FOOD SUPPLIES.

HC Deb 13 March 1940 vol 358 cc1224-331

4.13 p.m.

Mr. T. Williams (Don Valley)

The astronomical figures just referred to by the right hon. Gentleman are well-nigh beyond my comprehension, and I do not intend to examine the whole of the hemisphere within which that expenditure is taking place. We know that this Vote affects all war expenditure for which specific provision has not been made and on it, we could, of course, discuss the financing of the war, the provision of supplies for the Army, Navy and Air Force, the Ministry of Supply and so forth. We expect, however, that there will be ample opportunities for discussing the financing of the war when the Budget and the accompanying Financial Resolutions come before the House and we propose to ask for a day next week on which to discuss the general prosecution of the war, including the finance which is being provided therefor. To-day therefore we are prepared to debate a much less spectacular subject but one which comes within the scope of this Vote, namely, the question of food supplies. I would say, however, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that although we do not intend to-day to discuss general expenditure upon the war, the House of Commons will insist on keeping control over such expenditure and, from time to time, the Opposition parties will require ample opportunities for the discussion of that expenditure.

As a result of Ministerial speeches, broadcasts and articles, the question of food supplies has been lifted, at long last, to the position of a first-class subject. It has been a sort of "poor relation" for many years, but at last, as the Lord Privy Seal said yesterday, it is coming into its own again. The Minister of Agriculture has issued an appeal and in order to emphasise the importance of food production has actually turned himself into a film star, while the Lord Privy Seal almost becomes poetic every time he makes a reference to agriculture these days. The Prime Minister, who is more prosaic, as usual, warns, cajoles and promises, but unfortunately it is our opinion that despite all this there is no real enthusiasm for the ploughing-up campaign. We are not at all satisfied with the policy which has been, and is being, pursued by the Government, in view of the importance of this question.

I am sure the Minister of Agriculture will not deny that the farmers are sullen and resentful, not only at being let down in the past, but at the missed opportunities of the past 20 years. They are not at all certain about this apparently sudden conversion on the part of the Government. We have had, quite recently, the feeding-stuffs, meat and seed muddles with an infantile credit scheme, and we have seen vested interests at every corner, while there has been a Government tendency towards landlords which has militated against the success of the Minister's appeal. The Prime Minister's general contribution to the food situation was a speech made to the chairmen of the County Agricultural Executive Committees a short time ago. He guaranteed that when harvest time comes along labour will be provided from some source, but he did not explain from what source. He guaranteed a reasonable return and decent wages, but he did not say how, and he also said that if he or the present Government were in office at the conclusion of the war, farmers would not be let down as they were after the last war. I was rather interested to read that what the Prime Minister wants is a well-balanced, solidly established agriculture, whatever that may mean, but he did not explain just what well-balanced and solidly established agriculture really meant.

The right hon. Gentleman the Lord Privy Seal spoke recently from Nottingham, and I enjoyed every word of the speech he made, particularly his agricultural references, so much so that I almost expected to see him march into the House to-day in gaiters. His speech has been described as "monumental, packed with good intentions and high-sounding principles." I thought that was rather an unkind reference to him, but on closer examination of what he said, and a little reflection on some of his observations, I came to the conclusion that that description was, after all, not so bad. This is part of what he said: We must grow more food at home and make fuller use of the natural resources which the Almighty has bestowed on this island. That is a recent discovery of the right hon. Gentleman. He went on to say: That is good husbandry, and sound economy. We shall get better food, fresher food, more nourishing and healthier food for ourselves and our children. That is another modern discovery. He also said: We can hope to emerge from this war sounder, better off and wealthier than before we went into it. It looks as though the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer need not worry. Summing up, the Lord Privy Seal said: We shall have well tilled fields where we grew thistles. Why have thistles been growing? He added: We shall have ploughed laud where we have moor land, and a prosperous countryside where we have distress. What a confession for the right hon. Gentleman to make. "Let us," he said, "turn to agriculture and give our minds to the soil." These sentiments are extremely good, and I was very interested in them, especially when he said that the Government had fixed the goal. Apparently they have selected the team. The right hon. Gentleman, I understand, is the centre-forward, and I can understand that the Minister of Agriculture and the Prime Minister are two good inside forwards, but there are two other Ministerial Members of this team—the Minister of Food and the Chancellor of the Exchequer as half-backs. But instead of feeding their forwards they are passing backwards, and I doubt if they are ever likely to score a goal. In fact, so long as this team remains together I fully anticipate that they will all be on the transfer list in a very short time. The Minister of Agriculture is demanding of farmers that they will do their best by producing more food to conserve our shipping space, and help the Navy and our currency situation. He went so far as to say that if what he desired was fulfilled we should have changed the face of rural England. I entirely agree with that, after 20 years' neglect by the Conservative and National Governments, but I think the right hon. Gentleman would be the first to admit that if we are to change the face of rural England, it will require capital, and a lot of it as well, and a maximum of confidence.

For years we on these benches have pleaded for a real credit scheme. I understand that to-day is the concluding date for the flotation of the £300,000,000 loan at 3 per cent., and I hope the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been successful. Why not £310,000,000 at 3 per cent.? If so much capital is required for this food campaign of the Government, why not have a real credit scheme? If there are to be well-tilled fields where thistles grew before and if we are to have a prosperous countryside and be better off at the end of the war, then any such credit would be perfectly safe. It would do more—and this is the major point—it would bring back to the countryside that confidence which it has lacked for a long time. I repeat that the farmers suspect this sudden conversion and want something more than words if they are to go into this campaign with the enthusiasm we all desire. The Minister, on 25th January, said in the House that what we wanted was to make industry prosperous so that it could provide ordinary rates of interest through normal channels.

I would put it in another way and say that the Government have always resisted a really comprehensive credit scheme because they are afraid of the banks, merchants, and middlemen. We are at war, and peace-time vested interests ought not to stand in the way at this moment. What about this ploughing-up campaign? Quite obviously, both Oppositions have been supporting it from the commencement, but we are not at all sure that we have succeeded in some of the counties. Some of the counties may have done extremely well, and others less than well, but there are many reasons why we fear that the campaign is not being as successful a sit might have been. We have heard the Lord Privy Seal and the Prime Minister say that so many acres have been scheduled for turning over, but, so far, we have had no statement as to how many acres have actually been turned over. As for those that have not been turned over, there are many stumbling-blocks to be overcome before the maximum success can be obtained. There is a lack of capital, and particularly does this apply to the small farmers in all parts of the country. Some farmers are extremely prosperous to-day, and are doing very well, but I am equally certain that there is a large number of small farmers who have no capital available and cannot do the job they are called upon to do at this moment.

I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman—and perhaps he will reply later—how many liaison officers there are between the Ministry of Agriculture and the County Agricultural Executive Committees. It is my information that while most of the County Executives are doing their work as well as is humanly possible where landowner representation is not too heavily weighted, they need some inspiration by visits, and not by circulars. They need travelling advisers more than penny postcards, and if there are only two or three liaison officers between the Ministry of Agriculture and the counties, that will not produce the success we all desire to see. What are wanted are visits by people who can say not only what is to be done but how to do it. There is a type of small farmer who is utterly incapable of fulfilling his obligations at this moment. How many agricultural committees have seen fit to invite such a farmer to become a manager for the duration so that the County Executive Committee can take over the job and see that the work is put through? How many farms have been taken over since the committees commenced to function?

One of the drawbacks to the success of this campaign is the excessive tenderness of the Government towards landowners in this country. I know that where an agricultural executive committee have power they issue a certificate to allow a tenant to override the agreement between himself and the landowner, but that is hardly sufficient. Where a farmer desires to plough up more land than the actual quota the county executive will not grant a certificate if the landlord objects, and there is no appeal against that. The tenant is in a hopeless position, for if he dared to turn over more land than the landlord desired, and for which no certificate had been granted, he stands subject to a heavy fine, or compensation demanded by the landlord. Here is a case about which I read recently in the "Farmers' Weekly," with reference to a tenant who was not only about to turn over his normal quota but wanted to turn over a good number of acres besides. The landlord objected, and, therefore, the county agricultural executive committee refused to issue a certificate. This is what is said in the article in this paper: When the soil was tested the tenant was advised that the whole of the land would be better ploughed. Forty years ago or thereabouts 86 acres of that farm was under the plough, and it was regarded as good wheat land. It just tumbled down to grass. As for improving the turf itself, which is to say, making the most of the farm as it stood, without breaking any agreement, the first requisite was fencing, which you will remember was the landlord's liability. The tenant applied for material but the landlord refused, adding that if the tenant was not satisfied—well, there were other tenants. And all the time there are other farmers appealing against orders to plough fertile, heavily-stocked pasture land. That seems to me to be a scandal. In time of war you mandate the tenant and tell him what he has to do, but the landlord still retains the privilege of preventing a willing tenant from making the maximum use of his land. We conscript life, we mandate the tenant, Hitler is on the doorstep, and yet landlords' privileges prevent the ploughing-up of land for food production. That tenderness will not do, and I hope the Minister of Agriculture and the Lord Privy Seal will see what they can do about it. Here is another example of the tenderness of the Government towards landlords militating against the ploughing-up campaign and, incidentally, destroying a good deal of the confidence of willing farmers. Here is an instruction to the county executive committees: Where the grassland has been ploughed up under an Order it will be open to the landowner, at the end of the war, to lodge a claim for the restoration of the land, as far as practicable, to the condition in which it would be but for the ploughing up. If it is to be the right and privilege of a landowner, the moment war is over, to make a demand that the land shall be restored to the condition it was in prior to the war, what encouragement is there for the tenant farmer? How does the Lord Privy Seal reconcile this with his broadcast statement? That is taking us back to pre-war days. It does not breed confidence, and I should like to know how the Lord Privy Seal squares it with the statement he made. There is only one solution to this problem, and it is a solution which we are unable to discuss this afternoon, but the sooner the land of this country is nationalised the better.

There is another thing which is militating against the ploughing-up campaign. There is a scarcity of seeds. I know that the right hon. Gentleman has told us from time to time that there are plenty of seeds and that all that is required is for the farmer to give his order to-day or to-morrow, that once the merchant knows what the orders are there is an ample supply for all. My information, for what it is worth, is that the position so far as seeds are concerned is chaotic. Farmers are declaring that it is no use ploughing up land unless there is a guarantee of seeds, and, in any case, where seeds can be obtained the price has gone up. The price of seed oats has soared to 25s. per cwt., and no farmer who knows the real value of oats is willing to pay the merchant or another farmer that excessive price; four times as much as it was before the war commenced. Then the farmer may sow a mixed crop, and in this connection I read this morning in the "Yorkshire Post," where they refer to farmers being given permission to sow a mixed crop: With present prices—tares, which before the war were from 16s. to 18s. per cwt. were now 52s. per cwt.—and the limited supplies, it was impossible to meet all the orders. I want to ask the Minister of Agriculture, the Lord Privy Seal, the Minister of Food, and the President of the Board of Trade whether that constitutes profiteering or not? If farmers are called upon to pay 52s. for a commodity which they could buy for 16s. before the war, it will not only have a discouraging effect but in many cases farmers simply will not pay the price. To that extent it is militating against the ploughing-up campaign.

There is the question of feeding-stuffs. It has been placed on record in this House that the shortage of feeding-stuffs since the commencement of the war has been infinitely more destructive of our food supplies than the U-boat campaign. The hon. Member for Doncaster (Mr. J. Morgan) a few weeks ago said that we were 500,000 pigs less, 500,000 sheep less and 1,000,000 poultry less, than before the war, and I do not think his statement was an exaggeration, because every hon.

Member through his own correspondence knows that there never was a bigger muddle than the feeding-stuff muddle of the last few months. The Secretary of State for War, speaking yesterday, said that 12 months ago if conflict was not inevitable it was dangerously near, and yet the Government, apparently, did nothing about it. It is true that they were supposed to have started their preparations for war, but did they prepare in the matter of feeding-stuffs not only to help our shipping and our Navy, but to help our farmers to maintain their livestock? I do not need to quote half-a-dozen cases; one will be enough. Here is a case from Scotland about which the Minister of Food already knows. A farmer bought a farm in 1926 and erected modern buildings, his intention being to keep 750 pigs. He let the major portion of his land for grazing. In September last year he had 700 pigs, and his weekly consumption of balanced meal was 3½ tons. In December, without any notice at all, that 3½ tons was reduced to 10 cwts. per week. What could the man do with 700 pigs? He had to take 450 immature pigs to the slaughter-house. The bank immediately learned of this and made him sign a trust deed, and that man who was feeding 700 pigs in September last year has now signed on at the Employment Exchange. That is an instance of what has happened as a result of this feeding-stuffs muddle, for which all the Ministers are responsible to some extent. It is destroying the confidence, not only of poultry dealers, sheep farmers and pig producers, but of the rest of the community; and that case can be multiplied thousands of times.

I do not want to say too much about cereal control, but let me say this—I hope the Minister of Food will take note of it: At the head of every cereal control in this country the right hon. Gentleman, or those acting on his behalf, has established at the head the highest figure in some vested interest, and the farmer and the consumer to-day get very secondary consideration. Unless these controls are to be examined and their work carefully gone over, unless some confidence is restored to farmers, this campaign is not going to be a success. What we suggest, and nothing short of it will accomplish the object, is that the Government should not only control the mixtures but insist upon the right mixtures. You cannot buy one mixture this week and another mixture the next. Cattle do not like their food disturbed; they do not fatten and do themselves justice. The Ministry generally must have absolute control over the mixtures, control over the prices, must insist that the maximum price orders are observed, and also insist on a fair and equitable distribution to the various sections of the farming community. Livestock is infinitely more important than cereals. We cannot afford to lose any time by leaving this thing in the hands of vested interests of any sort.

Sir Patrick Hannon (Birmingham, Moseley)

What does the hon. Member mean by "vested interests"? What are the vested interests he has in mind in relation to the distribution of feeding-stuffs?

Mr. Williams

I need not make a special point in replying to the hon. Member, but every control in the country is almost in the hands of some person or persons who are interested in a particular business, and although they may be the best men in the world, it is extremely difficult for them to leave out of account the business in which they are financially involved. I make no personal charges, and have no desire to do so, but I know how difficult it is for persons who are largely financially interested in big concerns to forget their own business and their own schemes.

Mr. De la Bère (Evesham)

Has the hon. Member the milling combines in mind?

Mr. Williams

They did pass through my mind, but that is the hon. Member's pigeon, which perhaps he will refer to later on. One word about the meat scheme, because it is also disturbing the farmers of the country. The Ministry had months and months in which to prepare their scheme, but I am afraid they made another mess of it. It may be improved by now, and it is time, but I understand it has been a very costly luxury for the farmer. I have a letter here from the Urban District Council of Llandrindod Wells, in which they say that, although they are a livestock collecting centre all round the area, they are actually sending livestock from Somerset to Llandrindod Wells. These cattle have to travel 200 miles to an agricultural area. It is both a waste of time and money, and a waste of useful petrol. But the cost of this scheme, with its area officers, and its sub-area officers by the score, must be gigantic. I saw a letter the other day referring to the Minister of Food—perhaps it was an unkindly letter—in which it was said that the Minister's extravagance was a far bigger danger to this country than Herr Hitler. I do not think that is quite correct, but there is something in the statement about extravagance.

I would only give one example which appears to me to justify the charge of extravagance. It is a case which the right hon. Gentleman knows in advance. I refer to the sub-area chairman in Inverness. This gentleman, who, I understand, is a very efficient person—I make no reflection upon him whatever, and as far as I know he may be one of the most efficient men in Scotland—had a salary in pre-war days of £500. The right hon. Gentleman or his agent appointed this person, and for travelling, offices, staff, telephones, and stationery he is given £3,800, and when questions are asked about it the right hon. Gentleman's excuses or reasons are these. He said that this officer was remunerated on the same basis as that adopted for other sub-area chairmen. In other words, somebody in the Ministry thinks of a figure, and that figure is settled for the whole country. There is no question whether or not it is the right figure, and no suggestion of paying this very efficient person a reasonable salary and the expenses of the office. The sum of £3,800 is paid because other people in other parts of the country get a similar sum. To the extent that these schemes are costly, the Treasury, the farmers or the consumers have to pay, and if there is undue extravagance it tends to militate against the farmers doing their bit in the way that we would all like to see them doing it. The Divisional Food Controller of Inverness is Captain Sawyer, a landed gentleman, with £1,000 a year. His deputy is Colonel Mitford, another landed gentleman, having South African mining interests, with £750 a year.

Is the war being regarded as an opportunity of providing well-to-do landed gentlemen in all parts of the country with large salaries which they do not need, while those who are actually doing the work of going back to agriculture are eking out a comparatively miserable existence? I think that the right hon. Gentleman needs to start a thorough investigation into all the officers that have been appointed on his behalf. I do not blame him personally. It is a physical impossibility for us to trace these appointments, how they were made, and what they amount to; and I am quite sure it is equally difficult for the Minister to do so. There is another thing that is militating against the success of the ploughing-up campaign. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, there is a very grave shortage of labour, and that shortage is due to two or three reasons—low wages, inadequate cottages, and the lack of amenities. Perhaps there may be other reasons. Unless Ministers are prepared to do something not only with regard to wages but with regard to cottages and amenities in rural areas, they will simply not be able to retain in the countryside the men, their wives and families, who are living in broken-down cottages, with no social amenities, and receiving wages of 34s., 35s., 36s. or 37s. a week.

I have only one other matter to raise with regard to agriculture, and that is drainage. I do not want to argue or bandy figures with the right hon. and gallant Gentleman. We are in the middle of a war, and whatever might have been suitable in peace-time is not necessarily suitable in a time of war. I know that the 1930 Act established 47 catchment boards. I know that they were given power to undertake very large schemes. I know that in my own area a scheme costing £1,250,000 has been nearly carried through, but only after years of dogged and tenacious demands upon the Treasury was even that scheme possible. The catchment boards are made up very largely of ratepayers'representatives, and therefore, their action, or inaction, is largely determined by the Treasury grant. If a large grant is available, a scheme may be undertaken and large areas of land may be adequately drained, but if there is no real response from the Treasury, the catchment board representatives remember that their ratepayers are already heavily burdened, and nothing happens. It is fair to say that many parts of the country are not adequately drained because the Treasury have not responded as nobly as they should have done. The Drainage Act of 1937 was permissive. The Drainage Act that was passed this year was permissive. Unless there is driving force from the centre and adequate financial inducements to catchment boards to get on with the work, lack of drainage will still keep thousands of acres out of cultivation.

Last year, I travelled from Peterborough to Northampton. A few years ago I travelled through Finland, and although I had always understood that Finland was the land of lakes, there were infinitely more lakes in the Peterborough and Northampton area than in Finland. It does not seem to me that the claims made from the Front Bench that this drainage work is really being carried on are justified. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman and the Lord Privy Seal know that there are large areas in this country where cultivation depends entirely upon drainage. The farmers are unwilling to turn over land if they know that, having turned it over, it will be lying in water, that they will be able to grow neither cereal crops nor any other crops, that they will waste time and money. Drainage is paramount. I do not wish to labour the point, but I want to put this question to the Minister. Has he sent a postcard to the catchment boards, or has he made an offer to them? Has he tried to induce them to do something during the war, or has he left the matter as it was before the war?

I will not delay the Committee much longer, as I know there are many hon. Members who wish to speak. All is not well with this food campaign. Even the right hon. Gentleman's sweet sentiments will not get the food unless there is something infinitely more tangible done in the months that lie ahead than has been done so far. The Government are not taking a big and long view of the question. If they were, we should be engaged in a campaign not of one year, but of five years. We should be moving up to a zenith. When we had reached the maximum of cereal cultivation, we could still work wonders by reseeding some of the old turf that is to be seen from Land's End to John o'Groats. Last night the right hon. Gentleman said, in a broadcast speech, that in peace time our food imports called for 20,000,000 tons of shipping. We cannot afford that in war time. The farmers hesitate for want of capital. We cannot afford to hesitate. There is a shortage and mal- distribution of feeding stuffs. We cannot afford that. Landlords are barring the way because the Government have felt disposed to preserve their privileges. We can afford neither landlords'privileges nor landlords in war time. There is a lack of drive, despite the fact that the right hon. Gentleman in a short period of time has been "on the air" on two occasions. We are hemmed in on all sides by vested interests. I say to the Lord Privy Seal, the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Food that we cannot grow corn on paper, on the wireless or on the films, and unless there is to be action, and still more action, our agricultural campaign will not succeed.

4.55 p.m.

Mr. Lloyd George (Carnarvon Boroughs)

I am glad that I have been allowed to intervene in the Debate before the Lord Privy Seal speaks, because there are certain questions I would like to put to him, as the representative of the War Cabinet, and I could not do so with any success if he had already spoken. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams), who has spoken, as he always does, with knowledge, lucidity and an amplitude of facts, that all is not well with the food production campaign, and I shall endeavour to point out two or three reasons why it is not achieving, I will not say the purpose which the Government have in mind, but the purpose which they ought to have in mind in a great war like this.

The first reason is one which was indicated by my hon. Friend, that there is no confidence behind the scheme such as it is. The failure of the Government to redeem their promises with regard to feeding-stuffs is bound to have a bad effect upon the readiness and the confidence of the farmers in carrying on a programme of this kind. There were two promises from the Government. The first was a very sweeping one, that there would be an abundant supply of feeding-stuffs. The farmers believed this, unfortunately for themselves, and the result is that they have been let down very badly, let down so badly that some of them are on the brink of bankruptcy. The story has been told so well by my hon. Friend that I will not repeat it. The second promise was given in the House, in a discussion in which I took part, and it was that there would be 60 per cent. of the pre-war feeding-stuffs forthcoming until the end of March. The Minister was very hopeful that he might be able to continue it afterwards, but in so far as his pledge was concerned, it was limited to the end of March. That has been a complete failure.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. W. S. Morrison)

indicated dissent.

Mr. Lloyd George

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that it is. If he contradicts that, it shows that his Department does not inform him of what is happening. I hear it from every part of the country. There are those who have got cash and can pay the millers, or the agents who supply the feeding-stuffs, on the nail, and they get a fair supply, although even they do not always get their 60 per cent. by any means. But those who are not in a position to pay cash straight away are left far behind, and they are very lucky if they can get 10 per cent. or 20 per cent. Some are unable to get that. I receive letters from every part of the country stating that that is the case. If the right hon. Gentleman will make inquiries for himself, he will find that it is so. What is the result? It has been stated by my hon. Friend that the number of pigs is down by half a million. As a matter of fact, everything ought to have been done to increase the number if possible. The number of sheep is down. There has been an enormous slaughter of poultry, and the same thing applies even to cattle. But more than that, there has been created a lack of confidence in the Government of the day which is very fatal when the farmers are being asked to make efforts such as they have not made for over 20 years, and to do so at a time when, financially, they are not in position to make any special efforts.

