HC Deb 25 April 1947 vol 436 cc1423-39

  1. (1) Every competent authority other than the Board of Trade shall forthwith upon the receipt by them of the periodical or other estimates and returns furnished to them under this Act transmit to the Board of Trade copies of such estimates and returns.
  2. (2) If it shall appear to the Board of Trade that the information contained in the copies so transmitted is insufficient for the purpose of the discharge by them of the functions imposed upon them by Subsection (1) of Section (2) of this Act the Board of Trade shall require any person to whom Subsection (2) of the said section applies to furnish such returns as may be required for providing the additional information required for the discharge of the said functions, but save as aforesaid no person shall be required to furnish to the Board of Trade any information which has been required by any other competent authority to be furnished to such authority:

Provided that nothing in this Subsection shall be deemed to prevent the Board of Trade from requiring any estimates or returns to be furnished to them as a competent authority under Section one of this Act.

(3) Before requiring any person to furnish any periodical or other estimates or returns, a competent authority shall notify the Board of Trade of the information required by them, and the Board of Trade shall thereupon inform such authority whether such information has been furnished to any other competent authority, and shall transmit to such authority the information so furnished and where such information is so transmitted such authority shall not require any person to furnish that or substantially similar information to them.— [Mr. Mannigham-Buller.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Manningham-Buller

I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."

I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will find it possible to incorporate this new Clause in the Bill, because I believe it is a Clause, not only of considerable importance, but which accords with the true intent of this Bill, and will lead to a much more efficient collection of statistics, and avoid the danger of duplication by competent authorities, as described in the Bill, asking for the same thing on many occasions. The report of the Census of Production Committee stresses the desirability of centralisation in its introductory observations. It states: In the collection of statistical information it is of great importance that duplication of work between different Government Departments should be avoided. There is, as I see it, in the Bill as it now stands, an appreciable risk that that duplication will occur. If this new Clause is adopted we shall have the Board of Trade as a sort of clearing house for statistics. The Board of Trade will receive all the periodical and other estimates and returns furnished under the Bill to other competent authorities, and will have the power, under Subsection (2) of this new Clause, to add to that information if it requires it for the purposes of the census. The new Clause makes the further stipulation to avoid overlapping, that before any person is required to furnish any periodical or other estimates and returns, the other Government Departments shall notify the Board of Trade of the information required by them, and that then the Board of Trade shall inform that authority whether that information has already been obtained; and if it has, it shall furnish it to that other authority.

It does seem to us on this side of the House a matter of some importance that there really should be this centralisation in the collection of statistics, so that all statistics which are collected go to the Board of Trade, and so that all these returns, which, we hope, will be of great value to industry, may be centralised, to ensure, so far as it can be ensured, that the burdens upon industry, which are already very extensive, shall not be considerably increased by the necessity of having, from time to time, to furnish to one Government Department information which is already in the possession of another. I hope that, in moving this new Clause as shortly as that, I have made its object clear to the House.

12.15 p.m.

Mr. Erroll

I beg to second the Motion.

There is no doubt that the form filling by industry has become one of its most serious impediments. Particularly, it affects the small manufacturer who has not access to large clerical staffs, and who, hitherto, has not found it necessary to maintain a large statistical organisation for the successful management of his work. He is more and more finding that his time, and that of his clerks, is taken up with endless form filling on behalf of a multitude of Government Departments. I would add, in parenthesis, that the same vice has extended to the National Coal Board. Some firms making mining machinery, for example, are having to send returns not only to one divisional office, but to headquarters as well. So that we are getting overlapping and duplication within a single Government monopoly. How much that is going to be increased, when we have a number of Government Departments with powers to request information from individual firms, we can only surmise.

We are frequently told that it is not the intention of the Government to cause any duplication. We know the intentions of Ministers, and we know, also, that their acts do not always work out in accordance with their intentions. We are having numerous examples of one Government Department asking for information which has already been collected by another. This inevitably arises through there not being a properly constituted, centralised statistical department. It is an intrinsic principle of sound business management, wherever one has a large industrial organisation, that there should be one central statistical department. We suggest in this new Clause that the Government might well take a lesson from industry, and establish one centralised statistical organisation—we think, preferably, under the Board of Trade—to which all other Government Departments would apply for information, and by which additional requests for information would be sent out, only if the information were not already in its own possession.

