use these forces to defend ourselves against anybody else who will not co-operate with us?
  The fact that we have pooled our defences does not diminish—it increases our responsibilities and our risks. I take the view, which I commend to the Committee, that the responsibility of this nation, this powerful country, to itself and to its prestige in Europe is to-day infinitely greater, because of the responsibility we have pursued in connection with the pacification of Europe. In any case right hon. Gentlemen opposite cannot be allowed to say that because the collective security system has in their assumption broken down for
  1418
  the time being, this country has to refrain from defending itself. It cannot refrain, even in justice to others or in relation to democracy. The right hon. Gentleman surely cannot mean that whether collective security is able to protect this country or not this country should abandon the task of defending itself. That is implicit in the Edinburgh Resolution, because the Labour party said in that Resolution, to which reference is often made, that part of their policy was the maintenance of defensive forces. It was their policy, it was said, to maintain such forces as were consistent with the country's responsibilities as a Member of the League of Nations, the preservation of the rights and liberties of democratic institutions and the preservation of international law.
  I would like to know where our democratic institutions would be if this country were defenceless. In this connection the right hon. Gentleman below the Gangway assailed the Chancellor of the Exchequer for saying that it was not in the public interest to state in a precise way who were the allies and who were the enemies against whom this programme is directed. Does he seriously suggest that it would have assisted in the peace of the world if my right hon. Friend had opened his statement about this programme by saying that it is directed against nation X or nation Y? Why did the right hon. Gentleman criticise the Chancellor of the Exchequer as having said something improper when he said that it was not expedient or in the public interest to set out our allies and our enemies which might be contemplated?
  Sir Archibald Sinclair: If we are looking to the League our Allies are those other States also allied to the League.
  Sir T. Inskip: Yes, but supposing a very powerful nation, thought to be associated with us in defending collective security, refuses to do so, does it still remain an ally, or become an enemy? The fact is that on the whole question of the relation of this programme to our foreign policy, though I recognise that the hon. Members opposite would never admit that this Government has any real zeal or conviction in the idea of the League of Nations, that is the ideal to which we are working, and meanwhile we will not neglect that which will be

  1419
  necessary, whether we have collective security or not.
  I pass now to the next criticism that concerns myself more particularly, and it was that there has been no hint of direction, of co-ordination and no hint of any real planning. I sometimes wonder whether these criticisms are passed in any desire to know the plain truth about the facts or whether they are made at random in the darkness of ignorance. The right hon. Gentleman suggested that I failed in my duty because I had not co-ordinated the staffs of the different Ministries. I was not aware that it was one of my duties to undertake that part of the duties which fall upon responsible officers in 1he Government Service. I would have very little time left for my other duties if that were so.
  Let me invite the Committee to note what is going on in the way of planning. I think it will allay some of the fears and expel the doubts and the anxieties felt. I will give two examples. Take the case of our coast defences, and I speak from chapter and verse, from records and documents upon decisions with which I am familiar from day to day. The figures for coast defence at home and abroad are based upon a minute and meticulous examination of the subject. The first stage taken some time ago was to devise the general principles on which the coast defences of ports are to be based, bearing in mind all the possibilities of the naval or air attack to which the different categories of ports might be exposed. The next stage was to work out for each individual port the actual defences that were required under modern conditions, and the third stage was to discuss with the authorities on the spot the exact location of the different forms of armaments. Suppose we have completed these plans for coast defence. Is that or is it not an example of the co-ordination which the right hon. Gentleman so ardently desired? This is a question upon which representatives of the three Services have been engaged for years, and I want to pay a high tribute to the devotion and the skill which all concerned brought to the discharge of the duties lying upon those responsible to the Services to whom I am going to make reference later.
  Now let me come to another question; let us take the question of the anti-aircraft
  1420
  defence of this country. Here again the first stage was to settle the general principles, and the second stage was again a full examination, conducted by experts not only of all three Services, but of all Departments and interests affected, into the precise degree of protection to be afforded to any particular locality. On this co-ordinated planning the total amount and the character of the defences were calculated and the estimated expenditure followed in natural course. In this way there has resulted elaborate planning and co-ordination, for which I claim no virtue, but I have seen it done. I have seen it day by day. I see those engaged upon it and take into account what are the practical possibilities. These estimates of expenditure are based upon these inquiries and examination. The hypothetical assumptions on which the Estimates have been based are the result of closely co-ordinated effort, as is the detailed planning which has been the result. Will it suffice if I mention one or two more general subjcts? Let us take the reserves of ammunition. Does anybody think that we are planning this matter regarding supplies of ammunition regardless of other things? The reserves of ammunition are calculated with a view to a possibility of an emergency which may take place and always with the idea that we shall have sufficient reserves to cover the period between any outbreak of war and the time when full production by Government and other factories will come into play.
  The oganisation of this form of supply is in itself a revelation of the planning which has been completed. I do not think hon. Members realise the extent to which we have had an elaborate and exhaustive review of the capacity of this country to produce armaments of all types to meet the country's needs. We have allotted to the Departments the capacity of this and that firm so that there may be no overlapping and no competition between Departments for the services of the same producer. It has not been haphazard, panic planning, but a deliberate calculation down to the last unit of any particular type of weapon or arm that is required. Let me give an example. We found a definite deficiency of a very precise amount in the capacity for supplying the needs of the Army. What did the Government do? They

  1421
  forthwith took steps to acquire a well-known engineering undertaking, Scots-wood-on-Tyne, with an enormous actual capacity and a much larger potential capacity. The terms upon which it will be acquired are being carefully considered by the Departments, but it is a response to the detailed consideration of the needs of the country and is part of the completed plan for providing capacity to meet the demands which any emergency, even that of collective security, may make upon us.
  Let me present a concrete idea to hon. Members—Government factories. Why are we building Government factories for the purpose of producing ammunition and explosives? Why? During the last War, as everybody remembers, in the fever of necessity factories were designed even up to the last day of the War for the production of sorely needed supplies. There is no time in modern war, especially when the weight of the attack will be felt in the first few weeks, to make preparations which will take 18 months or a year to complete. So much have we planned, that we have felt it to be in the national interest to build factories while we have time, so that they can be available if an emergency should arise. Is that an example or not of planning and preparation? Perhaps some spokesman of the Opposition will tell us the answer.
  It is important to point out that although the total sum stated in the White Paper indicates the order of magnitude of the task the Government have to undertake it is not a balance sheet. The programme remains flexible. We hope it may never be necessary, if the Government's policy succeeds, to expend this vast sum, and the White Paper says that modifications are possible either up or down—I hope not up—but it does indicate to the Committee the task which the nation must undertake. The items in the balance sheet will be produced when the Estimates are before the Committee. I was glad to hear the hon. Member for East Edinburgh say that he was not at all surprised by what he found in the White Paper; that he knew well the magnitude of the task and that that he could have written with one exception everything contained in the White Paper. I only wish he would communicate his knowledge to hon. Members sitting behind him.
  1422
  I have been asked whether we are getting all we want as economically as possible. There is some suspicion that a Government Department enters into a contract a little wildly, without check and without supervision. Not a single contract is entered into on those terms. Where competitive tenders are impossible every tender and contract is subjected to an exhaustive examination by the costings branches. The right hon. Gentleman said that the costings sections have not been reinforced for the purpose of this gigantic task. He is wrong. Surely, he said that inadvertently. If he went into any of the Service Departments he would find that these branches have been recruited by the most competent men who can be found, eminent accountants, experienced in testing costings, and in examining the books of contractors. Government Departments, with the Treasury behind them if necessary, are jealous in protecting the taxpayer and Parliament from any undue exactions from those engaged on Government work.
  Mr. G. Hardie: With whom were Rootes Securities Limited in competition before they got the contract from the Government?
  Sir T. Inskip: I know that Rootes Limited is somewhat of a King Charles's head to the hon. Member. The contracts with Rootes Limited were examined in the same way as any other contract. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said that he had no confidence in me or in my staff. If I may deal with my unworthy self first, that is not so important, but it is important that he should have no confidence in the staff. I have stated the part I play with proper modesty. I may say that I have been cognisant of what is being done and hope that on some occasions I may have been able to make a small contribution. But the hon. Member invited us to supplement the staffs by adding
  "more of the younger and fresh-minded men from the Services to modernise the outlook of the officials at present advising him."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th February, 1937, col. 1307, Vol. 320.]
  Curious to relate the Government have already thought of that. About a year ago, just after I took office although not the consequence of my taking office, the Joint Planning Committee, comprised of men of comparatively junior rank, under the rank of full generals or admirals,

  1423
  received the assistance of a number of younger men in point of years and junior in rank, and you have in the department of the Committee of Imperial Defence some of the most alert, vigorous, fresh and most open minds that can be found in the Services. There is, fortunately, not wanting a good supply of persons to take their place if any of them should be called away for service on promotion. It is a complete misrepresentation to suppose that I, who am no longer able to claim to be in my late middle age, am associated with a number of respectable Colonel Blimps. The youth and intelligence and experience of these men who have passed through the Staff Colleges and the Imperial Defence College will meet with the approval of the most exacting hon. Members opposite.
  What sort of questions do we consider? May I say a word about the fallacy which underlies the suggestion so often made that I have solved no problems? I read in a remarkably friendly statement about myself, a rarely friendly statement, that I have solved no problems and that the solution of the problems of Defence was outside my duties. It is really a fallacy to suppose that the problems of Defence are like a mathematical problem, to which there is a certain answer if only you sit down and think about it long enough. The problems of Defence are questions not of mathematics but of the proper plans to be made to deal with an infinite variety of circumstances. Experience is one thing which helps to make right plans. No doubt intelligence and wide reading are aids to successful planning, and I can say that our experiences of the last year in the Eastern Mediterranean, in the Western Mediterranean, in the Spanish Revolution and in Palestine, have all had an effect in helping the Joint Planning Committee and the Chiefs of Staffs to see in actual concrete form emergencies for which plans must be devised.
  Nobody believes that plans once made to meet a certain emergency are ever likely to be required to meet an emergency of the same character. There come up constantly for consideration strategical problems for which plans have to be devised. I am glad to say that recently there has been formed a Joint Intelligence Committee, composed of representatives of the three Services, which works
  1424
  under the Chiefs of Staff. There is also a Committee on Industrial Intelligence in foreign countries. It is impossible for me to disclose the nature of the reports we receive and the information the Joint Intelligence Committee prepares for the Chiefs of Staff. I can only give my assurance to the Committee that they are an immense and indispensable aid to the right planning which continues from day to day in connection with these questions.
  The Committee may say, "This is all vague and abstract; tell us something of what you are doing." I have sometimes been interested to read that no plans are being made for the Higher Command or the higher control in war. This has been exhaustively examined, and although I do not suggest that the plans are final and for all time, the plans for setting up a proper control in time of war have been completed but will be kept under consideration. The Government may be blind to some things but it is too much to ask anybody to believe that after all that has been written about the complications of the Great War they really have not thought on how the next war should be carried on as far as the Higher Command is concerned.
  Let us take the question of seaborne trade, a notable illustration of the necessity for co-ordination in its true spirit. The Navy, the Air Force and even the Army must play their part in the protection of our seaborne trade. The narrow seas and their dangers have not escaped the notice of the Staffs and myself, and I am glad to say that, although here again they will be subject to revision in any fresh emergency and with every fresh discovery, exhaustive reports have been prepared. The distribution of the imports of food, the diversion of shipping from the East coast to the West coast, the organisation at the ports, the internal distribution and inland transport, the choice of routes—ladies and gentlemen, they have all been—[Interruption.] I remember making that mistake when I was much younger and much more nervous even than I am now. I apologise for my mistake. These matters and another which I was about to mention—the proper defence of vulnerable points against air attack—have been considered, not as "solved problems," but as plans subject to continual consideration.
  Time prevents me from dealing with all these topics, but let me mention one

  1425
  matter which I think will be of interest to the Committee. The accumulation of reserves of raw material is mentioned in the White Paper. Everybody will be aware that there are many commodities which are absolutely essential, and the Government have taken time by the forelock, and stores of those have been provided. I would like to say a word about two other topics. One is the question of food. Naturally this is a question of interest to the public, as indeed it is to the Government. Control and rationing have been prepared for, but I am aware that those are blank cheques, and that the question is. Where are the assets, where is the food? The Government are conscious that rationing is at most a second best. Storage has excited public interest, but if anybody gives a moment's reflection to that, he will see that the very purpose of any plan would be defeated by a premature disclosure of the steps which the Government are bound to take. Hon. Members have little conception of the complexity or the expense of this question. If anybody reflects on the cost of buying—as suggested by Sir Arthur Salter-—12 months' storage of food and the cost of providing storage facilities, he would not wonder that the programme is so expensive.
  Another matter to which I will refer briefly is the Army. We have often been asked what is the purpose for which the Army is to be used. Our Regular Army is a small one. Hon. Members opposite will agree with me that it must be equipped with the very best machines, arms and equipment we can give, not only for our own safety but for the purpose of the men whom we are asking to go into the Regular Army. Then there is the Territorial Army. The White Paper discloses that plans are being made to provide the Territorial Army with proper training equipment. It is a small Army even when we put the Territorials with the Regular Army. What is the purpose of this Army? I have been suspected sometimes of saying that it was to be an Army of unlimited size. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Caithness and Sutherland asked whether we were going to have an Imperial force to police the Empire or an Army to wage war on a Continental scale. We are not devising any such Army. We have this small, well-equipped, well-trained Army, and no-
  1426
  body can say what it may be necessary for any future Government to decide. It is small enough in all conscience for the tasks which it has to perform from time to time. All I can say is that we do not plan to have an Army on' the Continental model. We plan the less on that scale because of the paramount importance nowadays of the Air Force and the danger, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly said, of attack from the air. We are conscious of the proper proportion that must be maintained between these Services. I am gratified at any rate that in the course of this Debate there has been no suggestion that we are asking the country to maintain an extravagant or expensive Army.
  I have tried without unduly trespassing on the time of the Committee to refer to some of the questions which have been asked me. I have been charged in the past with devoting too much of my time to supply. I have not attempted to deal with that except by allusion this afternoon. If I have devoted too much of my time to supply, it is not because that is my major preoccupation, but because the speeches of the Government's critics have been largely directed to questions of supply. I have tried this afternoon to show that the proper balance is observed between those two parts of my duties; indeed they are often so closely related that it would be impossible to divide them. The scale of supply must often be conditioned by the policy for which forces, properly equipped, are required.
  I end as I began. Hon. Gentlemen opposite, although they question the Government's allegiance to the League of Nations, have not questioned the size or the necessity for this programme. Other nations are watching this Committee today. Other nations are not interested in our financial questions, whether we shall borrow or pay out of Income Tax or Super-tax. What other nations are interested in is in seeing the measure of unity there is in the nation and in this Committee on this task of making ourselves safe and making ourselves competent to discharge the duties of collective security if that day ever comes. I do not know whether I am too late in the hope I express in this Debate that before it ends right hon. Gentlemen opposite may make one thing plain, although

  1427
  they regard the Government as financially unsound in the measures they propose to take—I do not mind that, for we are prepared to meet that; what I should mind is that other nations, people abroad and in the Dominions, should have any illusions as to the unanimity which I believe exists in the nation on this question of rearming the country. The right hon. Gentleman opposite will not suspect me, I hope, of saying anything arrogant or of exceeding my duties if I make an appeal to him to make it plain in this Debate what I believe is true of the great trade union movement which hon. and right hon. Members opposite represent, that this country is at any rate to-day a great democracy, and that, contrasted with the authoritarian States, it is united in its determination that the democratic institutions of this country should be defended to the utmost of the ability of every Member of the House.
  5.38 p.m.
  Sir Francis Acland: I think the whole Committee is very grateful to the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence for all that part of his speech in which he described the work on which he is engaged. I would like to say at once that he has given me, at any rate, rather a new perspective with regard to that work and a good deal to think of which is new to me. I shall say what was in my mind before he spoke as to what we felt and feel about his work, but I will say at once that in some of the matters which he mentioned to-day as having come within the purview of his Department, he seems to me to have broken new ground in a very valuable direction and to have dealt with things which hitherto we have not felt were really being dealt with adequately.
  Before coming to that, however, I wish to make a preliminary point which arises out of something of which we heard a good deal yesterday, that this large measure of borrowing was brought within correct financial principles by saying that the loan would be paid back in a certain fairly limited measure of time, which T suppose would correspond in the main with the utility of the armaments, the battleships, and the buildings on which the money is to be spent. Although I recognise, as all do, the absolute honesty of the Chancellor in his statement of his
  1428
  intentions, I do not think any Chancellor ought to bind either himself or his successors in these matters of repayment. Of course, we all know that in fact every Chancellor will adjust the repayment of loans, whether it be this loan or any other, to the circumstances of each particular year with which he is dealing.
  When I have listened to Budget statements, I have always wondered whether there would ever be a Chancellor who would intimate that he had to deal with a normal year. As far as my experience goes, every year is always abnormal, and that allows special arrangements to be made with regard to debts of any sort or kind. Even if there were any power given to the Chancellor to deal with a certain part of our debt in a certain way, that could be made entirely of no effect by the Chancellor's complete freedom to deal with our total debt from year to year in practically any way he wishes. When I listened to the Chancellor yesterday, it came to my mind that we have heard him within recent months explaining how absurd it would be to earmark the yield of any particular tax or levy to any particular purpose, and when he has explained that to my hon. Friends who represent agricultural constituencies, I have entirely agreed with him; but I am bound to say that I think it is equally absurd to earmark any particular part of our debt to be paid off in any particular time or manner. Therefore, we are not justified in taking credit for the idea that these proposals will become any more defensible because the debt is to be paid off within 30 years.
  I would ask the Committee to consider for a moment or two whether the emergency in which the country undoubtedly finds itself, a greater emergency than ever before, justifies our departure from the general doctrine which Chancellors of the Exchequer have so often put forward, that, as long as it is possible, we shall pay as we go along. I have been looking up previous declarations on that question, and I find that they have been made equally definitely by Conservative Chancellors, such as Sir Stafford Northcote, or Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, or Liberals such as Sir William Harcourt or more recently the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), who was, of course, very much tempted in the days before the War when we were putting forward greater

  1429
  pressure with regard to armaments, to throw the cost on to debt in order to have more money for the social services which were his more particular concern. When one looks into the reasons which different Chancellors have given at different times against having resort 1o loans if it could possibly be avoided, one cornes back to one main reason which seems always to have been at the back of their minds. It is this: As soon as one gets into the region of loans, one loosens the control and the vigilance which the House can exercise over expenditure.
  One of the main reasons why we hesitate so much in approving the policy which the Chancellor has now presented to us is because, with the best will in the world, we feel that the Government have at present no really efficient system of control of expenditure and that, therefore, they should not be encouraged to drift along, as we feel they have hitherto been drifting, without tackling that matter more decidedly. Of course, I refer to what has, until to-day, seemed to me to be the failure of the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, judging by the statements which he has hitherto made, to show us that he and his Department were tackling what we think are the essential principles underlying national expenditure on armaments. It is not very easy to explain what I mean, but, as I see it, there are two separate questions which have to be answered by anyone who traverses this field. One is the question of what to do, and the other is the question of how to do it. As the Minister said, it has been chiefly with the latter question, the question of supply, that he has dealt in his previous statements to us.
  It seems to us that these two questions ought to be separately handled. I feel that the bigger question, the question of what to do, has been handled supremely well in two periods within my memory. Those were the periods during which Mr. Balfour, as we shall always think of him, and Mr. Asquith were in the chair of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Neither posed as an expert, but both of them—Mr. Balfour in a supremely able manner—saw to it that, if the experts decided that a certain part of our task could best be done by the Navy, it was not necessary that the Army should also be equipped to carry out that same part of the task. I think the Minister for the
  1430
  Co-ordination of Defence indicated to-day that he has been coming nearer to questions of that kind than we realised before. It did not seem to us, hitherto, that that sort of central question, the question of what we should do, had been getting the attention which it deserved in comparison with what we believe to be the minor question of how to do it, or the question of co-ordinating the services and supplies of the different Ministries. It did not seeem to us, hitherto, that the Minister had any real power of control, for instance, over the Admiralty, which, almost notoriously, has declined to assent to any superior authority on his part.
  We also had from the Minister to-day a not quite definite but rather interesting statement about the role of the Army on the Continent. We felt hitherto that the Government had not faced the question of whether, in view of the tremendous development of aircraft power, it would be possible in future for our Army to be engaged in Continental wars as we know them. It must be equipped, of course, for fighting anywhere in the world where we have possessions, but whether, in view of the development of aircraft power, we can so plan as to have an expeditionary force, even a small one, available, as our last expeditionary force was available, to go to the Continent of Europe seems to us a vital question. Hitherto we thought that that question was not being properly considered. I do not want to explain that further, but we had our doubts about those essential matters and also about the question, which is really also a central question, of what should be the relationship of our different Services in view of the tasks which they are now called upon to perform. It seemed to us, as I have said, that hitherto the Minister was dealing with matters which were minor and secondary.
  We felt, and still feel, in spite of all this talk about costings departments and estimates, that if you have a special programme covering five years in which a great deal has to be done—a great many buildings erected, a great deal of machinery installed, and a great many people engaged—if you cannot give any more than three or four or five years' security to those people, and if you are employing private firms in work of that kind, then you cannot by any possibility have efficient control of the profits which

