W.A.A.F. (TROPICAL KIT) (Hansard, 26 January 1945)

§ Miss Ward (Wallsend)
I want to make it perfectly clear that the comments that I shall make on tropical kit for the W.A.A.F. apply equally to the R.A.F. I am aware that the Service Departments always have been parsimonious in the allowances they have made to troops going abroad who require tropical kit and I feel certain that I shall carry the hon. and gallant Member with me in the remarks I am going to make. The Secretary of State for Air has already announced in the House that the amount of money payable to W.A.A.F. officers is, already, a matter of negotiation between his Ministry and the Treasury. I feel a little ungracious that I did not accede to my hon. and gallant Friend's suggestion—

Miss Ward
I was saying that I feel a little ungracious in not having acceded to my hon. and gallant Friend's suggestion that I should put off this question until negotiations had been concluded between his Department and the Treasury. I hope that he will not mind if I say that, though he has now risen to Parliamentary heights at which I have not arrived, I have had a fairly long experience of the Treasury, and I prefer that my remarks should be placed on record before negotiations are finally concluded. I know that if they had been concluded, any remarks that I made subsequently would be completely useless.
As the position is at present, W.A.A.F. officers have been posted to India, with a tropical kit allowance of £10, and I very much regret that the Air Ministry has permitted W.A.A.F. officers to be so posted without having reconsidered the whole position of tropical kit allowance. I am asking for two assurances. I want an undertaking that the money payment will be adequate to cover the necessary purchases, and I want an assurance that the scale of kit laid down will be sufficient for the type of life that the W.A.A.F. officers have to live in India and in other tropical climates. I also want to know that adequate equipment will be provided for the airwomen. I, 1255 myself, would not trust my hon. and gallant Friend's Department, or rather I should say the Treasury, in this connection because I cannot help feeling that people make decisions as to what scale of equipment is fair and equitable without ever having had any experience of tropical life or of what is necessary for life in India. I have recently been to that country, and I would like to tell my hon. and gallant Friend that a very senior officer told me that he considered that the standard for India and S.E.A.C. should, in fact, be higher than any other standards. I want my hon. and gallant Friend to bear that in mind when discussing the matter with the Treasury.
With regard to the amount of money to be paid, I spent a considerable time yesterday going round the various shops pricing tropical kit and I have come to the conclusion that a fair money payment would be something between £35 and £45. I do not think that anything lower than that will be acceptable. With regard to the scale of kit, I want to make it perfectly plain that I do not think any W.A.A.F. officer should be sent out to serve either in India or in the Middle East without two jackets and skirts, three or four additional skirts, from six to eight shirts, six complete changes of underclothing, and additional shoes and stockings and ties. I should like my hon. and gallant Friend, when replying to this, to let me know what scale of equipment has been laid down by his Department in this connection for the airwomen.
Last Wednesday, the Secretary of State for War gave certain assurances to this House when the House agreed to the compulsory posting of A.T.S. abroad. He told us that the best possible conditions of welfare would apply. I want to lay emphasis on this point, that welfare and good conditions are implicit in proper and adequate proper tropical kit, and I shall judge the sincerity of the assurances given by my right hon. Friend—I am sure I shall not be let down—by the way in which this matter is handled—the first case to arise after those assurances have been given. So I would warn my hon. and gallant Friend that his Department should not allow the Treasury to override whatever propositions he puts forward, because I can assure him that I can turn very nasty, unless I am satisfied that 1256 the Treasury is ceasing to be as parsimonious as I have found it in the past.
There is one other point I want to make. The effect of the present allowance of £10 is that really only women with private means have been in a position to volunteer, and I think that is regrettable. I could also point out that one Service Minister—I think it was the Secretary of State for War and not the Secretary of State for Air—said that girls were being advised to take evening wear and sports kit. That, of course, is an additional expense on the budget of the individual officer. I do not know what decision my hon. and gallant Friend will reach with regard to civilian clothing for W.A.A.F. in India, but I want to say that even if it is decided that evening clothes need not be taken, there will have to be some form of evening wear—that is to say, the officers may perhaps be authorised to take a mess dress, in the same way as British Red Cross workers take one. If that is so, that will be an additional charge on them, and I think it is very important. In addition, there is, of course, expenditure on adequate and proper sports kit.
I would say to my hon. and gallant Friend that this is the moment to do the right and the generous thing. I repeat that I think it very regrettable that W.A.A.F. personnel have been posted abroad without negotiations having been concluded between himself and the Treasury on this matter. Though I know he cannot give me a comprehensive answer to-day, I hope that when he goes back and continues the negotiations, he will point out to the Treasury that I, at any rate, think that in the past they have not served either the men or the women of the Services well in connection with the allowance for tropical kit.