It is not only within the industrial sphere that this principle has found ready acceptance. It was early discovered in large military headquarters during the war that a central statistical department was a necessary adjunct to efficient staff work and proficient military planning. It saved smaller formations, divisions and brigades, clerical work in that one return only, upon a given matter, was sent to one place, namely, the central statistical office at headquarters. What applied during the war in military circles, and is known to apply to industrial circles, could be equally well applied to Government Departments. We have put forward this new Clause because we think it is the right thing for the Government to do. We know we have a considerable measure of support from hon. Members opposite, as they indicated to us at an earlier stage of the Bill. We hope, therefore, that the Minister will consider the new Clause and all that it implies.

Sir A. Salter

I rise to support the proposed Clause. It seems to me a very modest proposal. Indeed, if I have any criticism of it, it is that it goes scarcely far enough to meet the dangers it is designed to meet, that is, of duplication of, or of excessive demands for, information. I sympathise with the President of the Board of Trade in desiring adequate information for the general purposes stated in the Preamble of his Bill. I speak not altogether as a layman in these matters. I have had for many years to use statistics, partly as an official and partly for the purposes of economic study. Moreover, I was head of the Economic and Financial Section of the League for some 10 years, one branch of which under Mr. Loveday, developed a series of statistical publications, which I think have had a very considerable reputation throughout the world. The President of the Board of Trade will be aware of these publications. In both these capacities, I have often wished that certain gaps in the information received could be filled up, arid occasionally, that certain powers which did not exist for the purpose of acquiring information could be obtained. At the same time, I have been very conscious indeed, especially in recent years, of the great danger of a series of separate authorities having powers to acquire information from the same business firms.

If we look at this Bill, we find, in Clause 16, that about 20 competent authorities can separately demand information from industry. That, however, gives an inadequate picture of the real situation, because, in each of these Departments, there are probably a number of officers at the head of separate branches, each one of whom, though not formally and legally, is, in fact, practically, also a separate competent authority who can launch a new inquiry. It has long been a very serious defect in the machinery of Government in this country that there is no single person or office, and no single mind, which has to weigh against the admitted desirability of obtaining a particular piece of new information the burden it means to industries of all kinds to whom the demand for that information is sent; which has to consider what will be the effect when another extra task is added to the work already demanded of them. I do seriously suggest that the cumulative effect of all the demands made on industry, small as well as great, is becoming a very grave, almost fatal, factor, in the conduct of their business. The dangers are that the demands for information will be duplicated; or excessive, if one has regard to the work involved; and also that the demands will be made in a form which is unnecessarily complicated. I could give a dozen examples, but every hon. Member will know of the extremely and unnecessarily complicated forms in use.

There is a further difficulty inherent in this problem. It is that, when a demand for information goes out from some Whitehall office, it goes in the same form to industries which are as different in the scale and size of their equipment and operations as the Imperial Chemical Industries, on the one hand, and a quite small firm, on the' other. It is extremely unlikely that the kind of form which might be suitable for the one kind of industry would be at all applicable to the other. I remember that, when I was an official in the National Health Insurance Office in 1912, we had to collect information and give instructions for carrying out the Insurance Act to the approved societies and branches, numbering some 20,000, and varying in form and character from a great society like the Prudential down to a little village society run by the local blacksmith. It was extraordinarily difficult to find a form of instruction which would be reasonably appropriate to the Prudential, on the one hand, and to the village society, on the other. In that office at that time, we arrived at a device which, for its own class of work, was very effective. We chose a certain officer in the Department through whom every demand for information and every instruction to an approved society, no matter from what branch in the office they emanated, had to go before they were circulated. He had to read them all through and ensure that they were easily intelligible to himself before they were circulated and allowed to go out to the approved societies. I may add that, as a secret bit of office technique, we deliberately did not choose the most intelligent or quick witted of our officers for that crucial point in our organisation.