The right hon. Gentleman must have read a very well informed article in the "Times" yesterday by its agricultural correspondent. He said: The prudent farmer no longer heeds official assurances about imported supplies of feeding-stuffs. The plain fact is that no one can see ahead for more than a few weeks. That is an impossible position in a business where you have to see ahead at any rate until the next harvest. I do not know whether it is possible for the right hon. Gentleman to stir someone up who is under his control, or under his thumb, and see whether he cannot improve the position as far as feeding-stuffs are concerned, because I can assure him that there is a vast amount of real suffering due to the fact that every pledge that he has given hitherto has completely broken down. Let the farmers know where they are. Let them know what they can expect. If you find you cannot do it, let them know it, and at any rate they can adapt themselves to circumstances in some way or other. When they are told they are going to get so much, and it fails, then next time that they will get less but that it can be guaranteed this time, and that also fails, they lose hope. They do not know how to conduct their business; no one could. That is having a very bad effect on the whole food production campaign. I can hear it on all hands. It is all very well for the Prime Minister to give a pledge to the farmers—no doubt he was told it was necessary that that should be done—that they would not be let down after the war. What is the value of that pledge given in respect of something where there will be no redemption perhaps for two, three, four or five years—that they will not be let down five years hence if they plough their land—when pledges given by the Government are not good for three weeks? It is the same Government which gave these pledges about feeding-stuffs which have broken down. It makes any pledge given by the Government utterly valueless.

The second reason why it is not going well is that it does not seem to me that the Government have made up their minds what it is that they are after—what their policy is and what they are aiming at. They do not realise, in my judgment, even now the vital importance of increased food production on an unprecedented scale as an essential part of winning this war. They have not got it into their minds, and therefore they have no clear conception as to what their goal is. It is no use referring to the past. I set certain proposals before them in 1935. They were turned down. If they had been carried out, you would have doubled the food production of the country by now. But there it is. All the other great war Governments, or those who anticipated war—Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin—regarded increased food production as about the most important part of their programme of preparation for a war which they regarded as inevitable sooner or later. Our Government is the only one which declined absolutely to take that point of view, and, while they were increasing their food production, we were allowing our arable land to lapse into grass. We go down by 2,000,000 acres of land which have become waterlogged, with weeds covering the whole. They did not deem it necessary because they were depending entirely upon imports. I should like to feel that they had shaken off that obsession now, that they had at last understood what all other European countries had fully realised before—that the facts of the war, the sinkings of our food ships, would have brought it home to them. They say they are going to increase their arable by, I think, 1,500,000 acres.

The Lord Privy Seal (Sir Samuel Hoare)

Up to 2,000,000.

Mr. Lloyd George

I should like to ask a question on that, to which the Minister might tell the right hon. Gentleman the answer, because I would not expect him to know this. Is that 2,000,000 a gross or a net figure? That is rather important. You have arable land last year which now will be grass in the ordinary course. I have some myself. Then you will plough that grassland. I should like to be quite certain. I think the balance in my case, for instance, would be in favour of ploughing, but, after all, it is only net. On the one hand, you have the arable land where you have sowed your grass seed and your clover for next year's grassland. On the other hand, you plough the grassland. Does that 2,000,000 acres take into account that there will be a great deal of arable which will be converted this year into grassland? Is the 2,000,000 a net figure? I do not think it is. What really happens is that you are getting promises. The county committees are asking promises for the ploughing of grassland. They never ask how much land which was arable would this year be grass in the ordinary course of good cultivation, and the result will be that you will have a gross figure of 2,000,000, but the net figure will be nothing comparable with that. I should like to ask that practical question of the right hon. Gentleman, and perhaps I can get an answer from the Lord Privy Seal. You are ploughing grassland. What kind of grassland? Is it the kind of grassland which any good farmer would plough in order to raise a cereal crop if he were doing it apart from war conditions? Has it been drained? I read the speech that the Lord Privy Seal broadcast. It was very pleasant. I also listened to his speech under the chairmanship of the Noble Lord. It was a proof that the Government have not yet grasped the real point. They seem to think that, if you plough any sort of old grassland and cast seeds into it, the harvest will be abundant, a hundredfold, or at least sixtyfold. Let us see what the right hon. Gentleman said. In order to stimulate farmers to do their duty, he thought he would put before them a sample of one patriotic farmer and say, "Go thou and do likewise." He said he was one who scythed the rushes on his farm before ploughing. The fact that there were rushes was an indication that the drainage was thoroughly bad. They were a warning to that patriot not to plough and that the first thing he ought to do was to clean his drains, and then plough. There may have been spirit, but there was not much mind. That is an illustration of the problem and a confirmation of the fact that the Government have not yet grasped it, that here are millions of acres which are suffering from lack of drainage.

I have been investigating several cases recently, and I have looked up all the authorities. There were 7,000,000 acres when I spoke to the House. I think I should be underestimating, with regard to all the facts of the case, if I said there are 10,000,000 acres whose fertility is destroyed, either entirely or very largely, through defective drainage. I could give quotations from Sir George Stapledon about what is happening to very good grassland. I have seen it myself. I have seen lime supplied by the right hon. Gentleman covering this land. That was a sheer waste. The first thing was to drain the water out. This is the sort of thing that ought to be attended to. But, even with all that, supposing you get 2,000,000 net added to your arable, you will be short by 250,000 acres of what you had in 1914. You have to go through to the harvest of 1941 with a quarter of a million fewer acres supplying your food at home than was the case in 1914, when there were 5,000,000 fewer mouths to feed. If the following year you double it, even then we shall be no better off than we were at that time. We have 6,000,000 tons of shipping down, and the Lord Privy Seal referred to the fact that we had 20,000,000 tons of shipping involved in carrying food to this country.

Sir S. Hoare

That is 20,000,000 cargo tons.

Mr. Lloyd George

My figure of 6,000,000 is also cargo tons. The registered tonnage is very misleading. Well, 20,000,000 cargo tons is an enormous figure. I really want to rouse the House, and, if I can, the country, to the danger of neglecting this problem and not undertaking it on an adequate scale in time. Let us see what happens. We think when our ships are sunk that that is all with which we have to reckon. When we hear of neutral ships being, sunk, we say, "Poor neutrals." We think it does not concern us, but in 1913 16,000,000 cargo tons came in neutral ships to this country, whereas in 1938 it had gone up to 29,000,000. We had almost doubled our dependence upon neutral shipping, and our own tonnage had gone down by 6,000,000 cargo tons. We have become increasingly dependent. I do not say that all the neutral ships sunk by German submarines, mines and aeroplanes were engaged at the time in carrying cargoes to British ports or from British ports, but nevertheless a very large number of them were. So every time you read about the sinking of neutral tonnage do not confine your sympathy exclusively to the neutrals. You can say, not merely "Poor neutrals," but "Poor Britain." Now this is a thing which did not happen in the beginning of the last war. It did not begin until the third year; but it is happening now at the beginning of this war. You have now double the number of sinkings that there were in the first six months of the last war.

What about the number of submarines? The First Lord of the Admiralty is my authority in reference to the last war and the present one, and he states in his great book that the Germans had about 20 submarines in active service during the first six or seven months of the last war. They did not increase very rapidly, but by the third year, when the sinkings came, their programme did mature—they did not start it very early—and they had 140 submarines in commission on active service. As far as I can understand from the First Lord's figures, they have now something like 20 in commission. If all our claims of sinkings were taken into account, it would hardly be that; but you must always make allowances because when you claim sinkings, quite honestly, and upon what appears to be quite good evidence, it does not always turn out to be exactly in accordance with the facts. I am assuming, at any rate, that there are still left about 20 or 30. Therefore it is no use taking the present condition, although that is not a good one, as if it were the worst we have to apprehend. They will certainly bring in, as they did in the last time, a good many more submarines than they had at the beginning of the war.

We also have to contend with attacks from the air. Even when they do not sink, they may damage; and if they damage, at any rate they reduce the carrying capacity of ships for some time. We have attacks upon the neutrals plying their trade in British waters. But this is what I want to ask. Did the Government consult the Admiralty before they laid down their plans in regard to food? Did they ask the Admiralty whether they could reasonably expect to guarantee that our losses in tonnage would not increase and that we might depend on having the same number of ships carrying food as we have to-day? Did they ask that? Did they consult the Shipping Department and ask what their expectations were? It is a policy which involves the starvation of 46,000,000 men, women and children in this country, and we ought to know exactly upon what our food production campaign is based. If you knew that there would be the same devastation as we were confronted with in 1917, with our tonnage already 6,000,000down, is this the programme you would put before us? No, you would have a more drastic and a more thorough programme. You would not have brought in a Bill with £300,000 or £400,000 for draining land, but you would have had something which would make every acre of this land rally to the salvation of the country.

The right hon. Gentleman the Lord Privy Seal is a member of the War Cabinet, and I ask him whether the Cabinet ever first of all asked the Admiralty what were their anticipations and their apprehensions and how far they were prepared to guarantee our shipping tonnage. They would answer, I am sure, by saying, "We cannot tell you to a ton."

They might not be able to answer even to 1,000,000 tons, but they would say this, "You are not safe unless you assume that, when all these submarines are in the sea, and when they have developed all their bombing programme and their mining programme, our losses will be less than so and so." You ought to know that now before you ever begin your programme for food production, because when you know what are the conditions you can make your plans accordingly. There is a programme No. 1 which is adequate for one set of conditions, and you want a programme No. 2 for a totally different set of conditions. Then you may need a programme which would be a programme of a besieged country where you have to cultivate every yard of land that will produce food; because when you are fighting you must fight with all your resources or give in.

I want to know whether there has been any meeting of this kind for members of the Cabinet and whether the Minister of Agriculture has ever had written instructions from the Cabinet telling him that the problem with which he is to be faced is to raise 4,000,000 tons of food or, it may be, 10,000,000 tons of food. There is a great difference between a programme where he has to raise 4,000,000 tons and a programme where he has to raise 10,000,000 tons: He can do it if you tell him in time, but you have to tell him in time, for it ions use starting a big programme of agriculture when the grim spectre of hunger has just appeared above the horizon. It must be done now. You may be short of feeding-stuffs, you have to ration meat and butter, but there are no privations. But what is to happen in one, two or three years'time? We cannot tell. I do not know what is happening about peace negotiations, but anybody who looks at the facts must know that it would be a fatal error for any Government not to contemplate the possibility of a very long war. Russia has got out of her difficulties in Finland. She can concentrate her resources.

What are the Minister's instructions? He ought to tell the House what instructions he has been given in view of the possibilities. We ought to take possibilities into account when the life of the country is concerned and prepare against them—and prepare against them in time.

I lay down this proposition, that the first thing the Minister ought to have as an objective is not to plough 2,000,000 acres, even if he can plough another 2,000,000 next year, of waterlogged and soured land. The first thing he has to do is to have a clear objective as to how much more food he must grow. If I were in his position, I should certainly say that I would attempt nothing less than the doubling of the food production of this country. I would put that as a minimum to begin with. There was that very good article in the "Times" yesterday by the agricultural correspondent, who said that there were hundreds of thousands of acres in this country that could produce three or four times the quantity of food that they are producing to-day. I think that is an understatement. I hate quoting any experience of mine, but I know what the soil is capable of if it is well cultivated.

In war you must spare no expense to make the soil do its best. To double the production of this country would be a comparatively easy task if the Government said resolutely, "That is our aim, and it has to be done." The County War Agricultural Committees would come along and say that they could not possibly do it unless, first of all, the Government helped them with field drainage, and I do not mean merely mole drainage. You would then get from these committees real value. They are doing their best with such instructions as they have, but if they were told that they were to produce double the amount of food, they would go round to the farmers and say, "How much did you produce last year? You must produce twice as much this year." They would look round the farms, look at the fields and see what the conditions are. It is no use scything rushes; you have to drain the land to make it fit for its work. To ask land to do its duty when it needs drainage is like asking a sick man to do a full day's work. The land is in ill-health. The blood in its veins is sour and pernicious. The land is suffering from pernicious anaemia. That is what is the matter. You have to put that right and make your programme a bold and intelligent one.

It is no use flinging statistics at the House of Commons; it is the harvest that will count. You cannot put statistics on a hungry man's table and say, "There you are, there is a beautiful dish of the Board of Agriculture's best statistics," We are getting deeper and deeper into this thing, and in my heart I am glad of the news to-day, because I was afraid that we were getting so deep into the mire that we could not extract ourselves. I ask the Government to tell us what they are going to do. It is the old trouble—too late in dealing with Czecho-Slovakia, too late with Poland, and certainly too late with Finland and not sending enough. It is always too late or too little, or both. That is the road to disaster, and it is the same here with agriculture. The moves we have had about the land are years too late. Everybody else has been taking much more drastic measures for years. It must be put right before we find ourselves face to face with a catastrophe.

I am glad the Lord Privy Seal is here. We wanted somebody above Ministers who have only divided responsibility and not the same opportunities with the Cabinet which the right hon. Gentleman has. He is a super-man. I will give him another name. He is over and above all these Departments, over and above all our fields. He is the great god Pan, lord of our flocks and herds and of all the little shepherds there on the Front Bench. As the god Pan he could not very well, as my hon. Friend on this side suggested, dress himself in gaiters. The other day he piped on the glories of agriculture to the lace makers of Nottingham. I should like to have one tootle of encouragement on his pipes for us poor mortals here, and to hear him tell us what he is doing to-day, taking the same broad survey as he did at Nottingham. He grasped the main principles then. I thought it was a very shrewd statement that whatever happened, at any rate the country would be richer for our efforts. Suppose you make the land produce twice as much as it did before and you find it is quite unnecessary, nobody will complain, because you will make the land a more smiling land and a more abundant land. You will make it a healthier land, you will make it a more secure land, and, I venture to say, you will make it a happier land.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will honestly take his task seriously. Two Departments are concerned here, and he is in the Cabinet. Let him really take the direction and the drive in this matter. Let him undertake to double the food pro- duction of this country. He will have difficulties to encounter and things he will have to overcome, very important things. They will cost money. He must overcome the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I should like to be there to see the struggle. May I give him categorically the points which I think he will have to see to? The farmer must know that if he doubles his production, there is an assured market arranged for the produce so that he will know that he can sell whatever he produces. That must be guaranteed before he begins. He cannot do what he has to do now and gradually increase and feel his way. There is no time for that. The Government must say, "We will see to whatever you produce." The next point is that the prices paid will cover the cost of production. They do not now. Farmers last year received less by over £4,000,000 than they did in the preceding year. The prices which they are paying are going up. Feeding-stuffs are nominally up about 25 to 30 per cent., but they are really up by 50 per cent. because their value is much less owing to their composition. The next thing is that the State will subsidise liberally all well-thought-out schemes of drainage, whether arterial or field drainage, so that the soil shall be fit for cultivation. Further, the State should take active steps to see that there is an ample supply of lime and fertilisers for the soil. Then, cheap capital should be available for all that is necessary to enable the cultivator to bring the soil to the highest pitch of fertility, not only by drainage and fertilisation but by the purchase of machinery, livestock and otherwise.

The remaining point is that there should be adequate labour provided to carry out this programme. At the moment labour is not merely trickling but is flowing from the land. There are 1,500,000 people out of work, and surely from those we could make up the deficit of the 250,000 men who have left the soil since the last war. And there ought to be more. It is every man's duty to help his country now in the particular province where he can render her the greatest aid. I agree, of course, that we shall have to take into consideration the increased cost to the farmer of increased wages, because with the present wages you cannot get people to remain on the land. When the Government bring in their Bill with a view to increasing wages the farmer has a right to say, "You must take this charge into account when you are fixing prices." The trouble is that the farmer is the one man for whom we do not seem to fix any prices. He does not know where he is.

Mr. De la Bère

Quite true.

Mr. Lloyd George

There, again, I quote from what appeared in the "Times" yesterday, that farmers do not know where they are with regard to prices. It gives a category of the things in regard to which farmers do not know where they stand. When an order is given for shells the men who manufacture them know where they stand and know what profits they can make. The same observation applies to aeroplanes, to guns, and to every munition and equipment of war—the manufacturers all know where they are. We are granting another Vote of Credit; it is the second—£500,000,000 already gone, £700,000,000 to come. All those who have been paid out of that money, or who are to be paid, know how much they will be paid for every article they turn out, and know also what profits they can make. The farmer is the only man who does not know. There is nothing in this Vote of Credit for him. All the others have been turned into the paddock first and have got what is known as the early bite—the luscious bite, the fattening bite, the nourishing bite. The farmer is to be turned in later, after all the others have had their nibble, and will get whatever is left. Well, there will be not much after those early bites.

To begin with, let the Government tell the farmers where they are—and let them first find out where they are themselves. That is essential. They should find out what they are driving at, what they are aiming at. Then they should go to the farmer and say, "We want you to help." He is as good a patriot as anyone else. There are now multitudes of them who are responding from sheer patriotism, with no faith or confidence but full of apprehension and feeling that they do not know how they are going to manage it. There are farmers who in the last few years—they are too proud to admit it—have been living, they and their families, on less than they would get on the dole or from public assistance—many of them. If we are asking them to make this very big effort, they are entitled to know how they will fare. I would not allow anything to stand in the way of the well-being of this country. Having made up their mind, the Government should then go to the farmer and let him know where he stands, and then we can all work together to help the country out of the mess it is in.

5.51 p.m.

Sir S. Hoare

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) has spoken with such vigour and, if he will allow me to say so, with such wit, that I hope it means that he is entirely recovered from his temporary indisposition. He has been kind enough to apply to me a number of descriptions that I myself fail to recognise. I am not a super-Minister, still less a superman and less still the god Pan. I am here as a member of the Government to try to do what I can to help on the war effort, concentrating most of my attention upon these home questions which I feel, with the right hon. Gentleman, are every bit as important as any of the Service problems. The right hon. Gentleman has covered a very wide field, and has invited me to reply to a number of questions. With the approval of the Committee I propose to accept the invitation he has given, and to make a wide and general review of the whole food position, and in the course of it I hope to deal with some of the specific points he has raised. But I would remind him that I am not one of the Ministers directly responsible for food questions. They will deal in greater detail with the specific points later in the Debate.

Mr. Lloyd George

Before the right hon. Gentleman goes to the wider survey could he now tell me what is the answer to the question whether 2,000,000 acres is the net figure or the gross figure?

The Minister of Agriculture (Colonel Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith)

It is actually a net figure. We have taken into account the fact that land going down to grass in ordinary rotation will be balanced by land coming back under the plough in the ordinary rotation, and this 2,000,000 acres will be land which is new to arable cultivation.

Sir S. Hoare

This Debate comes, it seems to me, at an opportune moment. The French Chamber has just discussed the food problem in France, and I welcome the chance of dealing with the problems in this country which the hon. Member for Don Valley(Mr. T. Williams) and the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs have put before the Committee. Let me begin by making a short survey of the food position as I see it at the end of six months of war. I begin with food stocks. How do they stand after six months of German ruthlessness on the sea? I am glad to be able to say that in every essential respect they are better to-day than they were six months ago. I cannot give the figures to the Committee. If I gave the figures it would obviously help the enemy, but I can assure hon. Members that I am not merely making a Parliamentary case but am trying to give them a true picture of the food position. At the present time wheat and flour reserves in mills and public warehouses are greater than at the outbreak of war. They were great in September, they are substantially greater to-day. Stocks of bacon and ham and butter are very high, and stocks of meat, frozen and canned, and canned salmon are all substantially larger than at the outbreak of the war, imported meat being remarkably high.

As to sugar, I admit that the stocks are somewhat lower than they were in September, but, even so, there are adequate supplies for the consumer and the position is steadily improving. Coming to the items of less general consumption, I can tell the Committee that there are very large stocks of whale oil—whale oil being used, as hon. Members know, to a great extent for margarine. Dried and canned fruits are in abundance. Taking the whole field of food for human consumption, I can say that the present position is substantially better than it was last September. The contribution of the Empire countries towards supplying us with foodstuffs has been on a very large scale, showing that in this difficult first chapter of the war we have been able to keep the Empire highways open for Empire trade.

Mr. A. V. Alexander

There is one point upon which I should like to be clear, because I am rather close against some of these problems. May I be certain that when the right hon. Gentleman refers to stocks he is referring in the case of all these commodities to stocks which are here—

Sir S. Hoare

Yes, in this country.

Mr. Alexander

—or to be purchased?

Sir S. Hoare

No. I am very glad that the right hon. Gentleman has interrupted me. I am referring to stocks here in this country. When I come to the question of feeding-stuffs I admit, frankly, that I have nothing like so good a picture to give to the Committee. Feeding-stuffs are always one of the most difficult problems in modern war. The right hon. Gentleman himself will remember the difficulties with reference to feeding-stuffs in the last war. The imports then were immensely less than the imports at the beginning of this war, and I am told that the problem of feeding-stuffs is one of the most difficult with which Germany has to deal at the moment, and that the shortage there is very great. I admit that there have been great difficulties in the months of the autumn and the winter, they were accentuated by the bad weather, and I am not, here and now, going to give any definite assurances or make any optimistic promises.

What I am going to say is that we are doing our best, first of all to improve the distribution of the feeding-stuffs that are in the country. I am inclined to think that distribution does not always keep pace with the actual stocks and that distribution has operated unfairly in many parts of the country. I can also tell the Committee that we are very much alive to the points raised by the right hon. Gentleman in reference to the prices of feeding-stuffs. We are trying to search out evidences of profiteering. At the present moment, we are actively engaged upon an attempt to see whether it is possible to ration feeding-stuffs. Any hon. Member who is in touch with problems of this kind knows that the problem of rationing feeding-stuffs involves great difficulty; but we are actively engaged upon those problems at the moment. Speaking for myself, I should be very glad to see some further control of that kind if it is found, in actual practice, to be feasible.

We are also engaged in creating a more detailed organisation for dealing with feeding-stuffs in the various areas. Dealers have now to be licensed. That started about a week ago. In addition to that, local officials are being appointed to see that feeding-stuffs go from the ports to the areas and that within the areas they are promptly and effectively distributed. Further than that I can tell the Committee—I come to this point because it is one with which I am very closely connected at the moment, as I am with a lot of these shipping problems—that we are considering our import tonnage, very much on the lines suggested by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs. I will come to this part of the question in greater detail later, but I would not be frank with the Committee if I suggested that we were hoping to get back to our pre-war imports of feeding-stuffs. We are doing our best to see that feeding-stuffs have their proper place in this rationed programme and in our import tonnage.