  1431
  they make. With such a tremendous expansion as is postulated in this White Paper, it seems obvious that every firm which can in any way contribute to the gigantic task must be roped in, and the claim which they will all make, that there is no guarantee of any permanence for their staffs or their premises, must prevail over any arguments that a costings department may bring against them, and lead therefore to an enormous growth of what is practically profiteering. That cannot be checked effectively as long as the Government rely mainly on private firms for their munition supplies. In this connection may I say that it is almost an insult to the House of Commons that the Government should have put before the country this enormous programme while they go on, from week to week and from month to month, without telling us their decision on the main recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Private Manufacture of Arms.
  I turn to another point, and on this I am only echoing the noble words of the Minister towards the end of his speech about the necessity for national unity. I think we ought to explore this loan policy in connection with that subject, and therefore in connection with the probability or otherwise of a European war. Personally, I think that the god of war or, rather, the devil of war has already taken charge practically everywhere. I see no signs of any policy anywhere except the policy of piling up armaments, and I think that the nations which are competing in that policy are, to use the Minister's simile, running violently down a steep place into the sea of mutual destruction. I think a major conflict in Europe in the next 18 months will be extraordinarily difficult to avoid and that no one can possibly tell whether we shall be drawn into it or not. It seems to me, as I have listened to people saying that we ought to keep out of any difficulties in Europe, that they regard war very much as a game of chess which can be played by two opponents while the rest look on in comfort. To me it seems that war is a game of blind man's buff with everybody blindfolded and the liability of collision at any moment between any of them in entirely unexpected ways.
  While I hasten to admit that I got a great deal of enlightenment and help from
  1432
  many parts of the Minister's speech, I am bound to say that it did not help me to clear up what is another central question, namely, What is the foreign policy of the Government and on what principle is it based? The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the League, and it is interesting to note that the Chancellor of the Exchequer never mentions the League. It seems to me that the only Minister who ever does mention it in any serious way is the Foreign Secretary, and he always speaks of it so nicely that it seems almost indecent to ask him whether he is going to do anything about it or not. However fairly one tries to examine Ministers' speeches, it is extraordinarily difficult to say whether our policy is based on the League of Nations, or on alliances, or on isolation. If it is difficult for us to do so, it must be more difficult for foreign countries, and that, it seems to me, adds to the likelihood of our being drawn into any great outbreak that may occur abroad.
  The point that I want to make is that if war comes in the form in which it must come, with devastating suddenness—any modern war between great Powers—there is one thing that will be as important to us as armaments, and that, as the Minister suggested, is national unity. I think the Government are sometimes too much inclined to feel that because they are called a National Government, they therefore represent the nation. They will have a rude awakening, I imagine, some day, but I do not go into that question now. My point is rather that if we cannot have complete unity, it is of overwhelming importance, if war comes, that there should be as much unity as possible. We do not realise what a marvellous asset it was at the outbreak of the last Great War that there was almost complete unity in this country.
  Earl Winterton: Except in the Cabinet.
  Sir F. Acland: The Noble Lord knows the history of that time, very likely, much better than I do, and I think he knows that from the moment Belgium was invaded there was, in essence, unity everywhere—with the people who really counted.
  Earl Winterton: I was in the House at the time, and I know that the unity came from the House of Commons and not from the Cabinet.
  Sir F. Acland: I would not accept that view, and I was a member of the Government at that time. I am sorry that my memory and that of the Noble Lord should be in conflict on that question, but he will allow me to proceed with my point. Now that the League has collapsed, we shall not get any unity again like the unity which we had at the beginning of the last War, but surely the nearer we can come to it the better. The connection between that subject and the present loan proposal is this: Although the people outside who will be considering this policy of the Government do not know much about inflation and deflation, and I am very glad of that, yet there are certain things already pretty clear to them and others which will gradually become clear to them. They know, for instance, that here they have a Government which would not, at the bottom of the slump, borrow a farthing to help the distressed areas, but is perfectly willing to borrow these huge sums now. They will realise later that borrowing at once puts up prices in a way that taxation does not, and that with high prices the wealthy man can, to a large extent, choose whether they shall hit him or not, because he need not buy things at the high prices if he does not like them, whereas the poor man must be hit by high prices, because he has to spend all that he has in order to live.
  Therefore, they will feel that to the extent to which the Government borrow, the burden of high prices will be distributed unevenly over different classes. It will be an uneven burden, because it will fall much more heavily on the poor people. It avoids the equitable method which applies under taxation, of graduating the burden so as to place the most of it on the shoulders of those who can best afford it and those who will undoubtedly make enormous profits in the gigantic boom which is going to take place. To that extent, the Government are unfairly treating a large proportion of our people, and I think that that may lead to a state of things, with prices soaring upward, for which the Government and the nation may have to pay a very heavy penalty if war breaks out.
  There was something of a duel last night between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the hon. Member for
  1434
  Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton). The Chancellor challenged him as to whether he dissented from the general and terrible conclusion of the White Paper that it might be necessary to spend £1,500,000,000 or more on armaments and other relevant things in the next five years. The hon. Member replied that he preferred to consider one thing at a time, and that that was not the primary question before the Committee. I thought that was a fair enough answer; but let me say for myself, and I think I may say it for my hon. Friends too, that I do not assent to the proposition that expenditure on this scale is inevitable. I know how enormously risks have increased since the League was allowed to collapse, but I cannot help recalling the ruling statement of the Prime Minister during the last election:
  "There has not been, there is not, and there will not be any question of great armaments or materially increased forces."
  We cannot help realising now that when he made that statement he must have known that the League was bound to collapse. He knew quite well then that the bluff of sanctions which worked so well with the electorate had already failed with Mussolini. Seeing that, with that in his mind, he made that statement about armaments, it is very difficult to see what has happened, although so many terrible things have happened since then, which makes the position so utterly different today. As an illustration of the difference, I will quote two short statements made by the First Lord of the Admiralty, one which was quoted by the right hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander) to-day, in which he summarised the speech of the First Lord last May:
  "A democracy must choose the issues on which it will act on their merits."
  That statement the First Lord to-day reiterated and defended. Compare it with this statement only seven months before:
  "My Government stands, and my country stands with it, for full, steady, and collective resistance to all acts of aggression."
  Which represents the true mind of the First Lord? I do not think he is a man who is likely to change his mind. I believe his true opinion all the time was expressed in the quotation which the right hon. Member for Hillsborough used to-day. If that is so, it only confirms me in the belief that the policy of July the

  1435
  year before last was put up as bluff, and that during the election Ministers knew already that that policy had failed. I am not, therefore, convinced that between the last election and now there has been such a deterioration in foreign relations as to justify what seems to be suggested in this White Paper, which is nothing less, I think, than the abandonment of foreign policy as an instrument of peace and the substitution of competition in armaments. We shall look carefully into the Estimates this year, and we on these benches may think it right to support them, as we did last year, but this document which is now before us seems to be a document of despair. We believe that there is a better way, and we shall continue to try to point it out to the country. We shall continue to urge it on the Government, and if that course continues to be as hopeless as it seems to be now, we shall try in due course to make our contribution towards securing an alternative Government which will not despair, as this one seems to me to have done.
  6.5 p.m.
  Sir Ronald Ross: A matter which has always puzzled me has been resolved by the speech to which we have just listened. I had always wondered whether the right hon. Member for North Cornwall (Sir F. Acland) was as gloomy as he appears to be, and we now know that he is. I do not think I have heard a speech which prophesied death and destruction to all and sundry in a more certain voice. I should think that if anything would have cheered the right hon. Member out of his natural melancholy temper, which would be appropriate to a member of his party, it would be the presence beside him of a kinsman who has intervened with such forcible effect. The only part which I have taken so far in this Debate, which I have attended almost throughout, has been to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Liberal party opposite whether he can give the names of the countries which we could count upon as allies against an aggressor. It might be improper, and certainly would be impolitic, for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to theorise about who would be our enemies, but why should it be improper or impolitic for the right hon. Baronet to tell us which nations we can count upon with certainty to support us if we are the
  1436
  victims of aggression, such aggression as he has denned under the Covenant of the League of Nations? He has not given the name of one country which would fill that honourable role.
  Sir A. Sinclair: If the hon. Member wishes me to answer his question I have two answers which I can give him. I say, first, that the practical experience of the Abyssinian dispute showed 50 nations marshalled in response to aggression, and that when we feared that the economic pressure in the Mediterranean might bring retaliation upon us and asked for naval assistance from four Powers in the Mediterranean, it was immediately proffered. My second answer is that I have never said that collective security is now a reality, but always that on the basis of the material which was proved, by our experience in the Abyssinian dispute, to be available, the Government ought to create that system of collective security. Our criticism is that they are not starting to do it now.
  Sir R. Ross: Yes, and the right hon. Baronet ought to create a party large enough to form a Government, but such things are very difficult. Has any country made more efforts towards collective security than ours? If so, let us hear which country it is. This country has done much to support collective security, and the answers which the right hon. Gentleman has given me furnish a notable instance of a case in which the efforts of collective security were unavailing. The case of Abyssinia furnished an occasion which was peculiarly appropriate for the application of economic pressure, but it was unavailing to save Abyssinia. I welcomed the second answer he gave as being a pronouncement which adds to the realities of the situation, realities which he so evidently recognises.
  This Debate has not been very enlightening as to the views of the party-opposite on the questions we are discussing, though it is enlightening, perhaps, on their state of mind. One seldom has the confusions of finance brought home to one so clearly as they were in the speech yesterday of the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence). He used one expression which was staggering to me. I have sat in this House listening to hon. Members opposite demanding increased purchasing power for the poor people of the country,

  1437
  but yesterday we had the hon. Member for East Edinburgh complaining that more people would have purchasing power, that poor people would have more purchasing power and would compete against one another. What do hon. Members opposite want? For months they complain that poor people have not enough purchasing power, and yesterday an eminent Member of their party was complaining that they would now have too much. I disagree with that suggestion completely.
  To-day we have had the speech of the right hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander). I am sorry that he is not now in his place, because I think there is no one else, except one of his colleagues, who could have shown himself such a master of Parliamentary invective in all its forms. It was a speech of sound and fury, but what did it signify? We had flashes of lightning from a woolly internationalism, but the speech produced only one definite pronouncement so far as I could see, and that was the humiliating acknowledgement that in the view of his party we had no hope of defending the Empire by ourselves. Is that the view of hon. and right hon. Members opposite? Have they given up all hope of defending themselves? There is no answer, and so I suppose that is their policy.
  Mr. Garro Jones: Will the hon. Member be good enough to tell us whether he considers that the British Empire alone could fight a war in the Pacific and in Europe? We have 12,000 miles of frontier in Australia alone, and an incalculable number of sea miles to protect. Could the British Empire defend itself in a war in Europe and the Pacific at the same time? Has the British Empire ever done so?
  Sir R. Ross: The British Empire has never yet been faced by that situation. [Laughter.] Hon. Members laugh. They are very ready with their laughs. They produce a hypothetical situation which could never have occurred in the past. I will answer the hon. Member from history. There has never yet been an occasion in the history of the world when the British Empire was not prepared to defend itself. So far we have never failed to defend ourselves adequately, and, so far as I and my hon. Friends here are capable of it, there will be no
  1438
  such occasion. Pusillanimous Members opposite have thrown in their hands. They are no longer prepared to rely upon our own resources—if necessary. Of course, I agree that it is not a situation which I—
  Mr. Logan: While the hon. Member is talking about the patriotism of his side, may I remind him of the Curragh-Kildare incident?
  Sir R. Ross: I am very much obliged for the interruption of my hon. compatriot. I think our views are perhaps distinguishable, but I am interested to have an interruption from him. I do not think the incident at the Curragh has the slightest bearing upon the point I was discussing; if so, I do not know what it is, but it was an incident which was one of the most fortunate things that ever happened to this country. I know it is one of the bugbears which the hon. Member, as an advocate of patriotism, perhaps not exactly the same kind of patriotism as mine, has always got in mind.
  Mr. Quibell: It was mutiny.
  Sir R. Ross: It was no mutiny, but I am not going to discuss the Curragh incident. I will tell hon. Members why. Because you, Captain Bourne, would stop me. I think I know a good deal more about the Curragh incident than some hon. Members opposite who have interrupted, and on another occasion, here or outside, I shall be only too happy to discuss it. One significant feature which comes out of this Debate is pathetic, and that is the belief by hon. Members opposite that somebody is going to fight their battles for them. That is a very dangerous belief for anyone to have. It is all very well; you may get assistance in many spheres, but to get countries to risk the lives of their own people in order to fight for the interests of another country is very difficult to do. It is an almost impossible idealism, which I am sure we have not yet reached in the world.
  Mr. Garro Jones: That is what the hon. Member's party won the last election on.
  Sir R. Ross: We won the last election on this—that we kept this country out of war with Japan and Italy, which the hon. Member's party would have liked to see the country in. That was one of

  1439
  the major factors which won the last election, and I think we shall probably win the next election on what hon. Members opposite are saying to-day. I came here expecting to find some reasoned attack on the matters on which the money is proposed to be spent, but no such attack has been made. We have not even had the familiar criticism of battleships, and we generally have some criticism of that sort. As, there has been a recent inquiry on the subject the attack seems to, have died down. We have had no criticism of the cruiser programme; 70 cruisers are the modest needs of this country, relying, as it must in the last event—I emphasise those words, although I hope that we shall never be thrust back on it—on our own Fleet to defend ourselves.
  I shall not waste the time of the Committee dealing with points which have not been raised. I would like to address a request to the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence and to the Government at large, as to the position of the Army. The Minister alluded to-day to the necessity for the Army having the best equipment. That is a view which everyone holds. It is a very small Army and it should make up in the quality, not only of its personnel but of its equipment, for what is lacks in numbers. At the present time it most certainly does not do so. I do not think anyone realises how weak our military forces are. Their functions are adequately set out in the White Paper which was issued in March. That White Paper should be read in conjunction with the White Paper that we have to-day. In paragraph 30 of it there is a definition of the functions of the Army, as far as they can be defined. It has three main functions:
  "To maintain garrisons overseas in various parts of the Empire, to provide the military share in home defence, including anti-aircraft defence, coast defence and internal security, and, lastly, in time of emergency or war to provide a properly equipped force ready to proceed overseas wherever it may be wanted."
  That last sentence shows that the British Army is intended in emergency to be able to face the best troops in the world.
  At the present time the Army is smaller by 21 infantry battalions than it was in 1914. The cavalry has been halved, and our responsibilities have increased. Above all, the reserves have been enormously
  1440
  diminished. What was called the Special Reserve has disappeared and no substitute force has been put in its place. As regards its equipment, for years the Army was entirely without any anti-tank defence, except that of its own field artillery. We have, I understand, a good, modern, light tank, but the medium tanks are insufficient in number, of obsolete type, and largely worn out. Although I appreciate what the right hon. Gentleman has said as to the effect of the Air Force upon the military forces, I would point out that the White Paper of last March announced the modest increase of four battalions and that we are now told that there are to be only two in the near future. We do not know what regiments will be asked to form them. Of two tank battalions which were put forward, only one is suggested in the immediate future. These are all matters of great importance, and no doubt at a later stage it will be possible to inquire into them in greater detail. I do not propose to do so now.
  I should like to allude to the question of factories and of munitions. We are entitled to know what share we shall be asked to fulfil in the provision, not only of men, but if their equipment and munitions. In regard to Northern Ireland, which I represent, on 21st May last year I asked the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence what share we might expect in that work. Up to the present I think we have not had a single thing, except the provision of one factory for the making of the hulls of flying boats, and the one ship which Northern Ireland gets in the shipbuilding programme. This area is far and away the safest of any industrial area. As regards employment that would be available, we are not in the depressed area, although our average situation as regards employment is certainly worse than the average of this country at the present time. What national factories, if they are to be put on a national basis, will be situated in our country, and will any further establishments be made there for the Air Force? No part of the United Kingdom is so well placed strategically, with a view to protecting traffic coming in from the Atlantic.
  Northern Ireland provides the highest proportion of recruits of any area in the United Kingdom. That is a matter in which we are fortunate, and I hope that hon. Members in all quarters of the House

  1441
  will be able to rival and perhaps surpass the proportion which we at present provide for the defence of our country. I submit that if we supply the men we might also be allowed to supply our proportion of the work for their equipment and the munitions which they will require.
  Mr. Charles Brown: Is it in order on this Resolution to canvass for orders?
  Sir R. Ross: I would be surprised if I did not get a sneer from the Labour party whenever I endeavoured to get something for the working men of Northern Ireland. I am asking for the working men; let the hon. Members in front of me remember that. These are national factories. This is no question of capitalists in my country; I am fighting for my own people. Because hon. Members opposite have never yet deluded the people of Northern Ireland to elect a Socialist it does not mean that those people have ceased to be working men. I think that they are well aware of the attitude so consistently taken up by hon. Members and of how much friendliness the working men of Northern Ireland have for the Socialists. That is all that I have to say. I hope that this Resolution will get the approval of the Committee by a very large majority. It is a very prudent measure and a justifiable one for spreading a burden, which we all deplore but which I think a vast majority of us face with resolution, over a period more appropriate to it than merely charging it on the annual Budget.
  6.26 p.m.
  Colonel Wedgwood: The hon. Member somewhat misunderstands the mind of the Labour party. We are quite prepared always to defend ourselves. We intend, if the occasion arises, to defend our country, and we are willing to defend democracy and the working class throughout the world if that defence may prove successful. In his passionate desire for isolation and in his hostility to collective security and the League of Nations, I wonder whether the hon. Member will cast his mind back and remember that even Deny would not have been defended successfully if it had not had allies.
  Sir R. Ross: I certainly have no hostility to the League of Nations, but I think we must be prepared to face the contingent failure of that system. I am
  1442
  glad that the hon. and gallant Member believes in the principle of "No surrender."
  Colonel Wedgwood: I am glad of that explanation. The hostility to the League which sometimes comes from the back benches is often misunderstood in this country and abroad as being general public opinion. I believe that the public opinion of this country, Conservative and Labour alike, is overwhelmingly strong in favour of the League of Nations and collective security as the best way of safety. I want, first of all, to respond to the appeal made by the right hon. Gentleman this afternoon in favour of national unity on this occasion. It must be well understood that if the Labour party go into the Lobby against the Government this evening, it is not against the necessity of spending this money on making our defences adequate. The vote against the Government to-night—in which I shall not partake—is not against protecting the country, but is against the method by which the money is to be raised.
  We are unanimous on all sides of the Committee on the question that something has to be done to make England safe. The country is in danger. Something more than the country is in danger -liberty is in danger, and, in the circumstances, we want to make not merely the biggest sacrifice here but the biggest impression upon foreign nations. This has been spoken of as a war measure, and it is a war measure. Just as in August, 1914, we had unanimity, so we have unanimity to-day. We will not go down before the dictatorships. I meet this White Paper with general approval, qualified by doubt. Certainly I strongly approve of re-arming the Army, so that it can face its fate in the next war with the best weapons available. The tendency to go into a war with weapons suitable for the last war has always been fatal to us in the opening stages of a war, and anything that can be done to provide machine guns of the latest pattern, to provide armoured cars of the latest pattern, to provide the best rifles and everything of' that sort, should be done. We do not want to increase the size of the Army; what we want to increase is the safety of the man and his confidence that he has the best weapons available. We have recently seen a terrible example of fighting in Spain. Anyone who has

  1443
  been reading the accounts of what has been going on there must realise that modem warfare with machines against people without machines cannot possibly be resisted, and the lesson of that war should be sufficient of itself to call for the mechanisation in every degree of the British Army.
  I am afraid I differ from some of my colleagues—not from all—in preferring that, if we have to raise £1,500,000,000,it should be done by loan, at least in part. I am still an impenitent inflationist; I prefer to run into debt rather than to pay as I go. Of course, that was a heresy seven years ago, and we should have been burned at the stake for saying anything of the sort, but since then we have had the experience of the admirable action of the Government in putting the pound off gold, which has created a boom in trade and brought about the wave of prosperity of which we hear so much and see so little. I can even agree with my hon. Friend here that all these good Gladstonian theories, all that we learned from John Stuart Mill and the economists, has been destroyed by the sudden discovery that we could do without gold, and have a capital levy without any trouble. I think, too, that the Government have made better provision for keeping control over the expenditure of the money than I was afraid they would. During the War, the first afternoon we voted £100,000,000, and after that it got into thousands. We voted it automatically, the Departments spent it royally, and the Treasury had no check over it whatever. That strengthens the argument for the principle of keeping Treasury control and a Treasury check—particularly a Treasury check on the profits made. Only by the most careful cost accounting can you ensure that firms shall not make extortionate profits out of the need of the British people.
  I approve of the emphasis that is laid on the necessity of providing large reserves of ammunition. I remember the War Office in the last War continually stopping the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), and, indeed, everyone who was pressing for increased supplies of shells—saying that they were not needed, cutting down the amounts that they were prepared to supply—while our men in Flanders were being shot to pieces
  1444
  and were unable to reply to the German shells. And that was not merely the case with shells; it was also the case with all those other munitions of war which are not perhaps so obvious as shells and ammunition and rifles.
  Lieut.-Colonel C. Kerr: Do I understand the right hon. and gallant Gentleman to say that the War Office were putting a restriction in any way on the number of shells sent out to our Forces?
  Colonel Wedgwood: Perhaps I should put it in a different way. I am taking it from the memoirs of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, in whom I should have every confidence as a Minister of Munitions or as Prime Minister. He repeatedly doubled the demands of the War Office in his orders for shells so that the supplies should be greater than the War Office were asking for. That is what we ought to avoid in the future, and that is what we should avoid if we had really large reserves of ammunition for the Army, for the Fleet, and, above all, for the Air Force. When one comes to the question of ammunition for the Air Force, by far the most important form of ammunition is a large reserve of petrol and oil. I hope, when I hear that special provision is to be made for ammunition, that provision will also be made for reserves of oil; and I should like to follow in the shocking footsteps of the hon. Member for Londonderry (Sir R. Ross) by saying that I think some of the derelict mines in my constituency might be used for storing oil. I would be quite safe there.
  While approving of these features of the proposals, I also want to secure unity and to deprecate the extraordinarily foolish partisan speech made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday. I cannot conceive what is the use of right hon. Gentlemen opposite, upon whom the country depends at the present time, who have a responsibility for saving this country from untold disaster, making partisan points seven years old against Members on this side of the House. There is no advantage in it; it destroys the chance of unanimity, and it shows a lamentable lack of intelligence on the part of the right hon. Gentleman as to the seriousness of the position and the duties of his station. You do not expect the Opposition to be always so careful of their language as the Government ought to be.