That was a problem which it was easy to solve for one single Department. But, we now have, impinging upon industry of every kind, scale and size, demands for information from some 20 competent authorities, and, in fact, as I have suggested, from very many more. There is no machinery in Whitehall which requires that the demands should be centralised, and not only centralised for the purpose of seeing that there is no duplication, but also for the purpose of ensuring that there is some human mind which is weighing up the total burden of all the demands that are made on different industries and the work which they will involve. We are coming to the point at which, desirable as it is to have extra information, we may have to stop, because we are breaking down a large proportion of business enterprise. We are usually accustomed in this House and in the country to assess the effect of bureaucratic control as a burden on industry by taking the number of officials and considering them in the proportion they bear to people outside. That, however, is a most inadequate measure of the burden on industry which is involved. There is a greater invisible element, in the system of bureaucratic direction and control, which consists in the people dispersed throughout industry who are the counterpart of the demanding and controlling officer in Whitehall, who have to fill up the forms which Whitehall demands. If we think of all these, we get what becomes a terrifying total of the full burden now being thrown upon commerce and industry, particularly the smaller concerns, which are not already equipped for supplying statistical information. I do not think that this new Clause will go the whole way towards achieving our object, but it would be an important contribution to it.

Sir S. Cripps

Of course, we should all agree that the danger of overdoing it in the business world is a great one. Everybody is most anxious that, on their particular technical questions, they should get all the information they possibly can, and to get the tidiest lot of statistics possible, so that the public, the Minister or whoever it is who is concerned may have the most accurate information. We are very conscious of that danger, but this new Clause, I think, would cause a vast amount of extra labour and a degree of centralisation which would be most undesirable. It must not be overlooked that there is a Central Statistical Office, which does not carry out the executive work in regard to statistics, but is charged with the co-ordination of the different statistical services.

Sir A. Salter

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman allow me? Surely, it only co-ordinates the results of the information which it obtains—not the demands for information?

12.30 p.m.

Sir S. Cripps

It also has the task of advising and assisting the Department as to what they shall get, and as to whether the material they want to get is already accessible from other sources. We hope that the Central Statistical Department will gradually grow in influence. After all, this very large statistical organisation which has grown up is a very new one. We are really still in the experimental stage, and, during that stage, we do not want to be too rigid in our centralisation. The House should bear in mind that if this Clause were put into operation, it would mean that my Department would have to keep copies of every statistical return. If I may say so, God help my Department if it had to do that.

There are masses of short-term reports with which the Ministry of Food have to deal, concerned with the day-to-day movement of stocks and with day-to-day supplies, and so on, which have no relation to the overall and general statistical picture that wants to be drawn from some central point.

Mr. Erroll

Surely, those short-term statistics are not collected under this Bill, and would not come under it at all?

Sir S. Cripps

They are collected under the Defence of the Realm Act, but they will be collected under this Bill as soon as those Defence Regulations lapse. This Bill will be the permanent structure under which statistics will be collected. It would be a terrible duplication if those forms had to be supplied to the Board of Trade, as well as to all the Departments who were utilising them.

Mr. R. S. Hudson

The right hon. and learned Gentleman and I are both at the disadvantage of not having served on the Standing Committee which dealt with this Bill. But, as a matter of fact, in dealing with a similar Amendment which we on this side of the House put on the Order Paper, the right hon. and learned Gentle- man's Parliamentary Secretary definitely stated the opposite to what the right hon. and learned Gentleman has been good enough to say. He said:

There is a standing instruction that all statistics collected by Government Departments should be sent to the Central Statistical Office."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee C, Thursday, 27th March, 1947; c. 176.]

Sir S. Cripps

I said that they were not sent to the Board of Trade, and that it was the function of the Central Statistical Office to co-ordinate all of them. As a matter of fact, they only get the statistics in summary form; they do not get the actual forms. If they were to get the forms, it would be a most embarrassing thing for them, becaust they would be snowed under with them, and would not know what to do with them, except, perhaps, to summarise them themselves, and that would be duplication. The general practice is for the Central Statistical Office to send Departments the summaries, and then, of course, they help them to bring them into their eventual form, the monthly book of Statistical Returns.

It would not be an advantage, therefore, if my Department were put in as a fifth wheel in this coach, which is already running quite satisfactorily as between the Central Statistical Office and the other Departments. We can, of course, at any time get from those Departments any statistics we desire. If v e want the actual forms, we can get them. As a matter of fact, we generally only want the summaries, in order to assist us with such central statistics as we get. I think that the analogy which the hon. Member gave about industries does not really carry him all the way. He will find that in many of the great industries, like I.C.I., for example, statistics and forms are not sent in to the head office. They get summaries from their different branches of the material points with which they are concerned at head office. That, really, is much the same way in which the process at present works within the Government itself. It is rather more complicated, but it is, roughly, on the same sort of basis.