I have covered in these general sentences the field of food and the field of feeding-stuffs. I do not take the alarmist view that has just been expressed by the right hon. Gentleman. I shall show the Committee that this does not mean that I am in any way complacent about the future position or that I do not suggest that drastic action has to be taken urgently in many directions. But I say, looking back over the first chapter of the war, that we can claim that the campaigns of the submarine, the aeroplane and the magnetic mine have failed, and, putting one thing with another, that the food position, in spite of those attacks, is better to-day than it was six months ago. When I say that, I do not want any hon. Member to think that I am looking at the future with complacency or with any false sense of security. I know as well as any hon. Member the uncertainties of war and how situations change almost in an hour or a day. In the future, we may be faced, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, with a greatly increased output of German submarines or with new methods of attack, and it would be criminal if we did not take every action in our power to prepare ourselves against dangers seen and unforeseen.

On that account I would say to hon. Members to-day that the fact that we have improved our food position in these six months should not give anyone justification for saying that we can sit back with folded hands or that we can, for instance, afford to go back on the rationing of this or that commodity. I take the view that rationing is not a sign of shortage but is one of the necessary essentials in the organisation for war. I am quite sure that, so far from going back upon our rationing programme, if in the future we do make a change, it will be in the direction of including other items in it. Equally, I say that the details that I have given this afternoon will afford no one any excuse for being extravagant in the use either of food or of any other commodity.

I tell the right hon. Gentleman, because I think it will interest him, that in connection with our food programme we are concentrating on the other side of the programme also, the avoidance of all possible waste and the use of food waste particularly for pig food, chicken food and so on. It is from the waste of the great towns that most of this food will come. We have now an organisation covering most of the big towns and, as a result of its existence, the collection of scrap and waste ought to be much more efficiently carried out than it has ever been before. In reference to camps, no doubt hon. and right hon. Gentlemen heard what the Secretary of State for War said on this subject yesterday, when he expressed his determination to prevent waste and explained the arrangements which are being made for the collection of waste products from camps. The avoidance of waste and the collection of scrap are essential.

One of the most important parts of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman related to the use of shipping. Here let me give the Committee a general survey of the shipping position as it affects the food supply. I agree with him that the two are inter-linked at every turn. The ship and the plough go together throughout the whole of this effort. From one point of view, the shipping situation is not unsatisfactory. At the end of six months of German ruthlessness upon the seas the net loss of our tonnage is only 230,000. That is a very small net loss. [An HON. MEMBER: "Does that include new tonnage?"] It means our losses after deducting new tonnage, captures of enemy ships and other acquisitions. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about the 'Queen Elizabeth'?"] I have left the "Queen Elizabeth" out of account altogether, although I would not like to say that the "Queen Elizabeth" would not be useful for some purpose in the war later on.

A net loss of 230,000 tons at the end of six months of war is a small percentage when you take into account the strength of our Merchant Navy and the fact that every day of the week there are more than 2,000 British ships at sea. It is a small loss. On the other hand, hon. Members must remember, and constantly remember in this war, the far greater demands that have been made on shipping since the years when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs was responsible for the government of this country. One of the most remarkable features of the change that has taken place is the increased demand of the fighting services for tonnage, the new arms, the higher rate of fire of modern weapons, steel for air-raid precautions and a whole series of other things. It now needs 14 men in industry to keep one soldier in the field and something like 40 men in industry to keep one aeroplane in the air. Those facts mean a far greater strain upon our shipping, however big this may be, than we have ever had before.

Mr. Lloyd George

There are the effects of the convoy system.

Sir S. Hoare

Yes, there are the delays due to the convoy system and to the contraband control. I say to the right hon. Gentleman, and I think that he will agree with me, that if there were no ships sunk by submarines, magnetic mine or aeroplane, we should still need every ton of shipping we have for our war effort. The right hon. Gentleman asked me how we were dealing with this side of the problem. I will tell him. He spoke of the amount of neutral shipping. Neutral shipping, as he knows, has always played a very great part in our import trade. Well, we have made a number of chartering agreements with the neutrals, and there will be a very great accession to the shipping over which we have control. In addition to that—this is a satisfactory fact—neutral shipping is more and more using our convoys. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we are very much alive to this question and that we intend to make every effort to get neutral ships into our service by charter or otherwise.

There is a second way in which we are dealing with the matter. It is a very important way and relates to our shipbuilding programme. What is the difference between the situation in the first year of this war and the situation in the first year of the last war? The right hon. Gentleman pointed to the fact that we are losing more shipping by submarine attack in this first year than we did in the first year of the last war.

Mr. Lloyd George

In the first six months.

Sir S. Hoare

The first six months. I will not argue the figures, but will take them as the right hon. Gentleman gave them. In the last war, we did not begin our great shipbuilding programme until 1916, 1917 or 1918, towards the end of the war. In this war, we embarked straight away at the beginning upon a great shipbuilding programme, and I think under the best possible auspices. Following very much upon the development that took place in the last war, we put these matters all under one single control—the very vigorous control of the First Lord of the Admiralty—so that there should be no competition between the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy.

These observations bring me more directly to the third point, concerning the way in which we have to economise on our shipping. If we look at shipping from the point of view of food, we see the possibility of economising in the imports of foreign food. There are three main fields of shipping imports. First of all there is the great field of war supplies, and obviously we do not want to cut them down. We want to expand rather than diminish them. Secondly, there is the field comprising a number of miscellaneous imports which have been coming into this country, some of them necessary and some of them not so necessary. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we are looking into this field meticulously and we are now refusing import licences for practically everything that we do not think necessary for our war effort. I think the right hon. Gentleman and hon. Members in general will see that in the months to come there will be a great alteration in this field of miscellaneous commodities. Finally, there is this great field of imported foodstuffs. Before the war it amounted to almost half our total imports. More than 20,000,000 tons of food were imported from abroad each year.

Here is a field in which I am quite certain we can make economies if we are to make our 100 per cent. war effort. The right hon. Gentleman knows this problem, I suppose, better than anyone in the Committee. He remembers the difficulties of those years 1916, 1917 and 1918, and he will remember the cuts which were made stage by stage in the imports of foreign foods. I believe that at the end of the war his Government had succeeded in bringing the imports down—

Mr. Lloyd George

Four million tons.

Sir S. Hoare

I was going to say more; at any rate it was between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 tons. I would not suggest to the Committee that the time has come to make as big a cut as that at once; nor will I say—and I know the right hon. Gentleman will agree with me—that you should even try to make a cut of that kind all at once. It has to be done stage by stage. I can tell hon. Members that we are now dealing with these imports of foreign foods and we are seeing where we can begin, stage by stage, to make cuts which may be necessary in the future. The right hon. Gentleman asked whether we have got different kinds of plans in mind and I can assure him that we have. We are contemplating the fact that we may have to do more in so many weeks or months time, and we are getting our—

Mr. Lloyd George

In relation to food production?

Sir S. Hoare

Aim coming to that soon. I am on the imports side at the moment. Again I think he will agree with me that you cannot make great cuts in the imports of foreign foods unless you greatly stimulate your home production of food. In the years 1916 to 1917 he succeeded in making these cuts by stimulating home production in this country at the same time. In this case we are trying to do very much the same thing. There is this improvement—because one always lives and learns—that we are trying to do more. He never got up to the 2,000,000 acres in one year, and we want to reach the 2,000,000 acres stage.

Mr. Lloyd George

The right hon. Gentleman must remember that we only came into office in December. A good deal of the ploughing of the winter wheat had gone by the time we came into office, so, therefore, the right hon. Gentleman was not quite fair. There was a hard winter and we only had the spring before us. It is not fair to count that year at all. The present ploughing programme was started certainly at the beginning of the war, and I think even before that. Therefore you have a full year. When we came into office it was too late to plough for the wheat.

Sir S. Hoare

I do not want to get into any controversy, because this question is much too serious for controversy. I will take what the right hon. Gentleman says about the date at which he came into office, and I will take into consideration the difficulty that he had, but he must give us credit for the unprecedented bad weather that we have had. Anyway there is this programme of a minimum of 2,000,000 acres. An essential part of the wider programme which I have sketched to the Committee is the cutting down of foreign imports of foodstuffs and unnecessary commodities wherever we can, so that we can free our hands for the greater war effort with munitions and war materials. I am confident that unless we make this reorganisation in regard to imports, we shall find it far more difficult, not to win the war—because we are all determined to win the war—but to win the war quickly.

Mr. Alexander

I know it is difficult for the Minister if he is interrupted but I must get this point clear with regard to the question of the new programme for restriction of imports. In considering the food commodities which the right hon. Gentleman has in mind and which he said were less essential, if there are good stocks now are they being conserved or are they being sold ad lib? Is there any restriction in the distribution? Are the public free to buy them and then find in six months'time that the stocks of imports which it is proposed to restrict have all gone? Is there any scheme? Is that to apply to imported fats like lard? Is there any arrangement for rationing it? I should like to know what is the programme, and I think the Committee should have a little more information.

Sir S. Hoare

Certainly the programme would be one of rationing and controlling the reserves. The right hon. Gentleman need not read more into my words than I have said. I have not suggested that there will be some sensational change in a week or a fortnight's time. We are examining our programme with a view to freeing tonnage wherever we can for munitions and war materials. I am sure when the right hon. Gentleman thinks the proposition over that he will agree that it is the only possible proposition.

Mr. Lloyd George

Economy?

Sir S. Hoare

No, higher than economy. You cannot have too much tonnage for the supply side of the Services.

Mr. Alexander

What I want to be sure of is this. Aim putting it now, because the right hon. Gentleman is here. If you are to have a special restriction on certain types of food in this necessary campaign—and I agree that it is necessary—it is no use rationing after the event. The restriction of the consumers' supplies must correspond with your major programme of restriction of imports.

Sir S. Hoare

I would not dispute the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman, but if he went through all the lists of our imports item by item, I think he would find that there are several in regard to which we could with great effect make economies. We have got to make economies in them, not only on food stuffs but also on some of the unnecessary luxuries and semi-luxuries which are still coming into the country—

Mr. De la Bère

Are we to understand that these matters are merely coming under consideration and no more, that it is not a scheme but that the matters will come under active consideration?

Sir S. Hoare

Apparently the hon. Gentleman does not like the phrase "active consideration."

Mr. De la Bère

Quite right.

Sir S. Hoare

I hope I have said enough to the Committee to convince most of the hon. Members, at any rate, that we are attempting to face these problems as hard practical problems in which action has to be taken and taken quickly. After that little diversion I come back to the home production programme of 2,000,000 acres. The right hon. Gentleman does not think very much of it. He is well entitled to his opinion about it— perhaps better than anybody else in the Committee.

Mr. Lloyd George

It is not enough.

Sir S. Hoare

I agree, but this is the first chapter. It is, however, the biggest chapter which has ever been undertaken for a single year, and I believe that we are going to finish it off. I have had the opportunity of talking to many of the chairmen of the War Agricultural Committees and on the whole they are convinced that with good weather and a concerted effort we shall finish it off. We have made the objective of 2,000,000 acres not because we should not like to see 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 acres, but because we thought that in the circumstances of to-day it is about as much as the industry can undertake. If we find we can do more, so much the better. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that as soon as we have finished off this programme we must get on with the programme for next year and the years to come. In considering that programme we must obviously take into account the four considerations which the right hon. Gentleman urged to the Committee.

Mr. Lloyd George

And drainage as well.

Sir S. Hoare

Yes, drainage as well. That is the kind of objective that we should all like to put into the first chapter. I hope that when the bigger programme comes, we shall have the right hon. Gentleman's help.

Mr. Lloyd George

I do not think the right hon. Gentleman is quite doing justice to the very important question which I put. What is the Government's drainage programme? It is no use ploughing up waterlogged land; and the danger is that that is what we shall be doing.

Sir S. Hoare

The right hon. Gentleman has already heard the programme. In the Debate the other day he took part in a long discussion on this question. Anyhow, there is the fact that we regard this 2,000,000-acres programme as a programme which it is essential to achieve. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman did not intend his speech to have such an effect, but I believe that the kind of speech he has made to-day might discourage people from carrying out this policy. The right hon. Gentleman made many suggestions about the possibility of the farmers being let down in future, and it seems to me that that might discourage them. I am sure that he does not mean that to happen, and I hope very much that his speech to-day will not discourage them. My own information goes to show that, on the whole, taking one county with another, the programme is going well. The ploughing is going well, and it looks as if the machinery side is, generally speaking, adequate and as if the labour for the ploughing is, on the whole, adequate, although I agree with every word that the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) said about the difficulties that might arise in connection with labour in the future.

I hope that one of the results of this Debate will be to encourage the farmers and their helpers to get on with the job, and finish it. This is an essential chapter, and not a small chapter, in our effort to get on with the war. It is an essential one if we are to economise with our shipping—and I have shown how necessary it is to economise with our shipping. I believe it is as necessary for us to make a success of this as of any of the Service programmes. I have ranged over a wide field, and I hope that I have shown hon. Members, even if they do not think the programme goes far enough, how acutely conscious the Government are of the problems that we have to face, and how determined we are greatly to increase home production in the country.

Mr. De la Bère

Could the right hon. Gentleman tell us something about the Government's credit plans for agriculture? I am sure he has been working hard on that question, and he must have produced a satisfactory scheme.

6.35 p.m.

Mr. Quibell (Brigg)

The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), in the course of a very interesting speech, stressed the need for land drainage in this country. Those of us who have kept in intimate touch with these problems will agree that energy and drive should be applied to the solution of the drainage question. But this is not a new problem. It is not the creation of this generation. The matter has been neglected for the past 30 or 40 years. While the right hon. Gentleman, in his speech to-day and in a previous speech in this House, stressed the need for what he described as field drainage, I believe that if the main drainage were attended to, the land drainage problem would be solved, and that most of the drains would flow as freely as on the day they were made. I had an experience recently in connection with a drain which was made up almost level. After 18 inches or two feet had been taken out, a pipe was laid; and then it was found to be totally unnecessary, because the land was already effectively drained.

The weakness lies in the fact that there are too many small authorities, with insufficient resources to carry out any scheme effectively. In most cases—in one case which I know of personally—the bigger part of the total income of such authorities is devoted to paying salaries and administrative expenses. It is well known that many drainage authorities are very reluctant to carry out substantial schemes because of the effect that the additional rate would have upon people who are already so heavily burdened. In one district, I drew attention to the fact that, as far as annual value was concerned, the rate was 4s. 9d. for the occupier, and 1d. for the owner. In some other districts, the incidence of rating on annual values has been a scandal. Until this or some succeeding Government make a grant to rating authorities of up to 75 or 80 per cent.—as had been done for some authorities—no land drainage or substantial improvement of the land will be carried out by the authorities. Recently I had my attention drawn to a case, of which I have particulars here, in which not a single thing has been done. The Minister should urge war agricultural committees in the counties to submit to him particulars of schemes which they must know to be necessary, though their personal contact with the farmers. Main drainage must be carried out if any progress is to be achieved.

At the week-end I went round the countryside, in my own and adjacent divisions, in order to see what was happening. We talk about ploughing up grassland, but I saw thousands of acres which, had not been touched since last season. I am not sure that the right policy would not have been to see that land already in cultivation should be kept in cultivation. Near Gainsborough, I saw field after field which had not been touched, and I doubt whether the farmers had sufficient resources to do the work. The agricultural committees should take action to see that this work is done, in order to increase our food production and to save shipping. There ions time to be lost. On Sunday I travelled 200 or 300 miles, all round Lincolnshire, and I saw that the Trent had broken through at two or three different places and flooded the countryside. It is to the everlasting credit of the local catchment board that, by their magnificent work, they prevented that great belt of agricultural land from being destroyed. The big authorities, with their huge incomes, can carry out these schemes, but the small authorities find their incomes eaten up by administrative expenses and officials' salaries. Therefore, I urge the Minister to press on schemes, so that the drains which are in the fields may run freely, and the farmers may have a chance to get a profit.

The Minister and other speakers referred, pretty strongly, I thought, to the removal of cattle over long distances. I heard a remark to the effect that the cattle had been taken for a ride, in order that they might have a look at the countryside. I remember an Act being passed to set up a Livestock Commission, whose duty it was to put out of existence the small slaughtering centres which are now being put out of operation by the Minister of Food himself. It is nothing new for cattle to be driven from market to market to have a look at the countryside. I have known of a farmer taking his cattle to Doncaster, and, the price there not being what he wanted, taking them on to Sheffield. This is nothing new, and it is due to a factor other than that suggested. Sometimes necessity—owing to the lack of feeding-stuffs in this past month—has compelled farmers, in my own district in particular, to move cattle over long distances. My district has been very seriously affected.

This would have happened whether the Food Minister had made regulations or not. It has happened, I think, in every district in the country. I consider that the ploughing up of this grassland is not proceeding as fast as it should, and I urge the Minister to lend an ear to those in the agricultural areas who have asked him and the Service Ministers tallow their men to stay on the land until they have finished ploughing and have sold their crops, instead of calling up men as is being done at present. I have had several cases brought to my notice. One is that of a disabled man who has a farm in the West Riding. He has a son accustomed to looking after the farm and the cattle. The son was called up; his father could not obtain another competent man; and yet he has been asked to get on with his ploughing. The West Riding Agricultural Committee recommended that the boy should be brought back in order that he might get on with the farming and help his father to prepare the crops. This was also recommended by another agricultural committee, but, strange to say, the Ministry of Agriculture turned down the recommendation. I have sent particulars to the Department so that the Minister will know that I have given him the facts.

The Minister says, "Speed the plough," but, as in the case of a builder's contract, time is the essence of the contract. Time is the essence of the matter as far as the ploughing is concerned. The farmer wants to have confidence that the Government will not let him down. They should tell him definitely that Kettering is dead and done with, and that this country will never again allow the land to lapse into disuse. He wants a price level in commodities, and he wants to retain skilled labour on the land. If we secured those two things there would be a different tale to tell about the countryside. The calling up of men from the land should be done judiciously, or the production of the most important munitions that we produce, namely, food, will be jeopardised.

I should like here to raise once more the question of potatoes, which I raised on two previous occasions. If we grow potatoes we wanton make the best possible use of them. I did not agree altogether with what the right hon. Gentleman said about grass, for we know that seeds are a very important food for our farming community, and another very important food that we have neglected is the potato. We are asking farmers to grow more potatoes. I believe that they will succeed in some potato-growing districts. But I am concerned with the question of what they are to do with the potatoes. If the policy of the Government is to erect processing factories for the purpose of making the surplus potatoes into animal food, let me warn them that it will be an absolute failure. The processing of a ton of potatoes will cost 15s. You will be taking the moisture out of the potato, and charging the farmer 15s. a ton for doing it, and then you will send the product back to him as animal food and tell him that his business is to put water back into the food before giving it to his cattle. That is too ridiculous. I would stress once more the fact that our surplus potatoes should be made into farina and other by-products, so that both the farmer and the country may derive the utmost benefit from increased production.

Immediately such a proposition becomes a big charge on the Exchequer, Members on this side of the Committee, and indeed hon. Members opposite, will no doubt complain of the expenditure of such a large sum of money upon a subsidy for processing potatoes. Then it may be said, that the farmer wants to live on the back of the general public. Farmers with whom I have come in contact—and I have been all over the potato growing parts of my division—agree that by turning surplus potatoes into potato flour, farina, starch and the like, they will be able to make the most out of their surplus crop. I am advised by a man who has experimented perhaps more than any other man in the country that the price of potatoes would more nearly approximate to 45s. a ton if they were used for this purpose, than would be the case if they were used in connection with any other process. I hope that the Minister will take this matter seriously. I understand that a scheme is about to be announced. The foundation of the manufacturing part of the new industry ought to be laid in such a way as to give the best economic reward both to the farmer and to the seller. There is a tendency nowadays to play up to the big combines and to associate this sort of thing with big factories.

When processing factories are put down, regard should be paid to the areas where potatoes are grown, and small units should be put down rather than big units. If large units are put down the transport costs will be such that they will, very largely, kill the scheme. Small units ought to be established in areas that are easily accessible. If that were done, I believe this would become a permanent feature of the agricultural system of this country. This sort of thing is done in Germany and in America. Other hon. Members in this Committee may be very modest and think that they are not equal to a German or an American, but I consider that I am. I am not modest about it, and do not apologise for saying so. What they can do with their potatoes in America, surely, by the application of common sense and organisation, we can do in this country, if we have the will and the means to do it. My last words to the Minister are that he should get on with the job. The Minister is engaged in the most important work of this war. If he and the Government bring energy and drive to bear on that task, they will earn and receive the gratitude of all sections of opinion in this House.

6.54 p.m.

Sir Ralph Glyn (Abingdon)

The Committee have heard to-day a speech by the Lord Privy Seal, which, I imagine, was designed not only to give confidence to all of us who believe in agriculture, but to spread outside and give confidence to the farmers. I listened to every word of the Lord Privy Seal, and when he resumed his seat I confess that I felt very much less confident than when he got up. He is taking a survey which necessarily involves establishing a large and interesting series of statements, which most of us have already appreciated. The real difficulty is the time factor, and that he could not explain away. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) said that a great deal had been done by the Government, but the motto had been, "Too late." You have to obey the laws of Nature, and to recognise that she is in command. Our complaint against the Government—not only this Government but against every Government since the last war—is that those who love the land and believe in the prosperity of the land have seen how selfishness and vote-catching have been ruining the land. We ourselves—we are all guilty—have sold the rights of this country, and we suddenly expect a miracle to occur, and it will not occur.

Therefore, all we can do is to try and give back confidence to those who work on the land, not by phrases which the Lord Privy Seal used, but by statements saying that for four years after the conclusion of peace there will be a continuation of this policy. It is not good enough for the Government to say that this is to be a national policy, and it is necessary for those of us who sit on this side of the House possibly to recognise that the whole land tenure system has to be changed, if necessary. Remarks were made by the hon. Gentleman opposite in regard to the landlords, who have always been abused and have certainly always been taxed. In the old days, before taxes were as heavy as they are to-day, the landlord loved his land and did his best for it. He had a tradition, but now, with the weight of taxation, it is impossible for landlords to do their duty to the State. It is realised that when a landlord dies his tenants will be faced with a complete upset of the whole machinery of the estate. How can one expect them, if their tenure of the farms depend upon the life of the landlord, who is an old man, to put back into the land what the land deserves? They know that death duties will come along, that the estate will be broken up, and that they will be asked either to buy the farm, or clear out so that somebody else can step in. The whole of that system is bound up with the national system of taxation, and in a cheerful way we have been discussing capital for years and years, expecting no difference or change in the actual management of the land.