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  I come now to the points which I think every reasonable person in the House must criticise in the White Paper. Obviously, if the country is in danger, it is in danger from a special quarter. I would suggest that, in rearming, we should rearm against that danger. I quite agree that it is impossible for the right hon. Gentleman, or even for the Minister for Co-ordination of Defence, who tells us a little more than the other people do, to get up and say against whom we are arming, but what we want to know is whether the staffs, all those people who are co-ordinating together, do hear him say, "We are arming against X; the danger is from X." Do we hear him saying to them, or do they hear him saying, "Our Allies in the next war will be So-and-so and What-not; take those into consideration in your plan"?
  Looking at this White Paper I should say that it has been drawn up by Colonel Blimps of all sorts with a view to increasing their own Services to the maximum and with a complete disregard for the real needs of the country—all based upon the idea that the country exists for the Navy and not that the Navy exists for the country. Can one, realising what the exact danger is, explain on any other grounds the particular increases demanded? Ammunition for the Army—all right. Ammunition for the Air Force—insufficient; something more must be done. But the Navy? If the danger is where we expect it, then there is only a small navy to fight; there is agreement with us to arm Germany with half our number of ships; it is a country to which, as we have given up the Baltic, we cannot even make ourselves unpleasant. What, then, is the reason for building these battleships at £8,000,000 apiece? What are they for, except to provide comfortable quarters for admirals afloat? The admirals ought to be here in Whitehall, but they like being afloat. That represents, I suppose, £30,000,000, which is not wanted for the pressing danger, but which is wanted by the Colonel Blimps of the Admiralty. But that is not all. There are to be two more aircraft-carrying ships, the cost of which is not given, but I suppose we can reckon it at £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 each. I ask the experts, what are aircraft carriers for? They are to defend the Fleet against attack. There is no danger of our Fleet being attacked by the German Fleet, and,
  1446
  therefore, there is no need for these aircraft carriers. We do not even know—I do not suppose the First Lord has the faintest idea—where the Fleet will go if war breaks out with Germany. [An HON. MEMBER: "To Belfast Lough."] My impression is that they will go further, and where they go the aircraft carriers will go with them. They are not to defend this country, but to defend the Fleet.
  Mr. Simmonds: Has it occurred to the right hon. and gallant Gentleman that the aircraft carriers will take our aircraft to any part of the world where our Fleet might be attacked, not by the German Navy, but by hostile aircraft?
  Colonel Wedgwood: Oh, yes, bless my soul, I had already thought of that. We have all thought of that, and the Colonel Blimps also have thought of it. Our danger is not from Japan; our danger is nearer home. If we are in danger to-day, it is not because of Japan, it is not because of America. All these beautiful plans made up to make us immune from attack from America, from Japan, from Mussolini, or whatever it may be, do not interest me in the least, and they ought not to interest the Front Bench opposite. If the country is in danger, it is in danger from Germany, and what we want to do is to spend our money in the best possible way to save us from Hitler. The hon. Member for Duddeston (Mr. Simmonds) exactly emphasised the point I wish to make. My objection to the White Paper is that it is devised, within the limits of the money available, to make us safe from everywhere. I want to be safe, and certainly safe, from the one danger.
  If we are in danger, if we are making this enormous sacrifice of £1,500,000,000 to save ourselves, surely we ought to take into account the fact that we ought to have allies. I see nothing in the White Paper—I dare say it is all right—to indicate that there has been consultation with the staffs of the French Government or the Russian Government. I see nothing to show that there has been any form of co-ordination between the Services. That, no doubt, is satisfactory under the aegis of the Minister, but who is to co-ordinate France, who is to co-ordinate Russia—the people who are in equal danger, and who will be tackled separately if they do not stick together? We have had in the past rather dramatic meetings of the chiefs

  1447
  of staffs of the French and British armies, and a great deal of junketing and publicity takes place, and a great deal of annoyance to other Powers. What I want to know is whether we can be assured that there is consultation going on quietly and that that consultation has taken shape in this memorandum. I can imagine the French saying: "What we want from you is an irresistible Navy in the Mediterranean to protect us from the dictators down there." I can quite understand the Russians saying, "Do not bother about the Air Force. We have enough aeroplanes to look after them without yours." But although those views would not, I hope, be accepted by the Government, I think that they ought to be taken into account and considered, and that any plan for spending £1,500,000,000 ought to be taken only after all the other elements which make both for danger and for safety have been taken into account and reckoned with before the actual orders go out.
  The right hon. Gentleman gave us an account of how the staffs of the Army, Navy and Air Force had combined together to discuss the best means of defending our ports. There, too, I think we may learn from what has been recently happening in Spain. I should have thought after the experience of the last War it would have been quite impossible for ships to bombard ports if those ports had any guns whatever to defend them, and yet we have seen recently Malaga, Valencia and Barcelona, which must be defended by long-range guns, being blown to bits by ships four miles out at sea. It is true they have not reached any guns but they have hit the towns, and I think we should learn from that that it is not enough to have the old-fashioned defence that we had before. It is probably not enough to have air defence by anti-aircraft guns. I take the typical raids that we had on Hartlepool and Scarborough. The batteries of Hartlepool had muzzle loaders, which were useless against the German ships. I hope the right hon. Gentleman is providing one or two eight-inch guns to prevent raids upon open seaside towns. Fortunately nearly all our ports, Newcastle, Hull and London, are well up the estuaries and no raid from ships can take place against them. Fortunately I do not suppose German ships could ever
  1448
  get to the West Coast at all, but on the East Coast it seems to me that there ought to be got ready as soon as possible adequate defence against raids from German cruisers.
  In the same way when you are dealing with the Air Force, there, too, we have been comfortably assured that we have actually the very latest and best machines. I have heard stories from Spain which make that seem rather doubtful. I want to know whether Russian bombers, armour-plated, practically immune from attack except by enemy aircraft guns, are being turned out in sufficient numbers in this country or whether we are tied to a certain pattern. I hear that the latest Italian Savoia fighting planes are better than ours. I should like to know whether the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence has insisted on there being some observers representing the Air Force with the armies of the two contending forces in Spain so that we may have at least knowledge as to the latest developments in actual fighting.
  Mr. Simmonds: I gathered that the right hon. Gentleman said the results of the flying of British aircraft of modern design in Spain do not compare well with those of Russian manufacture. Are there, in fact, any modern British aircraft in Spain which can be compared with Russian aircraft?
  Colonel Wedgwood: No. The hon. Member must not misunderstand me. This is reported to me from a British flyer flying German and Italian planes. Fortunately there are no British planes there. I am not complaining of the present British planes. I am saying that the Government should have observers to watch the first example of what we must call "civilised" warfare that has taken place for 18 years.
  There is a further lesson that we ought to learn from Spain, and it is undoubtedly an argument against the position that I have taken up for a long time past. It appears extremely difficult to bomb a ship at sea. The bombing seems to have been extraordinarily bad, and I hear that the anti-aircraft guns are extremely deadly. There should be an observer on the spot who could give us invaluable information and prevent waste of much of this £1,500,000,000. We have the eternal struggle between the Air Force and the Admiralty, a dispute which has been

  1449
  going on for 15 years and which gets bitterer an either side as time goes on. We were even contemplating spending a million pounds in an experiment to see whether an air force could destroy a British battleship. We are having an experiment provided for us for nothing, with no risk to us at all, and we should be learning from that experiment in Spain how best we can save ourselves.
  It is because the Government are still in the hands of the Service Departments, are still thinking of how much money they can get out of the Treasury and how much they can spend on the three great spending Departments that I suspect this White Paper. It is not that we want a quotation from one of the Foreign Secretary's speeches at the head of the Paper. We want evidence that the immediate danger before the country has been the one thing considered, and that every advantage has been taken of the possibility of collective security and of support from Allies in drawing up a list of our necessary requirements. It is because, above all, there is no evidence that this country has yet committed itself to the idea of collective security for the stabilisation of law and order and peace throughout the world, that there should be any doubt about how we should vote to-night. I think a vote for the Government on this occasion would be best, but let it not be misunderstood by either of the two right hon. Gentlemen there. If my friends go into the Lobby against this expenditure, it is not because they are not prepared to defend their country. It is not because they are not prepared to defend democracy and the working class throughout the world. It is because they doubt the use to which you may put this instrument which should secure peace.
  6.55 p.m.
  Captain Lumley: The right hon. Gentleman in his opening remarks about national unity said so much better than I can what I want to say that I feel tempted to tear up my notes, and let his appeal stand by itself. However, I will attempt to add to his appeal such arguments as I can produce, because I regard it as of real importance that what should go out from the House in this Debate is the broadest possible united front for all observers to see. This Resolution and the White Paper which accompanies it make it plain that the Government are prepared, so long as it seems
  1450
  necessary, to rearm the country on a formidable scale. I should regard it as a matter of real regret if in the circumstances that we have to-day anyone should be found to oppose that main intention. After all, we are all agreed on a number of things. No one denies the tension that exists in Europe. No one has sought to belittle the gravity of the crises which have occurred in the last two years. No one is blind to the fact that more crises may arise in future. Certainly no one disputes that this country has an important and even a dominating role to play. We have that measure of agreement, and yet these rearmament proposals are strongly opposed by hon. Members opposite. In their opposition, however, they have left us still in some doubt as to what are the real reasons for their objections. They have seemed to me to swing rather uncertainly between two lines of criticism and we are not quite sure on which they wish to base themselves. At one moment they object to the method of financing rearmament as proposed in this Resolution, and contend that it should not be done by loan. At other times it appears that they object not so much to the method as to the whole policy of rearmament.
  Two arguments have been used in objecting to the method of a loan, and about them I should like to say a word. The hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence) condemned this proposal because he said it would mean inflation, and the people who would suffer first would be the old age pensioners, the unemployed and those with fixed incomes. The burden would be placed on the wrong backs. I make no pretence to be an economic theorist, but that strikes me as a curious argument to Come from hon. Members opposite. In the past their party has identified itself with the policy of large schemes of public works. It is true that they have not been very explicit about the method they would employ for financing them, but when they were in office last they made great efforts to promote such schemes. Unless I am mistaken a considerable part of those schemes was financed by loan and I find it rather difficult to understand why they should think that a similar procedure now is wicked and antisocial. I am driven to the conclusion that their argument really amounts to this—it is common to most Oppositions—

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  that when they propose a thing it is right, noble and a boon to the working class, but that when we do it it is wrong, mean and a deliberate attempt to place further burdens on the poorest sections of the community. I do not think that we can be accused of being unfair if we say that that criticism does not carry very much conviction.
  But there is another argument which has been used and with which, I think, we shall all have to agree. It was said that expenditure of this kind on this scale and for a number of years on armaments is bound to affect the standard of living in this country. I should say that it was bound to do so. It may not reduce it, but it is bound to act as a check on the rise of the standard of life in this country, and that makes the proposals of the Government all the more impressive, when they put forward proposals such as this which they admit will have at least a checking effect on the rise of the standard of living, which we on this side of the House have always wanted to see. I believe it to be true that underlying many of the speeches of hon. Members opposite is some hostility to the whole policy of rearmament. We none of us quarrel with their aversion to rearmament. We on this side do not like to see any more than they do huge expenditure on armaments, whether it is made by loan or by increased taxation. We would much rather see such vast sums used for other purposes. But we cannot escape from unpleasant facts by ignoring them, and it is the facts to-day which compel us to face the burden of rearmament. The central issue in this Debate is not whether it is right or wrong to borrow money to finance rearmament, but whether the facts justify such great expenditure.
  I should like to make an attempt to state as concisely as I can the facts which make it necessary for the people of this country to shoulder the burden of increased rearmament, for unless these facts are generally accepted public opinion will not be behind these proposals as it ought to be. In attempting to state these facts I do not mean to be provocative to any country, and I shall try to state them in a way which will secure the agreement of hon. Members opposite. I think that they can be put in two quite short sentences. First, there are many nations which are
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  heavily armed, and their armaments have greater destructive power, have a wider range and can be more swiftly deployed than ever before. Second, it is impossible for any of us to say that all these armaments are in the hands of peace-minded people. On the contrary, we all know that there are those who to-day teach that war is one of the highest of human enterprises and who look with thinly disguised contempt at an institution like the League of Nations which aims at conciliation and law for the settlement of disputes instead of war.
  That is a formidable combination—men who appear to delight in war having ready to hand engines of war more powerful than any which have before been devised. I do not think that hon. Members opposite will wish to dispute that these are the essential facts which form the background of the existing situation. I think that we agree on the facts. Neither shall we disagree that these facts make it all the more important to pursue every means in bringing about an appeasement which will ensure peace, in taking every opportunity that offers for continuing to try to secure general disarmament and of taking every opportunity that offers to try to strengthen the machinery of the League. Rearmament cannot diminish but should greatly emphasise the necessity for redoubled efforts on these lines. There, I fear, our agreement ends.
  I find it difficult to understand how hon. Members opposite, if they recognise the facts, can advocate the course which they are pursuing in this Debate. It does not seem to square with anything they advocate. We have for some time been familiar with the policy they would pursue in foreign affairs. They demand a more forward foreign policy. They ask continuously that dictators should not be allowed to get away with everything they set their hands to, but with these demands they stop. They will not themselves face up or help the country to face up to the hard unpalatable fact that such a policy needs strength behind it if it is not to be only a poor bluff which is easily seen through. Hon. Members are advocates of collective security. That may be—I think it is—a lofty conception of international policy, but it is easy enough to enunciate a lofty conception but much more difficult to translate it into a practical policy.

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  Surely we have all learned the lesson of 1935–36, that collective security has no chance of success unless it can collect overwhelming force against an aggressor and unless it is certain that that force will if necessary be used. If these things accompany collective security it may prove to be a deterrent; if they do not it is likely to be only a fruitless aggravation of a difficult situation. But it has no chance to act as a deterrent if there is no force to collect, and in refusing to supply force hon. Members are advocating not a fine conception but rather a dangerous sham.
  In the course of the Debate yesterday, some hon. Members opposite complained that the words "collective security" are not even mentioned in the White Paper. That was answered by hon. Members on this side of the House yesterday and again by the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence to-day. I would like to add this one comment. In my humble view there have been too many words and not enough guns about collective security. This White Paper proposes to supply the guns, and when they are provided will be the time to talk more freely and firmly about collective security. But I assume that what hon. Members had in mind was to suggest that collective security played no part in the policy of the Government, and the main excuse of hon. Members opposite in justification of their opposition to rearmament is that they profess not to know the purpose for which these arms will be used. That excuse has done duty in nearly every Debate and every Vote on which armaments have been discussed. It is becoming a bit thin. It has in fact no justification at all.
  Both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have on several occasions laid down the aims of British foreign policy. The Foreign Secretary in particular in this House and in the country, in speeches at Leamington and elsewhere, has defined with some precision the purposes for which our arms may be used, and I believe his definition met with general support throughout the country. No doubt his words are familiar to hon. Members. It is not necessary for me to read them; I will just draw attention to one or two things which he said in the speech at Leamington. He pointed out that our arms would be used in accordance with our existing obligations and in
  1454
  accordance with our vital national interests. He went on to use these words:
  "In addition, our armaments may be used in bringing help to the victim of aggression in any case where in our judgment it would be proper under the provisions of the Covenant to do so."
  What I would like to ask hon. Members opposite is in what respect do they wish to go beyond that?
  Mr. R. Acland: Is it not right to say that in that spech the Foreign Secretary said that our arms may and undoubtedly would be used in accordance with our vital national interests and in respect of our obligations, such as France, and that then he used the rather different words that they may be used in bringing help to a victim of aggression? I am speaking from memory.
  Captain Lumley: I am obliged to the hon. Member, for my right hon. Friend made particular reference to that point. He added—this I think is the answer:
  "I used the word 'may' deliberately since in such an instance there is no automatic obligation to take military action."
  If he had said "would" he would have been going far beyond the covenant of the League. The question I want to ask hon. Members opposite is in what respect do they go beyond the speeches of the Foreign Secretary? In what respect do they regard his definitions as inadequate? I think that we are entitled to have an answer to those questions. These are matters of great import; the safety of the country, the maintenance of peace, are the subjects at issue. If hon. Members think that we are wrong both in our policy and the methods we are taking to make that policy effective, they owe it to the country to say clearly in what respect their aims differ from ours. I invite them, therefore, to make two things clear. In what way do their aims differ from the Government's and what scale of armaments do they require to make their aims effective? I recall in this connection that a few months ago one of the right hon. Gentlemen who usually sit on the Front Bench opposite declared that his party was passing through an intellectual crisis on foreign policy and armaments. We would like to know whether that intellectual crisis has resolved itself into any conclusion yet. If hon. Members cannot tell us what they want, we must conclude, with much sympathy, that their malady still persists.

  1455
  If, happily, they have now been restored to certainty and faith, we can look forward to a clear and robust statement of their requirements both in policy and in armaments.
  There are one or two matters in addition to collective security on which the attitude of hon. Members opposite to-day seems to be at variance with what they usually advocate. Hon. Members are free with the phrase that peace is indivisible, but they do not instruct the country what that means, that if war breaks out anywhere we all ought to be in it. Surely, they must be either a little less free with the use of such high-sounding phrases or a good deal more free with their support of the preparations which will turn such phrases into policy. I notice that quite a number of hon. Gentlemen opposite have put their names to a Motion which expresses the view that no territory under British rule should be handed over to anyone else. On this side of the House we all applaud that sentiment, but how do they propose to keep British territory if an armed nation or a combination of nations should choose to make a demand for such a transfer? Such a sentiment does not appear to be of much value unless it has behind it some armed force.
  There is one other question which I would like to put to hon. Members opposite. I do not think that I am doing them an injustice by saying that they are advocates of close collaboration with two States in particular which are members of the League—France and Russia. I certainly would not complain of their advocacy of such a course, but surely the Governments of these two countries would be justified in complaining, if the only collaboration which hon. Members opposite can offer consists of good-will speeches. With facts as they are in Europe to-day, everything which hon. Members are wont to advocate seems to demand a strongly armed Britain, and yet it appears—I hope that I may be wrong—that on this occasion, as on past occasions, when proposals are made by the Government to strengthen our Forces, the party opposite find some reason for opposing it. I regret that they should take up this attitude of opposition.
  We are agreed upon several fundamental things. We all agree that we want
  1456
  to preserve the free institutions which we regard as essential to our national life. We all recognise too that there are many people outside these islands who look to us with anxious eyes in these days to take a strong stand, if peace is to be maintained and if liberty is to remain in the world. How much better it would be if this House of Commons were unanimous in showing the world that we are resolute in our resolve to devote the great resources of this nation towards this great aim. That would be a united front which would be well worth while. I believe that it would be a great reinforcement to peace, but if, unhappily, unanimity is denied to us by hon. Members opposite, let us then still have a great majority in this House of those who recognise the unwelcome fact that, unless the views of many people in the world are going to change, it may be that in the next few years the strength of our armaments as well as the facility of our arguments may prove decisive in maintaining peace.
  7.20 p.m.
  Sir Stafford Cripps: I hope that in the course of the few remarks which I address to the Committee, I shall answer the observations of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for York (Captain Lumley), anyway as far as I am concerned. There are, indeed, so many points of objection to the proposals that are before us in the Resolution, that it is extremely difficult to cover the whole of the ground in anything like the space of time which I intend to utilise. We are witnessing the most magnificent subscription to the world suicide pact which has yet been publicised in any country in the world, and the objections upon which I particularly desire to dwell, because so many others have already been adequately covered from these Benches, are the objections which I believe to be the most fundamental and the most cognate. I have never expressed myself in this House or elsewhere as taking the pacifist point of view. I am prepared to acknowledge, as many people are to-day, the necessity for armaments in the circumstances that now beset the world. To me, however, the vital question is not whether there should be or should not be armaments in a particular country, but rather for what purpose and by whom those armaments are likely to be used.

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  I do not regard the vital divisions in the world to-day as being the divisions between nation and nation. For instance, to take an example, the armaments of Germany might well be welcomed by this country if those who control those armaments and will use them when they come to be used could be relied upon to have a beneficent purpose for their use. Many of us—certainly all of us on this side of the House—hate and fear those armaments because we know the objective with which they have been built up, and that the purpose for which they will be used is both vicious and bad. It is not the arms and the trained men that we regard as so sinister, but it is the powers that are going to order their use when the appropriate moment comes. It is, in fact, Nazi-ism and all that it stands for and all that it implies in aggressiveness and brutality and the suppression of freedom, that we regard as public enemy No. 1 of the world to-day. We have no quarrel with the people in Germany, and we should have no desire or need to consider arming ourselves or creating great armaments in this country against them, if we were convinced of the pacific intent of their rulers, but Herr Hitler's professions of peace, although strong in words, peace which is to come through the strong armaments of Germany, we do not believe to be genuine, because during the last four years we have experienced and witnessed his acts. He is just as ready, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer is ready, to profess peaceful intentions. He, no doubt, would express his faith in the Pax Germanica, just as the right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench opposite express their faith in the Pax Britannica, and there is, of course, this difference between the two, that Herr Hitler has not yet satisfied his imperial ambitions, whereas our ruling class has done so to a considerable extent at the expense of Germany after the last War.
  But the rivalries of the Pax Germanica and the Pax Britannica in the Imperialist conception of those ideas which rules with the two Governments to-day are a very fertile source for the next world war, just as the same feelings, the same policies and the same desires were the origin or one of the great origins of the last War. Indeed, the history of the whole of the last century in this country as to the use of British arms has largely been a history of what, if we were speaking
  1458
  of the case of Mussolini and Abyssinia, we should call brutal and unprovoked aggression. They have been used continually, either in the conquest or suppression of other peoples, in countries belonging to those other peoples and now brought by that means within the British Empire, or else they have been used to protect our own ownership and interests in those foreign countries. The South African War was a typical example of unprovoked aggression on a weak people in order to acquire the vast wealth of South Africa for the financiers of the City of London. The Great War was a good example of the second, and there is not the slightest indication, in spite of all the vastly increased dangers which are acknowledged in the world to-day, that the Government have any intention whatever of abandoning their traditional Tory outlook upon foreign policy.
  I have no doubts in my own mind as to what the foreign policy of the Government is. It is a policy of remaining in loose isolation, but always ready to pick up at any time that ally who seems likely for the moment to be most useful in maintaining the British Imperial position, quite regardless of the deeper and wider interests of world peace as a whole. By so doing, by this policy of uncertainty, they create an atmosphere of doubt which encourages an arms race throughout the world, and puts a premium upon aggressive incidents by the rulers of other countries who hope that they will be able to get away with it in the prevailing atmosphere of dislocation that is created by such a policy. The flimsy camouflage of the references of the Foreign Secretary to the League of Nations and collective security have, in my view, no object whatever, except to deceive the people of this country. He is the Prime Minister's young man, and he is apeing his leader's admitted acts at the last election when he deliberately went out to deceive the people of this country upon the policy of the Government.
  Some of the Foreign Secretary's colleagues, when challenged—not usually otherwise—give a vague and grudging lip-service to the League of Nations and collective security, in a manner that is quite adequate, I should hope, to convince everybody of their complete insincerity in that matter. The statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer

  1459
  yesterday, when he was interrupted, and his subsequent explanations were certainly sufficient to convince me of his complete insincerity. Indeed, the right hon. Gentlemen opposite have, in their conduct as a Cabinet, thoroughly proved in the last six years, by their acts, not by their words, that insincerity, and have succeeded in destroying any possibility of the effectiveness of any method of collective security in the world to-day. I think it is really almost too childish for even them to believe that these principles, the principles of the Covenant of the League and of collective security, can be thrown overboard whenever it does not suit them to carry those colours internationally, and then can be fished up again and utilised when the British Empire might find it convenient to call in aid the assistance of other Powers.
  Quite shamelessly and publicly they have thrown away these resources of peace, and now, of course, they are too thoroughly distrusted throughout the world for them to be able to rely, as they themselves admit, upon any measure of collective security. The surrender to Japan over Manchuria, the surrender to Germany over the continuously aggressive tactics of Hitler, the surrender to Mussolini over the Abyssinian incident, the refusal to enter into any pact or arrangement with Russia and France for the purpose of preserving collective security in Europe to-day, and the sacrifice of Spanish democracy to the forces of international Fascism are the acts of a Government that regards the major danger in the world to-day as being the growth of working-class power and not as being an attack from any other nation; and in that danger they are naturally gravitating towards their fellow capitalist Governments, whether those be democratic, autocratic, or Fascist. What we are concerned with to-day are the rights and the powers of the common people throughout the world, not the property and the profits of the respective ruling classes in the capitalist countries.
  The question that I ask myself is whether the provision of this £400,000,000 is going to benefit or enlarge the rights, or even protect such rights as still survive, of the masses of the people in the world. It may be that with a Government which could be trusted to advance these causes, the causes of the common people, such an
  1460
  expenditure might be necessary and unavoidable, though in my view it could never be sound or proper to postpone the burden to future generations by making that expenditure out of loan moneys instead of out of taxation; but when I am asked to trust this Government with the expenditure of that money, then I answer, without hesitation, "Not at any price." I am absolutely certain that the increased armaments that this money will give them the power to control will be used for thoroughly vicious purposes in the future, exactly as they have been used by their predecessors in the past. They will be used for the continued domination of the subject peoples, such, for instance, as the people of India. That will be made more certain by the increase of this power. War, if it is engaged in, will be for the protection of the property and interests of the few and will not be for the winning of greater freedom for the use of the common people, either here or in other countries.
  Mr. Austin Hopkinson: The hon. and learned Member is continually using the term "the common people." Are the common people not the people who returned us by overwhelming majorities?
  Sir S. Cripps: They are only the deluded common people. The diplomacy which will be reinforced, if diplomacy is reinforced, by these methods of the Government plan will be the diplomacy of imperialist rivalry and class domination which has marked this Government from its very inception. In fact, we shall be encouraging all those very evil things against which the workers of this country have organised themselves politically to fight, and we shall be giving new strength and greater power, by placing these great resources in the hands of the Government, to a ruling class whose whole history proves them capable of governing only in their own interests. If I am asked, as no doubt I might be, "What then would you do in the face of this Fascist menace?" my first answer would be certainly not to trust this Government, who are far more likely to be the allies of Fascism than the allies of Russia or any other working-class country; and my second answer would be that if the people of this country want protection against Fascism, they must understand that they can only get such protection by giving the control

  1461
  of their foreign policy and of their armed forces to some other Government which they can trust.
  Sir Cooper Rawson: Such as?
  Sir S. Cripps: Such as a workers' Government.
  Sir C. Rawson: You would not be in it.
  Sir S. Cripps: I am not concerned as to whether I am in any Government or not. I am concerned with the safety of the masses of the people in this and in other countries. If the people want protection against Fascism, they will only get it by giving control to some other Government, which they can trust not only to protect them from this menace of Fascism, which I most willingly acknowledge to be present in the world, but also to do what this Government have steadfastly refused to do, in spite of every pressure that has been brought to bear upon them during the last five years, by people of all classes and conditions in this country, that is, to initiate some real policy of peace, not a policy of maintaining political peace on a substratum of continual economic warfare, but a policy going to the root of the causes of war, which even the most reactionary to-day are prepared to admit are economic in their origin and are not merely political and emotional, as used so often to be the case.
  One would have thought that there had been enough demonstration during the last 18 years that you will inevitably drift nearer and nearer to war if you merely try to rely upon occasional political conferences and discussions internationally, while leaving all the time the economic rivalries of the world working day in and day out in the creation of the conditions which will produce war. Yet, in spite of these 18 years of experience, these 18 years of continued failure in the world, and the obvious and rapid approach to a fresh era of war, the Government have done nothing, literally nothing, during the last six years even to begin to explore a policy of economic peace.
  When one is considering this problem, it is necessary to consider who is going to suffer most if this Motion is passed. Certainly not the ruling class. Nobody, I think, in this Committee would deny that proposition. They have the opportunity of using their wealth to obtain all the good pickings that go to the wealthy in
  1462
  boom periods. A fresh period of profiteering is opening up to them, and there are boom conditions on the Stock Exchange. A rise in prices brings no great hardship to the ruling class. Their incomes rise very much more quickly than the prices. Even already profits and luxury expenditure are going up well ahead of the rise in prices, and the profits which are going to the wealthy are out of all proportion to the meagre rises that have been obtained by the wage earners. It is the poor housewife and her family who will feel the pinch as wages crawl up far behind the price-rise in the next few months and years.
  That will be the case if the armaments are never used, and then, when the end of this great programme comes, as come it must one day, unless, as the Chancellor suggests, the back of civilisation is to be broken under the continued load, there will be the most cataclysmic slump that this country has ever known, and then the poor will suffer even more terribly than they did on the last occasion. The boom period of pawnbroking will then be ushered in, and the only drawback will be that there will be such a glut in the market that even those resources will be valueless to the ever-growing crowd of unemployed who will be thrown on to the labour market. If the armaments are used, then millions of the common people in this country and in other countries will perish, and in what remains of civilisation, if anything remains, they will live a life of anguished poverty as they did after the last war. The great mass of the people will undoubtedly have to pay the main price of the suffering and tragedy in either of the events. Surely, then, they have a right to lay down their own conditions if they are to be called upon to make all this vast sacrifice, and the only safe condition that, in my view, they can impose is that they should have the control, through their own Government and their own political party, of both armaments and foreign policy, which will condition the use to which those armaments will or will not be put.
  Without the working class the rest of this country can do absolutely nothing to make armaments or to man the arms when they have been made. Workers are vitally necessary to carry out those tasks for the nation if those tasks are to be carried through. They have the right,

  1463
  therefore, to demand to govern and control the nation and its foreign policy, which will determine how those arms shall be utilised; not to govern it vicariously through the admitted deceptions of a reactionary Prime Minister, but to govern it directly through their own party and their own policy. If the minority in this country, the ruling class, who control all the wealth and the money, want the protection that only the workers can give them in these circumstances, then as a condition of that protection they should be prepared to put themselves politically and economically in the minority position which they ought rightly to occupy.
  My attitude, therefore, is this, that I shall resist to the last giving to this Government any further power for evil—evil demonstrated by the traditions of the class to which they belong and by the history of their whole foreign policy from 1931 down to to-day. I shall do my utmost to urge the common people of this country to refuse their assistance, financially and materially, to this Government, so that they may insist, as they have to pay the toll of tragedy and suffering, that they shall have the power to govern the affairs of the country through their own political representatives. In that way, at least, they may have a chance of obviating the appalling conditions which, whatever happens, war or no war, are bound to be the outcome of the continuance in power of this Government.
  7.47 p.m.
  Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes: I have no intention to follow the hon. and learned Member into the various arguments that he advanced. But he attacked the Government for not making war on Japan over Manchuria, and I should like to remind him, as I have reminded hon. Members before in this House, that the Socialist Government of which he was a member made it impossible, by shutting down the naval base at Singapore, for Great Britain to wage any war in the Far East. I ought to know what I am talking about, because for three years I commanded the Fleet that was destined to go to the Far East in case of trouble. In those circumstances it would have been absolutely futile for the Fleet to have gone east of Suez.
  1464
  I am sorry that the right hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood) is not here, because I should have liked him to hear my view that the opinions he expressed at the beginning of his speech more closely represent the opinions of the working man in the street than do the views expressed by the last speaker and other Socialists on the benches opposite. If the right hon. and gallant Member had been present I might have been tempted into following him in regard to questions of naval strategy. I am very glad to have an opportunity of saying a few words on this Resolution, because ever since my active career in the Navy came to an end, nearly six years ago, I have gone all over the country stressing the vital importance of rearming in the interests of peace and security, and the obvious fact that a Defence loan was the only possible way of providing the enormous sum that would be needed to make good the immense deficiencies which have accumulated while successive Governments have been disarming in the vain hope of getting other countries to follow their example.
  I do not propose to go into the details of the Resolution, which were lucidly explained by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and have been so scathingly attacked by speakers on the opposite benches, but I should like to remind the right hon. and gallant Member for New-castle-under-Lyme and the last speaker that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom they both attacked so hotly, is the same Chancellor of the Exchequer who found the finances of the nation in a state of disastrous bankruptcy after two years of Socialist administration, and that he is the same Chancellor of the Exchequer who lifted the finances of the country into a state of prosperity which is the envy of the whole world. Moreover, the people of the country respect and trust the Chancellor of the Exchequer, while they have every reason profoundly to distrust the finance policy of the Socialist Opposition.
  Until human nature changes it is a deplorable fact that risk of war cannot be regarded as banished, although I and others like myself who have seen something of war are fearfully keen to make war impossible. After every great war exhaustion, the apparent remoteness of another war, and the need for economy

  1465
  and retrenchment have brought about disarmament. The triumphs which Great Britain has enjoyed or the tribulations which she has suffered have depended on the extent to which she has rearmed before it is too late, Or the extent to which she has disarmed and the measure of her unpreparedness for the next war. I do not want to weary the House with history, but the ever-recurring lessons of history are of great value to those who come after, and I should like to refer to one or two points which have a particular bearing on the Resolution. In 1815, at the end of the Napcleonic wars, British sea power was supreme. To quote Napoleon's own words:
  "In all my plans I have always been thwarted by the British Fleet."
  For the next 100 years the Navy's task was limited to co-operating with the Army in the Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, and a few small minor wars, in surveying and charting the seven seas, in police duties all over the world and in the suppression of piracy and slavery. The British Navy in those 100 years was a great factor in the preservation of world peace. British sea power was not challenged for about 70 years, but the Government of 1870, believing that there would be no more war, cut down the Navy most drastically. Hundreds of officers and men were axed and discharged under what is known as the Childers scheme—Mr. Childers being the First Lord of the Admiralty at that time—and a very small Fleet was kept in being. France and Russia took advantage of this opportunity and began to build modern fleets and became our potential enemies, just as other nations have been doing in the last few years. During the Napoleonic wars people living on the south coast of England were terrified of invasion, and martello towers were strung right round the coast. In the early 'eighties history repeated itself and immense sums were spent on the building of great fortifications to allay the fear of the blue funk school, who have their counterpart to-day in those evil geniuses of Imperial Defence who are obsessed with the fear of the bombardment of London, to the exclusion of all other considerations of national defence.
  In those days, however, there was a blue water school, as there is to-day, but, fortunately for Great Britain and the Empire, a young naval captain, Lord
  1466
  Charles Beresford, went on half pay and entered Parliament to call attention to the deplorable state of the Navy. Thanks mainly to his efforts the country woke up to the fact that the security of the nation and its overseas Colonies was entirely dependent on the possession of sea power, and that while vast sums were being squandered on fortifications our sea power had dwindled to such an extent that the British Navy was incapable of protecting the trade and sea communications of the country against the modern fleets that were being built up by France and Russia. Beresford was well supported in both Houses of Parliament and the Naval Defence Act was passed in May, 1889. That Act authorised the Government to build 70 ships and to spread the expenditure over five years, as is proposed under this Resolution.
  It is interesting to read the Debates that took place in 1889. The criticisms are so painfully similar to those which have been put forward by the Opposition ever since the Government announced that they intended to restore our defences. The supporters of the Naval Defence Act declared that it was intended to maintain the peace of Europe, to protect our Colonies and commerce and to render our shores safe from attack. The opponents said that the Government's proposals were an incentive to war. Here is one quotation:
  "Instead of peddling with new guns and new ships, the Government should enter into negotiations with other nations."
  Another speaker said:
  "You are going to build enormous ships that will cost you a million sterling each. How do we know that any one of these may not at any moment be shattered to pieces by dynamite torpedoes?"
  It is the same old story, but at the present time the opponents say that the ships, may be destroyed by bombs from the air—all the same appeals to fear, with which we who have been striving hard for years to get our defences put into order, are so familiar. The 1889 Act was passed by a majority of two to one and was acclaimed throughout the country, despite the frenzied denunciations of the Opposition of that day. I will give one more quotation:
  "If the people realised how their money was being wasted, those who occupy the Front Benches would have been swept away with ignominy."

  1467
  Nevertheless this wise measure was the foundation of our modern Navy which helped to keep the peace for 20 years. In 1914 a Liberal Government in office, determined to maintain peace and to keep out of Continental entanglements, found itself involved in a war for which the country was utterly unprepared except in regard to the Navy—and we have to thank the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) for the preparedness of the Navy at that time— and a small Army which held the ring at terrible cost while the youth and manhood of the Empire was trained to meet the ordeal before it.
  Never during the past 300 years has Great Britain's sea power been relatively so low as it is to-day, and in estimating sea power I include the strength of the Mercantile Marine. An immense effort will be necessary to restore our sea power, and I am thankful that this wise and statesmanlike measure gives hope that it will be properly restored before it is too late. Ever since I entered this House I have pleaded with the Opposition to put questions of Defence outside party politics. What a splendid thing it would be, and what an effect it would have all over the world, particularly in the totalitarian States, if this democratic House of Parliament would show a united front and demonstrate to the whole world that it means to rearm in order to give security to the Empire and enable Great Britain to play its traditional part in keeping world peace. I would like to support the concluding words of my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence which he expresed in moving terms. May I suggest to hon. Members opposite that before they finally decide to carry this matter to a Division they should remember what happened in 1889 and reflect upon what would have happened in 1914 if the Opposition of 1889 had had their way?
  8.4 p.m.
  Mr. Garro Jones: The hon. and gallant Member who has just sat down made an appeal to us on these benches to present a united front on the question of national Defence. There is a united front on national Defence, but the question is what is meant by national Defence? That is the issue that divides the other side of the House from this side. Having said that, I should like to
  1468
  know what would have been the response of the hon. and gallant Member if seven years ago we from that side of the House had made an appeal for a united front in the borrowing of £100,000,000 for the defence of the morale and the livelihood and the health and the spirits of the unemployed of this country? What would have been the response if we had asked for that to be put outside the realm of party politics? I am afraid the hon. and gallant Member would not have been so ready to place that above party politics.
  Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes: The hon. Member must not conclude that my sympathies with the working classes are not as keen as his.
  Mr. Garro Jones: Whereas seven years ago it was said to be wrong to borrow £100,000,000 to save the poor masses of our population, it is considered right now to borrow £400,000,000 for purposes of Defence. That is the position that has not been explained. It has been said that it is a matter of confidence, but confidence is largely a manufactured thing. Speaker after speaker on the other side of the House has made the boast that the present Chancellor of the Exchequer is the man who is responsible for restoring the confidence of this country and that the Labour Government of 1931 was responsible for destroying it. I deplore the dishonesty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in sitting there and allowing that statement to be made by one speaker after another from his side of the House when he himself stated in the country that the crisis and the lack of confidence in 1931 were not brought about by the Labour Government at all.
  I have a report of his speech, and as this matter of confidence and crisis is of vital application to the validity of the proposal to borrow money rather than spend it out of income, I think I am entitled to read an extract from that report. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer said in 1931. when the crisis was supposed to be over:
  "I make this statement at once, that the financial troubles have not come upon us through anything that was done in this country or by the late Government."
  That was the Labour Government. I think it is regrettable, the Chancellor of the Exchequer having made such an admission, that speaker after speaker for

  1469
  years should repeat that false charge, and that the Chancellor should never take it upon himself to refute it. Again, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill)—no friend of ours—speaking on the same theme, said in 1932 in this House:
  "I thought, myself, that there was a good deal of exaggeration about the crisis which arose last August and September—and a certain amount of manipulation."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th May, 1932; col. 1175, Vol. 265.]
  I think we are entitled, on the authority of those great experts in finance, to say that there is no validity in the contention that this Government is entitled to borrow money for armaments while the Labour Government was not entitled to borrow for the vital needs of the poorer sections of the population.
  Mr. Stuart Russell: May I ask the hon. Member to give the place and date of the speeches he has quoted, and also whether he has given the House full and fair extracts from those speeches, or whether what he has quoted was followed by some qualification?
  Mr. Garro Jones: I will give the hon. Gentleman the information he asks for. I can assure him I am not in the habit of making garbled quotations. These speeches are not susceptible of any other meaning. The speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was made at Sheffield on 15th October. 1931, and if the hon. Member finds that I have quoted it accurately I shall be obliged if he will propagate that information among his friends. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping spoke in this House on 4th May, 1932.
  The fundamental question which has arisen in the course of this Debate is whether or not this country would be wise or prudent to rely upon the principle of collective security at this stage and in the present state of the world. Quite frankly I confess that at the present moment that would be an untenable position to take up. Obviously, collective security and the present strength of the League of Nations do not in present circumstances provide sufficient protection against the menaces which surround us. But whose fault is that?
  In the face of all the rebuffs and the betrayals which the principle of collective security and of the League of Nations has had to bear in the last few years, it
  1470
  would be more than a miracle if at present that were established as an international principle. It is only two or three years ago that the present Prime Minister was stumping the country expressing his doubts as to whether at that stage there was any usefulness in collective security. The whole history of the diplomacy of this country since the War has been a story of reluctance by Conservative Governments to accept that principle of collective security. It is necessary to mention only a few instances. There was the bombardment of Corfu by Italy; there was the invasion of Lithuania and Memel; there was—the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary must bear his part of the blame for this, although no doubt he thinks he has a very good defence—the invasion of Manchuria by Japan; and there was the final calamity of the betrayal of the principle of collective security when the Italian Dictator was allowed to invade Abyssinia and get away with it.
  I say that if successive Conservative Governments in this country since the War had taken a strong stand, collective security would be enthroned to-day as a principle of peace upon which the nations could rely. We intend to maintain the full force of our effort towards bringing about that situation.
  We have been asked from the other side whether or not we are in favour of the degree of rearmament which is now being proposed. I am going to admit quite frankly that that places hon. Members on this side of the House in a considerable and honest difficulty. I have always disbelieved in the wisdom and morality of competitive armaments. I believe that since the War, British Governments, influenced by former French Governments, have failed to implement the disarmament contemplated by the Treaty of Versailles, and have failed to tackle the economic and political causes of war. I believe that that failure has brought us to the position we are in to-day. But if by reason of these blunders in policy we are confronted with a deterioration in the international situation which makes us admit that at the moment it is necessary to strengthen our armaments, then I say that, whether we support or abstain from opposing these increased armaments, we are entitled in so doing to reject responsibility for the blunders in foreign policy

  1471
  which have brought about the necessity for re-armament.
  As far as I am concerned—although I am not prepared to commit myself to support or oppose any particular item of armaments—that is my attitude towards any armament proposals that are put forward.
  I want to deal with the reiterated claim that these are defensive armaments. I am not so sure whether, in the true sense of the term, they are defensive armaments. There is a saying in the most elementary books on strategy that offence is the soul of defence. If we examine the present world situation we might be able to apply the converse—namely, that defence is the soul of offence. If the nation is merely going to stand pat on the present position, if we say that we are going to make no concessions or alterations in the map of the world, no economic concessions, that what we have we hold, and that if anybody attacks us they do so at their peril, I cannot regard that as a true defensive attitude. Unless the present and any other Government are prepared to tackle the economic and territorial causes of war it is impossible for us to say that they are standing only on the defensive in holding to what they possess. Here I find myself quite frankly in a different position to some of my hon. Friends. The whole political story of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, East (Mr. Mander) has been one of pacific intention, but he joins with many others in repeatedly pestering the Government to give a pledge that in no circumstances will they restore to Germany the colonies which were taken from her. That is a dangerous and untenable attitude. If we were to put ourselves in the position of Germany to-day and had to contemplate the Polish Corridor, lack of colonies and lack of economic opportunities, we should never accept permanent peace until there had been a rectification of that position. It is regrettable that we have responsible ex-Ministers like the right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) and hon. Members like the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, East who say that in no circumstances must we listen to the claim of other nations for a restoration of their colonies.
  Mr. Mander: Let me make my position clear, as it differs from that of some hon. Members. I entirely agree that so long
  1472
  as we maintain individual Colonies Germany has a legitimate claim, but I would get over that by developing the mandate system, by placing all Colonies under the international control of the League of Nations.
  Mr. Garro Jones: That has not been always the position of the hon. Member, because the burden of his appeals to the Government has been for an assurance that in no circumstances will Germany's Colonies be returned. He now says that so long as there is the system of Colonies owned by separate nations, he is in favour of giving Germany her fair share.
  Mr. McGovern: Is the hon. Member in favour of giving Colonies back to Germany?
  Mr. Garro Jones: I am in favour of having the question put before a tribunal of equity as part of the general pacification of the world. If Germany is prepared to enter into disarmament on the basis of justice all round I would give Germany such measures of economic and territorial adjustment as an international tribunal of equity might decide. If we are going into such a tribunal with our minds made up, if we say that we do not propose to make any concessions, there will be no permanent pacification for the world. We must remove these causes of war. If we do not we shall go on with rearmament, which finally will mean conflagration. I have long sought for an opportunity to put my point of view on these matters, and I am glad of this opportunity, however much offence it may give in some quarters.
  In dealing with these armament proposals we shall want to satisfy ourselves that there are no blunders in the general conception of the armaments policy of this country, that is, in the general architecture of our armaments policy. I am wholy unconvinced that these matters have been tackled by the authorities who are responsible. Let me read a statement made by the present First Lord of the Admiralty:
  "As our lives depend on a free passage through the seven seas of the world the Fleet must be strong enough to go anywhere and carry out its duty in any conditions. It is our determination to have such a Fleet, and to build it with the least possible delay."
  That means a Fleet of a remarkable size. When we seat our Fleet to the Mediterranean, although it had a