From the point of view of the control by this House, it is very essential that Ministerial responsibility should remain in the operative Department. I should be very unwilling to be made responsible for the statistics of all other Departments. I do not think that that would be satis- factory, because I should not be in a position to give full explanations to the House, whereas, if the House feel that too many statistics are being collected by, say, the Ministry of Fuel and Power, the Ministry of Health, or whatever Ministry it may be, they are entitled to question the Minister as to why he wants those statistics. That is a good check upon the work being done.

Therefore, I feel that, though the fundamental objective behind this Clause is one with which we have great sympathy, the form in which it is suggested is wrong. It should not be a legislative form, but an administrative form. It is quite clear that it should be a matter of good administration, rather than legislation. I can assure the House that, as this develops, we shall try to get as good a centralised form of administration for statistical services as we possibly can. I am sure that we shall always be most anxious to receive the assistance of those who, like the right hon. Gentleman, have had a great experience in the collection of statistics. With that explanation, I hope that the right hon Gentleman will be good enough to withdraw this Motion.

Mr. R. S. Hudson

When we came to draft this Clause, we were, as the right hon and learned Gentleman will realise, in a considerable difficulty. I agree with the right hon Member for the Oxford University (Sir A. Salter) that, in some ways, it is defective. But we were faced with the fact that this House had given a Second Reading to the Bill, and that it had been considered at considerable length in Standing Committee upstairs. Clearly, it was impossible, or so we thought, to ask this House on the Report stage to make a complete and drastic revision of the whole machinery which it had previously approved. Therefore, we were bound to try to see how we could fit in this idea, which I think meets with general approval on all sides of the House, of a more centralised collection of statistics, and the prevention of duplication.

My right hon. and hon. Friends in the Committee upstairs attempted to put down an Amendment which would have had that effect. In opposing it. the Parliamentary Secretary said: If the Amendment were adopted, the collection, for instance, of the monthly figures of coal production would have to be under- taken by the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Labour or the Ministry of Agriculture.… In short, the Board of Trade would have to deal with the whole range of industrial production. He went on: All we ask in the Clause "— that is, the Clause as it stands— is that Government Departments who are in the best position to deal with their own industries shall acquire the information in a way which will suit not only them, but the industries with whom they deal."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee C, 27th March. 1947; c. 169, 170.] Of course, we agree with that. But what we want to be sure of is that there is no possibility of duplication. The hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Durbin), who is now a junior Member of the Government, in the Debate on Second Reading gave an account of some of the difficulties he had met with in the duplication of statistics. Under this Clause, we do not want the Board of Trade, except in so far as it may be responsible for the Central Statistical Office, to do the collecting. All we want to ensure is that, before a Department starts to ask for new statistics, it should, at least, be compelled to go to some other Department, whether it be the Board of Trade, technically, or the Central Statistical Office, and ask whether they had already got the desired statistics.

As the right hon. and learned Gentleman will see from the later Amendment which we have on the Order Paper, we want to make it a complete defence against prosecution for failure to return statistics, for a person to be able to say, "I have already furnished the statistics, or their reasonable equivalent, to some other Government Department." It is unfair that the same person should be asked to give the same statistics to three or four separate Departments. I quite agree that it is to some extent a matter of good administration, but I hope the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not think me rude if I say that we on this side are not altogether happy about the excellence of the administration of his and other Government Departments. [An HON. MEMBER: "No Opposition ever is."] No doubt, if we were in power, we should not need this Clause; I do not think that even the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself in his heart of hearts would say that the administration of some of his colleagues is as good as that of some of his colleagues of Coalition days.

It would accordingly be as well to lay down in statutory form an obligation on Government departments to consult the Central Statistical Office. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman wants to insert some other Minister instead of himself, or some other words in another place, if our wording is not quite right to achieve the object we have in view, that is a different matter. Perhaps we might do with this Clause as we have done with his Clause, pass it formally and agree to amend it in another place.

Mr. Maclay (Montrose Burghs)

I have hesitated to intervene in this Debate because I have been unable to follow the procedings on this Bill in its earlier stages in the House, entirely because of the regrettable weight of legislation which means that one has to spend all one's time on another Bill. I have, however, the most intense interest in statistical problems, and though I should hesitate to repeat the arguments which may have been put forward before, I may find it difficult to avoid doing so as I have not been able to follow the proceedings upstairs. Listening to the discussion on this proposed new Clause I have been very much impressed by the argument for it, and I am perturbed because, if I have correctly understood it, there is no provision anywhere in the Bill for one central authority to decide what kind of information shall be collected.