The Lord Privy Seal has held many offices, but he has never, I think, been foolish enough to accept the position of Minister of Agriculture, if it was ever offered to him. He has planned his political life, so far, to avoid having anything to do with the land. But he is responsible now because he is in the War Cabinet, and it is clear that this is a matter of major policy within the purview of the War Cabinet. The Lord Privy Seal made a statement to-day which astonished me. He said that labour is adequate for the task of ploughing. Everybody knows that every farmer, every agent, everybody connected with the land is worried to death over the labour position. An agricultural labourer is one of the most highly skilled persons in the country. A tractor driver has not only to drive a tractor but to pull a farm implement behind it. People talk about training men or women to drive farm tractors as if it meant simply careering about the fields, and as if the tractor had nothing to do but give itself movement. The fact is that a tractor driver must be also a highly skilled ploughman. Therefore it is absolutely essential that the problem of training young people for work on the land should be tackled.

Some of us believe that the evacuation scheme has been of great benefit to town children who have gone into the country. Many of them have now got a new vision of what life is on the land. All they want are opportunities of being trained. The training of boys for the land is of urgent importance from the national point of view, but if it is to be carried on, all parties must be determined that agriculture shall always keep its proper place in the life of the nation. You have no right to train boys for work on the land and lead them to believe that they have a future before them unless that is the case. It is one thing to plough up land, but it will be another thing to keep the land fit, and still another thing to harvest the crops. So far we have heard nothing except about ploughing. The farmer in many cases has no money to buy tractors to bring in the crops. He cannot get credit, and something ought to be done, and done very quickly, to enable a reputable man who has knowledge of his work to get the necessary credit. You cannot expect seed merchants and banks to continue to offer credit.

The fact is that there is not confidence to-day that fixed prices, giving a fair and reasonable return, will be available to the producer. There are boards and controls to see that there is no profiteering at the expense of the consumer, and that is quite a right thing, but the consumer may find himself going hungry unless something more is done to assure the producer that he will be able to pay fair and proper wages and get prices which are fair and adequate. I beg the Minister to recognise, when dealing with this movement to get more people on the land, that there is also an ancillary movement to increase wages. I believe that the Bill now introduced will be of assistance, but I am bound to say that the Lord Privy Seal did not inspire me with confidence that he really recognised how great is the labour problem, how urgent it is, and how disastrous it will be if steps are not taken to see that farmers are equipped to harvest the crops grown on the land that is now being ploughed.

Two matters show the difficulties caused by having to deal with several Ministries. Seed merchants are rationed for petrol, and in many cases it is quite impossible for seed to be delivered to the farms because there is not a sufficient ration of petrol. The recent shortage of coal meant that threshing tackle could not be used in many places because coal was not obtainable. The Lord Privy Seal did not deal with one matter which certainly might come under his direct supervision because it does not concern the Minister of Agriculture alone but concerns the Ministry of Food, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Health and the Board of Trade. I have tried for years to get it recognised that we have within our gates a great army—an army of rats, probably numbering 40,000,000. We pat ourselves on the back and say that we have a rat week. It is perfectly futile to have a rat week. Every day we should be out after these vermin.

People do not realise the menace of the rat. I believe it is true to say that if you had only half the present ploughing-up programme, it might be possible, by killing off the rats, to get better crops by the saving effected in that way than you will get by the full ploughing programme. One pair of rats may have no fewer than 1,100 descendants in less than 12 months. One pair of rats can eat the equivalent of 160 two-pound loaves. In Germany to-day it is a criminal offence to have a rat found on your property. Field-Marshal Goering in his four-year-plan concentrated on a great campaign both in town and country to get rid of the plague of rats. I urge that something should be done to tackle this problem, because it is impossible nowadays, owing to labour and transport difficulties, always to erect stacks in a rickyard where they are well protected from rats. If you have a rick standing through the winter and you have only 100 rats in that rick, they can collectively eat 16 quarters of wheat. These figures surely are worth noting. I cannot understand why in this interval in the war we should not use the whole of the troops in England to help to clear out this enemy and thereby save a vast amount of food which his required for the people.

Imagination is needed. It is no use the Lord Privy Seal saying he will take a note of it. We do not want a note taken; the thing is to act, and to act at once, before the next harvest, in order to try and get on top of this most dangerous and odious plague. No one knows how much disease is conveyed by rats. I believe that foot-and-mouth disease to a very great extent is caused by the movement of rats. It is heartbreaking for one farmer who is doing his duty when his neighbour does not, because the more he kills the rats on his farm the more they will come in from outside. There must be collective action carried out simultaneously, and if that is done, we may save food to the value of £10,000,000. I know that the Minister of Agriculture has been very patient in facing criticisms which some of us have offered since he came into office, but one must recognise how terrific is the danger which confronts us. In the farmers and farm workers you have the most loyal section in the country, but the men in the countryside want to be given confidence and want to be able to feel that these problems are really being tackled and that whatever party may be in office after the war the farmer and those dependent upon him will not be sacrificed.

7.13 p.m.

Mr. Wilfrid Roberts(Cumberland, North)

The Lord Privy Seal in his speech suggested that the speech of the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) was a little discouraging. I must say that I agree with the hon. Member who has just sat down in thinking that the speech of the Lord Privy Seal, to say the least of it, was not encouraging. I am most anxious that nothing I should say should discourage the efforts of farmers, because we all wish the ploughing-up scheme every success, but if the speech of the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs has the effect of rousing the mass of the population, which is the urban population, to the possible dangers of not having a sufficiently energetic agricultural policy, then it will have done an immense deal of good. The Lord Privy Seal hardly dealt with agriculture at all. He told us about what was being done to economise shipping, and he laid considerable stress on the amount of food which is being put into storage. I was glad to hear it, although I do not think it really reflects much credit on the Government that they have done six months after the war what should have been done before the war started. But all the food which has been stored is food from abroad.

The contention of those of us who want to see a more energetic agricultural campaign is that if you continue to depend on imported food to the extent to which the country is dependent at the present time, you are using foreign exchange and shipping space which is more needed. But I can tell that agricultural production at the present time is less than it was before the war. What concerns me is that the Ministry of Agriculture does not seem to have made an estimate of the contribution of British agriculture in relation to our total needs. It is affected by this question of animal feeding-stuffs, and although I have spoken about this before, I want to make the point again. Approximately, the output of British agriculture before the war was something over £200,000,000 per annum, before you deducted the amount of production which was dependent upon raw materials. The estimated gross output of British farmers in 1914 was somewhere about 40 per cent., and, after deducting imported feeding-stuffs, it was not more than 30 per cent. I challenge the Minister to tell me to-day whether the net agricultural output from British land is now more than 25 per cent. of our needs, after deducting the amount of production which is entirely dependent upon imported feeding-stuffs.

What has been the tendency of British agriculture since the last war? Take two examples. There has been a tremendous development of poultry farming, which has become much more important financially than wheat growing, but which is almost entirely dependent on feeding-stuffs. There has been a great development in dairy farming, although, to a large extent, we are dependent for our milk supplies on imported cattle food. When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs suggests that the aim of the Government in the country should be to double the British agricultural output, is it too much to think that we could feed ourselves for four days a week where we now feed ourselves for two days a week? That is what I believe doubling the output of British agriculture means, and I do not think it is too high an aim to set ourselves at the present time.

A criticism I would make of the Government's agricultural policy is that they have not attempted, with some small exceptions, to do more than increase the arable acreage by 2,000,000 acres. After all, the rest of the 30,000,000 acres of land are also susceptible to enormous improvement. If you take this problem as a whole, you may say that the average output per acre of British farm land is something in the nature of £8 10s. per acre. What are the Government doing to raise that output to £10 or £12 per acre, always having regard to the fact that it cannot be done the easy way, by using imported feeding-stuffs? One man will be able to produce perhaps £20 worth of food per acre and another man £4 worth per acre, and, therefore, it is not only necessary to have a general plan for agriculture, but you have to get down to actual details field by field, farm by farm, parish by parish and county by county. The Minister said that we want to avoid bureaucracy and encourage the local county committees to use their local knowledge to the full. He should go further and use their local initiative and imagination to the full. There are rumours of some sort of circular letter which has gone out, telling local committees that they are not to give their opinions and that they are agents of the Minister. I do not know exactly what this instruction consists of—

Mr. De la Bère

You mean the hush-hush business.

Mr. Roberts

Yes, and it seems to me all wrong. You want the local committees not to be carrying out slavishly the instructions of the Minister but to suggest to him how, in their particular counties and in their particular circumstances, they could increase their production. Take the Isle of Ely; it will be quite impossible after these ploughing-up orders have been carried out to find any substantial number of acres which can be ploughed up in future. I suggest to the Minister that he should say to the War Executive Committee of the Isle of Ely, "Give me your suggestions. What more do you want?"

Sir Ernest Shepperson (Leominster)

I do not want to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I happen to come from the Isle of Ely, and I want to assure him that nearly the whole of the island is under the plough and that the reason why more cannot be done is that there is no more grassland to plough.

Mr. Roberts

I am grateful to the hon. Member for emphasising exactly what I was saying. Production cannot be increased in the island, but perhaps there are other ways. Perhaps they could recommend them if fertilisers were reduced in price. I suggest that the organisation of counties should be developed, even if it might mean taking on more officials. There has been a survey of the whole country which has produced very interesting results. This survey, combined with local practical and expert knowledge, could, I think, be very practically used. There has been a tendency in this ploughing-up campaign for the county committees to divide up the amount they have to plough and go to every farmer and say, "Your quota is so much." It may be that in some cases a man who has no ploughing whatever has to do four or five acres. That is wasteful, because some soils produce more than the soils in other districts. In some cases a farmer ought to plough 90 per cent. of his land, and in other districts none at all should be ploughed. Therefore, you should translate your general plan into practice with the fullest co-operation of local advice and initiative. You will never do it unless you approach the county committees and say, "We want an increase of production. Tell us how you can do it." If this was done, I think the Minister would find from the answers that there is a wider desire than he realises to have a better credit scheme established for small farmers.

Taking the whole of England, especially the West of England, one-third of the land of this country is under farms of less than 150 acres each, and it is these small men who need credit if they are to play their part. It is no use saying that credit is available; it is the business of the Minister concerned to see that every bit of land is being used to its proper advantage, especially the land of the smaller farmers, who find it most difficult to get credit. I cannot resist reporting the case of a county committee, about which I was told the other day. They had one applicant—the chairman of the committee, who knows something about banking. I was told that he is the per- feet applicant, that he is completely "uncredit-worthy," and that he fulfills every condition which is laid down in the scheme because he could not get credit anywhere else and no one would lend him money. He is the only man who can get credit under the present scheme.

I want to say another thing about a matter I have raised before—grass drying. I understand the Minister has made up his mind that there should be no assistance whatsoever for grass drying. Good grassland produces more protein per acre than wheat. If you can cure it without loss, it has almost as high a protein content as any other crop. Where there is waste is in making it into hay. You lose an important food value of the product. There are other methods such as ensiling, but I cannot understand why, for the expenditure of a few thousands of pounds, the process of grass drying, which is now being worked by hundreds of farmers in this country, cannot be encouraged on a co-operative basis, as in the case of smaller farmers in the West of England, where the rainfall makes it certain that you will get a crop in quantity and good grass, and also where the rainfall makes it certain that only occasionally will you harvest a bad crop I agree with the hon. Member for Abingdon (Sir R. Glyn) that this is a time when political parties might well try to get agreement, not only as to what is to be done now, but perhaps also with a longer view of the agricultural problem. We may not be able to agree on everything, but we may at least get some measure of agreement which would greatly help to give confidence to farmers generally that there was a future for the industry after the emergency is over.

7.33 p.m.

Mr. Butcher (Holland-with-Boston)

The hon. Member for North Cumberland (Mr. W. Roberts) has suggested that it may not be possible to get an agreement among all political parties, but I think that if we explore the possibility of an agricultural long-term policy, not on party but on national lines, we might find ourselves all going the same road with almost the same unanimity as we have in the prosecution of the war. On one thing I am sure we should agree, and that is that in time of war we realise the value of the agricultural worker and that we should put his welfare in the forefront of our programme and make sure that in the days to come his skill and industry receive a reward not inferior to that of men who work in the towns. I think that in the problem of securing the maximum amount of production possible we are inclined to attach too much importance to the actual number of acres ploughed up rather than to the maximum amount of food which can be produced from the acres under the plough. We must have new acres coming under the plough in the years to come—they will give us food—but we must have, particularly next year and the year after, the maximum production possible from the acres we already have in hand. I feel that we might use the County War Agricultural Committees more in this way. They are being used to designate the land to be ploughed up. I think we might possibly use them to designate the amount of the crop to be put in.

I have referred to the agricultural worker and to the importance of his receiving a fair return, but it is not only the agricultural worker who requires a fair return. There is the farm itself as well. There is all the difference in the world between high farming and average farming, and there must be a margin over to pay for ditching, draining, and fertilising. Again, the farmer is engaged in a business which cannot be judged on one year's balance sheet. He will have his good year and his bad year, and you have to take, to get the average, five or seven years. He has had his bad years in the past, and I hope that the Minister of Food will look carefully indeed at the price levels which have been fixed. Let me tell him how they are operating in the county of Lincolnshire, which he knows is one of the most fertile and intensively worked parts of this country. I am sorry to say that under the two crops of sugar and potatoes I doubt whether we shall have an increase in acreage over last year. Beet is a difficult problem, and I am afraid that many of the farmers are not looking at it at all. The contract price is not as good as it should be. We are, I understand, to be given a bonus if the costs are greater than was anticipated, but nobody knows what will have to be paid for labour, and while the promise of the Prime Minister that the men will be available is greatly appreciated, that in itself creates its own difficulties. It brings fresh people into the countryside, with the difficulty of providing accommodation for them. Furthermore, the lifting, knocking and topping of beet is very hard work and highly skilled, and not the sort of job which can be done unless the men are properly trained. There is this difficulty too, that the beet harvest comes at the same time as the potato crop has to be made safe, and we have 58,000 acres of potatoes to be lifted, so that our labour problem is likely to be a big one.

The other crop is potatoes. I feel that the price level for potatoes should be lifted, and lifted at once. The price being paid to-day under the control in the case of the King Edward class is 17s. a ton less than the average for the same quarter during the past three years. The average price at Spalding, as returned to the Potato Marketing Board for the first quarter of the past three years, was £6 2s., and this includes the low year of 1938–39, which tends to reduce the average. At the present time only the minimum price prevails, and I have heard of cases where to clear the crop and get some cash, farmers have actually broken the law by selling below the minimum. The potatoes are the best in the country, and yet they reselling at 17s. a ton less than the average price for the same time of the year during the last three years. Although quite rightly the costs of labour have gone up and transport has also increased, the minimum wage for the agricultural worker in my division has been raised from 37s. 6d. when war broke out to £2, and proposals have recently been made to increase it to £2 2s. The price for potatoes should be lifted. The average price to-day is not as good as the ordinary market price was in the period before the war. I have a feeling that in view of the difficulties of the sugar crop, the harvests and the poor prices, and the not too satisfactory prices for the potato crop, there may be a tendency for farmers to swing from potatoes to barley. We have heard that in the near future factories are to be put up in the potato growing districts. I hope they will be something more than actual food factories; and that we are not going to have these potato-growing areas swinging away from their traditional crop to barley, an easier crop, because the Minister has not been able to give them quite enough as a return.

Now I come to the question of pigs, and I am bound to say that I do not think that the price of pigs is what it should be when related to the price of feeding-stuffs. There was a relationship established between pigs and feeding-stuffs on the basis of 12s. 6d. per score dressed carcase weight when feeding-stuffs costs were 8s. 6d. per cwt. The Minister no doubt has heard the reports of the last annual meeting of the retail producers of the Pig Marketing Board. The meeting was broken up, or at least adjourned, in the hope of finding a more satisfactory formula. Many farmers feel that with the price of feeding-stuffs at 12s. 6d. there should be a return of 13s. per score. If you take the old formula to which I have referred, then, on present day cost of food, the price per score should be 22s. 3d., whereas it is in fact only 18s. 6d. per score for pigs up to nine score dead-weight, and less as the weight increases. If the Minister is to get the maximum amount of production from the land, he must make some adjustments in the basic prices which are being fixed for essential commodities. If that is done, it will put new heart and confidence into farmers, and we shall get a far greater production from the acres already in hand.

Then there is the question of the distribution of food. If production is important, distribution is equally important. I admit that the Minister of Food had a very difficult job indeed. He was preparing, I am sure, for the distribution of food under heavy aerial attack. We can all visualise the ordinary consumer dodging out of a shelter to the grocers and the butchers. If the Minister of Food is in difficulties at the present time he must put a lot of the blame on to Herr Hitler, because if Herr Hitler had hit earlier and harder, there would have been far less grumbling on the home front. But, having said that, I am bound to say that some of his schemes require substantial overhauling. I refer particularly to the meat distribution scheme, which is really not working as satisfactorily as it should. I think the Minister was right in reducing the number of slaughter-houses from 1,600 to 801, but the step was too drastic, and the scheme was based on urban areas and did not allow sufficient variation in rural districts. I think the Minister too has been fortunate in the weather. While it has given him a headache in the matter of transport, it has certainly helped him to keep meat as it should be. It is impossible to think without misgivings about what will be the position in the summer. Unless some alteration is made, there will be trouble because of the congestion at the abattoirs, where the facilities are not what they should be, and the equipment is not adequate for the job. In a good many cases no additional equipment has been provided, although there has been a great increase in the throughput of the slaughter-houses. Cattle have bellowed in the lairage day after day, sheep have bleated on the premises for over a week, pigs have squealed away waiting to meet their death. That is not a pleasant thing for those who live in the neighbourhood, but from the point of view of the country, it is a serious matter, because while the animals wait they lose weight. If they are kept for more than about 48 hours before being killed, they lose weight—in the case of cattle, from 30 to 50 pounds, sheep from three to four pounds, and pigs from seven to 14 pounds.

Moreover, the allocation has not been quite as it should be. The hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) has told us of cattle that were sent from Somerset to the remoter parts of Wales. I can tell the Minister of pigs that were reared not far from Sleaford, were consigned to Sleaford market, and then sent alive to Grimsby; lost their lives at Grimsby, and were sent back to Spalding, which at that time had no need of pig carcases. There are many holes and gaps in the distribution system which the Minister will be able to tidy up as the scheme gets under way, but I feel that the time for clearing up these matters is limited, because there is a very grave dissatisfaction with the way in which the meat system is working at the present time. I have in my possession a cutting from the "Meat Trades' Journal" of 7th March, which gives a report of the annual meeting of the Livestock Traders' Association, and I will read to the Committee two extracts from the report. The first is: Pigs which had been sent from Scotland had been disembowelled and left at the abbattoir a fortnight with the hair on and were going rotten while pigs had been sent from London to Scotland where there was plenty of stock, and in one instance, pigs which had been allocated had their destinations changed four time sin one week. It was also claimed at that meeting that the amount of meat which was wasted at abattoirs throughout the country week by week represented as much if not more than the quantity which went down with the "Sultan Star," that is to say, 6,000 cattle. I do not know whether it is the case that this wastage is taking place, but I should not be doing my duty as a Member, and as a supporter of the Government, if, when these things came to my notice, I did not pass on the information to my right hon. Friend and give him an opportunity of checking it or publicly refuting it. I believe that agriculture has taken a new place in the minds of the urban population as well as of the dwellers in the countryside. The very fact that food is rationed is bringing home to the men and women in our towns and cities that food is not provided except by hard work on the part of the land workers or risk by the men at sea. The people in the towns are willing in this time of war to do what they can to reduce the burden that is placed on the men at sea and they are willing to pay such prices for their foodstuffs as will enable the workers on the land and the farmers to receive a fair return for their contribution to our victory.

7.51 p.m.

Mr. R. C. Morrison (Tottenham, North)

I should like to make one comment on the concluding part of the speech of the hon. Member for Holland-with-Boston (Mr. Butcher), in which he referred to the interest which the urban population is taking, almost for the first time, in some of these agricultural questions. In the last Debate on agriculture, I ventured with some temerity to inflict a few of my thoughts and views on the House, and I want this evening to follow up the speech I made on that occasion by dealing with another phase of the same question. In doing so, I want to tell the hon. Member for Holland-with-Boston that since the local authority with which I am connected began to take a prominent part in collecting waste food for utilisation as feeding-stuffs for animals, the campaign has aroused the interest and received the wholehearted co-operation of the people in the district. I want to invite the Minister to give his urgent attention to a matter which I want to raise about the collection of waste food for utilisation as feeding-stuffs for animals, particularly pigs. I am not sure whether the Minister of Food is the Minister who deals with this matter, or whether it is the Minister of Agriculture, or the Minister of Supply, or a combination of the three. If it is a question for co-operation between the three Ministers, I ask the Minister of Food to see that that co-operation is brought about.

A state of affairs is rapidly coming about which may cause great difficulty. An appeal has been made, and is being made every day, for local authorities to arrange for the collection of waste food. That appeal is being received with enthusiasm. The local authority for which I am speaking used to collect from six to eight tons of food refuse a week, but now it collects between 20 and 30 tons, and other local authorities are doing the same thing. With every week that passes, and with the increasing publicity that is given to the campaign, a greater amount of food refuse is being collected. The whole of this refuse can be, and will be, collected by the local authorities without any additional cost, or, at any rate, an infinitesimal cost. The cost of collecting from 20 to 30 tons is not worth troubling about. The very success of the scheme is causing the difficulty to which I want to refer. The Minister will realise that while it is the business of the local authorities to collect the food refuse and to urge householders in their area to hand it over, it is not their business to dispose of it.

Because of some publicity which we got in the Press, the local authority which I represent was inundated with requests from farmers in all parts of the country—from as far away as South Devon—for these feeding-stuffs. We have sent tons of it to Devonshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire and other places. However, as other local authorities nearer to those places begin to collect food refuse, obviously we shall lose the customers, who have come to us in their necessity, but who, as soon as local authorities nearer to them collect the food refuse, will go to those authorities. A fortnight ago my local authority found itself in the difficult position that it had nearly nine tons of feeding-stuffs on its hands which it could not sell. Now, it is impossible to make an appeal to householders to save refuse, and then have to admit that some of the stuff which they have taken the trouble to save has had to be destroyed. We got over the difficulty by putting an advertisement in an agricultural newspaper. Immediately we were inundated by trunk telephone calls and telegrams, so that we soon had plenty of customers again, and the feeding-stuffs are being sent out as fast as the vans bring them in. Nevertheless, as the campaign gets into full swing, I can visualise the agricultural newspapers being full of advertisements of feeding-stuffs and the local authorities competing one against the other for the sale of these feeding-stuffs.