  1473
  superiority of five to one, it was quite ineffective for the purpose for which it was sent. I want to know whether the Government have tackled the problem as to what are to be the functions of the great battleships—the bulk of the expenditure we are being asked to sanction is for the Fleet. The Mediterranean was an example of the futility of the Fleet in narrow waters. I heard the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence say that he believed the Fleet had overcome the menace of the submarine and the torpedo. If my figures are correct only 85 submarines were sunk by this country during the whole of 1918, and that was only 19 more than in 1917, with all the best antisubmarine devices we then had. Since then there has been a new menace of small, fast motor-boats, carrying torpedoes, and the vast development of the air menace. I am no Air Force partisan, although that was the Service in which I spent a considerable number of years, but I am utterly unable to see for what purpose those great battleships can be used.
  The First Lord of the Admiralty, who appears to have changed his view on this point, said that the great battleships must be able to go out into the high seas, four-fifths of the oceans of the world, where aeroplanes can never reach. But the strange fact is that those are the four-fifths of the oceans which do not matter. It is the narrow waters that will decide the results of the next war; it is in those narrow waters that the issues will be fought out. I sincerely hope that on that point we shall be able to have a certain amount of further information. If we look over the whole history of the wars of the world, we shall see that they were not fought out on the great oceans, or in the Dominions and the Colonies. There were minor battles fought there, but the last word was said in Europe. It was in Europe that the treaties of peace were decided.
  I would like to say, finally, that I think it is a great mistake for the whole of the Defence organisation to be left in the hands of one Minister, both for supply and for strategic questions. If the speeches which we hear from the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence are a typical example of the ground which he has to cover in a day's work, I am not a bit surprised that he finds himself a little muddle-headed when he tackles these problems. I took the trouble after
  1474
  the last speech but one that he made to make a list of the subjects with which he dealt, and I think it would be worth while for the Committee to hear them. In the course of 40 minutes, this is the range of subjects which he attempted to cover: the Royal Commission on the Private Manufacture of Arms, a disquisition on the defensive character of the programme, the importance of the Fleet in a scheme of Defence, air expansion, scientific armaments research, labour difficulties, organisation of the Territorial Army, the Fleet Air Arm, Aeroplane—Battleship Inquiry, strategic use of the Army, a disquisition on recruiting, the training of Royal Air Force Reserves, the shadow scheme of aircraft manufacture, training of labour, and the advisability of a Ministry of Supply.
  To those of us who spend so much of our time appealing for a clarification and a planned scheme in dealing with the Defence Services it seems lamentable that we are not able to arrange our debates so as to avoid the necessity of ranging over so wide a field.
  I think it is impossible for one Minister to try to bring together two jigsaw puzzles at the same time, one dealing with questions of supply and the other dealing with questions of Defence. An entirely different type of man is wanted for them. The type of mind that can focus on questions of supply is not interested in questions of strategy. The type of mind which can envisage the whole of the strategic problems on the map of the world is unutterably bored with questions of supply and details such as have to be dealt with by the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence. We want somebody who understands these questions. I am not at all sure that the present Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence is the right man for that part of the work. I do not think it is the learning of his profession which is wanted for such a job. I think someone ought to be appointed who has some knowledge of these strategical questions. I do not say he ought to be a soldier or a sailor, for I have no faith in that type of mind; but I think someone ought to be appointed who has had a little more experience of such things than the present Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence. He has no knowledge of military operations. I do not think he has ever seen

  1475
  any military operation more important than the changing of the Guard in Whitehall. Therefore, I hope we shall have somebody put into that position who at any rate speaks the language, for until that is done I, for one, shall not have full confidence in the general architecture of the Defence scheme of the Government.
  8.30 p.m.
  Lieut.-Colonel Kerr: I would like for a moment to dwell on one or two of the points raised by the hon. Member for North Aberdeen (Mr. Garro Jones). With regard to the hon. Member's criticism of the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, I think he was a little hard on the right hon. Gentleman. I admit that in the speech of 40 minutes' duration to which the hon. Member referred and to which I listened, the right hon. Gentleman did cover a great deal of ground; but surely that is the type of man one wants in that position—a man who can co-ordinate all those big matters. It would be inadvisable for a Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence to be a soldier of much knowledge or a sailor of much knowledge. We need a man who is capable of taking the chair when all this great and intricate technical knowledge comes before him for purposes of coordination in the arranging of the Defences of the country.
  Another point of the hon. Member's speech to which I would like to refer is his attack on the Government for having refused, in 1931, to borrow £100,000,000 for the purpose of creating work to absorb the unemployed. I wonder whether the hon. Member has really thought about that matter very much? The great difficulty which everybody has had, hon. Members opposite as well as hon. Members on this side, has been to find out how to devise schemes which would be worth financing, which would not be a burden after they were completed and which at the time of their creation and their completion would not put other men out of work. That has been the great difficulty. In the present case, in the terrible necessity for spending this vast sum on armaments, we are not competing with any other industry.
  Mr. Messer: May I ask the hon. And gallant Member a question?
  Lieut.-Colonel Kern: Perhaps the hon. Member will ask it later on, for I wish to develop my argument now.
  Mr. Messer: You will have left the matter then.
  Lieut.-Colonel Kerr: The hon. Member will find an opportunity of asking his question later on. My point is that in this terrible necessity of spending this vast sum, there will be no interference with the general trade of the country; in fact, it will help unemployment. It is terrible to think that this is the thing which will do that, but undoubtedly it will. Hon. Members opposite say that all of this will benefit a small number of very rich people. Is that really true? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes!"] How much of this £1,500,000,000 do hon. Members suppose will go in wages? I should think the whole lot of it, if it could be technically analyzed. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO!"] Hon. Members cannot get away from that fact. There is the cost of the material, which, after all, has to be produced by labour—that is, to a great extent, wages.
  Mr. Gallacher: Where do the wages go?
  Lieut.-Colonel Kerr: I have listened most attentively to hon. Members who have spoken. If I were saying anything untrue or unreasonable, I would bow to any hon. Member who interrupted me, but I do not think frivolous interruptions are necessary on an occasion of this sort, for the matter is far too serious. Another point has been raised by hon. Gentlemen opposite with regard to 1931. I agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the crisis in that year was not due to hon. Members opposite or the Labour Government. It was due to world conditions. But I do find fault with hon. Gentlemen opposite and their Government in that connection, because they found themselves incapable of dealing with the crisis when it did arise and they said, "We cannot go on like this and we must allow somebody else to take on the job." [HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] It is not nonsense. That is actually what took place and I am glad to notice that the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) seems to be in agreement with me. Therefore, I think it is unkind of hon. Gentlemen opposite to criticise, as they have done, the Government which lifted the country out of

  1477
  that crisis and restored it to a condition of prosperity which I am sure they themselves never expected to exist to-day.
  I thought that in yesterday's Debate and to some extent in to-day's much irrelevant matter was introduced. After all, this is a very simple question. There is nothing complicated about it. I think the man in the street and Members of this House, and indeed the Empire as a whole, all agree that we want adequate protection. That being so, we want to know what price we have to pay for it. The Opposition, it seems to me, are creeping about in an atmosphere of dark ignorance on this subject. How can anybody in this Committee know as well as the Government the price which it is necessary to pay? I am not so sure, indeed, that hon. Members opposite have attempted to criticise the amount very much but it is clear that the Government must know from the information which they alone can have at their disposal what is the necessary amount, and the Government have said that the necessary amount is £1,500,000,000 in the next five years.
  The present position is unprecedented as far as this country is concerned. I am sure that hon. Members opposite are just as keen as we are on this side to see that there is adequate protection for the peoples of the Empire. We are always having thrown in our faces the deplorable examples of what happened in regard to Japan and Abyssinia. In that connection I would only say that it appears to me that the party opposite is really the warlike party. They wanted to go to war over those questions. I suppose they will get into office some day, though it does not appear likely just now, and the great anxiety in my mind is to ensure, if this warlike party opposite get into office, there will be an adequate force to protect the country when they proceed to give effect to their belicose ideas. I think that remark applies also, to a great extent, to my erstwhile colleagues, the Liberals, because they, I think, were in favour of closing the Suez Canal on a recent occasion and if they were to get into power, we should require adequate forces to carry out their policy.
  Reference has been made to the Treaty of Versailles. This situation has been brought about to a great extent because the Treaty of Versailles was not carried out by a great many of the countries con-
  1478
  cerned, in regard to disarmament. We were the only people who did carry out that disarmament undertaking and that is why our position is as it is to-day. I ask hon. Members to suppose what would have been the position if we had not carried out that disarmament and if we had piled up arms as other nations did.
  Mr. Stephen: Which nations?
  Lieut.-Colonel Kerr: Russia, France, Germany, Italy and everybody else. Suppose we had built up armaments in the same way as those countries have done within the last few years. I am sure we would, by now, have spent more than £1,500,000,000 and I am confident that a great many of the armaments thus acquired by us would be obsolete now. Driven into this position as we have been driven into it by the arming of other countries, is it not the case that—provided that we are safe now and I believe we are just about safe—we have not only saved money, but are providing ourselves with an up-to-date fighting machine as a result of this resolution. I feel complete confidence in the Government in this matter and I do not understand why hon. Gentlemen opposite do not feel as I do about it. Unless the Opposition believe that the Government are deliberately dishonest—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"]—If they take that view, I have nothing more to say to them but I see no justification for it at all. [HON. MEMBERS: "Read the Prime Minister's speech.] The Prime Minister has always stated fully and exactly the intentions of the Government and it is easy for any man who is not prejudiced either by party or by class to appreciate what the right hon. Gentleman said. [Interruption.] I know that the Liberal Socialists will get angry at what I say but they will get their opportunity of replying to me instead of interrupting. I am certain that there is no dishonesty about the Government's policy and I cannot help feeling that if hon. Members opposite were on this side of the House, under the same conditions, they would be doing exactly what the Government are doing to-day. I whole heartily support this Resolution with absolute confidence in the Prime Minister and the Government.
  8.45 p.m.
  Mr. Quibell: It has been said in the Debate that this sum for rearmament is

  1479
  a staggering amount. It certainly staggers some of us on this side. We had really believed that the object of the Government, working through the Foreign Secretary, was so to strengthen the League of Nations that this country would only be called upon to contribute what would be regarded as its adequate share in order to protect this country against an aggressor. This is a staggering sum for which to ask in a time of peace. What exercises the minds of many hon. Members, not alone those on this side of the Committee, is this: Against whom is it that we are arming, and with whom are we likely to be at war? The hon. and gallant Member for Montrose (Lieut.-Colonel Kerr) said that was well understood, that it was known. It may have been made known to hon. Members opposite at some of those meetings which were the subject of complaint at Question Time, but it certainly has not been conveyed to Members of this House as a whole who collectively are responsible for passing or rejecting this Vote. I should like to know whether it is Germany, or Italy, or a combination of the two, or who it is, because the men and women of this country will want to know, especially those who suffered as a consequence of being led up the garden at the time of the last war. Like a previous speaker on this side, I am not prepared to leave this country unready to meet a contingency such as arose with the last war, not in the least, and I believe that in the main my colleagues are prepared to vote the necessary amounts, providing we can ascertain from the Government what they are, in order that we may protect this country.
  I remember that almost at the beginning of the last war I was in a town which was subjected to one of the first air raids on this country. Something like no bombs were dropped on that town, which had not a single rifle or soldier or anything to give the slightest protection to the inhabitants. The Government of that day, some of the members of which are still in this House, had the audacity, in order to give confidence to the people, to put a wooden gun on the top of some works in Hull. Hull was raided almost nightly by the Zeppelins, but no protection was afforded. I saw houses which had been destroyed, I saw people, absolutely defenceless, and
  1480
  almost frantic, running miles and taking with them their possessions in perambulators. Since then I have seriously believed that it was the duty of successive Governments, including this Government, to do everything in their power to see that bombardment from the air was abolished for ever as a method of warfare, but in the munition centre in which I live there is still a constant fear and dread of what may happen if there is an outbreak of war in which enemy air forces are employed.
  At the last election we were asked to trust the Government and the Prime Minister. The Government ought to be in a position to judge events infinitely better than those of us on this side of the Committee, who are not in possession of information such as the Government must of necessity have, or ought to have; but I say there ought to be means of taking this House more completely into the confidence of the Government. As far as trusting the Prime Minister is concerned, he would be the last man whom I should trust in a matter of this kind, after the statement he made at the last election that he would be no longer responsible for the defence of this country, because, so far as the Navy was concerned, there was scarcely a capital ship which was capable of discharging any responsibility that was placed upon it. What Government was responsible for that? Why was not the country told, and why was not this House told? If conditions were as he described them in his speeches during that election, all I can say is that instead of being honoured and trusted he really deserves impeachment. Do not the Government realise that the people of this country would have more confidence in them if they had treated some of those who came through the last War a little more generously? That would have given them more confidence in the Government on this occasion. This loan will have a most profound effect upon many people in different parts of the country, some of whom are the sons and relatives of those who fought in the last War and some of whom still possess a pair of crutches but have not a single penny, pension except the 10s. a week from the Prince of Wales' Fund. The Government say they want to create an efficient army and are trying to stimulate recruiting and part of the difficulties they experience in that task arise from the lack of confidence among

  1481
  the people that the Government will secure greater measure of justice for men who may be maimed in a future war.
  It is said that this money will give work to the unemployed. Taking the long view of finding work of a permanent character, I should have preferred the Government to raise a loan in order to provide some of the bridges necessary for the defence of the East Coast; I should like to have seen the money spent on something more useful than armaments, something of a more productive character. What the Government ought to have done was to summon another conference. The people of this country evidently possess a peace mind, they desire peace. Hon. Members opposite say they desire peace as much as we on these benches. If they do, why not urge upon Ministers to take their courage in their hands and summon another conference to recreate the League of Nations and see whether accommodation cannot be found for those nations which are at present standing outside the League? They should also recreate a peace mind and, in general, make as big an effort for peace as we are making in the preparations for war.
  8.55 p.m.
  Mr. Mander: I want to make one further and very brief reference to what the hon. Member for North Aberdeen (Mr. Garro Jones) has just said concerning the German colonies. I am opposed to their being given back to Germany, either as colonies or under Mandate, because of the question of the treatment of natives and the point of view of strategy, but I think that legitimate grievances should be met in the way I have indicated, by extension of the Mandate system and the internationalisation of colonies altogether.
  We shall vote against this Motion with the conviction that we are doing absolutely the right thing. We are not opposed to supplying whatever arms are required by the State in order to defend ourselves against possible enemies, and we feel it is right that we should play our part—an adequate and proportional part—in any system of collective defence that exists, but we think that the particular method chosen, of payment by loan and mortgaging the future, is entirely indefensible and contrary to the interests of the country. I should have thought that if we wanted to impress other countries with our determination to
  1482
  go forward at all costs with the necessary rearmament, the heroic course would be to say: "We are going to bear the burdens, however heavy they may be, upon our own shoulders, like men, as we did in the crisis of 1931. We will not run away from it."
  The Government are again running away from their responsibility by putting it on to the future. If you cannot get the whole of the finance required out of the taxes, by increasing the Income Tax, Super-tax and other taxes, then it is my point of view, and I do not know whether anyone else shares it, that it would be far better to have a capital levy here and now, and far better than adopting the method proposed by the Government. Before the War, the Germans, when they were going in for their great rearmament scheme, had a levy on capital which worked perfectly satisfactorily and provided them with all that they wanted. I do not say that that is necessary, but I certainly think that we ought not to shrink from it if the money cannot be raised from taxation. Nothing would raise our prestige and show our determination to the world more than a really heroic method of that kind.
  The real point is that the Government are afraid once again to place upon the shoulders of the people the burdens in which they, most unnecessarily, have involved them. They are on the run once more, and they are trying to give the impression that we can run a war, or preparations for war, on the cheap, which is an entirely unsound idea. Another advantage that would come from bearing the financial burdens now is that the persons who would be affected by having to pay a high rate of taxation would be so shocked and so outraged by the taxes placed upon them that they would turn round to the Government and say: "This is no joke. We cannot tolerate a policy which involves us in Surtax and Income Tax of this kind. You must adopt a different policy which will lead us in the direction of peace, as can be done even to-day. If you cannot do so, we will have a Government that will do it."
  I say frankly that I do not see any alternative to the present Government. The forces on the left, the progressive forces, and in those I include Conservatives as well as Members of the Labour party, are so distracted with fighting each other and unable to agree, although agree

  1483
  ment would be quite easy, that the Government of this country is a gift to the present National Government within any foreseeable future. That could be changed if the Government would only return to the policy on which they won the General Election of 1935. The whole aspect of world affairs would be changed. Some reference has been made to the fact that the Foreign Secretary puts everything in most admirable sentiments about the Government's policy being based on the League of Nations. So he does. He does it honestly and in an attractive way, and a feeling of false security is created. There is a feeling that things must really be all right because he puts them so nicely; but, of course, nothing ever happens, and a policy of exactly the contrary is in practice carried out.
  The Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence made a very interesting speech to-day. I am sure he is doing his best. He used a great many Biblical expressions, and I am going to quote one that has been used by somebody about him. It may be quite untrue but I have heard it said that in his task he shows signs of being "faint, yet pursuing." Whatever vigour he may or may not show, he is certainly pursuing something. The point is, what is the policy that he and the Government are pursuing? A lot of light has been thrown on that during the past two days, and it has been revealed, as I have suspected for a long time, that they are pursuing a policy of isolation. They do not pretend that they take the collective system and the League of Nations seriously. I do not think I am doing them an injustice. They quite sincerely hold that view. They may look upon it as an ideal for the dim and distant future but, apart from certain commitments on the Continent with France and Belgium, their policy is one of isolation.
  The question has been put, and it is a proper question: "Who are the allies in the collective system on whom we can rely?" I would ask which of our possible allies can rely upon our word, after the betrayal of Abyssinia? Who is going to trust our word to carry out our obligations? Putting that question aside I would answer the very legitimate question that has been put, as to whom could we rely upon? The policy for which we stand on this side of the House is that
  1484
  which is so well represented on that side by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) and a number of other hon. Members. It is not a policy confined to this side of the House at all. Many warm supporters are led by the right hon. Gentleman. When he was asked: "What would you do in the case of Germany or Russia? Which would you fight for or against?" he said: "The answer is easy. I should be against the aggressor." I suggest that if the Government were to make it clear that we are willing to go all out with all our Forces, not drawing back as in recent examples, we could rely upon a system of alliances. After all, the League of Nations is only an alliance of all loyal nations against a potential aggressor. We could rely upon France, Belgium, Russia, Poland, the Little Entente countries, the Balkans, Turkey, Holland, and the Scandinavian countries. One would hope that all the others would come in, and Germany and Italy, too. If they did not, they would rightly be encircled. Any aggressor deserves to be encircled; that is the object of the League of Nations system.
  In answer to the question which has been put, I say that we could rely on those nations, if properly led by us. The forces are still overwhelmingly on the side of right, decency and peace throughout the world. That would require definite arrangements; there would have to be staff talks; and, if those arrangements were made, action would never be necessary, because, if it were known that you had that overwhelming strength ready to act against an aggressor, he would never dare to come up against you. It is the knowledge that such arrangements do not exist, and the belief that we might not play our part, that is encouraging the dictators to strike out right and left, as they are inclined to do at the present time.
  To-day I ventured to ask the Prime Minister a question which I have asked him before: Whether, in view of the gravity of the situation and the great desirability, which has been expressed in the House to-day, of national unity in defence and foreign policy, he would not invite the Leaders of the Opposition—I am speaking entirely on my own responsibility—to confer with him and see, even yet, if it is not possible to find unity. He gave a reply which I cannot help feeling

  1485
  was unworthy of the head of the Government—that the initiative does not rest with him, that the Opposition must approach him. I venture to hope that he will reconsider the matter, and, as the head of the Government in this time of peril, consider the advisability of issuing invitations of that kind and seeing how far we can get towards unity. It might well be that it would fail, but, on the other hand, it might succeed, and, if it did succeed, the advantages to this people and to the world as a whole would be so immense that I submit that it is well worth trying.
  9.8 p.m.
  Mr. Hardie: I am glad that the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence has returned, because to-day he made a very serious statement, a statement which apparently he has been too busy to see was an uninformed statement. He said that all the money that is to be spent will come under the review of Parliament, and every detail of expenditure will be meticulously examined. I am sure he has been too busy to read the daily reports of questions and answers in the House. For a long time Members on this side have been trying to get down to what has been done in his Department since the first Vote went through. We have been trying to get from the Under-Secretary of State for Air the prices that were being paid for certain lands that were being bought for aerodromes, but we have been told that for some reason or other we could not possibly have that information. That does not seem to imply that there is the meticulous care about expenditure which the Minister tried to impress upon the Committee to-day.
  Not only in the Air Ministry, but in every other Department where there has been something to be made, the usual manipulations have been at work. Whether the Minister realises that or not I do not know, but his statement to-day shows that all that is being done is not meticulously examined. There are certain people on certain committees on certain subjects in regard to aerodromes being built and aerodrome material being bought, and some of these individuals are now selling those materials to the aerodrome people. If there had been that great care in regard to expenditure that the Minister spoke of, we should have known to-day what those things were. I know that this Debate is supposed to
  1486
  be one of confidence, but I always like to get away from that, because it is the way to allow people to get away with the swag without being seen. Even in laying down foundations and making roads there are certain materials used. Why could not the Minister tell us that certain people on certain committees are selling materials for that purpose? That is the kind of thing that took place in the last War. Do we not remember Gretna? Do we not remember the money that was flung by the million into Gretna? Do we not know the swindling that took place in the building of Gretna? The Labour Government when it was in office but not in power tried to get a grip on that in order to put it to use, when all that the Tory Government could do was to sell the plant, which cost £2,000,000, to someone in Carlisle to pull down and sell in pieces at so much a pound.
  The Government are always in the hands of people called industrialists, and it is they who are going to get a grip on this after it has got through the financial manipulators in what is called the City. This meticulous examination is a question for the Minister's Department and the Air Ministry, but they are either incapable of giving answers or do not wish to expose what is taking place. If it would help them to get hold of the individuals, I would not mind being quiet, but I would like them either to tell us who the individuals are or say they do not know. Ever since this expenditure has been suggested there has been that gloating anticipation of those who hope to participate in the profits. These things may be for the destruction of their own relatives, but there is always this question of something for nothing that seems to impel them forward. I have always believed in paying as I go. It is a working-class idea. You do not want to have your grocer calling at your door; it is not good; and if we were doing right we should be paying as we go.
  Suppose that this country receives a visitation of 1,000 aeroplanes which destroy all the buildings. That would be a trial so far as property is concerned, but what is left? You would still have the land. The Duke of Westminster would then have something to work upon to rebuild what had been destroyed. Seeing that in the last War the values of land were increased, and that even now