§ Mr. Astor (Fulham, East)
I want to back up the forcible words and the eloquent, cogent and unanswerable plea of my hon. Friend. I can speak with feeling on this topic, as I spent no fewer than four summers in the Middle East, three of them on the Suez Canal. The conditions under which these girls will serve will be even harder than those which we experienced, and our experience was that you had to change every day. When you have been sweating hard, as you do merely by sitting at an office desk in a climate like that, it is necessary for the 1257 sake of decency and hygiene to put on clean clothes every day and change in the evening. You must, therefore, have sufficient clothes to be able to comply with this elementary necessity, and the need in that respect in the case of ladies is no less than in that of men, especially as you cannot be sure when you are moving about, that you will have sufficient laundry facilities. The idea that you can have, as in England, one in use, one in the wash and one to spare, is inadequate, especially as you do not know where the "dhoby"—which is Arabic for laundry—is.
After great difficulty I got from the Secretary of State for War a list of clothes which applies to A.T.S. officers. He said there was no authoritative or prescribed list, and no list which was said to be necessary; officers were only advised to have certain articles. Because they are only advised, the War Office need not pay them enough to buy the articles. The officers, however, must have them. It is not a question of advice but of necessity, for if they did not take the articles they would soon be in trouble for being incorrectly dressed. When I got the list and costed it out, I found that the Government grant of £10 was totally inadequate. We are, in this matter, up against the Treasury, which has not yet accepted the principle universally, that officers should be paid sufficient to cover the initial cost of their outfit. They are relying on the old 19th century idea that officers are people of private means. That is unacceptable in the 20th century. When last year I proved to the Admiralty when they were giving a £50 grant, that the minimum and cheapest outfit costs £65, they raised the sum. That is a precedent which my hon. and gallant Friend the Under-Secretary can quote.
I think the Government will find that the public will take an interest in this question. We saw what public interest was aroused over the question of the A.T.S. being sent abroad. The Government received the support of the House then and it is up to them to treat the women services handsomely. One of the things that has saddened me since I came back from the Services and became a Private Member, is to see how seldom the Government are amenable to reason and to the friendly approach, to the private letter, to the reasonable Question in the House. We are first told that it is not 1258 so, and it is with great difficulty that one gets out the facts. It is only by acting like the importunate widow that one gets the Government to act. It means an awful lot of trouble for us, and blows on both sides, which give no satisfaction except to the spectator. I would ask my hon. and gallant Friend to give the message to the Government that the women's Services should be given an adequate amount of tropical kit and should be paid a sufficient sum. If the Government want a fight we will have a fight, but it is an awful waste and in the end public opinion will be with us. I hope that the sweetly reasonable arguments we have put will so fortify the hands of the Under-Secretary that he will be able to announce a decision favourable and fair to the women who have taken on themselves the very onerous commitment of serving in tropical climates.

§ The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Air (Commander Brabner)
I am sorry the hon. Lady was not able to defer to my request to put this discussion off for a week or 10 days, because I feel that, with the appeal to sweet reason which has been made, I might have been able to give a very different answer from that which I am afraid. I shall have to give now. I am not yet in a position to announce that a revised scale of tropical kit allowance has been finally agreed between the three Services and the Treasury. Whatever our success or failure may be, it will not be for want of trying. The hon. Lady has just come back from India and South-East Asia, and my hon. Friend the Member for East Fulham (Mr. Astor) has served in hot climates. So have I, and I can speak with great appreciation of the need for an adequate allowance of kit for those who have to go to those climates, and particularly for the women who are doing a gallant and extremely valuable job, and one which could not be done without them.
I think I can say that the Air Ministry's suggestions would very nearly meet with the hon. Lady's full approval. I hope she will accept my assurance that we are pressing the matter as hard as we can. The position at the moment is that the allowance is £10, exactly the same as is authorised for R.A.F. officers. Until comparatively recently, the adequacy of the allowance has not been questioned, for 1259 many reasons, possibly because not many women have been pressed into these areas and possibly only those volunteered who were capable of paying.

§ Miss Ward
Do I understand that representations from officers themselves have never been made to the Air Ministry?

§ Commander Brabner
I have seen the papers, and have gone into the matter. The adequacy of the amount has not been seriously challenged. We cannot offer these things when there is no desire that they should be had. But now I am saying, quite definitely, that the amount has been challenged, and that we will do something to put it right. Recently, the three Service Departments, as the hon. Lady knows, received representations of the need for an increase, and these claims are now being sympathetically considered. I am sure that both my hon. Friends would not mind me saying that they are not the only people who have been to these areas during the war, and that they do not possess a monopoly of sympathy for the people who are there now. We are in favour, in the Air Ministry, of an increase, and now there remains only the question of a settlement of the extent of the increase between the three Services concerned. I am confident—in fact, I can say I am certain—that a decision will be reached shortly on this matter.
1260 There is one other thing I feel I ought to say, and that is that Government Departments are not creaking and groaning things which work in a world of their own. There are women in them with great experience, and I am confident that the Treasury, in this matter, will not be brow-beaten, and that neither will they be unreasonable. I feel that we ought to give them credit for at least being as forthcoming as they have been so far. At this stage of the negotiations I cannot give more details. I feel that the raising of this matter to-day has forced me to be less informative than I might have been, and careful of what I have been saying. But at the same time, I hope that in not being able to give a favourable answer to the hon. Lady, I will not cause any alarm or despondency in the minds of those officers who are being posted to these climates, because I can assure them that the matter is under very active consideration and that I hope to be able to make an announcement in the very near future of considerable improvement in the rates of kit allowances.