So far, I have not been able to find anybody in any Government Department who seemed to be doing what the Lord Privy Seal said, this afternoon, was being done. I should like the Minister of Food to tell us something about the active steps that are being taken in connection with the organised distribution of these feeding-stuffs so collected, because unless there are organised methods of distribution, there will be a very difficult position. Reports are coming in of local authorities all over the country collecting this waste food, and as more and more of them do so, the customers will be narrowed down to those living within a few miles of the local authority in question. In any case, as far as my particular local authority is concerned, I am sure the Minister will agree that we ought not at this time to take up railway transport unnecessarily in sending these feeding-stuffs as far away as Devonshire, for instance. The problem will be particularly difficult in the Metropolitan area because of its vast population, and consequently, the tremendous amount of refuse that will be collected when the scheme gets under way. It will amount to many hundreds of tons per week. The nearest farms are a considerable distance away. There will very quickly be a glut unless there are some organised methods of disposing of these feeding-stuffs and finding a market for them.

The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate also that if large quantities of this food refuse are held in urban districts, in the warm weather there will be trouble from the medical officers of health. That matter has to be borne in mind. I am not making any complaint from my own local authority, for it is well able to look after itself. We have already taken steps which, I think, will be effective. We have ordered a machine which will be installed within the next few weeks; the waste food will be tipped straight into this machine, boiled, mixed and dried, and then sent out as meal. This will not only greatly reduce the bulk, but enable it to be kept for a few weeks, if necessary. I have no knowledge of agriculture, but I have an idea that there will not be the same urgency for feeding-stuffs for pigs in the summer as in the winter. Therefore we shall be in a position, by turning it into meal, to keep it in case there is no demand for it at the time. That is straightforward, but is any Department of the Government doing anything so that other local authorities, some of whom will have even a larger amount of refuse to deal with, are able to do something along similar lines?

The right hon. Gentleman had something to do with a scheme for turning surplus potatoes into some kind of potato flour. It seems to me that the machine that we are going to get would be built on somewhat similar lines for a somewhat similar purpose. I would suggest that there should be centres set up where a number of local authorities could combine to own a central plant which would handle this refuse. My authority has been approached by other authorities to see whether it would be convenient for us to handle our refuse along with theirs. Naturally, every local authority is willing to help another, and we will do what we can. But I think the solution will be found in putting up plant jointly owned by three or four local authorities to which all this refuse could be taken and where machinery could be installed to turn it into meal. I do not see why this should not be done and the meal sold at £3 or £4 a ton, yielding a reasonable profit to those who handle it, and that compares very favourably with the price at which pig meal is selling now. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will give some attention to the matter because if the situation develops as I have suggested, hundreds of tons of refuse are going to be sent in every week and nothing has been done, up to now, to organise the distribution of the food. It is not the kind of thing that you can shut off for a few weeks and then start again. The local authorities having got the householders into the frame of mind that they will separate this food refuse and hand it over, we have to be ready to send it out and see that it is utilised properly, otherwise there will be more trouble for the right hon. Gentleman's Department.

8.5 p.m.

Mr. Robertson (Wandsworth, Streatham)

I wish to speak about fish food. Fishing is the second oldest industry in probably all countries, and the only reference that I have heard to it to-day was a brief statement by the Lord Privy Seal in regard to canned salmon, an unimportant commodity, very expensive and mainly imported from Japan. I wonder whether the Committee is aware of the immensity of the British fishing industry. The average British catch, for each of the three years to 1938, of white fish, leaving out of account salmon and herring entirely, amounted to 15,333,000 cwt., and the: average foreign landings amounted to 1,100,000 cwt., making together nearly 820,000 tons per annum. The cost of that fish is the wear and tear of British boats, the wages of British fishermen and the cost of British coal.

To give a further comparison, let me state the figures of imported meat, a subject which has often been discussed in relation to the detriment that the home-farming industry is facing. Chilled beef and tongues, including canned beef and essences, from all countries, Dominion and foreign, for the same three years averaged 13,000,000 cwt.—3,400,000 less than fresh fish—and mutton and lamb for the same three years from all countries, including New Zealand and Australia, 7,000,000 cwt.—less than half the total of fish. I estimate that three quarters of Britain's fish-catching power has been commandeered for war purposes. I have no grievance about that, nor has anyone in the industry, but I want to draw attention to the serious deficiency of about 11,000 tons per week of white fish, a very important food of the people. I am alarmed about the position. The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries have cancelled the quotas of foreign fish, but I am very doubtful whether that measure will add to any extent at all to the figure that I have given of the average for the three years to December, 1938. It would only be a mere bagatelle in reducing the huge deficiency to which I have referred.

Take these foreign countries which fish the North Sea in common with ourselves. After six months of war Belgium is send- ing us nothing at all. She has sent one or two boats round to a West Coast port, and they will produce some fish. Denmark is an important supplier in peace time, but, unhappily, owing to enemy action she has dried up. That enemy action was foreseen by every thinking man in the industry and might have been foreseen by the Ministry. Holland is in a similar state to Denmark. She was an important supplier, but now not one iota comes from that country. France has not nearly enough for her own use; therefore she cannot send us anything at all. Norway was in peace time the principal supplier of foreign fish to Britain, and she has made a determined effort to increase her supplies, with disastrous results which must have been apparent to anyone who can conceive the distances that fish from North Norway has to travel to reach the British market, and taking into account the war-time difficulties which must occur. The great bulk of this fish comes from the province of Finmarken, which extends to the Finnish border. It is landed at the little fishing villages and sold to merchants, who pack it in boxes with ice-boxes which weigh as much as the contents. It is put on to coasting steamers, and they call in at other ports, and in the fulness of time they get to Bergen. That may be five or ten days, according to the nearness of the ports to Bergen. Two or three days are taken up in trans-shipping the cargo from the coasting vessel to the English-bound steamship. When that is done that vessel has to leave Bergen Fjord and proceed north retracing its course over the route of the coasting vessel, waiting for a convoy. It joins the convoy and comes to this country.

A lot of that fish has been from three to four weeks on the way and is unfit for sale when it reaches Newcastle. The very cold winter helped things along for some time, but in February 70,000 boxes of this stuff arrived at Newcastle and were marketed over a period of eight days. The gross weight of that consignment was about 7,000 tons gross, and 7,000 tons of mainly stale fish were carried on our railways. My constituents could have done with coal. We are badly in need of it. Seven thousand tons of coal would have gone a long way to alleviate the situation in London. That fish was sold by a trade which is very sadly afflicted, and much fish went into consumption which should never have so gone. Two hundred tons were condemned at Billingsgate alone, and many more tons were condemned up and down the country. You can imagine a situation where you have a distributing industry called upon to handle a fourth of its normal supplies and still pay its way and remain an honest taxpayer. The whole system of condemnation depends on the goodwill of the merchant and the trader. It is not food inspectors going around who ensure that the laws in regard to good food are carried out; it is the wholesaler, the curer, the retailer and the fried fish dealer.

The Temporary Chairman (Mr. Charles Williams)

I must ask the hon. Member to keep this fairly close to the Ministry of Food Vote and show how it could be improved and not go too much into detail about the trader.

Mr. Robertson

I wanted to make an important point as to the responsibility of the Ministry of Food, about which I have given the Minister two days' notice. That is a very regrettable state of affairs which should not, in my judgment, have occurred if the slightest imagination or forethought had been given to conditions which are applicable in war-time and which before war should have been known to exist. In peace-time the bulk of the fishing in Iceland waters outside the three-mile limit is done by British trawlers, but, as the bulk of our trawlers are no longer fishing, we are importing fish from Iceland. Icelandic trawlers are coming here now landing fish caught by Icelandic crews, and a great deal of the work that they are doing could be done just as efficiently by British trawlers if an arrangement were come to with the Icelandic Government. That supply, however, will slacken off, if it does not entirely disappear, the moment the cod-fishing season finishes in April. Then we shall have to do without Iceland other than for a small quota of frozen fish which will come from there.

I hope our gallant fishing fleet will be able to catch 25 per cent. of the average British landings in spite of the harassing and savage attacks being made on them. I am hopeful that some of these old craft—and unfortunately they are in that condition—will be able to go to some distant ground other than the over-fished banks of the North Sea, to the grounds fished by the vessels taken over by the Admiralty. They should catch more fish from there than from the nearby banks where they are subject to attack. Surely it arises from the figures I have given to the Committee that there is the necessity to look elsewhere to make good the huge deficiency. In my submission, by the advent of rationing of important food-stuffs such as bacon and meat, and with the threatened addition to which the Lord Privy Seal has referred to-day, the success of the scheme will depend on the provision of alternative foods. The healthy adult will find it exceedingly difficult to get bodily sustenance out of the rationed supplies of meat and bacon. He must look for an alternative food, and surely one of the most important of these will be fish. I agree that he can buy eggs, bread, and cheese and that the well-to-do will be able to obtain poultry, but fish must be one of the most important of the alternatives. Yet here we have a huge deficiency to make good against peace-time landings when the public could buy whatever they liked.

I suggest that the obvious thing to do is, firstly, to look to Newfoundland and Eastern Canada. These two countries abut the greatest fishing ground in the Northern hemisphere. But Newfoundland has the status to-day of a bankrupt English county. We have been pouring money for years into the country in an endeavour to keep it going, but I submit that by organisation and financial support from the Government a very considerable part of the deficiency we are facing could be made good. I do not suggest that all of it could be done there, but we could obtain very large supplies of cod fillet, leaving the waste behind, and not transporting heads, guts and bones, which could be turned into valuable feeding-stuffs. There is no reduction plant to do this in Newfoundland, which could be a very valuable source of supply to meet the needs hon. Members have put forward to-day for farm feeding-stuffs. We should obtain a valuable supply of fish, so badly needed by our people, if they are to produce the shells, the guns, and the aeroplanes which this war will command. There is a new industry in existence, because one or two enterprising firms in the fish trade have taken it upon themselves to make good the neglect on the part of the Government. They have combined with their colleagues in Newfoundland and extended cold storage and freezing works and trained personnel, but it is somewhat unreasonable to expect that one, two or three fish importing firms should assume the burden of making good a 75 per cent. deficiency in a huge industry like this. Not one thing has been done other than that effort on the part of these firms, and this war is 6½ months old. Nova Scotia is in exactly the same position as Newfoundland. And let it be remembered that these countries are only a short distance away.

The Temporary Chairman

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member, but he must really keep to the Minister's Vote. I do not think we should wander into all these questions unless the Minister has any proposal to make in regard to Newfoundland.

Mr. Robertson

I have no desire to waste the time of the Committee, but I would say to the Minister that everything I have said is meant to be constructive and to draw the attention of the Committee to a very important industry and to a very important national food. With the greatest respect, I am afraid there has been a lack of knowledge of the industry in this House, otherwise more hon. Members would feel as I do on this question. When I spoke in this House for the first time on the subject on 8th February I was a member of the trade, and I enjoyed a good income as a result of years of hard work. I feel so strongly on the matter that I have given it up and have resigned. I have thrown up every appointment I had with the fishing industry. I could ill afford the loss of income, but I did not want to stand here and be suspect in any man's eyes. Having said that, may I ask your indulgence? I will not waste the time of the Committee, for what I am saying is of great national importance.

The Temporary Chairman

It is not a matter of the indulgence of the Committee but a matter of the Rules. When we are dealing with a matter of this kind, we can only deal with subjects which come strictly within the Vote. If the hon. Member is dealing with a suggestion that some of this money should be used to help to increase the food supplies, that is right, but we cannot go into the affairs of Newfoundland or Nova Scotia.

Mr. George Griffiths (Hemsworth)

Is it not in Order that we should discuss the question of whether the Minister should trade in Newfoundland so that we can have more fish?

The Temporary Chairman

Certainly, if it is a question of increasing the amount of food in this country, but it is not in order to go into the affars of Newfoundland itself.

Mr. Griffiths

Then the speaker can keep on fish so long as he does not say too much about Newfoundland?

The Temporary Chairman

So long as it has something to do with the actual Votes which we are discussing.

Mr. Robertson

We will leave Newfoundland, as it seems a troublesome point. Very little money sent there would bring about the supply of fish which is wanted in this country, and it would put Newfoundland on their feet for all time. They would be able to supply the world with good quality frozen fish to take the place of the salt fish which has now gone out of fashion and on which Newfoundland has existed for centuries. I wonder whether the Committee is aware of the relative importance of fish to other commodities, such as wood pulp. Take the case of a country with a population of 330,000—I am afraid to mention Newfoundland again—whose two main industries are wood pulp and fishing. Wood pulp would approximate in value to the exportable value of fish, but wood pulp would employ only 10,000 people, while the fishing industry would employ 300,000. Any two hon. Members could cut down a tree which would sell for £20, but no two Members could procure equipment in the fishing industry and catch fish which would sell for that amount. I mention this as illustrating the relative employment value of commodities having similar exportable values. Other countries could give us supplies, but there are difficulties of transport and price. Iceland has realised the importance of frozen fish, and merchants have entered into an arrangement to import fish from Iceland to this country. That will serve a useful purpose, but the fish is too dear and is to be sold at a much higher price than the pre-war price.

The other day I was speaking to the President of the Fish Fryers' Association, who is the head of a group of 30,000 fish traders who perform a great national work. He told me he had been to the Ministry of Food a day or two before and that the chief official there had taken him aside and said, "Can you do with frozen fillets at 10s. a stone of 14 lbs.?" The pre-war price was 3s. 6d. a stone, carriage free anywhere in Great Britain. Yet the Minister's chief disciple at the Ministry of Food tells the fish fryers' chairman that he will consider supplying in the distant future fillets at 10s. a stone. In this House we speak of pegging wages to prices. Where are the people to get the money from to pay for fish at this price without the viscious spiral about which we are so apprehensive taking place? I know there is a shortage of British Refrigerated Shipping, but there has been a British vessel lying spare for six months, which is owned by a British company, and is fitted to freeze 30 tons of fish a day and to carry 2,000 tons at zero Fahrenheit anywhere in the world. I do not know how many times that vessel has been offered to the Ministry of Food. She could have been purchased at the beginning of the war for £20,000. The last price I heard was £50,000. She need not be purchased, however, for the Ministry of Shipping has the power to requisition it and to send her out to Nova Scotia to bring back the fish which the fishing industry has purchased and has not yet received because another department of the Ministry of Food wanted the shipping space for bacon.

Huge supplies of fish are waiting to come here. They are wanted in this country and they will be needed much more when the cod-fishing season ends in two or three weeks time. How can people be satisfied with 1s. 10d. worth of meat a week unless some other food is available? We must feed the people who are working in the industrial yards, the factories and the foundries. Are they to live on 1s. 10d. worth of meat a week plus a little bacon and margarine? I went to the Food Defence Department 12 months ago about this question and told them what they should do. The official to whom I spoke knew as much about this industry as my foot. On the outbreak of war I wrote to the head of the Department and told him that there had been neglect in the Department for the two years of its existence and that, instead of busying themselves on a scheme of distribution, they had neglected the industry and that the one certain thing was a huge deficiency of fresh fish. I was immediately telephoned for and was asked to go along two or three hours later. I realised that when I got there an official would say, "Tell me about the fishing industry." So I rapidly dictated a memorandum giving the name of every fishing plant, every cold store in every country capable of supplying us with fish, and every plant manager and every exporter who could be relied upon. I gave a life-time's experience in that memorandum. Money could not have bought it. No attention at all was paid to it.

A few days later, on 19th September, on the introduction of my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Balfour), I met the Minister of Food, and told him substantially what I have told the Committee to-night. I told it to him week after week since, and not one thing was done until I spoke in the House on 8th February. In winding up that Debate the right hon. Gentleman regretted he had been out of the Chamber when I spoke, but he promised to read my speech. I do not know whether he did; at any rate, I did not hear from him. I waited 10 days and then wrote to the Lord Privy Seal, appealing to him in his capacity as Chairman of the Co-ordinating Committee to deal with this urgent matter. He promised a three-corner meeting with the Minister and myself, but that did not take place. Some 10 days later I met the Minister of Food and again covered the ground that I have covered to-night. I repeated that I was willing to help him and that my former associates in the industry would help him without payment, without any titled jobs, but keeping ourselves in the background. When that meeting had lasted an hour the door opened, someone burst in, and I could see that everything pertaining to fish was forgotten. The newcomer said that five earthquakes had occurred that afternoon at the Ministry of Food. Having regard to my own tragic experience, I was not surprised. I imagine there are five earthquakes every day at the Ministry. It is a ramshackle edifice and the Minister is reeling and staggering from one crisis to another. It is with great regret that I, as a loyal party man, am compelled to say these things, but the national interest comes a long way ahead of party. Whatever my political future may be—and that does not really matter—I hope that something will be done to ensure that an adequate supply of fish is brought in now to meet the appalling deficiency of which I have told the Committee.

8.35 p.m.

Mr. Woods (Finsbury)

First of all, I should like to say that I am sure the Committee are grateful to the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Robertson) for his breezy sea trip. The subject he dealt with is of considerable importance. During the greater part of this Debate the problem of food has been viewed from the standpoint of the producers, the agricultural industry, but I want to deal with it from the point of view of the consumer. I represent a densely-populated constituency in the heart of London, and I feel that the Committee will get an entirely wrong view of the problem if they view it merely as a production problem, because food is produced in order to keep human beings alive. Listening to the Lord Privy Seal, I could not get away from the feeling that there had been preliminary conversations between him and his colleagues, that he had told them he had to speak in this Debate and asked what he should say. I imagine from the nature of his remarks that he was instructed to speak comforting words unto Zion. I was more than ever convinced that he was told to say something reassuring and comforting when he accused the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) of creating suspicion and misgivings in the minds of agriculturists. That is turning the argument on to those who are trying to help and bring home to the Government the importance of this subject.

It is difficult to prophesy what will take place, and I imagine that hon. Members, including those who have spoken most pessimistically, profoundly hope that their worst fears will not come true. At the same time, there seems to me a very real probability of this war becoming a war of attrition, and in the event of its developing along those lines, the suffering, especially in the densely-populated areas, will be terrible beyond all description. Whatever may be the will to fight of the soldier at the front, if there is actual starvation then the war will come to an end irrespective of all the expenditure upon armaments and the elaborate training and equipment for carrying on military warfare. Like many other hon. Members I have had the privilege of discussing the position in Central Europe at the end of the last war with some of the charitable organisations which sent out relief workers to do what they could to repair the damage of war and to create a spirit of good understanding between those who had been enemies. We heard from them the stories of what they had seen, of little children who had had no proper meals from the day they were born, whose mothers were incapable of giving them the food they longed to give them. If this war goes on and the Government carry on as they are doing, assuming that "something will turn up," saying that we must hope for the best and speaking comfortable words when they are criticised, I fear we may drift into a situation like that. I have also discussed the situation with the actual victims of it in Central Europe in 1918 and afterwards.

Coming to more recent experiences, with two other Members on these benches I had the privilege of visiting Spain on one or two occasions, and we were in Barcelona only a week or two before the collapse of the Nationalist campaign. Those of us who saw things there are under no misapprehensions as to the real cause of the defeat of the Republican forces. Fortunately we had taken a small supply of food, in the hope of being able to give it away. One could only conclude that the standard of living had come down and down and down. We, not being habituated to that standard of living and the small quantities of food provided, found it utterly impossible to eat the food at all. The whole population of that vast city was existing on worse than the scraps which have been referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for North Tottenham (Mr. R. C. Morrison). The day arrived in Barcelona when there was no longer a cat or a dog and no longer any scraps to be collected for the feeding of pigs. If the Cabinet continue to take the attitude which has been displayed this afternoon, and imagine that they can feed the people on statistics or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) said, imagine they can grow food on paper, then the outlook is terrible.

The provision of food and its distribution should be one of the major considerations of any really intelligent Cabinet. I am not specially qualified to deal with agriculture and all its problems, but from what experience I have had of agriculture and the organisation built up by the Government to deal with it I am convinced that the cardinal feature of the personnel has not received the attention which it ought to have received. The hon. Member for Streatham referred to some individual who had been appointed to deal with the fishing business who, he said, knew no more about it than his foot. I can well believe that. The hon. Member for Don Valley said that though those who sit on the Treasury Bench may for the time being be a team, at the end of the season they will be on the transfer list, and that for some of them there will be no transfer fee. I feel that the same criticism applies to many of those holding war-time appointments. There is a story going round Yorkshire of an inspector who had been appointed by the Ministry of Agriculture to inspect grass lands which were to be turned into arable land. He called at one farm and the farmer showed him round. He asked the acreage of a certain field and said, "Yes, that is a very nice field, we will have that turned into arable land." After he had seen three fields and decided that they were all suitable the farmer thought it was time to ask him whether he knew anything about agriculture, because those fields were already showing the green of the winter-sown corn.

Sir R. Dorman-Smith

That was in the last war.

Mr. Woods

But I understand that there are officials now who are capable of that sort of thing. I can understand that in an organisation which has to be built up rapidly, it is easy to find a number of square pegs in round holes, but the time has now come when, out of our experience, there ought to be a complete review of the personnel. The hon. Member for Don Valley referred to a number of these appointments, some redundant and some inappropriate. My own experience of those dealing with Food Orders proves that there have been a number of inappropriate appointments. I will quote one case which I have taken up with the Minister of Food, who has promised to look into it. Fat is not only important as an edible substance but has value for munition purposes. Under the present grouping scheme various people are being licensed and registered as fat refiners. From what I can gather, most of these people have been appointed because they are members of some organisation which has sprung up, in many parts of the country at any rate, almost overnight.

In a part of the country which I know, it would seem that the hint went round, mostly among horse slaughterers and cats'-meat producers, that if they wanted to get into the job of fat refining, they should join an organisation and pay the fees. There is a slaughter-house which has been appropriated and is being used. Adjoining it, is an absolutely up-to-date refining plant with machinery for dealing with the whole of the offals and so forth, but because this organisation is not a member of this new scheme and is not in the swim, all the fat is being carted three miles out into the country to a knacker's yard which is filthy and is infested with rats. All the appurtenances are obsolete. The fat is taken out in a cart of a standard which is inappropriate to a cats'-meat business. Although this place is out in the country, it pollutes the atmosphere for a mile round. Money is wasted in carting stuff there and bringing it back again. I understand that this is not an exceptional case.

I quite appreciate that, in the speed with which the machinery was built up, many arrangements were made which are unnecessarily elaborate. Some of the arrangements are in sanitary, and organisations and incompetent personnel have been brought into the scheme. The day has come when the whole of the machinery should be gone through with a fine-tooth comb. Where there is inefficiency or waste, either of food or effort, or in labour or transport, the Cabinet ought to review the matter in the light of the possible extension and continuation of the war until a stage of attrition is reached. In that way the effort that we are now demanding of the Government through this Committee would be of some use in the successful prosecution of the war.