  1487
  they are increasing as a result of this proposed expenditure, why should there not be a direct charge—a levy—on the value of the land? These values are being created by the expenditure of public money; every penny that is going to be spent in the armaments business, or in buying land or building materials, or in putting up buildings, all tends towards, to put it mildly, profiteering. That is a mild and gentlemanly word; the truthful word is a very ugly word. That swindling is going on now there is no doubt. In every paper that deals in any way with financial business you see exactly what this thing means to those who are manipulating financial business. They know what it means and they are making the most out of it. Whenever there is money about, something like a great big claw comes out, and no effort is made to find out whether the money is being spent properly or not. The meticulous idea of the Minister is far wide of the mark, and he ought to know it. He is going to be in trouble very soon, because information leaks out. Do not forget that every works contains working men, and it is a very simple matter to make deductions when you are used to that method of finding out what is taking place.
  I hope the Minister will see to it that, whenever a question is put down, it will be honestly answered. If you are not going to give the information, say, "We are not going to tell you." Do not evade it or put it off. If you can tell us, then tell us the truth. The Minister is in possession of information now in regard to certain operations that took place when the first proposals for rearmament were made, when certain firms dealing in aircraft came into the field. He knows that he was being pressed on all hands by big interests in the City and that representatives of the City were even in the House trying to press him. The expenditure of the money that we are going to vote means, we are told, new buildings. Why is it necessary to put up new buildings when you have buildings already erected which are suitable? We had to pay through the nose for the use of land at Gretna and, when we had finished with it, we handed it back to the landlord for an old song. When you pass it in the train it makes you feel how the country was denuded and drained of
  1488
  money that it badly needed when the War finished. Can the Minister tell us if any of the land or buildings used in the last War are being used now? I hope we shall get answers to questions that we put down which will tell us exactly what is taking place.
  9.20 p.m.
  Rear-Admiral Sir Murray Sueter: I congratulate the Government on their courage in bringing forward these two White Papers. They are very fine indeed, and they will show the world our determination to put our Defence Forces right. Our Defence Forces have caused many Members in the House and people in the country grave anxiety during the last three years. The hon. Member for North Aberdeen (Mr. Garro Jones) brought up the question of battleships, and I agree with every word that he said. We airmen claim that it is possible to put a battleship out of action if you can drop a bomb down her funnel or in the vicinity of her propeller. You turn her into a lame duck. The Government, through pressure, set up a committee to go into the whole question of bomb versus battleship. It was a very fair inquiry. I gave evidence, and the conclusion that the committee came to is summed up in a White Paper (Cmd. 5301). May I read a paragraph:
  "We have given full consideration to the information already available as the result of the various experiments, and it is plain to us that capital ships cannot be constructed so as to be indestructible by bombing from the air. This would probably be true even if the factors of speed, armament and weight were disregarded in the design of the ship so that the thickness of the defensive armour could be indefinitely increased."
  The Committee say that the battleship is vulnerable to air attack. That is all that we airmen have claimed. We have said it for years. The Committee find that we were perfectly right, and now we have in this White Paper on Defence provision being made for two battleships in the next programme and three after that, and they cost something like £8,000,000 apiece. That is a very large sum of money—a stepping stone towards the replacing of the whole of the capital ships allowed under the Washington Treaty, namely, 15 at £8,000,000 each, or £120,000,000.
  Mr. Hopkinson: Is not the true meaning of the Committee's report that the aeroplane will get the better of the capital ship if the capital ship keeps quite still and does not defend itself?
  Sir M. Sueter: In the American experiment one bomb dropped down the funnel of a destroyer and blew her to pieces. Another bomb dropped near a submarine and cut her in two. The House may vote this money for battleships and our countrymen may notice it, but they can never say in a future war, if some of our capital ships are destroyed or made into lame ducks by a bomb, that the airmen did not warn their countrymen. That is all I ever wanted to do. I wanted to warn my countrymen that that sort of thing could happen by bombing from the air. I was at Malta last month and saw the "Hood," the "Queen Elizabeth" and two other battleships lying in the Grand Harbour. They were enormous targets for any air attack. I think the Government are very wise in increasing the number of cruisers. I should have liked to have seen the money voted for battleships go into cruisers, destroyers and submarines. We cannot well have too many cruisers when we remember that it took some 40 ships to hunt down the "Emden." It would have been much wiser if we had put the money that had been taken for battleships into cruisers, destroyers and submarines.
  I am glad to see that the Government are increasing our tank battalions, and I hope that they will go into the question of the medium tank, which I believe is not as efficient as it might be. We have coming along a light tank of which I hear good reports. We want to see our men trained in the use of the most modern equipment that science can produce. We have had interesting Debates lately on Air strength, and we have been told there is a lag in Air development. The reason given is that there is a lack of skilled labour. If I can have the attention of the Co-ordinating Minister for one moment, because this might interest him—
  Sir T. Inskip: I beg the hon. and gallant Member's pardon, but it was a matter of some importance that I was discussing.
  Sir M. Sueter: Thank you. Members come here to air their views, and if Ministers cannot pay attention to them they had better go outside. I do not mean that offensively; we back-benchers do sometimes want a little attention. I was saying that there is an appreciable lag in Air development, and we are told
  1490
  it is due to lack of skilled labour and to the fact that some factories do not function as well as others. Who is looking into this question of skilled labour? Is there anybody who sees whether there is a surplus in one place, and whether that surplus might go to some air factory? Who is looking into the question of priority? Do the tanks or do the aircraft get priority? These questions want attention by someone.
  Then there is the question of factory sites. We had a proposal for a factory at Maidenhead, but eventually it was turned down. It was said that you could get 5,000 people round Maidenhead to go into the factory. I can tell the Coordinating Minister that you cannot get a few hundred. I live near Maidenhead, and I cannot even get a gardener. They all go into the Morris works. Whoever told the Co-ordinating Minister that he could get 5,000 men there did not know what he was talking about. I submit to the Prime Minister that it is high time we had an Under-Secretary for Supplies to look into these questions and to help the Co-ordinating Minister. It would relieve him of a lot of detail work and leave him free to handle the bigger problems. The hon. Member for North Aberdeen (Mr. Garro Jones) gave a list of the subjects with which the Coordinating Minister has dealt. There was a colossal number, and it is high time the Minister was relieved from some of that work so that he can use his big brain on the larger question of Defence policy.
  9.30 p.m.
  Mr. Erskine Hill: I want to congratulate the Government on facing up to the reality of war. As I have listened to the Debate, and particularly to hon. Members opposite, two vivid pictures have formed themselves in my mind. The first picture is of the General Election in 1910 when, as a boy, I attended a political meeting at which, in answer to the question of a heckler, a Liberal statesman replied that there was no danger of war and that in any event our defences were amply secure. The next picture is in France in the year 1915, when there was no adequate protection—many hon. Members on both sides will recollect the situation—when owing to the lack of shells it was impossible for us to fulfil our part as adequately as we should have done, and

  1491
  when a great many lives were lost. I know that if there should be another war hon. Members opposite, as hon. Members on this side, will do their part, but I think that if such a situation should arise most hon. Members would be glad that the Government had taken the line they have done now in putting forward the scheme outlined in the White Paper. I do not know whether, if there had been a loan of this sort before 1914, the War might have been avoided—it is at least arguable that it might have been—but I am certain that the War would have been much shorter in duration and that a great many British lives would have been saved.
  It may be that the House will be discussing shortly in what way it is possible to improve the lot of the serving soldier, sailor and airman, but before we do that you will have to make clear to the relatives of those whom you are asking to serve that the men in every Service will be adequately protected, and that the tools they have to use will be of the most up-to-date kind. If you do not do that you are exposing them to an improper risk. Many hon. Members, I hope, will think twice before voting against this Resolution when they realise that in the years that lie ahead they may be glad that they have allowed the Government to take proper measures for the defence of the country. There is another aspect of the question. It is that those who are in command in the totalitarian States should realise that our democracy is in earnest, that we may have been slow in making proper preparations but that we are in earnest, and we will not allow ourselves to have imposed on us from outside ideas that are foreign to what we have been brought up to believe is right, and that any attempt to interfere with ourselves and our Colonies will meet with that sort of action which the history of this country has shown will always be taken when we have improper interference from outside.
  I welcome the action of the Government in taking these steps which have appeared necessary to them, and, after all, they alone are the people who know how to protect this country and the Empire. For those reasons the House should have faith in those who know what the situation is and should rally round, after all, what is the national
  1492
  cause. It is quite beside the point to say whether the Government were right or wrong in any action they have taken in the past as regards the League of Nations. The question for us to decide to-night is whether the state of affairs in Europe demands that we should take what would seem to be the sane and proper steps to defend ourselves. It will be recognised that in strengthening the British Navy, which has done so much recently in the troubles in Spain, we are strengthening something which will act, as it has acted in the past, in the interests of peace. In strengthening our Air Force, it will be recognised by all those who are willing to think rightly, that we are doing it to prevent any country thinking that it can come and attack us and impose its will upon us. I can picture no greater effort in the cause of peace than supporting the Government in these really bold steps which they have taken to ensure our safety, and, by so doing, to secure the peace of the world.
  9.37 p.m.
  Mr. McGovern: On a point of Order. I want to ask, Captain Bourne, whether it is proper for both the Whip and yourself to negotiate for speakers to come into this Debate—and it is quite evident that many of these speakers have nothing to say—while other hon. Members have been sitting here all the evening attempting to take part in the Debate.
  The Deputy - Chairman (Captain Bourne): The matter is within my discretion.
  Mr. McGovern: I state that you have done that to-night. It is not the duty of the Chairman.
  The Deputy-Chairman: The hon. Gentleman must withdraw that remark.
  Mr. McGovern: I will not withdraw it.
  The Deputy-Chairman: The hon. Gentleman must withdraw from the House.
  Mr. McGovern: I will not leave the House.
  The Deputy-Chairman: In that case I shall have to name the hon. Member.
  Whereupon the DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN named the hon. Member for disregarding the authority of the Chair, and left the Chair to report the circumstance to the House.
  Mr. SPEAKER resumed the Chair, and the DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN reported that Mr. MCGOVERN had been named by him to the Committee as disregarding the authority of the Chair.
  The Prime Minister (Mr. Baldwin): I beg to move, "That Mr. McGovern be suspended from the service of the House."
  Question put.
  Mr. Maxton: May I say a word or two?
  Mr. Speaker: I am afraid that I cannot allow it.
  Mr. Maxton: I have seen occasions when the Chair would allow a word or two of appeal to be made on an occasion like this.
  Mr. Speaker: This should have been done before. The Question has been put.
  Mr. Maxton: I rose to my feet as soon as you came to the Chair.
  Mr. Speaker: The Question has to be put without debate.
  Mr. Maxton: I accept your Ruling, but I have been present in the House on occasions when Mr. Speaker has been
  willing to listen. [HON. MEMBERS: "Order."] If that is to be the attitude then there will be more. I am making a plea to you, Sir, upon grounds that have been frequently put in this House. Of course, if you insist, I have to bow to your Ruling, but I have been present in this House on many occasions such as this when Mr. Speaker has been willing to listen to representations of the circumstances which might have arisen at a time when he was not present.
  Mr. Speaker: I have to carry out the Standing Orders of the House. I have no alternative.
  Mr. Maxton: Is there not a precedent for not carrying out the Rules of the House in these circumstances and thus allowing a member of the party, one of whose members is to be suspended, to make an appeal to you?
  Mr. Speaker: I have no alternative. The Question has been put, "That Mr. McGovern be suspended from the service of the House."
  The House divided: Ayes, 231; Noes, 25.

  Division No. 83.]

  AYES.

  [9.45 p.m.

  Acland, Rt. Hon. Sir F. Dyke

  Colville, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. D. J.

  George, Megan Lloyd (Anglesey)

  Acland, R. T. D. (Barnstaple)

  Cook, Sir T. R. A. M. (Norfolk, N.)

  Gibson, R. (Greenock)

  Acland-Troyte, Lt.-Col. G. J.

  Cooper, Rt. Hn. A. Duff (W'st'r S. G'gs)

  Glyn, Major Sir R. G. C.

  Albery, Sir Irving

  Cooper, Rt. Hn. T. M. (E'nburgh, W.)

  Granville, E. L.

  Alexander, Rt. Hon. A. V. (H'lsbr.)

  Cranborne, Viscount

  Green, W. H. (Deptford)

  Allen, Lt.-Col. J. Sandeman (B'kn'hd)

  Craven-Ellis, W.

  Grenfell, D. R.

  Amery, Rt. Hon. L. C. M. S.

  Croft, Brig.-Gen. Sir H. Page

  Gretton, Col. Rt. Hon. J.

  Anderson, Sir A. Garrett (C. of Ldn.)

  Crooke, J. S.

  Gridley, Sir A. B.

  Anstruther-Gray, W. J.

  Crookshank, Capt. H. F. C.

  Griffith, F. Kingsley (M'ddl'sbre, W.)

  Apsley, Lord

  Croom-Johnson, R. P.

  Grimston, R. V.

  Aske, Sir R. W.

  Cross, R. H.

  Guy, J. C. M.

  Attlee, Rt. Hon. C. R.

  Crossley, A. C.

  Hamilton, Sir G. C.

  Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley

  Dalton, H.

  Haslam, Sir J. (Bolton)

  Balfour, Capt. H. H. (Isle of Thanet)

  Davies, C. (Montgomery)

  Heilgers, Captain F. F. A.

  Beamish, Rear-Admiral T. P. H.

  Davies, Major Sir G. F. (Yeovil)

  Haneage, Lieut.-Colonel A. P.

  Beaumont, Hon. R. E. B. (Portsm'h)

  Dawson, Sir P.

  Hepworth, J.

  Bellenger, F. J.

  Denman, Hon. R. D.

  Herbert, Major J. A. (Monmouth)

  Bennett, Capt. Sir E. N.

  Denville, Alfred

  Hills, Major Rt. Hon. J. W. (Ripon)

  Benson, G.

  Despencer-Robertson, Major J. A. F.

  Holmes, J. S.

  Boothby, R. J. G.

  Dixon, Capt. Rt. Hon. H.

  Hope, Captain Hon. A. O. J.

  Boulton, W. W.

  Drewe, C.

  Hopkin, D.

  Bower, Comdr. R. T.

  Duckworth, W. R. (Moss Side)

  Hopkinson, A.

  Bracken, B.

  Dugdale, Major T. L.

  Hudson, R. S. (Southport)

  Brown, Col. D. C. (Hexham)

  Duncan, J. A. L.

  Hulbert, N. J.

  Brown, Rt. Hon. E. (Leith)

  Dunglass, Lord

  Hume, Sir G. H.

  Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C. (Newbury)

  Eckersley, P. T.

  Hunter, T.

  Browne, A. C. (Belfast, W.)

  Edmondton, Major Sir J.

  Hurd, Sir P. A.

  Campbell, Sir E. T.

  Ellis, Sir G.

  Inskip, Rt. Hon. Sir T. W. H.

  Cartland, J. R. H.

  Elmley, Viscount

  Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)

  Castlereagh, Viscount

  Emery, J. F.

  Keeling, E. H.

  Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.)

  Errington, E.

  Kennedy, Rt. Hon. T.

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. Sir A. (Br.W.)

  Erskine-Hill, A. G.

  Kerr, Colonel C. I. (Montrose)

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. N. (Edgb't'n)

  Evans, Capt. A. (Cardiff, S.)

  Kerr, J. Graham (Scottish Univs.)

  Channon, H.

  Everard, W. L.

  Keyes, Admiral of the Fleet Sir R.

  Charleton, H. C.

  Fildes, Sir H.

  Lawson, J. J.

  Choriton, A. E. L.

  Findlay, Sir E.

  Leach, W.

  Clarke, F. E. (Hartford)

  Furness, S. N.

  Leckie, J. A.

  Clarke, Lt.-Col. R. S. (E. Grinstead)

  Fyfe, D. P. M.

  Leech, Dr. J. W.

  Cobb, Captain E. C. (Preston)

  Ganzoni, Sir J.

  Lees-Jones, J.

  Colfox, Major W. P.

  George, Major G. Lloyd (Pembroke)

  Levy, T.

  Liddall, W. S.

  Perkins, W. R. D.

  Somerville, A. A. (Windsor)

  Little, Sir E. Graham-

  Peters, Dr. S. J.

  Spens, W. P.

  Llewellin, Lieut.-Col. J. J.

  Pethick-Lawrence, F. W.

  Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Fylde)

  Lloyd, G. W.

  Pilkington, R.

  Storey, S.

  Lovat-Fraser, J. A.

  Price, M. P.

  Strauss, E. A. (Southwark, N.)

  Lumley, Capt. L. R.

  Ramsay, Captain A. H. M.

  Strauss, H. G. (Norwich)

  Mabane, W. (Huddersfield)

  Ramsbotham, H.

  Strickland, Captain W. F.

  MacAndrew, Colonel Sir C. G.

  Rawson, Sir Cooper

  Stuart, Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn)

  M'Connell, Sir J.

  Reed, A. C. (Exeter)

  Sueter, Rear-Admiral Sir M. F.

  McCorquodale, M. S.

  Reid, Sir D. D. (Down)

  Taylor, C. S. (Eastbourne)

  Macdonald, G. (Ince)

  Reid, W. Allan (Derby)

  Taylor, Vice-Adm. E. A. (Padd., S.)

  MacDonald, Rt. Hon. J. R. (Scot. U.)

  Remer, J. R.

  Tinker, J. J.

  Macdonald, Capt. P. (Isle of Wight)

  Rickards, G. W. (Skipton)

  Titchfield, Marquess of

  Macmillan, H. (Stockton-on-Tees)

  Ridley, G.

  Train, Sir J.

  Macquisten, F. A.

  Robinson, J. R. (Blackpool)

  Turton, R. H.

  Makins, Brig.-Gen. E.

  Ropner, Colonel L.

  Wakefield, W. W.

  Mander, G. le M.

  Ross, Major Sir R. D. (Londonderry)

  Walkden, A. G.

  Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R.

  Ross Taylor, W. (Woodbridge)

  Ward, Lieut.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)

  Mason, Lt.-Col. Hon. G. K. M.

  Rothschild, J. A. de

  Ward, Irene M. B. (Wallsend)

  Mayhew, Lt.-Col. J.

  Rowlands, G.

  Wardlaw-Milne, Sir J. S.

  Meller, Sir R. J. (Mitcham)

  Runciman, Rt. Hon. W.

  Waterhouse, Captain C.

  Mellor, Sir J. S. P. (Tamworth)

  Russell, A. West (Tynemouth)

  Watkins, F. C.

  Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest)

  Russell, S. H. M. (Darwen)

  Wedderburn, H. J. S.

  Milner, Major J.

  Samuel, M. R. A.

  Wells, S. R.

  Moore, Lieut.-Col. T. C. R.

  Sanderson, Sir F. B.

  Westwood, J.

  Morris, O. T. (Cardiff, E.)

  Sandys, E. D.

  Williams, C. (Torquay)

  Morris-Jones, Sir Henry

  Scott, Lord William

  Williams, T. (Don Valley)

  Morrison, G. A. (Scottish Univ's.)

  Seely, Sir H. M.

  Wilson, Lt.-Col. Sir A. T. (Hitchin)

  Morrison, R. C. (Tottenham, N.)

  Selley, H. R.

  Windsor, W. (Hull, C.)

  Naylor, T. E.

  Shakespeare, G. H.

  Windsor-Clive, Lieut.-Colonel G.

  Neven-Spence, Major B. H. H.

  Shaw, Captain W. T. (Forfar)

  Winterton, Rt. Hon. Earl

  O'Connor, Sir Terence J.

  Shinwell, E.

  Womersley, Sir W. J.

  Orr-Ewing, I L.

  Short, A.

  Wragg, H.

  Owen, Major G.

  Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir J. A.

  Wright, Squadron-Leader J. A. C.

  Palmer, G. E. H.

  Simpson, F. B.

  Young, Sir R. (Newton)

  Parkinson, J. A.

  Smiles, Lieut.-Colonel Sir W. D.

  Patrick, C. M.

  Smith, Rt. Hon. H. B. Lees- (K'ly)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

  Percy, Rt. Hon. Lord E.

  Somervell. Sir D. B. (Crewe)

  Sir George Penny and Commander Southby.

  NOES.

  Banfield, J. W.

  Griffiths, J. (Llanelly)

  Messer, F.

  Batey, J.

  Hall, J. H. (Whitechapel)

  Potts, J.

  Brooke, W.

  Henderson, J. (Ardwick)

  Ritson, J.

  Burke, W. A.

  Henderson, T. (Tradeston)

  Silverman, S. S.

  Cripps, Hon. Sir Stafford

  Jones, A. C. (Shipley)

  Strauss, G. R. (Lambeth, N.)

  Dobbie, W.

  Kelly, W. T.

  Wilkinson, Ellen

  Dunn, E. (Rother Valley)

  McGhee, H. G.

  Williams, E. J. (Ogmore)

  Gallacher, W.

  MacNeill, Weir, L.

  Griffiths, G. A. (Hemsworth)

  Maxton, J.

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—

  Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Stephen.

  Mr. Speaker directed Mr. MCGOVERN to withdraw from the House.
  Mr. McGovern: I accept the decision of the House, Mr. Speaker, having made an honest and sincere protest against the unfair conduct of the proceedings.
  The hon. Member then withdrew.
  Mr. Maxton: I endeavoured, after you had put the Motion for the suspension of my hon. Friend—
  Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. Member rise to a point of Order?
  Mr. Maxton: Yes, Sir. I rise to put this point to you: Frequently in this House I have seen incidents of this description occur in Committee, and when the Speaker came to the Chair an opportunity was given for representations to be made on behalf of the hon. Member who was incurring the pain of
  1496
  the House. I have heard of such representations being made by the Leader of the Opposition, and I have heard spokesmen from the Government Bench endeavouring to arrive at some more satisfactory solution of the difficulty. You, Sir, denied to me on this occasion the opportunity to do what has been granted on many occasions in this House—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order!"]—and, Mr. Speaker, I propose, at the very earliest opportunity, to place on the Paper a Motion calling attention to the conduct of the Deputy-Chairman of Committees in misdirecting the proceedings of this House.
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member rose to a point of Order. I do not know whether he asked me if I was in order in doing what I did, but I can only say that I have refreshed my memory, and I repeat that I was only carrying out the orders of the House.
  Mr. Maxton: I have not called in question the fact that you were obeying the Rules of the House. I am merely calling in question the fact that you did not allow to me considerations that have always been shown by your predecessors.

  WAYS AND MEANS.
  Again considered in Committee.
  [Sir DENNIS HERBERT in the Chair.]