My particular reason for being disturbed about this, is my own experience during the war years. Previous to the war I must say that I had a hearty contempt for statistics; I thought they were a nuisance, and just things that people liked to play with, but it was brought home to me when I was working on matters which required careful planning that you cannot begin to move without knowing what you are talking about. The second thing I learned was that if two people are talking about the same problem they must be doing so in the same terms. I will quote one magnificent example of this. I remember that at one stage in the war the shipping authorities, with which right hon. Gentlemen sitting in front of me were concerned, were under very heavy attack because, in the United States. it was claimed that they were failing to move the available production that had been allocated to the United Kingdom Particularly in question were 300 locomotives, and the British staff here also accused us of failing in our duty. They said that there were 300 locomotives shown on their records as being available for movement and we had not moved them. We immediately made contact with our executives in New York and asked if this was true. They looked up their records and said there were no locomotives. So we started to hunt the thing down, and we found that both sides had beautiful records but unfortunately they presented entirely different answers, although dealing with the identical commodity, locomotives We ultimately found that the reason for it was that on the one hand records showed every locomotive which had been allocated and which might be right back at the works, not moving down to the seaport, while on the other hand the shipping statistics showed those which were available alongside the quay ready to be moved into a ship. In point of fact a serious issue depended on it, because we might have lost all the locomotives if it could have been shown that they were in fact available and had not been moved.

That is precisely the problem that may arise here, because the President of the Board of Trade said he did not particularly want a lot of detail, he wanted summaries; but the summaries, particularly if they are to be used for obtaining information necessary for the appreciation of economic trends, must surely be prepared on a common basis. How on earth can that be achieved if each Department is left to prepare statistical information on its own and send up a summary? I do not believe that the Central Statistical Office can get the correct story in that way. It is the old question, which must be very well known to the President of the Board of Trade and to every hon. and right hon. Member, namely, the problem of finding out what is available and of knowing just where to make a cut in the pipeline to determine the position.

That was another difficulty we met with in dealing with supplies, say, to a Dominion. The most conflicting stories would be going round of how much was available for shipment, and it took months of work and finally the creation of a central statistical machine to be responsible for the form and presentation of the information before we overcame the difficulty. No two Departments would ever agree on precisely what was available, but all that was required was to say that at some given point of the pipeline you start counting what is on this side of the cut. I do not see how far this Bill can achieve this purpose unless there is a central authority which will define where each Department starts and stops. I should be most grateful to the President of the Board of Trade if he would say how these difficulties are going to be avoided.

12.45 p.m.

Sir S. Cripps

This Bill of course is to authorise the collection of statistics. It does not purport to lay out the administration by which those statistics will be dealt with. That is an administrative matter which could not satisfactorily be dealt with by legislation. The principle is that the Central Statistical Office is the general advisory body to the Government upon the use of statistics, upon the sort of statistics required, how they can be collected and so on, but the actual collection of these statistics is in the hands of the Government Department which is currently dealing with the persons from whom the statistics are to come. That Department knows much better the form in which the statistics can be provided, what is the convenient thing to ask for and the convenient way to get it; it is in consultation with the industry itself, and can therefore arrange matters for more conveniently. This Bill is to give them power to get these, as well as the central statistics which I will not deal with for the moment. It seems to me that that provides the raw material. The question is how that raw material is to be worked up—

Mr. Maclay

The Central Statistical Office may advise, but it depends how co-operative the Departments are, and who is to do the working up of the raw material. No one can do it, if it is to be used for a common purpose when it is worked up, unless it is prepared on a comparable basis. Only a Central Statistical Office can give guidance on that.

Sir S. Cripps

Working up the raw material is a job for the Department, but the method by which it should be done, and the form, are obviously matters on which there must be consultation between the Departments and the Central Statistical Office—and the planning authority as well, for that will be a vital factor in this matter. If that is left to be handled administratively, as a matter upon which Ministers can be questioned in the House, it is an easy way of doing it. To try and put it into the hard-and-fast form of legislation is, I think, the wrong way, and I am sure the House would not be wise to pass this Clause.