8.48 p.m.

Mrs. Tate (Frome)

I listened with great disappointment and I might almost say with dismay to the speech of the Lord Privy Seal this afternoon. I listened to him saying that the position with regard to food stocks was much more satisfactory than it was at the beginning of the war, and he proceeded to give us a list of the commodities of which he said we had an increased supply—wheat, flour, bacon, butter, sugar and things of that kind. In fact, he spoke exactly like a satisfied grocer. I would like to know whether anyone can really say whether our essential supplies of food in the country have increased, and whether our potential capacity for producing food in the country is better than it was. That is what really matters. We talk very often of our strength in submarines, ships, aeroplanes and guns, as compared with that of the enemy, but although those are very important, I sometimes think that we do not sufficiently stress the possibility that this war may not be a war mainly of guns and armaments. It may develop into a war of political and economic attrition. Should that be the case, the food produced here at home will be an enormously important factor towards the winning of the war. I do not think, if you regard the possibilities of producing food at home, that they are as satisfactory as Government broadcasts and Government speeches would have us believe.

I do not wish to raise the question of feeding-stuffs or the depreciation in our livestock, but when one is eternally listening to the rather self-satisfied remarks which we hear about the 2,000,000 additional acres which we are to plough up, I feel we cannot let the matter rest there. We are told that we are to have an additional 2,000,000 acres under the plough, and that the scheme is going very satisfactorily. Is it all satisfactory? When the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) spoke this afternoon he cited an instance of a farmer who ploughed up ground covered with rushes which will be of very little use for some time. That may be only a few acres but a few acres here and there will make a great difference throughout the war.

I have in my hand a letter from a woman who has a 12-acre farm on which, for the past 12 years, she has reared probably the best poultry flocks in the country. In the last 12 months she has won over 100 prizes. She sent seven birds to Antwerp last year, where out of 4,000 entries she won the championship honour prize, the Dutch R.I.R. ribbon, four firsts and a second and she had four birds claimed at double figures. That is a very creditable performance from a 12-acre farm. Anyone who has studied the poultry industry in the last few years knows how grievous has been disease among the flocks. She has kept her flocks entirely free from disease. She has maintained her grassland in the most wonderful condition. Nevertheless, an order has come to her now to plough up six of those 12 acres. She wrote to the Ministry and pointed out that this would mean putting 2,000 birds immediately on to six acres, with the inevitable result of disease and the undoing of 12 years' work. Someone sent an inspector from the county agricultural committee to see her 12 acres, and she thought that at last a more reasonable attitude would be taken, but she has received a letter confirming the order to plough up the six acres without delay.

Mr. Radford (Manchester, Rusholme)

It is ridiculous.

Mrs. Tate

That is six acres out of 2,000,000, but is there one Member of this Committee who would say that by ploughing up those six acres, we should be helping to produce food in the country? Of course, we should be doing nothing of the sort. I believe that the policy of food production, and the amounts we intend to produce at home and to import from abroad should be directed from the Government. I am not happy that there really is any definite plan as to what increase is expected from the land which is to be ploughed up. The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs tried to get an answer on that point this afternoon. If he was satisfied with the speech which he had in reply to his own I shall be very much amazed.

I have another letter here from a smallholder in my constituency. For years she has managed to pay from her produce the wages of 12 men. She has produced pigs, poultry and butter. She writes to me that to-day she can manage that smallholding only by drawing on capital reserves and that unless she can be assured of a definite improvement in prices she must close the whole thing down. This may be only a smallholding but it is not an isolated instance. It can be multiplied in every agricultural con- stituency in the country. When these examples are multiplied, they may mean a very serious decrease in food production, and they do not warrant the Government's optimistic attitude in speeches and broadcasts.

In the last war, a food production council was set up. The Noble Lady the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Viscountess Astor) asked the Minister on 12th October whether he could state the date on which a food production department was to be set up in his Ministry and the date on which the county agricultural committees were first asked to hold a meeting to discuss plans for food production. In his reply the right hon. Gentleman said that the food production committee had been set up as part of a peace-time effort to plan for war. But what had in fact been done? Nothing but the consideration of the various appointments of people to serve on that committee. There had not been before the outbreak of the war one meeting of that committee nor any really planned food production policy for this country. I realise that plans have been made for appointing officials to the county committees, but there have never been any definite plans as to the quantity of food we intend to produce in this country in time of war

It is unpleasant for one to attack the present Minister of Agriculture on these points, for no man more than he has fought for years for a long-term policy and no man with more bitter memories of the neglect of agriculture has to sit there and defend the Government's policy. He is not responsible; he has inherited an almost impossible position. If to-day we are to ask of the farmer that he should produce additional food under very difficult conditions, we must make sure that his position will be made possible both now and after the war. It is useless for the Lord Privy Seal to tell us that the question of labour is not giving any difficulty. It is giving appalling difficulty. To give one small example, in my own constituency a man in a village came into the 20 age group and was due for military service. He is a conscientious objector and his claim to exemption as a conscientious objector was successful. He obtained a job with a brother building army huts in a nearby town; he got that job as a skilled man, but he was not skilled; he was just an ordinary labourer. He now goes back to the village, brings home every week his pay envelope containing£5 or £6, and talks not unnaturally of the desirable conditions of life for a conscientious objector. It is not very helpful either to the agricultural labourers in the village or to the other men about to be called up, and if we are to exempt these men it should not be possible for them to earn £5 and £6 a week. They should not earn more than they would have been earning had they been in the Army which they regard as against their consciences.

If we are to have an adequate supply of labour on the land after the war the question of housing, water and electricity and all the amenities of village life must be studied. There must be a national survey of our water supplies. I represent a division in Somerset which is one of the wettest counties in England. You can walk across many acres of that county and your feet will be soaking, but you can go into villages where there has not been enough water in the summer even to wash the children. In the village of Peasdown the summer before last, the mistresses in the village school had to bring water with them for drinking purposes because it was not possible to get water out of the tap. It is that sort of thing which is causing the drift from the land. When the young men marry, their wives will not face the lack of amenities in village life. It is no use saying that a Central Wages Board will raise the status of the agricultural worker and make it more desirable for him to stay on the land. Low wages and difficult conditions in regard to housing, water and general amenities are the reasons for the drift from the land, and until we have a survey and a general improvement in the conditions we shall never get the people back to the land.

I say to the Government: You have a wonderful opportunity to-day. Many children for the first time are learning the joys of country life, and in children there is a real love of the countryside, but you will never get them to stay there when they grow older if conditions remain as they are to-day. You will not get a proper price for the farmer for what he produces until you decide what you will import and what you will grow, and it is useless to go on telling us of the 2,000,000 acres which you intend to plough unless you have made up your mind what extra proportion of food you intend to produce from those 2,000,000 acres, and are certain that the acres you plough are the most suitable..

9.2 p.m.

Mr. Ridley (Clay Cross)

One or two references have been made by hon. Members during the Debate to credit facilities. I should have desired to speak on the point, except that I observe from the record of the proceedings in another place that the Minister appears to have given effect to a pledge he made during the Committee stage of the Agriculture (Miscellaneous War Provisions) Bill, and that therefore we shall have, if we so desire, a very adequate opportunity of having a Debate on credits when the arrangements are laid on the Table of the House. I only mention that in order to add this: The Minister by now must be assured, from the critical observations that have been made by hon. Members, that if the arrangements laid on the Table of the House are not a variant from the draft arrangements that were in the hands of the hon. Members of the Committee when the Miscellaneous Provisions Bill was considered on the Committee stage there will be a very critical Debate and discussion. Before the arrangements are made here they must be drawn in much more wide and generous terms than appeared to be the case when we had the draft provisions in our hands.

I entirely share the views that have been generally expressed about the disappointing character of the speech of the Lord Privy Seal. I was reminded of the fact that Mr. Bernard Shaw once said of the late Lord Rosebery that he never missed a chance of losing an opportunity. I seriously believe that the Lord Privy Seal has missed the chance of taking a very great opportunity. He has had the opportunity of using the House as a sounding board, so to speak, under which he could have made a speech to agricultural England that would have brought it to its feet with a new resolve and a new devotion to purpose. His speech was couched in such terms of faltering diminuendo as to create discouragement when further encouragement was imperative and important. The general, hesitating character of his speech can be best illustrated by reminding hon. Members of the way in which the right hon. Gentleman referred to the drainage provisions in the Miscellaneous Provisions Bill. They are known, even by the Minister, I should think, to be totally inadequate for any large-scale drainage purposes. They form a little piece of what is really required in order to have a national drainage effort. All that the Lord Privy Seal could say in that respect was that they will come back to the House with another tiny Bill from time to time in order to take over £380,000 from the Treasury with which to have another very tiny bite at what is a very big job.

The speech will do nothing to allay the general and grave disquiet concerning the absence of a sound and serious agricultural policy. I saw it stated the other day that the sooner people who knew nothing about agriculture ceased to talk about it, the better it would be for agriculture. That indicates a complete misunderstanding. A farmer may be a good farmer, but he is not necessarily as good either as economist or politician. If we starve because of ineffective agricultural policy, we all starve; and we all have a right, therefore, to be concerned with the problem. Agricultural policy is not a matter only for the agricultural community, who are part of the national economy, and not of a Fascist or Syndicalist corporation. It is a matter for the common citizen, who wants to know how he stands. I intend to make what I regard as a common citizen's contribution. There is a general feeling that the Department of Agriculture has for the last two or three years tinkered with its problems. Take the case of milk, on which there has been one procrastination after another. We might by now have had an efficient distribution of clean milk. In fact, we have neither clean milk as a whole nor efficient distribution of it where it exists. The Minister could not stand up to the vested interests involved. In the case of eggs and poultry, we have had one promise after another, and nothing has ever materialised. In my constituency, and in other constituencies, small poultry producers are going to ruin by hundreds as a result.

In the King's Speech at the beginning of the 1938 Session we were promised, in the field of agriculture, an "active and constructive policy." Nobody has seen such a policy yet. Last year we had what was called an Agricultural Development Bill. The very Title of that Bill was a cloak for its poverty. It did not develop anything except the very worst method of distributing agricultural subsidies. It did not pretend to implement the promise of an "active and constructive policy." It made no attempt to deal with agricultural problems as a whole. In a day or two there will come back to this House the Agriculture (Miscellaneous War Provisions) Bill. That Bill tinkers with land drainage offers a fraudulent prospectus about credits, and shows no intention on the part of the Government to tackle the whole problem of agriculture, despite the gravity of the position.

In discussion after discussion, the present Minister of Food, before he jumped from the frying pan into the fire, protested that he must not be pressed too far, before the war, on the question of war-time policy. He was not pressed too far, but the House was entitled to assume that there existed a policy, that there was a scheme to meet the emergency when the emergency came. The right hon. Gentleman himself said with not too much clarity that "if an emergency should emerge, the land would be able in a worthy manner to provide food for our people" and that what we needed was "a more comprehensive strategy." We have no indication of what he meant by "a more comprehensive strategy," nor is it obvious that the Agriculture (Miscellaneous War Provisions) Bill will enable us to provide food for the people in what he called "a worthy manner." The immediate responsibility of this triumvirate of wanderers from one job to another is to produce as much food as the country is capable of producing. Science, industry, and finance should all be associated for that purpose.

The Minister of Agriculture takes some paternal pride in the pamphlet issued by the National Farmers' Union on agricultural policy in 1938. I find that pamphlet very interesting. It calls for "a comprehensive survey of the capabilities of the land of Great Britain," and observes: How little knowledge we possess of the potentialities of the soil. There has been a kind of survey under the land utilisation scheme, but no such comprehensive survey as was called for in that pamphlet. The Minister wants more land under plough. Without that survey, can he now know that he is not ploughing up first-class pasture land and leaving under grass land that, turned to arable, with science applied to it, would be very much more effective? Are we harnessing science to our aid as to the arable possibilities of our inferior grassland? Are we even harnessing science to our aid as to the possibilities of improving the yield of millions of acres which are already under arable cultivation? Without the aid of the scientists, we cannot possibly discover what these illimitable possibilities are, and how illimitable they are. Last week we were discussing the Palestinian question. If anybody has any serious doubts as to what can be done in this matter on a soil hitherto regarded as almost unproductive, let him read a story of the communal settlements in Palestine called "Collective Adventure," by Maurice Pearlman. He will then see how science can make two blades of grass grow where not even one grows now. We were talking last week about drainage—and not really doing much more than talk about it. If the Minister were asked the total extent now of our drainage needs, main and field drainage, could he say, in terms of acreage and money, what we need to do in that respect in order to produce a state of maximum agricultural efficiency? He could not. He could only make a guess. I suggest that we cannot guess our way to victory. We can achieve it in this field only by wise and systematic practice, and the Committee sees no signs of that to-night.

The Minister is ploughing up 2,000,000 acres. He will probably get that 2,000,000 acres. Is all that acreage to be seeded before it is too late for seeding; and will not a large proportion of it be seeded only because a considerable number of small farmers have had to make themselves the victims of a most unworthy kind of exploitation? There has been in this matter, as many hon. Members know, a deplorable ramp. Has the Minister of Food, in association with the right hon. and gallant Gentleman any real knowledge of the quantities and categories of yield that he wants from the soil, or is he just allowing the event to shape itself? In no political sense it is obvious that in these matters the traditional Conservative orthodoxy in the field of agricultural policy must not be disturbed even by a war in which we have not yet been beaten. It is a most serious reflection that, if we are beaten, a grave responsibility will rest upon the two Ministers concerned with agriculture and food. It will not be the fault of the agricultural community. We are a nation of small farmers, difficult perhaps to fit into a great war effort, but they want to fit themselves in, and they are not being helped.

In my constituency, which includes a large number of small farmers, there is among many of them a feeling of despondency and despair. Why? They have not yet recovered, no matter how much the Minister may hope that they have, from what they regard as the deception about feeding-stuffs. They are short of feeding-stuffs for their cattle and poultry, while hunters and hounds are being fed. Their poultry is being destroyed without compensation by an animal which is bred and preserved for the purpose of a contemptible sport. They cannot get the feeding-stuffs they want, and have to accept inferior mixtures at exorbitant prices. The Maximum Prices Order of the Ministry of Food is regarded almost with contempt and derision. The small farmer buys from the merchant the mixed feeding-stuffs, and he has to pay exorbitant prices. He is entirely at the mercy of the merchant. He is at his mercy for another reason. He must have feeding-stuffs or let his stock die, and he cannot afford to do that, so he has to buy the food at whatever exorbitant price is charged, and, as I say, there is a ramp going on. Only a day or two ago I read an extract written by a small farmer in my division whom I know very well, and upon whose integrity I would stake almost everything. He says that the mixed meals, etc., are poor in feeding value. I know of cases where farmers have been summoned for deficiency of fat in milk. They were men of 30 years' reputation. Their plea was the poor quality and shortage of feeding-stuffs. Another case on the same lines is pending in this area. He is a man who has sold milk for 25 years without complaint. Two grave dangers immediately emerge. The one is that, because of the inadequacy of feeding-stuffs, there will be a serious drop in the milk yield, and secondly, there will be a serious drop in the quality of the short supply. The Minister must give much more serious attention to the matter of animal and livestock feeding- stuffs than has hitherto been the case. Pressed by what may be described as the inexorable time-table of nature, the farmers are at the mercy of the seed merchant and the suspected Seeds Advisory Committee. Farmers ask, Where are the Canadian oats? Are they in this country, and have they been distributed and made as free as they ought to have been, or are they being held up so that the price of home produced oats can be maintained. These are matters which discourage and gravely affect the energy and devotion of large numbers of the small farming community. We shall rue the day if, in spite of discouragement and disappointment, we do not provide the opportunity, encouragement and inspiration which the occasion really needs.

I read in the "Observer" on Sunday, as I have no doubt did other hon. Members, an extremely well informed article by Mr. A. P. Macdougall, who said that it was the constant habit of people, in order to avoid the agricultural problem, to say that there must be no more farming from Whitehall. I regard that as sheer nonsense, for what is needed above everything else is central direction in agricultural policy, with drive and energy. It must be central direction for the purpose of planning agriculture as we are planning many other things. The scientist, the engineer, the agriculturalist and the agricologist must be brought together—they are the men who know what can be done, and have done it—in order to show agriculture as a whole how it can now be done. They must be harnessed to a new, energetic agricultural policy not for the purpose of harrowing the farmer, but for the purpose of fertilising his mind, and that of the Minister as well, with the very best wholesome advice. If the Treasury dare stand in the way of what the Minister regards as plans that are imperative for our protection and security, let him have enough courage to come here and say so. If he continues to tackle the job in what Macdougall calls an "ill considered, spasmodic, half-hearted and palsied manner," this House and the country will impose upon him the severest possible censure.

9.22 p.m.

Mr. De la Bère (Evesham)

I want to touch upon something which I do not think has been touched upon to-day, and to speak very seriously, not in any way with a view to embarrassing the Government, but to assist them and to prevent them from continuing the very grave mistake which they are making at the moment. The Government are actually engaged at the moment in trying to lull the public, and indeed the farmers as well, into a false sense of security. In order to do that they have instituted a hush-hush campaign. I read this week the pages of the "Farmer and Stockbreeder," an admirable paper which I read every week, and it was clear what had been taking place. It was muffled, stifled and uninteresting and had nothing of that usual vigour and push which it displayed before. One could see quite clearly that the hand of the Government had done its work. I do not know whether the hand of the Government will be able to muffle and stifle that admirable paper, the "Daily Express," which sometimes has something to say, but it may be able to do so, and then we shall find that the agricultural community have no one left to champion their cause. I do not want anyone here to think that the "Daily Express" is always on my side. It has made one or two observations that were very unflattering.

The Temporary Chairman

The hon. Member cannot deal with the "Daily-Express." It is not included in this Vote.

Mr. De la Bère

I will deal with food and the efforts of the Government to lull the country into a false sense of security. It is clear that the Minister of Agriculture, for whom I have the highest regard, is rather anxious to curtail the observations of the chairmen of the county war agricultural committees. I do not want to do him any injustice, but I think it is clear there has been a good deal said that they must not express any opinion in public, and I think the same can be said of certain distinguished members of the National Farmers' Union. I think that is a very bad thing. Those critics who really want to help the country are prevented from expressing their views on the food situation, and that may lead the general public to think that all is going well and that there is plenty of food and plenty of production from the home soil.

The Lord Privy Seal had the finest opportunity that any Minister could possibly have of really inspiring confidence in the House of Commons and throughout the country. What did my right hon. Friend do? He made, if I may say so, the most insipid speech any man could possibly make. He told us nothing at all. He left us with the awful feeling that here is a man. Chairman of the War Cabinet Committee dealing with agriculture, on whom the country relies, but who had not the remotest, foggiest idea of where he was leading us or where we were getting. It is perfectly clear he has no plan and no scheme. What is he doing? He has disheartened the Minister of Agriculture himself; he has disheartened the officials in the Ministry, and those officials, I know, are splendid men who are doing their best. If they feel that all their efforts are in vain, how can we expect to double our food production? If my criticism sounds severe, I can only say it is intended to be severe. You can do anything in this country provided you get somebody at the head who can inspire confidence and who can carry those behind him in a fight for victory. My speech to-night is a short one, but it is a fighting one.

With all the weight I have, I ask the Lord Privy Seal whether he will sit down and seriously consider some of the fundamental problems that we have to face? I asked him a few minutes ago a question about credits. I forget exactly what he said, but, of course, it was something like "We cannot deal with that now" or "It is under active consideration." That carries us nowhere. Why are we in the muddle we are in to-day? It is because none of the fundamental problems of agriculture have ever really been seriously tackled by the Government. There is no comprehensive plan, nothing concrete, nothing crystallised in any shape or form. The only thing we get is—we get it day after day—"It is not in the public interest," or "It is under active consideration," or "Perhaps my right hon. Friend will put down another Question on the Order Paper." It is a hollow mockery; it is not sense at all. It is bringing the whole House into contempt to treat it in this way. This matter is just as important as any of the services engaged in the war. Yet it is considered to be quite funny. It is regarded in this way: "Oh, it is only the hon. Member for Evesham. He is talking about agriculture. It is rather tiresome that he should be so persistent." But I am absolutely sincere.

This problem of agriculture will have to be faced. It should have been faced months ago. I want to draw the attention of the Government to three things. The first is the question of credits. It cannot be expected that a man without working capital will be able to double the output of food from his land. The second thing is the provision of feeding-stuffs. You cannot expect to get any real result from livestock fed on bad compound mixtures. You must have straight-run feeding-stuffs. Why cannot we get straight-run feeding-stuffs? Because the port mills will not release the offals which are processed from the wheat. There is only one way to deal with that, and the Government know it. They are doing it now. They are going to suggest buying out the milling combines. It is a great secret; you must not give it away. For once I find myself in accord with the Government. Let the Government buy them out, and get rid of the people who have caused all this muddle. The third thing is that the Government have got to give a fair deal to the agricultural worker. Some of us voted against the Government in Committee upstairs, and, what is more, we defeated them. We were right, and now they are going to bring in a Bill to do the same thing. We must pay these men sufficient to enable them to hold up their heads, to live in decency, to feel that the work they are doing is work of real national importance, and that they are human beings.

The Chairman

The hon. Member forgets that we have an Agricultural Wages Bill coming before us. He is anticipating that. Moreover, the question of agricultural wages does not come within the terms of this Motion.

Mr. De la Bère

I bow to your Ruling, Sir Dennis, with that profound respect which I have for you, and I will not proceed along those lines. I will end on this note. Will the Government bring forward a comprehensive scheme, a concrete, crystallised scheme, and announce it to the farmers, and give the farmers confidence that they are going to fulfil their pledges? High-sounding phrases and the appearances on the cinema screen of the Minister of Agriculture carry no weight at all. What we want to feel is that the Government are going to carry out their words and really help the farmer to produce more food. That will do more to win the war for us, and win it quickly, than anything else that can be done. This is a matter that is of the most vital importance, and I do hope that what I have said will not be hushed out of every newspaper—although I do not mind if it is only recorded in the Official Report. I sincerely hope that hon. Members will support what I have said and induce the Government to do what should have been done years ago.

9.32 p.m.