  DEFENCE LOANS.
  Question again proposed.
  9.55 p.m.
  Mr. Attlee: This Debate is concerned with one immediate point and one larger point that lies behind it. The immediate point is the consideration of the way in which the money is to be raised for the programme of armaments. The point that lies behind that is the policy of which those armaments are an expression. I do not want to pursue the question of the desirability of raising a loan for the purpose of armaments. Our objections were very fully stated by my hon. Friends the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence) and the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton), whose arguments have not been answered. The Chancellor of the Exchequer made no attempt whatever to answer those arguments. He took refuge in a very old trick. He pretended not to understand them. He said that he was puzzled. He did not really appreciate the point. He found it difficult to follow their theoretical arguments. I do not believe that the right hon. Gentleman is as dense as he made out. He would not have got to his present position unless he could appreciate the comparatively elementary points which my hon. Friends put with very great clarity. The fact was that he had no answer. That was so obvious that when the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence got up he thought it necessary to say a word on the subject, but he did not get very far.
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer devoted a good deal of his time not to explaining his proposals but to attacking us on these benches. He formulated a number of questions of his own, to which he challenged a reply. Those questions were based on false premises. It is a very simple thing to beg the whole question and then shoot questions across and challenge denial or confirmation of them.
  1498
  He dealt with some points, but it struck me that he was a good deal more interested in making party scores than in getting support for his loan policy. That was a little unfortunate, because the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence tried what one might almost call the Baldwin touch, by appealing very solemnly for unity. He wanted us to show a united front to the world, to show the foreigners how we all stood together, and to show our confidence in the Government. That is another very old trick, the confidence trick. That trick entirely depends on the question whether the victim knows the personnel of the gang or not. The same gang cannot play the same confidence trick twice on the same people.
  Perhaps it is worth while looking at the gang that asks for this confidence from us. There is the Lord President of the Council. I wonder what the Lord President of the Council would have thought in the earlier days of his career if a Government of which he was a member had produced these proposals? If members of the party to which he then belonged had used some of the arguments that have been put forward by hon. Members opposite I can imagine how the Lord President would have torn them to tatters by his denunciation. This puts the seal on the right hon. Gentleman's career. It is the final act by which he casts aside everything for which he stood. Therefore, I do not think that we can have confidence in the Lord President of the Council. I do not think that hon. Members opposite have confidence in him. There was a Debate on 31st March, 1934, in which the Lord President was put up to make a statement on Defence. That was exactly the time when the present Prime Minister had already begun to have grave misgivings about the whole armaments situation. That was the period when, although he had those suspicions, he thought it prudent to keep them to himself. Therefore, the Lord President of the Council was put up to make a statement. I presume he knew all about it. Anyhow, he did not give it away, and no one could have gathered the seriousness of the situation from his speech.
  Then there is the Home Secretary. He is the other one in the triumvirate. He must have been in the full counsels of the Government. He was put up to speak on 13th July. Did he make an alarmist

  1499
  speech? Not at all. He was put up to smooth away the inconvenient blurtings of Lord Londonderry and Lord Monsell, because it was not good for democracy to know the truth at that time. Then there is the First Lord of the Admiralty. He made at Geneva the famous speech which invited the Abyssinians to their betrayal. Finally, there is the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister knows at all events the virtue of the necessity of confession. He said that he ought to have confessed earlier. The remarkable thing is that it was in the period from 1933 that he began to feel disturbed, and the disturbance ran on to 1934, until the right time came to get an Election on a particular issue. In 1934 the Prime Minister said:
  "The greatest crime to our own people is to be afraid to tell them the truth."
  It is amazing that he should have said that, when subsequently he made such an appalling statement. But there is more than this. There is the written word also. This is the third issue of a Defence paper that we have had; it is the third number. In the first number, the J.R.M. number, we were told this:
  "If risks have been run they, have been accepted deliberately in pursuit of the aim of permanent peace."
  We know now that that was untrue. It had nothing to do with permanent peace. It was the question whether the Prime Minister could win the Election or not. It is too late in the day to come forward now and ask for us to have confidence in this Government. Their record all through has been one of betrayal of everything they profess to stand for. We have only to glance at their record of foreign policy. It is an appalling record. Every time that there has come some question on which you might have expected them to make a stand, to make a stand on their own professions, they have run away calling out to those who reminded them of their profession: "Oh, you want war." We have a reference in the White Paper to the changed conditions since the first White Paper. It is interesting to see what those conditions are. One condition which has changed since the first White Paper is the position in the Eastern Mediterranean. The position that has changed since the second White Paper is the position in the Western Mediterranean.
  1500
  It was extremely courageous of the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence to refer to those two areas. He said that events had occurred there and that one could get valuable lessons from them. That is a phrase which I know very well. Whenever I have read the history of the Great War and the story of some appalling blunder, when perhaps 30,000 or 50,000 men have been shot down almost before they got over the top, the explanation and excuse has been that valuable lessons have been learned. The world has learned valuable lessons in the Eastern and Western Mediterranean and we have learned valuable lessons in the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. We and the world learned that the word of honour of the Government is worth nothing. We learned that they are not even interested in the principle they used to profess of Imperial interests, because the strategic position in the eastern part of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea has been handed over to Italy, We turn to the Western Mediterranean and there we find, in spite of the professions of the Prime Minister, that the Government are not really interested in the defence of democracy. Everywhere they are on the side of the dictators.
  We have learned something else. The present Prime Minister in a famous speech told us that the next war would be a matter of killing women and children. We know now from experience in Abyssinia and Spain what modern warfare really is like, both in bombing women and children and in the machine-gunning of women and children. I hope hon. Members read the "Times" correspondent yesterday about the way in which the gallant Christian gentlemen, friends of the hon. and gallant Member for Peebles turned machine-guns on women and children fleeing to the mountains. In any previous generation in this country an event such as that would have caused a stir on the benches on both sides of this House. It is a sign of the hardening effect of war that these things pass quite unnoticed now. The proposals we have before us are the terrible result of six years of National Government. We have had six years of this Government whose Members are always boasting of the wonderful way they have brought the country out of a terrible state of despair and brought us to prosperity. It is not much satisfaction to the turkey to know

  1501
  that he has been fattened up before he is to be killed. The hon. and gallant Member below the Gangway said that we owe a great deal to the Government.
  I have described this as a war measure. The Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to resent that phrase. He said it was regrettable. The question is not whether it is regrettable or not but whether it is true. Every sentence in this White Paper contemplates war, not as a possibility, but as a certainty. Every word in the speech of the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence was directed, not to the possibility, but to the certainty of war. It is quite clear that what we have now is the organisation of this country permanently on a war basis. The Government have absolutely no policy for peace. There is no suggestion of peace. When the other day a question was put by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswinford (Mr. A. Henderson) to the Prime Minister asking whether he could not deal with some of the big economic questions internationally the Prime Minister said that the time was not opportune. No time could be more opportune. Throughout this document and throughout the speeches we have heard, there runs the cry, "The time is short; get ready now." We hear of two-year plans and three-year plans and five-year plans, but we have not heard one word of what is to happen at the end of five years. What is to happen? War? Is there going to be disarmament? Shall we be safe at the end of five years? Armaments are piling up.
  The right hon. Gentleman the Lord President of the Council has frequently told us what happens as the inevitable end of competitive armaments. I suppose no one will deny that we are in an armament race at the present time. I have the evidence of the present Foreign Secretary who, in July, 1934, said:
  "The alternative to an agreement about armaments is an armaments race."
  You have no agreement; you have, therefore, an armaments race. I should be very glad if the Prime Minister could give me any instance of an armaments race which has not ended in war. That is the position with which we are faced. We are challenged to say what is our position with regard to the amount of these armaments. What is the amount that will make us safe? I do not believe the Government are going to get any safety through these armaments. There is no suggestion that these armaments
  1502
  will make us safe. The amount of armaments depends on your policy. We are not really considering the British Islands only now. We have taken in the whole of the British Empire. We are very much in the position of 1910, which the hon. Member for North Edinburgh (Mr. Erskine Hill) quoted just now-four years before the Great War. He said he got a reply from the Liberal Government of that day that there was no chance of war. We know that we had war in four years.
  I have never accused the Prime Minister or his colleagues of wanting war, nor would I accuse the Liberal Government of 1910 of wanting war, but the course they pursued was one of armed anarchy in Europe and the pursuit of nationalist and Imperialist aims made war inevitable. The amount of armaments that you require depends upon who is on your side and who is against you, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer discussed this matter in the most extraordinary terms. He discussed it in terms of isolation. One of my colleagues said there was no mention of the League of Nations. He asked whether we would be any happier if there had been that mention. Certainly not, unless the idea of collective security was expressed inside the document. The Chancellor of the Exchequer showed quite plainly that the Government are not considering the League at all. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman, to do him justice, has ever been particularly interested in the League of Nations, except at the period just before the last election. He made a statement which shows quite plainly that he had no conception of the League at all. He said:
  "We have not to single out a particular Power as the enemy, nor are we, as a matter of fact, in alliance with other Powers on whose aid we could count in that particular case. What we have had to do is to consider a whole series of hypothetical emergencies in which we might be opposed to this or that Power, or this or that group of Powers."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th February, 1937; col. 1311, Vol. 320.]
  Our conception of the League of Nations is not that we were just allied Powers fighting one against the other for a particular purpose and then separating. Our idea was a solid block of Powers standing together for peace, and outside the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the aggressor. We are obviously back to the law of the jungle. The League of Nations has entirely gone. The result of

  1503
  all this is these armaments. The right hon. Gentleman asked what we should do if we were faced with this position. We should not have allowed ourselves to get into such a position. I have no doubt the right hon. Gentleman thinks that if he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer instead of Mr. Snowden in 1931, he would have balanced his Budget, and that none of the troubles which came upon us would have fallen upon him. When we left office the world was moving towards peace. If after six years the Government take credit for what they have done they must also take the discredit for the present situation, although I do not claim that it is entirely due to the incapacity and wickedness of the Government. But I am not proposing suddenly to spring an Election on the country.
  I agree that there are difficult circumstances and I know that in foreign affairs you have to consider what other people are doing, but I do say that in the terrible situation to which the world has come a very heavy responsibility rests on the triumvirate who have been ruling this country. The amount, therefore, depends on policy, and there is no policy here whatever. All we have in the way of a policy is an armaments competition— £1,500,000,000 in five years, and then more if necessary. That means that the competition will get worse and worse. Hon. Members opposite can accept that if they like, but I challenge them to say that it is not the straight road to war and ruin. We are told that there is a co-ordinating plan. I listened with great interest 'to the minor details and smaller points made by the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, but they did not give any evidence of coordination on major strategy at all. Quite the contrary. The Minister proudly stated that he had co-ordinated coast defences and anti-aircraft work, but he has managed to do this without having settled the question of who is to control the Fleet Air arm. It strikes me as most extraordinary that these smaller points should be considered and great outstanding questions left unconsidered.
  In the White Paper we are merely referred back to previous White Papers, those of 1936 and 1935, but you find no co-ordinating plan in any of these papers, because for political reasons the White
  1504
  Paper of 1935 could not be represented as a big programme of rearmament. It was reckoned as only a plan for the reconditioning of existing forces. We never have had a co-ordinated plan. We have had statements from the War Office, the Admiralty and the Air Ministry, but they have been uncorrelated and unco-ordinated, and they remain so to this day. All we have had has been a mere piling up of armaments but no considered and co-ordinated plan at all. Therefore, I am not at all impressed by what the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence said. It is easy to say to the Opposition "You must not interfere; we know all about it; we have all the able people." Many hon. Members have said that we must take it unquestioningly from the Government. That has not been the custom in the past. That was not the attitude of Conservatives in 1910; on the contrary, they screamed from the housetops, "We want eight and we won't wait." It has never been the custom in this country to accept these things either from the Government or without examination from their technical advisers.
  I am not in the least satisfied that there is not gross waste in this programme. I am absolutely certain that if by any chance we survive this programme and what it leads to, we shall get the same profiteering scandals as we have had before. We have had them after every war. We had then after the South African War, which I suppose was one of the instances of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's statement that Great Britain has never been aggressive. We have always had these scandals, and we shall have them again. We are told of great plans. Occasionally something leaks out when it affects the amenities of the well-to-do. So we had the White Waltham scandal. It has never been explained why at one moment White Waltham was the only place to put an air factory. Then they managed to start one at Speke. We had a new geography as well as a new statement.
  We on this side say frankly to the Government that we have no confidence whatever in them, and I am sure they will frankly admit that there is no reason why we should have. We take the line that we are perfectly prepared to make preparations for what is needed for the defence of this country, but we do not

  1505
  beg the question by simply saying, "Defence." Defence depends on policy. There is no policy here that can bring security. There is no policy here that can bring peace. The Prime Minister is responsible for making one of the biggest mistakes that has ever been made by a Prime Minister in this country, because he is placing all his reliance on things and not on people. He is very careful to build up a great mass of mechanism, but he has forgotten the spirit of the people he governs. That is where his greatest mistake comes, for he had his chance. There was a time when the people of this country trusted the right hon. Gentleman and really believed that he stood for peace. He wantonly threw that confidence away, and he will not get it again. It is of no use the right hon. Gentleman making speeches about being willing to stand for democracy when on every hand we see the Government betraying democracy. It is no good the Government saying that they stand against tyranny when everywhere they lick the tyrants' boots.
  We had a very interesting quotation from the Chancellor of the Exchequer's calendar. One of my colleagues has given me a better quotation, from the Trade Union Congress calendar. It is a quotation from a man who, whatever may have been his faults, stood throughout the world for British liberty. Wherever the right hon. Gentleman of that day was known, he was known as a man who stood up for liberty. That man was Lord Palmerston. I recommend all hon. and right hon. Members to read his speech on Spain made 100 years ago and to see how high they can hold their heads to-day. This is the quotation:
  "Opinions are stronger than armaments. Opinions, if they are founded on truth and justice, will in the end prevail against the bayonets of infantry, the tire of artillery and the charges of cavalry."
  The weakness of all the armaments of the Government is that there is no spirit behind them but the spirit of a feeble class Imperialism. It is a spirit which looks to the past and not to the future. It is a spirit which is in tune with the Government's home policy and which makes their foreign policy hopeless, because you cannot hope to carry out a policy of social justice abroad, when you rest upon social injustice at home.
  10.26 p.m.
  The Prime Minister: I think the right hon. Gentleman was hardly fair to me in saying that I never realised the spiritual forces of this world. I think I was the first member of my party who often pointed out at public meetings the spiritual force which animated the early days of the movement to which the right hon. Gentleman belongs, and I have never lost an opportunity of pointing out how that spirit has now been dead for some time. That spirit which was prominent in the earlier days is dead, and that is why the party opposite has been led into a position such as it is in to-night. I know quite well from my own experience of politics over recent years that the form of attack which the right hon. Gentleman delivered to-night was the one best calculated, in his view, to draw together a number of discordant elements who hold very diverse views on the lightness or unrightness of the Resolution which is before the Committee.
  Owing to no fault, either of the right hon. Gentleman or of myself, our time is somewhat curtailed for the main matter with which we have to deal, and I do not propose to go at any length, and in some respects I do not propose to go at all, into certain personal observations which were made about me during the Debate. I wish to touch only on one of them because it illustrates the point of policy to which, in the main, I shall devote the short time left for me to-night. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Cornwall (Sir F. Acland)—and I regret that I was unable to hear his speech—complained that I must have known, I suppose at the time of the last Election, that collective security was going to fail and the League was going to collapse and therefore, apparently, that I deceived the electors. I do not suppose for a moment that the right hon. Gentleman can have followed the speeches which I delivered at the last Election, and, indeed, I have hardly referred to them myself since. But I have a distinct recollection that I said all through that Election that we were trying out sanctions for the first time; that it was impossible to say whether sanctions would succeed or not; that many supporters of the League said that if sanctions failed it would be the end of the League; that I did not take that view;

  1507
  that I thought it was a cowardly view and that, if sanctions failed and the League appeared to fail, there was all the more need for the friends of the League to stand by the League, to find out how and why the failure had been made, and to see if the League could be strengthened and made a success in the future, and that no opportunity should be lost for bringing back into the League certain great Powers who had left it. I think the line I took all through that time was of truer service to the League than the tide of propaganda which was put out to try to make people believe that sanctions could be imposed without risk of war. Our people can always recognise facts swiftly when they see them, and they realised that there was danger in a process which they had often been told and made to believe had no danger whatever in it.
  In the short time left, and before I come on to foreign policy, as I shall do in four or five minutes, I want the Committee to consider what it is that is being done with regard to repairing deficiencies and doing the other work which we propose to do as set out in the White Paper. The situation is serious enough, but it is just as well to avoid exaggeration. Under the proposals—which the Committee knows—and in spite of increased liabilities on this country, the Army is less, and will be less, than it was in 1914. The Navy, in spite of the increases that will be proposed in the Estimates, which we shall have to consider early next month, is far from being a great Navy in the sense in which we used the word in 1914. The expansion is in the new arm, in the Air Arm. The great expense of this programme is in the air. That is where the money is being expended, I believe with the consent of the whole nation. There may be differences here and there as to how it ought to be expended, but that this nation should possess an Air Force of immense power is the view of practically every soul in this country. Anti-aircraft defence, as hon. Members will find when they get down to the Estimates, is, again, a branch of the Service which will demand large sums of money. It is a far more serious problem than it was at the time of the last War, and it is a form of defence which will probably have to be increased and moved farther and farther back as
  1508
  the radius of air attack from Europe increases.
  Ships, again, are some of the heaviest items of expenditure, and must be as long as it is thought right to increase the size of to-day's navy, though, as I say, it will not go back to the size of the Navy of 1914. And large sums must be spent on all kinds of stores, partly because of those years since the War, when all parties combined to spend as little as was possible on the Services, trying to pull together the finances of the country after the War, and also instituting, as I shall show in a moment, considerable increases in the social services of this country. Those are the directions in which the heavy expenditure chiefly lies, and those forms of expenditure can be, and I have no doubt will be, examined in detail when the Estimates come before the House.
  But with all this—and I would repeat it, because my words here to-night may go abroad—there is no thought and no intention of aggression by this country. We want to put ourselves in a position to deter aggression. Deterrence is our object, and if you believe that deterrence possible you will believe that ineffective deterrence is worse than useless. We shall neither assure our own safety and that of the Empire, nor play our part in securing peace in the world, unless we bring our forces up to the necessary standard. That, and that alone, is what this expenditure is for.
  I have one more observation to make before I come to the question of foreign policy. I have said in speeches that I believe this country of ours is in a position in which she can finance what we are going to do, and that she can do it without risk to what she has done and is doing for the Social Services, and With out affecting our standard of living any more than that standard is affected, and will be, affected from time to time, by the rise or fall in the price of com-modifies. I want to put this quite clearly to hon. Members: This expenditure that we are asking the House for appears, I agree, an enormous expenditure. We contend, although I know this view is not taken upon the benches opposite, that it should be a temporary expenditure, that is to say, for about a generation. The Social Services are here for all time, and I hope, indeed, that this generation,

  1509
  and future generations, may see them improved.
  I wonder whether the Committee realise the additions that have been made to the Social Services since the War. The expenditure of the nation is at the rate of £450,000,000 a year—half as much again as 10 years ago; the expenditure of the State amounts to well over £200,000,000 a year, and that figure is double what it was 10 years ago. That shows the enormous elasticity in the financial power of the country and how we have been going forward in those respects after the War, probably faster and better than any other country in the world. I believe, if this country works hard and pulls together, and no unforeseen disaster occurs, that there is no reason why our social life should be affected in those regards by what we are proposing to do in the Financial Resolution to-night.
  The statement which has been criticised, the White Paper referring to this Debate, is a "Statement relating to Defence Expenditure." It does not purport to be a statement relating to foreign policy. But there is no inconsistency between the preparations described in the White Paper and the declarations that we have made from time to time with regard to our foreign policy. I should like to examine them for a short time. I would like to recall to the Committee a recent announcement by the Foreign Secretary. I do that because it must be fresh in many Members' minds, and because it puts very clearly and succinctly how we regard the position. I have taken a copy of it; some hon. Members will be familiar with it. He was speaking in reference to the rearmament proposals of the Government, and he said:
  "It may be asked, for what purpose will these arms be used? Let me once again make the position in this respect perfectly clear. These arms will never be used in a war of aggression. They will never be used for a purpose inconsistent with the Covenant of the League or the Pact of Paris. They may, and, if the occasion arose, they would, be used in our own defence, and in defence of the territories of the British Commonwealth of Nations. They may, and if the occasion arose they would, be used in defence of France and Belgium against unprovoked aggression in accordance with our existing obligations. They may, and if a new Western European settlement can be reached they would, be used in defence of Germany were she the victim of unprovoked aggression by any of the other signatories of such a settlement. Those, together with our Treaty of Alliance with Iraq and our projected Treaty
  1510
  with Egypt, are our definite obligations. In addition, our armaments may be used in bringing help to a victim of aggression in any case where in our judgment it would be proper under the provisions of the Covenant to do so. I use the word 'may' deliberately, because in such an instance there is no automatic obligation to take military action. It is, moreover, right that this should be so, for nations cannot be expected to incur automatic military obligations save for areas where their vital interests are concerned."
  I think that that is a very clear and very fair statement. It represents the views of the Government. As regards my right hon. Friend, if I may so call him, the Member for Caithness (Sir A. Sinclair), who suggested that there was a division in the Cabinet—one of the most venerable forms of suggestion in political life—I would tell him that the last dissension which occurred in the Cabinet was no fault of mine; it was when, to my infinitely great regret, he left us.
  It is in view of that statement of the Foreign Secretary that we wish our proposals to be regarded. Hon. Members opposite have complained that there was no mention in the Chancellor's speech of the League of Nations. They concluded from that—and here is another curious, swift, illogical, political conclusion—that we have ceased to take any interest in the League of Nations. I do not know what possible reason they can have for that suggestion. I believe there is no difference of view in any part of the House as to the relationship of our policy to the principles of the League. The object of all parties alike in this country has been, and remains, a very simple one, and that is to maintain peace. We have done our best. The Leader of the Opposition says we have failed. We do not accept that failure. We have by no means abandoned our hopes. Our object, as I say, is to maintain peace, and we have sought to build up an international structure for that purpose. That international structure, as everyone in the Committee knows, was unable at the first attempt to stand the weight which it was made to try to bear. As the Committee knows, and as I think has been repeatedly stated from this Box, the Government have not lost hope yet, and we are now devoting our efforts to bringing about a pact to take the place of the old Locarno Pact with the old Locarno Powers.
  I think, myself, it may well be in the immediate future that the most hopeful