Mr. W. Shepherd

We have listened to the explanation given by the President of the Board of Trade about the administration of this device to secure statistics, but I am afraid that what he has told us is not altogether satisfactory, because what is necessary surely is some device, or some authority, to be responsible for limiting the expenditure and vetting the extension of the demand made for figures from industry. It is true, as the President of the Board of Trade said, that the Central Statistical Office has some sort of advisory function. Surely what is required here is not an advisory function but something which is much more rigid than purely advice. It is not sufficient in my view that the central office should say to a Department that it should present its applications in this or that form. There should be definitely some authority established with the power to limit the demands on industry for these things. I do not think that any question of good administration or bad administration will put this matter right.

There must of necessity be some central authority, and what is more convincing evidence of the need for a central authority than the action of the Government themselves? As the President of the Board of Trade mentioned in his speech, they are proposing to set up a central authority, and it naturally follows from that that a central planning authority is the same sort of thing as a central statistics authority. I cannot see how the President can justify, on the one hand, the establishment of a central authority and, on the other, leave the collection and collation of information to the mere device of individual Departments. Surely there is no sense in that at all and in his own words the President stands ready to support the Clause which we have on the Order Paper. I hope that the Government will once more look at this Clause, because it is designed to get over a real difficulty. It will remove much of the anxiety which many people feel about the duplication of authority, and I believe it will make for the smooth running of this Bill if they accept what we are asking them to accept today.

Question put, "That the Clause be read a Second time."

The House divided; Ayes, 56; Noes, 179.