Mr. McGovern (Glasgow, Shettleston)

I rise to strike an entirely new note in this Debate. We have had a day of discussion on agriculture. That Debate has been arranged by the official parties in the House for the convenience of Members who are interested in agriculture in order to impress upon the Government their views as to the development of a policy that will help to win the war. Not being party to that agreement we on this bench want to take the opportunity of registering our opposition to the provision of this credit of £700,000,000 for the purpose of carrying on war. We believe that, instead of discussing how to spend this money on a policy of winning the war, we should be trying to develop reason and to find a policy that would save this vast expenditure and take us along the ways of peace. Therefore, I intend to night to make an appeal to the Government that in order to save the vast sums that are to be expended in the next few months, and probably in the next few years if the policy that is being pursued to-day is continued, we should attempt to apply our reason to the situation and see whether we cannot bring this war to a close before a tremendous slaughter begins on the battlefields.

To-day we have seen the tragedy of the humiliation of a small nation ground down by a large nation which has imposed its will on the smaller Power and imposed terms of peace that must be galling to the people of Finland. Therefore, when Finland has ceased in the struggle which looked like extending throughout the Scandinavian countries and, many anticipated, might extend throughout the Balkans, we say there is evidence to-day, if a man has eyes to see, ears to hear and brains to apply himself to the signs, that the world is in a state for bringing this war to a speedy termination. We are told by some hon. Members that we must continue this war and spend these vast sums of money until Hitlerism has been destroyed. If I am asked, "Would you make terms with Hitler at the present moment?" I would say, "Certainly." Hitler is the leader of the German Reich at the present moment, whether you like it or not. If you examine both the state of mind of the German people and the backing he has in Germany, you will realise, as most of the military men are beginning to realise, that after six months of war there is no evidence of internal revolt in Germany. There is no evidence that they cannot get their food or raw materials.

To-day eminent military men are writing in the Press week after week and telling us that we cannot win this war except by a tremendously supreme military effort, and then they pour scorn on our ability to reach a decision by attempting to break through the Siegfried Line and on the German's ability to break the fortifications of the Magi not Line. If you go on for one, two or three years with this enormous expenditure of money and, what is vastly more important, the tremendous throw-away of national effort in lives, and then it suddenly dawns upon you that you cannot win by military effort, you have to get down to discussions with Hitler, Goering, Hess and Goebbels. You have wasted lives, wealth and effort in endangering civilisation itself and in the end you are compelled to negotiate with the people with whom you are told not to negotiate. That may be galling to a certain number of people in this House who want to win this war by military effort and want to smash what they believe to be a menace to mankind.

Let us examine this question frankly and honestly. Does any Member of this Committee or any person in the country believe that millions of human beings in Germany are behind Hitler if they do not feel they have some sense of grievance? I believe the German people are, in the main, just as reasonably minded as British people. My mind does not only extend to sympathy and reason with the British people; it extends beyond frontiers and barriers overseas to the common people of all lands. We have to realise that in Germany the people are behind Hitler because they feel they have a sense of grievance which we must apply our minds to understand. The more politicians in this country make flamboyant speeches, telling us that we must continue the war until Hitler or Germany is crushed, the more solidly will you put the German people behind Hitler, unless you appeal to them and show a state of mind that is prepared to negotiate. The German people have felt from the time of Versailles that they were suffering from injustices and that there was the danger in this war of the reimposition of injustices. Not only do they feel that, but there are others who have felt it.

Let me examine the state of mind of some of our politicians who have found prominent places on the Front Bench during this war. There is this statement: We are holding all our means of coercion in full operation or in immediate readiness for use. That was made on 4th March, 1919, three and a half months after the Armistice was signed. The statement goes on: We are enforcing the blockade with vigour. We have strong armies to advance at the shortest notice. Germany is very near starvation. All the evidence I have received shows the great privations which the German people are suffering and the great danger of a collapse in the entire structure of the German social and national life under the pressure of hunger and malnutrition. Now is the time to settle. That statement was made, not by Goering, but by our Goering—the present First Lord of the Admiralty. Here is another statement: Tuberculosis especially in children is increasing in an appalling way and, generally speaking, is malignant. In the same way, rickets is more serious and widely prevalent. It is impossible to do anything with these diseases; there is no milk for the tuberculous and no cod liver oil for those suffering from rickets. That is from an International Commission of Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian doctors in April, 1919. I will quote from a small book entitled "I hate Tomorrow," by H. Greenwall: The babes were like small monkeys, nothing but skin and bone. They were wrapped in pieces of canvas sacking. The complexions of the women were like ash: their cheek bones seemed to be about to protrude through their flesh. Their eyes appeared to be sunken in their sockets. Their hands resembled claws. Supposing we had finished the war under those conditions, with our people suffering as the German people suffered at that time. As an individual, and a member of a small party in this House which has supported in the past every effort for peace, even to an extreme degree during the Munich period, when we were reprimanded for our backing of the Munich settlement, we say that after Munich there was a great want in policy. The Prime Minister came back to this country after having proclaimed to the world "Peace in our time" and immediately went to the armament makers and said "Full speed ahead. We must have more bombs, more guns and more anti-aircraft guns to meet this menace and the struggle we are bound to have in the future."

An international meeting of the Powers should have been attempted at that time. There should have been an attempt to get the nations of the world together to settle their outstanding differences. If we had had such an international gathering, not a sham, not an attempt to promise something which was never intended in reality, and had said to every other nation, "Put your cards on the table, tell us your grievances, and what you feel about the outstanding differences and we will discuss them in a reasonable way," I believe that war would have been averted. No such attempt was made, and we have drifted into war. Hon. Members say that we have to punish the aggressor. We are living in a world of aggression. The rule of the aggressor has been operating for some considerable time. Nobody suggested that we should go to war with Japan because she invaded China, or with Italy because she invaded Albania and Abyssinia. No one suggested that we should go to war with Russia, who first invaded Poland and then Finland. There is something of hypocrisy in the statement that we should go to war with one aggressor in a world of aggression and leave these other Powers, some of which you meet in a friendly way. I am driven to the conclusion that you are punishing the outstanding rival of the Imperialistic system.

I say to the Government that we are living in a period when peace is being talked by men and women in the streets, in the cafés, in the workshop, in the home and in the Employment Exchange. Everywhere one goes, among the working folk and business people, except a small circle of profiteers who are doing well out of the war, peace is being talked. Everybody wants the war to be brought to a close. Do not forget that the peace feeling in this country is extremely strong. Hon. Members must not delude themselves because it has not been possible to mobilise the real peace forces in the country. We have two sham peace forces which have been doing a tremendous amount of harm to the real peace movement—the Communists and the Fascists. Both of them represent foreign Powers. One represents Russia and the other Germany, and both of them are kept parties by these foreign States. They come along at election time and call themselves peace candidates, seriously damaging the real peace movement in the country by their stupid and criminal interventions.

There is a real peace feeling in the country, and if it can be co-ordinated, it will before long prove a tremendous factor in influencing the Government along the road of peace. Do not let us have any doubts about that. There are members of the present Government whom I believe to be professional warmongers. I have already referred to the First Lord of the Admiralty. I heard it said the other day that he is enormously happy in his present position. He is like a schoolboy running up and down the country. He is 65, and hopes to live to 80. He is prepared to carry on the war for the next 15 years and then hand it over to his son Randolph or to Vic Oliver. He is a man whom nobody would employ in times of peace because he has not the mind for peaceful problems. He talks of armaments and navies, and air fleets and bombs and shells. He is thinking all the time that he is a captain in a world of struggle and strife. These people to-day are as great a menace in our national life as anything which comes from Germany. I heard two old ladies in the bus talking the other day after the First Lord had made a speech. One said, "Did you hear Winston's speech last night?" The other said, "Yes, it was a tonic." "A tonic," said the other, "it was a feast." That is the state of mind we have to deal with.

I know that it is criminal to talk about peace and that we are only poor, simple Members of Parliament, but we come to this House and say, "Here is an opportunity." The Prime Minister has a marvellous opportunity. We know his position. We know that he dare not express the feelings of the people in terms of peace because the war-mongering element would get rid of him and run the Government. But here is an opportunity, and I am prepared to face it. If I am asked what I would do in the circumstances, I will tell hon. Members. I would make a statement to the country, broadcast it to the world. I would say that we were prepared to have an armistice and a world conference at the earliest possible moment, to bring every Power round the conference table, and to leave the dead past behind. I would say that we were prepared to go forward to a new era in which the raw materials of the world would be internationally controlled by an international board representing each country. Although I am a Socialist, I would be prepared, as a stepping stone, to have a trustification of the whole of the raw materials, even in a capitalist world, and give to each nation the right of access to these materials.

The trouble is that we are living in a world where politicians refuse to adjust themselves to changing conditions. The world moves on, and circumstances change. The need for change in our economic life becomes apparent, but the mind of the backward politician, the eighteenth century mind, cannot be applied to twentieth century problems. We cannot make any headway. In order to bring Herr Hitler to the conference table, and Mussolini and Japan and Russia, I would offer to consider in a rational way the outstanding grievances of the world. Hon. Members may say, "What if Herr Hitler refused to discuss with you?" I am prepared to face that also. There is more than Herr Hitler in this problem; there are the German people to be considered.

I am an individual with pacifist convictions, although I am not a complete pacifist, as any hon. Member would find out on occasion. I am a man who only in the most extreme circumstances would resort to violence, and I would use violence only in defence of my own rights as an individual or in defence of those whom I believed to be weaker than myself and to require defence. In the present situation, I would tell the world that we are prepared to retire behind our fortifications, that we are not prepared to fire a shot or to send out a bombing plane of any kind to attack any enemy, and I would appeal to Germany to give consideration to a policy of that sort. If Germany refused, I would go to the microphone the following day and I would broadcast to the world that we were in deadly earnest, that we had no desire to punish the German people, to impose upon them another Versailles, or a policy of starvation, or to attempt to penalise them in any way.

I would go on repeating that offer to the German people until, with the pressure of the various neutral countries, including America, Germany was compelled to accept. In the end, Hitler would have to accept a reasonable policy, if the policy of smashing Germany, as it is proclaimed by hon. Members, were scrapped. In the end, we should go over the head of Hitler and get to the German people, even against his desires; although I believe that Hitler has reached the stage where he has indulged in smash and grab with the intention of forcing France and Britain to recognise the power and might of Germany in order to come to terms with them and to get justice for the German nation. That is what we have to offer to-night as an alternative to this horrible slaughter. The other day one of the leaders of the Labour party made a speech in which he said that he was prepared to sacrifice 1,000,000 young lives rather than face—[An HON. MEMBER: "Who said that?"]. The right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood), at a sports club in London, as reported in the "Daily Mail" of 2nd February, 1940. [Interruption.] Hon. Members cannot get away with it in that way. I have here the report of the speech, and he said: I would sooner see a million lives go now than face the same situation again in 20 years' time. Whether hon. Members dispute it or not, that is the policy of determining to go on and on with the war until Hitlerism is smashed. I say that that was done 20 years ago, and we are back in the same position after having sacrificed over 1,000,000 lives. It is a horrible thing to hear old men who are safe from the trenches and the warfare themselves talking, in terms of generosity, of sacrificing 1,000,000 of the lives of the youth of this country. It is a shocking thing to hear those who have built up youth movements, who have climbed the stairs and hammered at doors and delivered literature, talking of handing over these 1,000,000 young lives to be crashed in order to smash Hitlerism. There is no guarantee that in the end you will crush Hitlerism. I have held from the moment that war broke out, and even before it, that you will not secure military victory over the German people. I would rather see negotiations take place now in an intelligent manner than go forward to years of slaughter, strife, bitterness, passion and hatred, and reach the stage at which people are so bitter that they have not the minds to apply to the problems of the world as we see them to-day. They are not problems of religion, race or colour; they are social and economic problems.

In a changing world we appeal to mankind to realise the necessity of getting together to discuss how we can avoid the slaughter of 1,000,000 men from this country, 1,000,000 from Germany, 1,000,000 from the various States of the world. I appeal to hon. Members to recognise that that is our contribution. We believe in the mission of Mr. Sumner Welles. We believe in the offers that have come through underground sources and that are being rejected, spurned, and attacked. We believe that if we apply our reasoning powers we can end this horrible nightmare of continual slaughter and apply our talents and energies to the building of a civilisation. Let us get together and discuss how we can raise the standards of the people in the Colonial world, in the various countries; and let us remember that the Germans are part of the human race as are the British people. There are millions of Germans who hold similar views to our own. My hon. Friends and I do not encourage you to go on with slaughter; we appeal to you to call a halt, to apply your minds to ending the war. Even if we are the only Members in the Lobby to-night, we will oppose this Vote of £700,000,000 for the purposes of war, because we believe that the money, the energy and the talents should be used for the purposes of peace and in getting rid of the horrible, vicious circle of war.

10.1p.m.

Mr. Gallacher (Fife, West)

I rise to put a point of Order. I am opposed to this credit, Sir Dennis, and I am opposed to the Government, and I want to know how I can register that opposition in view of the fact that I shall have no opportunity of going into the Lobby.

The Chairman

I do not quite understand the hon. Member's Question. He can go into the Lobby if he wishes to do so.

10.2 p.m.

Mr. Alexander (Sheffield, Hillsborough)

The Committee has just listened to a speech of the hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern) putting forward Pacifist views—

Mr. Maxton (Glasgow, Bridgeton)

Anti-war views.

Mr. Alexander

The members of the party for which I am speaking to-night have always sympathised with and always been tolerant of the expression of such views. I may say that it is a very good thing for many of us that we are living in a country in which we can still express those views. Before coming to the main questions to which hon. Members have been giving their attention in this Debate, I want only to say that I well remember that hon. Members below the Gangway on this side were great supporters of the approaches that were made to the German leaders which culminated in the arrangements at Munich. I well remember then giving expression to the same views at that time as we have heard stated so eloquently and ably to-night by the hon. Member for Shettleston. But I am afraid that the hopefulness which they expressed at that time was completely disappointed, and indeed, after listening to the hon. Member for Shettleston earlier in the afternoon expressing his profound disgust at what has happened in Finland, I found it a little difficult to reconcile his earlier statement with some of the things that he has just said about the rulers of Germany.

Mr. McGovern

I do not want to be misunderstood. What I said about Finland was that I welcomed the ending of the slaughter, but that I thought it loathsome that a country like Russia, which professed to be a peace-loving State, should have indulged in brutalities of any kind.

Mr. Alexander

I am obliged to the hon. Member for his explanation, but I ask him to give us credit for this, that we earnestly and profoundly believe that negotiations started at this moment, un- less the other side proved by deeds what they meant, would simply lead the people of this country into a position like that in which the Finns now are.

If I may return to the main question of food and agricultural policy, we listened to the very detailed survey of a general character which the Minister gave, but I felt a great sense of disappointment that the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams), full of points to which the Opposition wanted answers, did not get answers. I look to the Government Bench in the final reply to give answers to the points that my hon. Friend made. We put a specific question in regard to the farms which you have power to take over under the existing law and exactly how that was going to be used. We have had no answer to that. My hon. Friend put a question with regard to the prices of seeds, and he quoted the example of seed oats. We have had no answer to that. I should very much like to know, not only in regard to seeds, but also in regard to feeding-stuffs for cattle, what steps the Minister of Food is taking to see that the users of seeds and feeding-stuffs get a square deal on price. I know the Minister has issued a Maximum Prices Order, but, if my information is correct, a great many farmers, who are not able perhaps to give large cash orders every week, but who order mixed cattle food very often cannot get an invoice at all. There is a very great amount of profiteering going on. We should like an answer upon that question.

We should also like an answer with regard to the steps that the Government propose to take to protect the tenant farmer from unjust treatment by the landlord, especially in regard to the ploughing-up of his land. Those points were completely ignored also. Then there was the point with regard to the appointments which have been talked about so much in the Press, and certainly, with regard to the speed with which a great many of the appointments have had to be made. I have no doubt that in some cases it happened that people with considerable incomes, retired from service, have been able to get very good appointments under the Ministry. From the case put by my hon. Friend, a pretty urgent and detailed overhaul seems to be required. May we ask for an answer on that point also? Then there is the question of drainage. Obviously, if you are to get an increase of production, which we all want to see, we must make every effort, and not the least is to speed up and make effective the administration of drainage powers which are already in the hands of the Government. My hon. Friend, who was more humorous than I have heard him for some time, asked whether we were dealing with this speeding-up by sending a postcard or by sending a man to see whether the job was being done. Until you get that drainage done, you will not get the full results of the programme to which the Government have set their hands.

May I turn to one or two comments on the speech of the Lord Privy Seal? He is always courteous, suave and pleasant, but the more I pondered over his speech, the more I was disappointed with it. I was not surprised that hon. Members opposite felt that there were gaps in it. When he dealt with the wider question of foodstuffs, the more I listened the more I doubted. The first claim he made with regard to stocks was that the position was better than it was in September. The reserves of wheat and flour and the stocks of bacon and butter and ham were higher than at the outbreak of war. Occasionally the price of bacon has been so high that stocks have got high, too. It has been largely owing to other sections of the Government's policy that the price is so high. In regard to meat, the position is regarded as satisfactory, but sugar stocks are somewhat lower, though it is curious to remember that in his forecast last time the Minister said sugar need not be rationed. We should all be able to have a pound a head. I warned him that we should never get more than 12 ounces. How much better are wheat and flour than last September? The Minister will not tell me now. He will tell me it is not in the public interest. I know broadly what were the stocks last September. Not so many months ago you were eating into your stocks so rapidly that you had to borrow 100,000 tons from France. How much better is the stock to-day? Have the stocks been repaid to France?

I think this sort of optimism is hardly justified. That is not the kind of answer that we want from a member of the War Cabinet. We want more frankness. There will be other people besides those who use cereals for direct human food who will be asking, "If the Minister of Food says there is a great improvement in wheat and flour stocks, how is it that we have had to kill millions of poultry because we could not feed them?" If it has been possible to improve the stocks in spite of the shortage, why have the poultry farmers been kept so short? We should like a little more explanation about what the real situation is. What I know is that the country as a whole is not eating as much butter per head as before the war. It is rationed, and rightly rationed, but even under the ration in my view some of the stocks would have been eaten into if it were not for the high price which is charged. I do not think the Minister would disagree about that. What is the situation now?

The Minister yesterday announced a policy for milk which has two aspects. He says, that we have, of course, been giving for January, February and March a subsidy of 3d., 3d., and 2½d. respectively and that we are going to make an average price, above this period of last year, for the summer months of 2½d. a gallon. But in answer to a supplementary Question he has to say that this money will not be provided by subsidy from the Government but from some other source, and on pressure it transpires that this was to be provided by an increase in the price of manufacturing milk. But please remeber that the price of milk for manufacture was already substantially increased last September by nearly 3d. a gallon, and this is a proposal to increase it by another 2½d. If the price all round over the whole of the milk is taken by the Government from the farm instead of the Milk Marketing Board, and there is to be this 2½d. without help from the Government, you have to increase the price of milk for manufacture, which is only one-third of the total, by a very much higher figure than 2½d. If I am correctly informed, the suggestion is that in certain of the products which rely on milk for this principal constituent, the price to be paid is to be actually higher than liquid milk prices. If the Minister does not agree with me, he can give me an answer. I am perfectly prepared to give way, but I may say that I am usually right. We happen to handle the goods and to be close up with the negotiations.

Let us look at the position and let us take cream. If you are going to put up the price to the extent which is suggested, will you sell cream? Of course you will not. How does it affect the farmer? Instead of taking milk at somewhere about 6d. and 7d. a gallon for making butter, and there are 2½ gallons of milk for a pound of butter, you are going to charge 8d., 9d. and up to 1s. for milk for butter and what sort of price is going to be paid? [An HON. MEMBER: "Four shillings!"] My hon. Friend jocularly says it will be about 4s. It may well be 2s. 6d., according to the particular amount. How is that going to help the consumption of butter? In any case I think it will fail, and the butter will not be received into the pool. The Minister knows that this summer, in consequence of the slaughter policy undoubtedly required because of the failure to ration meat in time, and in consequence of the lack of feeding-stuffs in winter, milk production will be bound to suffer, and instead of having the normal surplus in the summer months of about 40 per cent. which is usually required to balance the periods over the whole year, I doubt whether it will be 30 per cent. When you come to deal with the amount of money required by the industry in return for the position I have outlined, the Government will agree to increase the price of liquid milk unless the House of Commons can force them to restore the policy they adopted last. January and provide a subsidy; and instead of milk being kept at 7d., it will go to 8d. and 9d. The attitude of the party on this side has always been that the essential thing in war-time, as far as it can be maintained—and I know it is difficult—is to keep the price of liquid milk at such a figure that it is available to the nursing mothers and the children in the working classes. I foreshadow that what I have said will come true. I shall wait and see. I have waited and seen the result of my earlier prophecies, and I have not been far out.

Another point mentioned by the Lord Privy Seal was that we had plenty of whale oil. That is interesting. Whale oil is one of the principal constituents used in the manufacture of margarine. It reminds me that there was considerable controversy last September and October whether there should be a commodity sold as "pool margarine." The Lord Privy Seal said nothing about the comparative lack of soft oil. The Minister knows that the make-up of the higher brands of preparatory margarine has to be altered because we are getting short of soft oil. The Government have moved away from a sane policy of a pooled margarine in which all the constituents available would be used to the most economical advantage, and to-day we are short of soft oil. I met the other day the director of an institution which has nothing to do with the institution with which I am associated, and which deals in potato crisps. There is a large outlet for one of the farmer's commodities in that direction. It is essential in the treatment of that commodity for its sale and attractiveness that it uses a good deal of soft oil, but this firm were cut down in their supplies to a figure which is almost unthinkable because you have let the advertising agents of the other people run away with you so that you have got away from the policy of using economically the constituents in a pooled commodity. As a result there is a shortage of soft oil. That is not the way to carry on a food supply policy in war-time.

Then the Lord Privy Seal said a few words about the policy to be followed in restricting imports. I do not think any of us on this side have any hesitation in backing the Government when they really restrict the import of luxury commodities. I did not hear any suggestion in the Lord Privy Seal's speech that we should strongly oppose the importation of heavily priced sparkling wines or anything of that kind. There may be reasons for that, and we may want to keep in with our sources of supply when they are in Allied countries. If, however, it is to be the policy of the Government to keep out luxury articles in order to concentrate on necessities, I am sure the Government will get support.

Let us come to food. It has been argued that the Government's policy has been mainly dictated by the lack of tonnage. That is not true. Let us have the whole truth on a Vote of Credit. I know that the shipping position is difficult, but I am sure that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury could tell us a thing or two about why some commodities are not coming in. It is because of the strict Treasury control over exchange. We did not hear anything of that from the Lord Privy Seal. We are very short of lard now. Fortunately, I am able to say a word about that. There was a fine trade carried on by different people in this country who imported steam lard and refined it, thus helping to supplement the normal supplies produced here. That business is finished; the people engaged in that work have been put out of business.