  1511
  prospect is the prospect of regional pacts. It is worth anything, it is worth everything in Europe to-day to get a feeling of security, at any rate in one part, from which that security, if once attained, may spread to other parts of Europe. We regard regional pacts as of the greatest importance, but the Committee must recognise, and no one who has to deal with these things practically can fail to recognise, as has often been said from this Box, that the League differs from the League originally contemplated, and the difficulties which will lie in the way of those who try to work for collective security in a League in which some of the most powerful and highly armed nations in the world are outside, are almost insuperable. One of the most cogent causes of unrest in Europe during the last two or three years—and there are many of them—I definitely believe to be due to want of equilibrium between the obligations and the liabilities of our country and the material strength of our country. Our liabilities and our obligations having been so much greater than our material strength, we find it much more difficult to do what we would than we should find it in a heavily armed world if we had stronger arms.
  Hon. Members on the other side often speak about collective security as though it would work by itself, and as though there were some kind of antithesis between collective security and national security. I think that point was very well exposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich (Mr. H. Strauss), who pointed out the effect of Article 8 of the Covenant. In the few minutes that I have I am not going to allude again to that, but there is no antithesis. The two things are one, and it is a very great fallacy to think that you can vote for something that is going to be spent on collective security and you cannot vote for something that is going to be spent on national defence. Let us ask ourselves for a moment what is the object of collective security. You want to get by collective security this, that the forces of order are stronger than the forces of disorder. And more than that, the object is not merely to win a war should one break out. If any war breaks out in Europe now it is not going to be a localised war. It will run through Europe—the most terrible thing you can
  1512
  conceive—and if the forces are fairly even, you may have a repetition of 1914 with all its horrors. The idea of collective security was that there should be so overwhelrnmg a force on the one side that no aggressor could start war. That would have been the case, as I have said over and over again, had the League been universal. That could have been done, and it could be done to-day. But if you are to fulfil your obligations under collective security you must have power enough to defend yourselves.
  I ask you to think of this for one moment. Were there a pact—and I am not speaking of collective security through the whole of Europe—for mutual defence between the nations of Western Europe, I hope and believe—and the committee hopes and believes—that such a pact would maintain the peace. But if it were broken, and were members of it, we might find ourselves in a moment in opposition to a first-class military and air Power in Europe. Under collective security, assuming that those who were acting with us came in, the brunt of some fighting would always be with this country—the brunt of naval fighting; for one thing because this country has possessions oversea, this country has possessions in the East, and this country must be able to look after itself on the sea, and yet be able to look after itself if disaster should come further afield.
  Under any form of collective security this country would be the first to stand the racket in the air, provided that the country against whom collective security was engaged was within a radius from which she could bomb us. Therefore, for this country to enter into any system of collective security of that kind when she is not in a position to pull her weight with the other countries, or to defend herself satisfactorily, would be a most dangerous thing for this country, and it is to avoid that that these proposals are put forward. There must be no doubt if there is to be any security of that kind. Perhaps some hon. Members may remember that I said—I think it was at the last Election, and I think I said it in my broadcast—that I would never as Prime Minister be a party to engaging again in sanctions on behalf of this country until this country was much more strongly armed than she was then. That I believe to be fundamental for the existence of this country, and it is because of that we

  1513
  are recommending these proposals to the Committee.
  I apologise for having to cut what I have to say very short. I would like to add one word taking up what my right hon. Friend the Minister for Co-ordination of Defence said at the end of his speech. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition was a little sarcastic at my expense on account of various speeches I have made about democracy. I have for many years, ever since I became Prime Minister, tried to make the people of this country proud of their system. I have tried to make them realise that it is not a system that can be preserved without sacrifice. The time for sacrifice is now. I believe it can be preserved, and I believe that what we are doing will have that effect. It is a sacrifice, but a sacrifice worth making. I saw the other day that a member of the Communist party said that this was a very good time to be alive, to which an admirable riposte was made by an hon. Member whom I see sitting on the other side of the House, and, if I may I congratulate him on that reply. But it is a good time to be alive for those who believe in their principles of democracy and are prepared to make the sacrifice for it, because they have the opportunity now of making that sacrifice. All of us believe that the spirit of freedom is worth something in this country. The best thing we can do now to preserve it is to make our country so strong, that no one who holds opposite views in these matters shall ever consider it worth while making any wanton aggression on this country. It is for the safety of ourselves and of our people, and it is for that to-night that we are going into the Lobby.
  Question put
  "That it is expedient—
  (1) to authorise the Treasury, during the five years ending on the thirty-first day
  of March, nineteen hundred and forty-two, to issue out of the Consolidated Fund sums not exceeding in the aggregate four hundred million pounds to be applied as appropriations in aid of the moneys provided by Parliament for the Navy, Army (including Royal Ordnance Factories) and Air services for those years;
  Provided that the amount so issued in respect of any service for any year shall not at any date exceed the aggregate of the amounts proposed to be issued in respect of that service by the estimates upon which this House has, before that date, resolved to grant sums to His Majesty to defray expenses for that service for that year;
  (2) to authorise the Treasury, for the purpose of providing money for the issue of sums as aforesaid or for replacing sums so issued, to raise money in any manner in which they are authorised to raise money under and for the purpose of sub-section (1) of section one of the War Loan Act, 1919, and to provide that any securities created and issued accordingly shall be deemed for all purposes to have been created and issued under the said sub-section (1);
  (3) to authorise the old sinking fund to be used in the said five years for providing money for the issue of sums as aforesaid instead of being issued to the National Debt Commissioners;
  (4) to provide for the repayment to the Exchequer, out of moneys provided by Parliament for the said services in such proportions as the Treasury may direct, of the sums issued as aforesaid with interest at the rate of three per cent, per annum as follows:—

  (a) until the expiration of the said five years interest only shall be payable;

  (b) thereafter the sums so issued shall be repaid, together with interest, by means of thirty equal annual instalments of principal and interest combined;

  (5) to provide for the application of sums paid into the Exchequer under the last foregoing paragraph, so far as they represent principal, in redeeming or paying off debt, and, so far as they represent interest, in paying interest otherwise pay able out of the permanent annual charge for the National Debt."
  The Committee divided: Ayes, 329; Noes, 145.

  Division No. 84.]

  AYES.

  [10.57 p.m.

  Acland-Troyte, Lt.-Col. G. J.

  Balfour, Capt. H. H. (Isle of Thanet)

  Boothby, R. J. G.

  Albery, Sir Irving

  Balniel, Lord

  Bossom, A. C.

  Allen, Lt.-Col. J. Sandeman (B'kn'hd)

  Barrie, Sir C. C.

  Boulton, W. W.

  Amery, Rt. Hon. L. C. M. S

  Baxter, A. Beverley

  Bowater, Col. Sir T. Vansittart

  Anderson, Sir A. Garrett (C. of Ldn.)

  Beamish, Rear-Admiral T. P. H.

  Bower, Comdr. R. T.

  Anstruther-Gray, W. J.

  Beauchamp, Sir B. C.

  Bowyer, Capt. Sir G. E. W.

  Apsley, Lord

  Beaumont, M. W. (Aylesbury)

  Boyce, H. Leslie

  Aske, Sir R. W.

  Beaumont, Hon. R. E. B. (Portsm'h)

  Boyd-Carpenter, Major Sir A. B.

  Assheton, R.

  Beit, Sir A. L.

  Bracken, B.

  Astor, Hon. W. W. (Fulham, E.)

  Bennett, Capt. Sir E. N.

  Braithwaite, Major A. N.

  Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley

  Birchall, Sir J. D.

  Brass, Sir W.

  Baldwin-Webb, Cot. J.

  Blair, Sir R.

  Briscoe, Capt. R. G.

  Balfour, G. (Hampstead)

  Blaker, Sir R.

  Brocklebank, C. E. R.

  Brown, Col. D. C. (Hexham)

  Fox, Sir G. W. G.

  Magnay, T.

  Brown, Flt. Hon. E. (Leith)

  Fremantle, Sir F. E.

  Makins, Brig.-Gen. E.

  Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C. (Newbury)

  Furness, S. N.

  Manningham-Buller, Sir M.

  Browne, A. C. (Belfast, W.)

  Fyfe, D. P. M.

  Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R.

  Bull, B. B.

  Ganzoni, Sir J.

  Mason, Lt.-Col. Hon. G. K. M.

  Bullock, Capt. M.

  Gluckstein, L. H.

  Mayhew, Lt.-Col. J.

  Burgin, Dr. E. L,

  Glyn, Major Sir R. G. C.

  Meller, Sir R. J. (Mitcham)

  Burton, Col. H. W.

  Goldie, N. B.

  Mellor, Sir J. S. P. (Tamworth)

  Butler, R. A.

  Graham, Captain A. C. (Wirral)

  Mills, Sir F. (Leyton, E.)

  Caine, G. R. Hall-

  Grant-Ferris, R.

  Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest)

  Campbell, Sir E. T.

  Granville E. L.

  Mitchell, H. (Brentford and Chiswick)

  Cartland, J. R. H.

  Gretton, Col. Rt. Hon. J.

  Mitcheson, Sir G. G.

  Carver, Major W. H.

  Gridley, Sir A. B.

  Moore, Lieut.-Col. T. C. R.

  Castlereagh, Viscount

  Grimston, R. V.

  Moore-Brabazon, Lt.-Col. J. T. C.

  Cayzer, Sir C. W. (City of Chester)

  Guest, Hon. I. (Brecon and Radnor)

  Moreing, A. C.

  Cayzer, Sir H. R. (Portsmouth, S.)

  Guest, Maj. Hon. O. (C'mb'rw'll, N.W.)

  Morris, O. T. (Cardiff, E.)

  Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.)

  Guy, J. C. M.

  Morris-Jones, Sir Henry

  Cazalet, Capt. V. A. (Chippenham)

  Hacking, Rt. Hon. D. H.

  Morrison, G. A. (Scottish Univ's.)

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. Sir A. (Br.W.)

  Hamilton, Sir G. C.

  Morrison, Rt. Hon. W. S. (Cirencester)

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. N. (Edgb't'n)

  Hanbury, Sir C.

  Muirhead, Lt.-Col. A. J.

  Channon, H.

  Hannon, Sir P. J. H.

  Munro, P.

  Chorlton, A. E. L.

  Hartington, Marquess of

  Nall, Sir J.

  Christie, J. A.

  Haslam, H. C. (Horncastle)

  Neven-Spence, Major B. H. H.

  Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.

  Haslam, Sir J. (Bolton)

  O'Connor, Sir Terenee J.

  Clarke, F. E. (Dartford)

  Heilgers, Captain F. F. A.

  O'Neill, Major Rt. Hon. Sir Hugh

  Clarke, Lt.-Col. R. S. (E. Grinstead)

  Heneage, Lieut.-Colonel A. P.

  Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. W. G. A.

  Clarry, Sir Reginald

  Hepburn, P. G. T. Buchan

  Orr-Ewing, I. L.

  Clydesdale, Marquess of

  Hepworth, J.

  Palmer, G. E. H.

  Cobb, Captain E. C. (Preston)

  Herbert, A. P. (Oxford U.)

  Patrick, C. M.

  Colfox, Major W. P.

  Herbert, Major J. A. (Monmouth)

  Peake, O.

  Colman, N. C. D.

  Hills, Major Rt. Hon. J. w. (Ripon)

  Peat, C. U.

  Colville, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. D. J.

  Hoare, Rt. Hon. Sir S.

  Percy, Rt. Hon. Lord E.

  Cook, Sir T. R. A. M. (Norfolk, N.)

  Holmes, J. S.

  Perkins, W. R. D.

  Cooke, J. D. (Hammersmith, S.)

  Hope, Captain Hon. A. O. J.

  Peters, Dr. S. J.

  Cooper, Rt. Hn. A. Duff (W'st'r S. G'gs)

  Hopkinson, A.

  Petherick, M.

  Cooper, Rt. Hn. T. M. (E'nburgh, W.)

  Hore-Belisha, Rt. Hon. L.

  Pilkington, R,

  Courtauld, Major J. S.

  Horne, Rt. Hon. Sir R. S.

  Ponsonby, Col. C. E.

  Courthope, Col. Sir G. L.

  Horsbrugh, Florence

  Porritt, R. W.

  Cranborne, Viscount

  Howitt, Dr. A. B.

  Pownall, Lt.-Col. Sir Assheton

  Craven-Ellis, W.

  Hudson, Capt. A. U. M. (Hack., N.)

  Preston, Sir W. R.

  Croft, Brig.-Gen. Sir H. Page

  Hudson, R. S. (Southport)

  Radford, E. A.

  Crooke, J. S.

  Hulbert, N. J.

  Raikes, H. V. A. M.

  Crookshank, Capt. H. F. C.

  Hume, Sir G. H.

  Ramsay, Captain A. H. M

  Croom-Johnson, R. P.

  Hunter, T.

  Ramsbotham, H.

  Cross, R. H.

  Hurd, Sir P. A.

  Crossley, A. C.

  Inskip, Rt. Hon. Sir T. W. H.

  Ramsden, Sir E.

  Crowder, J. F. E.

  Jackson, Sir H.

  Rankin, Sir R.

  Cruddas, Col. B.

  Jones, L. (Swansea W.)

  Rathbone, J. R. (Bodmin)

  Culverwell, C. T.

  Keeling, E. H.

  Rawson, Sir Cooper

  Davidson, Rt. Hon. Sir J. C. C.

  Kerr, Colonel C. I. (Montrose)

  Rayner, Major R. H.

  Davies, C. (Montgomery)

  Kerr, H. W. (Oldham)

  Reed, A. C. (Exeter)

  Davies, Major Sir G. F. (Yeovil)

  Kerr, J. Graham (Scottish Univs.)

  Reid, Sir D. D. (Down)

  Davison, Sir W. H.

  Keyes, Admiral of the Fleet Sir R.

  Reid, W. Allan (Derby)

  Dawson, Sir P.

  Kimball, L.

  Remer, J. R.

  Denman, Hon. R. D.

  Knox, Major-General Sir A. W. F.

  Rickards, G. W. (Skipton)

  Denville, Alfred

  Lamb, Sir J. Q.

  Robinson, J. R. (Blackpool)

  Despencer-Robertson, Major J. A. F.

  Lambert, Rt. Hon. G.

  Ropner, Colonel L.

  Dixon, Capt. Rt. Hon. H.

  Latham, Sir P.

  Ross, Major Sir R. D. (Londonderry)

  Doland, G. F.

  Law, Sir A. J. (High Peak)

  Ross Taylor, W. (Woodbridge)

  Donner, P. W.

  Leckie, J. A.

  Rowlands, G.

  Dorman-Smith, Major R. H.

  Leech, Dr. J. W.

  Runciman, Rt. Hon. W.

  Drewe, C.

  Lees-Jones, J.

  Russell, A. West (Tynemouth)

  Duckworth, G. A. V. (Salop)

  Leigh, Sir J.

  Russell, S. H. M. (Darwen)

  Duckworth, W. R. (Moss Side)

  Lennox-Boyd, A. T. L.

  Salt, E. W.

  Dugdale, Major T. L.

  Levy, T.

  Samuel, M. R. A.

  Duggan, H. J.

  Liddall, W. S.

  Sandeman, Sir N. S.

  Duncan, J. A. L.

  Little, Sir E. Graham-

  Sanderson, Sir F. B.

  Dunglass, Lord

  Llewellin, Lieut.-Col. J. J.

  Sandys, E. D.

  Eastwood, J. F.

  Lloyd, G. W.

  Scott, Lord William

  Eckersley, P. T.

  Loftus, P. C.

  Selley, H. R.

  Edmondson, Major Sir J.

  Lovat-Fraser, J. A.

  Shakespeare, G. H.

  Elliot, Rt. Hon. W. E.

  Lumley, Capt. L. R.

  Shaw, Captain W. T. (Forfar)

  Ellis, Sir G.

  Lyons, A. M.

  Simmonds, O. E,

  Elliston, Capt. G. S.

  Mabane, W. (Huddersfield)

  Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir J. A.

  Elmley, Viscount

  MacAndrew, Colonel Sir C. G.

  Smiles, Lieut.-Colonel Sir W. D.

  Emery, J. F.

  M'Connell, Sir J.

  Smith, Bracewell (Dulwich)

  Emmott, C. E. G. C.

  McCorquodale, M. S.

  Smith, L. W. (Hallam)

  Emrys-Evans, P. V.

  MacDonald, Rt. Hon. J. R. (Scot. U.)

  Smith, Sir R, W. (Aberdeen)

  Entwistle, Sir C. F.

  MacBonald, Rt. Hon. M. (Ross)

  Smithers, Sir W.

  Errington, E.

  Macdonald, Capt. P. (Isle of Wight)

  Somervell, Sir D. B. (Crewe)

  Erskine-Hill, A. G.

  McEwen, Capt. J. H. F.

  Somerville, A. A. (Windsor)

  Evans, Capt. A. (Cardiff, S.)

  McKie, J. H.

  Southby, Commander A. R. J.

  Everard, W. L.

  Macmillan, H. (Stockton-on-Tees)

  Spears, Brigadier-General E. L.

  Fildes, Sir H.

  Macnamara, Capt. J. R. J.

  Spens, W. P.

  Findlay, Sir E.

  Macquisten, F. A.

  Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Fylde)

  1516

  1517

  Storey, S.

  Tufnell, Lieut.-Commander R. L.

  Williams, H. G. (Croydon, S.)

  Stourton, Major Hon. J. J.

  Turton, R. H.

  Wilson, Lt.-Col. Sir A. T. (Hitchin)

  Strauss, E. A. (Southwark, N.)

  Wakefield, W. W.

  Windsor-Clive, Lieut.-Colonel G.

  Strauss, H. G. (Norwich)

  Walker-Smith, Sir J.

  Winterton, Rt. Hon. Earl

  Strickland, Captain W. F

  Wallace, Capt. Rt. Hon. Euan

  Wise, A. R.

  Stuart, Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn)

  Ward, Irene M. B. (Wallsend)

  Womersley, Sir W. J.

  Sueter, Rear-Admiral Sir M. F.

  Wardlaw-Milne, Sir J. S.

  Wood, Rt. Hon. Sir Kingsley

  Sutcliffe, H.

  Warrender, Sir V.

  Wragg, H.

  Taylor, C. S. (Eastbourne)

  Waterhouse, Captain C.

  Wright, Squadron-Leader J. A. C.

  Taylor, Vice-Adm. E. A. (Padd., S.)

  Wayland, Sir W. A

  Young, A. S. L. (Partick)

  Titchfield, Marquess of

  Wedderburn, H. J. S.

  Touche, G. C.

  Wells, S. R.

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

  Train, Sir J.

  Williams, C. (Torquay)

  Sir George Penny and Lieut.-Colonel Sir A. Lambert Ward.

  NOES.

  Acland, Rt. Hon. Sir F. Dyke

  Groves, T. E.

  Pethick-Lawrence, F. W.

  Acland, R. T. D. (Barnstaple)

  Hall, G. H. (Aberdare)

  Potts, J.

  Adams, D. (Consett)

  Hall, J. H. (Whitechapel)

  Price, M. P.

  Adams, D. M. (Poplar, S.)

  Hardie, G. D.

  Pritt, D. N.

  Adamson, W. M.

  Harris, Sir P. A.

  Quibell, D. J. K.

  Alexander, Rt. Hon. A. V. (H'lsbr.)

  Hayday, A.

  Richards, R. (Wrexham)

  Ammon, C. G.

  Henderson, J. (Ardwick)

  Ridley, G.

  Attlee, Rt. Hon. C. R.

  Henderson, T. (Tradeston)

  Riley, B.

  Banfield, J. W.

  Hicks, E. G.

  Ritson, J.

  Barnes, A. J.

  Hollins, A.

  Roberts, W. (Cumberland, N.)

  Barr, J.

  Hopkin, D.

  Robinson, W. A. (St. Helens)

  Batey, J.

  Jagger, J.

  Rothschild, J. A. de

  Bellenger, F. J.

  Jenkins, A. (Pontypool)

  Rowson, G.

  Benson, G.

  Jones, A. C (Shipley)

  Salter, Dr. A.

  Broad, F. A.

  Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)

  Sanders, W. S.

  Brooke, W.

  Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)

  Seely, Sir H. M.

  Brown, C. (Mansfield)

  Kelly, W. T.

  Sexton. T. M.

  Buchanan, G.

  Kennedy, Rt. Hon. T.

  Shinwell, E.

  Burke, W. A.

  Kirby, B. V.

  Short, A.

  Cape, T.

  Lawson, J. J.

  Silkin, L.

  Cassells, T.

  Leach, W.

  Silverman, S. S.

  Charleton, H. C.

  Leonard, W.

  Simpson, F. B.

  Cluse, W. S.

  Leslie, J. R.

  Sinclair, Rt. Hon. Sir A. (C'thn's)

  Cocks, F. S.

  Logan, D. G.

  Smith, Ben (Rotherhithe)

  Cove, W. G.

  Lunn, W.

  Smith, E. (Stoke)

  Cripps, Hon. Sir Stafford

  Macdonald, G. (Ince)

  Smith, Rt. Hon. H. B. Lees-(K'ly)

  Dalton, H.

  McEntee, V. La T.

  Sorensen, R. W.

  Davidson, J. J. (Maryhill)

  McGhee, H. G.

  Stephen, C.

  Day, H.

  MacLaren, A.

  Stewart, W. J. (H'ght'n-le-Sp'ng)

  Dobbie, W.

  Maclean, N.

  Strauss, G. R. (Lambeth, N.)

  Dunn, E. (Rother Valley)

  MacMillan, M. (Western Isles)

  Taylor, R. J. (Morpeth)

  Ede, J. C.

  MacNeill, Weir, L.

  Thorne, W.

  Evans, D. O. (Cardigan)

  Mainwaring, W. H.

  Thurtle, E.

  Evans, E. (Univ. of Wales)

  Mander, G. le M.

  Tinker, J. J.

  Fletcher, Lt.-Comdr. R. T. H.

  Marshall, F.

  Viant, S. P.

  Frankel, D.

  Mathers, G.

  Walkden, A. G.

  Gallacher, W.

  Maxton, J.

  Walker, J.

  Gardner, B. W.

  Messer, F.

  Watkins, F. C.

  Garro Jones, G. M.

  Milner, Major J.

  Watson, W. McL.

  George, Major G. Lloyd (Pembroke)

  Montague, F.

  Welsh, J. C.

  George, Megan Lloyd (Anglesey)

  Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Hackney, S.)

  Westwood, J.

  Gibbins, J.

  Morrison, R. C. (Tottenham, N.)

  Wilkinson, Ellen

  Gibson, R. (Greenock)

  Muff, G.

  Williams, E. J. (Ogmore)

  Green, W. H. (Deptford)

  Naylor, T. E.

  Williams, T. (Don Valley)

  Greenwood, Rt. Hon. A.

  Oliver, G. H.

  Windsor, W. (Hull, C.)

  Grenfell, D. R.

  Owen, Major G.

  Woods, G. S. (Finsbury)

  Griffith, F. Kingsley (M'ddl'sbro, W.)

  Paling, W.

  Young, Sir R. (Newton)

  Griffiths, G. A. (Hemsworth)

  Parker, J.

  Griffiths, J. (Llanelly)

  Parkinson, J. A.

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—

  Mr. Whiteley and Mr. John.

  Resolution to be reported upon Monday next.

  DEAF CHILDREN (SCHOOL ATTENDANCE) BILL.
  Order [2nd February] that the Bill be committed to a Standing Committee read, and discharged.
  Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House for Monday next.—[Mr. Rostron Duckworth.]
  The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

  DEAF CHILDREN (SCHOOL ATTENDANCE) BILL.

    ADJOURNMENT.
    Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Captain Margesson.]
    Adjourned accordingly at Eleven Minutes after Eleven o'Clock.