Division No. 142.] AYES. [12.51 p.m
Baldwin, A. E. Fraser, H. C. P. (Stone) Price-White, Lt.-Col. D
Beamish, Maj. T. V. H. Gage, C. Raikes, H. V.
Birch, Nigel Hannon, Sir P. (Moseley) Ramsay Maj. S.
Boyd-Carpenter, J. A. Hinchingbrooke, Viscount Reed, Sir S. (Aylesbury)
Buchan-Hepburn, P. G. T. Hogg, Hon. Q. Salter, Rt. Hon. Sir J. A
Bullock, Capt. M Hudson, Rt. Hon. R. S. (Southport) Shepherd, W. S. (Bucklow)
Challen, C. Keeling, E. H. Stuart, Rt. Hon. J. (Moray)
Clifton-Brown, Lt.-Col. G Law, Rt. Hon. R. K Taylor, C. S. (Eastbourne)
Conant, Maj. R. J. E. Lennox-Boyd, A. T. Thorp, Lt.-Col. R. A. F.
Cooper-Key, E. M. Lucas-Tooth, Sir H. Touche, G. C.
Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C Maclay, Hon. J. S Vane, W. M. F.
Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col, O. E. Macpherson, Maj. N. (Dumfries) Wheatley, Colonel M. J.
Crowder, Capt. John E Manningham-Buller, R. E. White, J. B. (Canterbury)
Dodds-Parker, A. D. Marlowe, A. A. H. Williams, C. (Torquay)
Dower, Lt.-Col. A. V. G. (Penrith) Marsden, Capt. A. Williams, Gerald (Tonbridge)
Dower, E. L. G. (Caithness) Moore, Lt.-Col. Sir T. Willoughby de Eresby, Lord
Drewe, C. Mott-Radclyffe, Maj. C. E
Erroll, F. J. Nield, B. (Chester) TELLERS FOR THE AYES
Fletcher, W. (Bury) Noble, Comdr. A. H. P Sir Arthur Young and
Fox, Sir G. Orr-Ewing, I. L. Mr. Studholme.
NOES.
Adams, W. T. (Hammersmith, South) Dodds, N. N. Messer, F.
Allen, A. C. (Bosworth) Driberg, T. E. N. Middleton, Mrs. L
Allen, Scholefield (Crewe) Dumpleton, C. W. Montague, F
Allighan, Garry Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C. Mulvey, A.
Attewell, H. C. Evans, E. (Lowestoft) Murray, J. D
Austin, H. Lewis Evans, S. N. (Wednesbury) Naylor, T. E.
Ayles, W. H. Foot, M. M. Nicholls, H. R. (Stratford)
Baird. J. Foster, W. (Wigan) Oldfield, W. H.
Barstow, P. G Ganley, Mrs. C. S. Oliver, G. H.
Barton, C. Greenwood, Rt. Hon. A. (Wakefield) Parker, J.
Battley, J. R. Greenwood, A. W. J. (Heywood) Paton, Mrs. F. (Rushcliffe)
Bechervaise, A, E. Griffiths, D. (Rother Valley) Paton, J. (Norwich)
Belcher, J. W. Gunter, R. J. Pearson, A
Benson, G Guy, W. H. Piratin, P.
Beswick, F Hale, Leslie Platts-Mills, J. F. F.
Bing, G. H C. Hamilton, Lieut.-Col. R Poole, Major Cecil (Lichfield)
Binns, J. Hardy, E. A. Proctor, W. T.
Blackburn, A. R. Harrison, J. Pursey, Cmdr. H.
Boardman, H. Hastings, Dr. Somerville Randall, H E.
Bottomley, A. G. Haworth, J. Ranger, J.
Bowden, Flg.-Offr. H. W. Herbison, Miss M. Reid, T. (Swindon)
Bowles, F. G. (Nuneaton) Hicks, G. Ridealgh, Mrs. M
Braddock, T. (Mitcham) Hobson, C. R. Royle, C.
Bramall, E. A. Holman, P. Scott-Elliot, W.
Brook, D. (Halifax) Holmes, H. E. (Hemsworth) Sharp, Granville
Brown, George (Belper) House, G. Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.
Brown, T. J. (Ince) Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.) Shurmer, P.
Bruce, Maj. D. W. T Hughes, H. D. (Wolverh'pton, W.)
Buchanan, G. Hynd, H. (Hackney, C.) Silverman, J. (Erdington)
Burden, T. W. Jay, D. P. T. Simmons, C. J.
Burke, W. A. Jeger, G. (Winchester) Skeffington, A. M.
Callaghan, James Jones, D. T. (Hartlepools) Skeffington-Lodge, T. C
Castle, Mrs. B. A Jones, P. Asterley (Hitchin) Skinnard, F. W.
Champion, A. J. Kenyon, C. Smith, C. (Colchester)
Chafer, D. Key, C. W. Smith, Ellis (Stoke)
Chetwynd, G. R. Kinghorn, Sqn.-Ldr. E. Smith, S. H. (Hull, S.W.)
Cocks, F S. Kinley, J. Snow, Capt. J. W.
Collindridge, F Lee, F. (Hulme) Solley, L. J.
Collins, V. J. Leslie, J. R. Soskice, Maj. Sir F.
Comyns, Dr. L. Lewis, J. (Bolton) Sparks, J. A.
Cooper, Wing-Comdr. G. Lindgren, G. S. Stamford, W
Corbet, Mrs. F. K. (Camb'well, N.W.) Lipton, Lt.-Col. M Stephen, C.
Corvedale, Viscount Logan, D. G. Stewart, Michael (Fulham, E.)
Crawley, A. Lyne, A. W. Strauss, C. R. (Lambeth, N.)
Cripps, Rt. Hon. Sir S Mack, J. D. Stress, Dr. B.
Daines, P. McNeil, Rt. Hon. H. Stubbs, A. E.
Davies, Edward (Burslem) Macpherson, T. (Romford) Sylvester, G. O.
Davies, Ernest (Enfield) Manning, C. (Camberwell, N.) Symonds, A. L.
Davies, Harold (Leek) Manning, Mrs. L. (Epping) Taylor, H. B. (Mansfield)
Deer, G. Martin, J. H. Taylor, R. J. (Morpeth)
Delargy, H. J. Medland, H. M. Thomas, D. E. (Aberdare)
Dobbie, W. Mellish, R. J. Thomas, George (Cardiff)
Thurtle, E. Warbey, W. N Willey, O. G. (Cleveland)
Titterington, M. F. Weitzman, D. Williams, D. J. (Neath)
Turner-Samuels, M. Wells, W. T. (Walsall) Wills, Mrs. E. A
Ungoed-Thomas, L. White, H. (Derbyshire, N.E.) Woodburn, A.
Vernon, Maj. W. F Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W. Wyatt, W.
Viant, S. P. Wigg, Col. G. E. Yates, V. F.
Walkden, E. Wilcock, Group-Capt. C A. B Younger, Hon. Kenneth
Walker, G. H. Wilkins, W. A.
Wallace, G D. (Chislehurst) Willey, F. T. (Sunderland) TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Mr. Popplewell and Mr Hannan.