Take green vegetables. After the hard winter, when green vegetables were scarce, when people of the working class could not afford 6d., 9d. or 1s. for a cauliflower, we should have been glad to supplement our supplies of vegetables. That was quite impossible. The Treasury put their grip on. They said, "You may have been offered 50,000 tons of Dutch peas, but we cannot allow you to have the power over that block of guelder exchange." So Dutch peas, except for a small quantity, were kept out. The same observation applies to other commodities which are really necessary. I do not want the Financial Secretary to think that I am in favour of wasting our reserves of currency, but if we are to exercise some control by means of currency, I hope that it will not be applied to food until we have rigidly excluded luxury articles. That has not happened yet.

The same considerations apply to feeding-stuffs. For the life of me I cannot think what the Government and their advisers have been thinking of to allow the feeding-stuffs position to get into its present state. We have been told that the wheat position is better now than it was in September, in spite of the run upon it, and yet the Government are not able to promise farmers 60 per cent. of their feeding-stuffs. How is that? It would have been just as easy to buy the maize we required as to buy the wheat. Why did they not buy it when it was available? The Minister smiles. I come back to a point which I made months ago. At a time when the farmers were short of feeding-stuffs this country was over and over again refusing supplies from near ports and negotiating with far-off ports, and gaining hardly anything on the transactions after allowance had been made for the increased cost of insurance and freight from the far ports. That may well have happened because the Treasury stepped in occasionally and held up the Minister and his executive, saying which parcels they could or could not buy from the point of view of whether the exchange was favourable or not. I feel that the humorous observation of my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley that the members of the Government are like a football team in which the players are passing back and not feeding their forwards, was a very happy one. That situation might have been, if not wholly avoided, at least very much altered. We have had a policy of looking at the task we have to fulfil, whereas what we want is a policy of going straight for it, instead of drifting. We have wasted much of the resources of this country. We have wasted the resources we had in livestock so badly that the price of beef is higher than it ought to be and it will be so for the next few months. I hope that, in the short time at my disposal, I have given the Minister enough points to answer. At the moment we are not satisfied.

10.31 p.m.

Mr. W. S. Morrison

In the short time at his disposal, the right hon. Gentleman has certainly given me a number of points to answer; he has also succeeded in compressing into that very short time a very great deal of gloom on the general situation. We can look on the bright side and reflect that it is inevitable in our discussions that the Opposition should take up an attitude of criticism—and very valuable it is, I may point out—but I am sure that hon. Members opposite would not like it to go out that what they have said is a definite statement of the position, without having a balanced view presented by the other side.

I find myself to-night in a position to reply both on the agricultural topic and on food administration in general, and that suggests a programme to me. The reason why my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister of Agriculture has not replied in person on the very large number of interesting points of an agricultural character put to him, is that we felt that, in a Debate of this character, offering to hon. Members one of the few opportunities they have to express their opinions on matters important to themselves and to their constituencies, too much time ought not to be taken up by Front Bench speeches. If, therefore, I do not answer all the points of an agricultural character, I hope that they may be postponed to another day or dealt with in another way.

I can say, in general, about the exercise of powers to take over derelict land, that that is being provided for and that committees are in touch with my right hon. and gallant Friend. The necessary steps are being taken in appropriate cases. With regard to tares—which has more a Biblical than an agricultural connotation—I understand that the figures are right. The price has risen from 16s. a cwt. to 52s., and the reason is that most of the supplies of cheap tares came from Baltic countries. These supplies are cut off and very little of them is grown at home. The increased charge reflects the scarcity of that commodity and the increased freights involved. On the point as to landlords, we cannot expect a Debate of this character to take place without the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) and some of his hon. Friends heaving a brickbat at the landlords. It would give a false impression to suggest that landlords are not anxious to play their part in our agricultural effort. My right hon. and gallant Friend assures me that in every case where a ploughing order has been judged advisable, because the land is suitable, the order has been made, irrespective of who possesses the land.

Mr. T. Williams

Does that apply if a farmer wants to plough up more than the quota?

Mr. Morrison

I understand that the guiding principle in every case is to consider whether the proposed ploughing-up would be really economical or not. It has been frequently said that there are cases where you actually get lower production by ploughing-up. Discretion has to be exercised. On drainage I find that there is no difference of opinion as to the importance of this elementary act for restoring fertility to the land and that it is proceeding with vigour under the catchment boards. Some years ago, when I was Minister of Agriculture, I had the privilege of visiting many of these catchment boards which have done remarkable work up and down the country for which the nation as a whole should be grateful at this time. I should be very surprised to learn that there is any slackness on the part of the catchment boards in performing the duties entrusted to them. They take a natural pride in seeing the land in their charge improved and they perform their work with enthusiasm. I was interested in the speech by the hon.

Member for Brigg (Mr. Quibell), and there is a great deal in what he said about the smaller areas and their lack of resources. One point in his speech which I did appreciate, and can confirm from my own experience, is that if the main drainage is put right, you will see a remarkable improvement in ancillary drainage. Our forefathers in generations past have laid down trench systems, some deep and some shallow, the outlets of which have been blocked, and I am convinced that if the question of main drainage is proceeded with, there will be a remarkable improvement in inland drainage systems which were constructed many years ago.

With regard to the question of stocks, as my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal said, the position has improved. We have sometimes to restrict the consumption of one particular article or another, and one of our objects has been that of building up reserves against what might happen later. The position has improved. The right hon. Gentleman opposite will not ask me to go into figures, of course, but he asked me one question which I think I should answer because it is a perfectly reasonable one. He asked whether if we had overtaken all the consumption of stocks which took place at the end of last year, and, if we were now in a better position, how it was that poultry in some cases had had to go short? One of the answers to that question is that there has been a restriction of supply of animal feeding stuffs, but the damage that has been done has been repaired and the country is now back in the position in which it was before. One has to make priorities of what can be imported, as the right hon. Gentleman will realise.

The hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) referred to the necessity of securing that the ploughing-up campaign is carried out with the enthusiasm which confidence alone can engender, and he mentioned many matters which, he said, tended to destroy that confidence and to make it less a labour of love on the part of those charged with the duty of proceeding with its execution. In passing, I would say that confidence is a plant of tender growth. It can be blasted by adverse events, but it can also wither if too much oratory of a pessimistic character is allowed to circulate continually around it. While we ought to lose no opportunity of airing our grievances, we ought at the same time, to consider what effect our words will have.

Where I come into the agricultural picture to-day is with regard to prices. One thing that the agricultural population does realise is that, through the activities of my much-abused Ministry, they get two elements of agricultural stability. The first is a guaranteed market, and the second is better prices. Let us look at some of the prices of staple agricultural commodities to-day. The price of fat cattle is, to-day, 28 per cent. higher than it was this time last year. The prices of oats and barley—cereals always associated with political trouble for the Minister of Agriculture and the Secretary of State for Scotland—are nearly double what they were this time last year.

Mr. Quibell

They were much too low then.

Mr. Morrison

They were; but I am trying to indicate that the whole agricultural picture is not of such a deep black hue as is sometimes suggested. The prices of fat stock are higher than they have been for 18 years in this country, and the prices of oats and barley are higher than they have been for 20 years. I have always believed that a guaranteed market and good prices are the main essentials of agricultural stability; and, however variable other things may be, those essentials will enable agriculture to function with some confidence. Milk has been mentioned. Yesterday I fixed an increased summer price, which I think will be satisfactory, coupled with an assurance in regard to winter milk. That assurance is necessary now, because it is now that arrangements for winter milk must be made.

Mr. Alexander

Can the Minister make available details of the actual costs upon which that guarantee has been based?

Mr. Morrison

The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that it is not always easy to give tabulated information on agricultural costs. It must be a matter of opinion, and our opinion is that the rise is justified. I can well understand that the right hon. Gentleman holds the view that this increase is too great, but that is not my view. I should like to make one other statement about feeding-stuffs, as they have been mentioned. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) argued that what I said in January about feeding-stuffs was not realised. I said then that by the end of January, when we had got over the worst of our troubles, it was found possible to increase the supply of imported feeding-stuffs to 66 per cent. of the pre-war quantity, and that I hoped to maintain the proportion of 66 per cent. during the remainder of the month and during February and March. In fact, from the ports there has been released 66 per cent. of the average pre-war monthly consumption of feeding-stuffs.

That average monthly figure may give rise to some misunderstanding. We have no figures showing the month-by-month pre-war consumption of feeding-stuffs. We know that it varied from month to month, but the figure on which this release is based is the average monthly consumption. In practice, we have carried out that promise. These imported cereals have been released from the ports. The distribution of this commodity is a very different thing. The trade is an extremely complicated one, but I think there have been improvements in regard to the imported products. One is the requirement from the merchants of returns as to their pre-war business, and the possibility of inspection of their books to ensure that. As far as may be they are giving the right proportions to their customers. There is also this to be said. The 66 per cent. refers to the total import of feeding-stuffs. It is not to be deduced from that however that every farmer will in every case get 66 per cent. of any particular sort of feeding-stuffs and it is a matter of high policy that what is available must be utilised.

Mr. Quibell

The division of the year into 12 equal periods, in respect of which 66 per cent. of feeding-stuffs is allocated is unfair, because a bigger percentage of feeding-stuffs is used from November to March. Consequently the allocation is not on a fair average, having regard to the additional quantities of feeding-stuffs required in the winter months of the year.

Mr. Morrison

I appreciate the hon. Member's point. It is true that at this season of the year there is a heavier consumption of feeding-stuffs than there is normally. But this 66 per cent. is a fraction chosen on the best information I can get. Taking into account the cold weather, the figure is more likely to be 58 per cent. than 66 per cent., but we have not accurate figures for each month. With this licensing and the new control scheme, I believe we shall get better results in distribution, but the general import position still remains. The hon. Member for Don Valley and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs unite in saying that we must economise in the shipping used for carrying food. When I tell the Committee that of the 20,000,000 tons that have been mentioned, the bulk is employed in carrying cereals, the bulkiest and most difficult thing to export, which makes the largest possible call upon shipping space, we must see where we can save. It is obvious that this large bulk of cereals must make its contribution. It is equally obvious that the bread supply of the people must be maintained, and therefore it is necessary for us to look at the position and see if we can economise shipping and yet provide the full quota of feeding-stuffs.

We are faced with the position of asking which is the most useful type of farming from the nation's point of view in time of war. Is it that of the man who relies entirely upon imported feeding-stuffs for his business and who buys from overseas, or is it that of the man who is able to reinforce from the produce of his own soil the feeding-stuffs that he requires? It is right to ask from a strictly war-time point of view where the shoe pinches? We have not taken that hard view of it. Realising the hardship to many employed in this form of agriculture we have tried to mitigate it..

Mr. T. Williams

Surely the right hon. Gentleman will understand that it is just as important to preserve livestock as it is to preserve food, otherwise we shall be taking everything out of the land by growing wheat and there will be nothing left.

Mr. Morrison

I agree with that, and we are maintaining our livestock which is ancillary to the other. I want hon. Members to ask themselves again what type of farming is best in war-time. I think as regards the pig the answer must be that the pre-war pig which was fed in peace-time on balanced rations must transform himself—as human beings have to do in war-time—and must become a war-time pig, omnivorously seeking his food in perhaps less tastefully got up quarters in order to contribute to victory. There is one thing about feeding-stuffs which I should say. We were forced during the difficult time to limit to one-third the amount of home-grown wheat that could be released. Now that the position has improved we have been able to release one-half and I think that should have an effect in easing the situation.

Meat control is another matter on which I would appeal for a realistic approach to the question. A great number of rumours go about and it is difficult sometimes to check their accuracy. One frequently hears it said that animals are sent from Llandrindodd to Somerset and so on. I would ask hon. Members to think of the useless movement of animals that take place in peace-time, of the dealer on the spot hoping for a bargain who transports an animal perhaps 100 miles in the hope of obtaining a penny for himself. Under this scheme farmers bring their animals to a centre, which is a great saving in transport. I remember being asked a question about some meat that had gone bad in the Midlands. On inquiry I found the source of that complaint to be a propaganda leaflet issued by a road transport concern to show that the railways were incompetent. It is inevitable in dealing with these things that we must annoy many vested interests. Though I would be as gentle as possible with them it is impossible to avoid giving pain to some people. I would ask hon. Members when they hear complaints to try to verify them and not to credit every rumour that is bruited about.

In regard to personnel one hon. Member mentioned the chairman of a committee who got £3,800 a year. That sounds a very large sum, but this chairman has a lot of expenses to meet, and they have been very carefully calculated. His personal remuneration is only about £700 a year. In the original order with regard to these appointments, it was provided that a review of the financial arrangements should take place after not less than three months. That review will be undertaken. A Captain Sawyer was mentioned, a divisional food officer. His wife, I understand, has a small well-known estate in that part of the country.

He is supposed to have mining interests, but all he has are a few ordinary mining shares. He has no connection with the mining industry. Lieut.-Colonel Mitford was mentioned as getting £700 a year. He is hon. treasurer of Inverness Infirmary and has been responsible for running the Homes for Soldiers' and Sailors' Children at Dunkeld for some years. He has been described as a landed proprietor. He is a landed proprietor—with a large estate of 16acres. Another rumour which went round was that Mrs. Mitford had a Government appointment and this was supposed to be a scandal. I have found on inquiry that she was a member of the A.T.S., and I think that one can only applaud her for her patriotism.

Miss Wilkinson (Jarrow)

Was she an officer?

Mr. Morrison

I plead with the Committee to exercise discretion when they hear stories of that sort. For instance, it is said that if meat traders are employed they must be feathering their own nests; and, if civil servants are employed, we are told that they have never been in a slaughterhouse in their lives and know nothing about it. The answer to this is that we must secure a judicious mixture of both, always remembering to keep such control as to make things work properly and smoothly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Robertson) spoke about fish and described requests made to me. He will forgive me for saying that when he came to me it was as a very big trader in frozen fish. I have never had a shadow of suspicion about the bona fides of my hon. Friend, but he will realise that in matters of this kind we have to consider how the scheme is going to work from the public point of view, and if I have not accepted all his recommendations, and he has been angry, I can only point out that every trader I have met always has the idea that if we would follow his particular way of doing business everything in the garden would be lovely. That is the enthusiasm which great ability, success and a profound knowledge of the trade engenders in a man. But quite often two traders, equally successful and enthusiastic, do not share quite the same views.

Mr. Robertson

I must say, with very great respect, that that reply is very misleading and inaccurate. I gave a figure to-day of a great national deficiency in food, 11,000,000 cwt., and I should like the Minister to say how he proposes to make that up.

Mr. Morrison

The whole question of importing frozen fish is being considered and worked out with all the trading interests concerned. We realise the deficiency but the matters he has mentioned are not so easy of solution. As regards trawlers, only 43 ply from Hull and to send them out to foreign waters must mean more unemployment in Hull. All these matters have to be taken into consideration. I ask the House not to accept the too pessimistic views which have been mentioned. I think it is grossly unfair to farmers. It is true that farmers are

pugnacious from time to time but the bulk of them are working with confidence and courage in the discharge of their duties which the State has laid upon them.

Question put, That a sum, not exceeding £700,000,000 be granted to His Majesty, towards defraying the expenses which may be incurred during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1941, for general Navy, Army and Air Services and for the Ministry of Supply in so far as specific provision is not made therefor by Parliament, for securing the public safety, the defence of the realm, the maintenance of public order and the efficient prosecution of the war, for maintaining supplies and services essential to the life of the community and generally for all expenses, beyond those provided for in the ordinary Grants of Parliament, arising out of the existence of a state of war.

The Committee divided: Ayes, 192; Noes, 2.

Division No. 54.]	AYES.	[11.0 p.m.
Adams, D. (Consett)	Eckersley, P. T.	Leighton, Major B. E. P.
Adams, D. M. (Poplar, S.)	Ede, J. C.	Lipson, D. L.
Albery, Sir Irving	Eden, Rt. Hon. A.	Little, Dr. J. (Down)
Alexander, Rt. Hon. A. V. (H'lsbr.)	Edwards, Sir C. (Bedwellty)	Loftus, P. C.
Allen, Lt.-Col. Sir W. J. (Armagh)	Edwards, N. (Caerphilly)	Lucas, Major Sir J. M.
Anstruther-Gray, W. J.	Elliston, Capt. G. S.	Mabane, W. (Huddersfield)
Apsley, Lord	Emery, J. F.	M'Connell, Sir J.
Aske, Sir R. W.	Emrys-Evans, P. V.	MacDonald, Rt. Hon. M. (Ross)
Baldwin-Webb, Col. J.	Etherton, Ralph	McKie, J. H.
Beamish, Rear-Admiral T. P. H.	Fleming, E. L.	Makins, Brigadier-General Sir Ernest
Beaumont, Hon. R. E. B. (Portsm'h)	Foot, D. M.	Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R.
Beechman, N. A.	Fremantle, Sir F. E.	Mayhew, Lt.-Col. J.
Bernays, R. H.	Fyfe, D. P. M.	Mellor, Sir J. S. P. (Tamworth)
Bird, Sir R, B.	Glyn, Major Sir R. G. C.	Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest)
Blair, Sir R.	Greene, W. P. C. (Worcester)	Milner Major J.
Boles, Lt.-Col. D. C.	Greenwood, Rt. Hon. A.	Mitchell, Col. H. (Brentf'd & Chisw'k)
Bossom, A. C.	Gretton, Col. Rt. Hon. J.	Molson, A. H. E.
Boulton, W. W.	Gridley, Sir A. B.	Morgan, R. H. (Worcester, Stourbridge)
Braithwaite, Major A. N. (Buckrose)	Griffiths, J. (Llanelly)	Morris-Jones, Sir Henry
Briscoe, Capt. R. G.	Grimston, R. V.	Morrison, G. A. (Scottish Univ's.)
Brooke, H. (Lewisham, W.)	Guest, Dr. L. H. (Islington, N.)	Morrison, R. C. (Tottenham, N.)
Brown, Rt. Hon. E. (Leith)	Hacking, Rt. Hon. Sir D. H.	Morrison, Rt. Hon. W. S. (Cirencester)
Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C. (Newbury)	Hambro, A. V.	Mort, D. L.
Bull, B. B.	Hannon, Sir P. J. H.	Munro, P.
Butcher, H. W.	Harris, Sir P. A.	Nall, Sir J.
Campbell, Sir E. T.	Hely-Hutchinson, M. R.	Neven-Spence, Major B. H. H.
Cazalet, Major V. A. (Chippenham)	Henderson, A. (Kingswinford)	Noel-Baker, P. J.
Channon, H	Heneage, Lieut.-Colonel A. P.	O'Connor, Sir Terence J.
Chapman, A. (Rutherglen)	Hepburn, P. G. T. Buchan-	Orr-Ewing, I. L.
Charleton, H. C.	Holdsworth, H.	Owen, Major G.
Cobb, Captain E. C. (Preston)	Hopkinson, A.	Paling, W.
Cocks, F. S	Horabin, T. L.	Parker, J.
Colville, Rt. Hon. John	Hore-Belisha, Rt. Hon. L.	Pethick-Lawrence, Rt. Hon. F. W.
Conant, Captain R. J. E.	Horsbrugh, Florence	Pickthorn, K. W. M.
Craven-Ellis, W.	Howitt, Dr. A. B.	Price, M. P.
Crooke, Sir J. Smedley	Hudson, Rt. Hon. R. S. (Southport)	Procter, Major H. A.
Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C.	Hulbert, Squadron-Leader N. J.	Pym, L. R.
Crowder, J. F. E.	Jackson, W. F.	Quibell, D. J. K.
Cruddas, Col. B.	Jarvis, Sir J. J.	Radford, E. A.
Culverwell, C. T.	Jennings, R.	Raikes, H. V. A. M.
Dalton, H.	John, W.	Ramsden, Sir E.
Davidson, Viscountess	Jones, Sir H. Haydn (Merioneth)	Reed, Sir H. S. (Aylesbury)
De la Bère, R.	Jones, L. (Swansea W.)	Reid, W. Allan (Derby)
Dobbie, W.	Jowitt, Rt. Hon. Sir W. A.	Reith, Rt. Hon. Sir J. C. W.
Dodd, J. S.	Kennedy, Rt. Hon. T.	Ridley, G.
Dorman-Smith, Col. Rt. Hon. Sir R. H.	Kerr, H. W. (Oldham)	Riley, B.
Duckworth, W. R. (Moss Side)	King-Hall, Commander W. S. R.	Roberts, W. (Cumberland, N.)
Duncan, J. A. L. (Kensington, N.)	Knox, Major-General Sir A. W. F.	Robertson, D.
Dunglass, Lord	Lamb, Sir J. Q.	Robinson, J. R. (Blackpool)
Dunn, E. (Rother Valley)	Latham, Sir P.	Rowlands, G.
Royds, Admiral Sir P. M. R.	Strickland, Captain W. F.	Williams, C. (Torquay)
Ruggles-Brise, Colonel Sir E. A.	Tate, Mavis C.	Williams, Sir H. G. (Croydon, S.)
Samuel, M. R. A.	Taylor, Captain C. S.	Williams, T. (Don Valley)
Sanderson, Sir F. B.	Taylor, R. J. (Morpeth)	Wilmot, John
Sexton, T. M.	Thomson, Sir J. D. W.	Windsor, W. (Hull, C.)
Shakespeare, G. H.	Tinker, J. J.	Windsor-Clive, Lieut.-Colonel G.
Shepperson, Sir E. W.	Titchfield, Marquess of	Womersley, Sir W. J.
Smith, E. (Stoke)	Tomlinson, G.	Woodburn, A.
Smith, Sir R. W. (Aberdeen)	Tufnell, Lieut.-Commander R. L.	Wright, Wing-Commander J. A. C.
Smithers, Sir W.	Wakefield, W. W.	Young, A. S. L. (Partick)
Snadden, W. McN.	Walker-Smith, Sir J.
Southby, Commander Sir A. R. J.	Ward, Lieut.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—
Spens, W. P.	Ward, Irene M. B. (Wallsend)	Mr. James Stuart and Major Sir James Edmondson.
Stewart, J. Henderson (Fife, E.)	Waterhouse, Captain C.
Stewart, W. J. (H'ght'n-le-Sp'ng)	White, Sir Dymoke (Fareham)
Strauss, H. G. (Norwich)	Wickham, Lt.-Col. E. T. R.
NOES.
Maxton, J.	Wilson, C. H. (Attercliffe)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—
		Mr, McGovern and Mr. Stephen.

It being after Eleven of the Clock, The Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.

Resolution to be reported To-morrow; Committee to sit again To-morrow.