§ THE EARL OF SELBORNE rose to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether it is the intention of the Prime Minister to preside at the meetings of the Imperial Conference. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I will not detain the House long in asking this Question, and I hope I need not tell your Lordships that in what I am going to say there is not implied the slightest derogation from the office of the Secretary of State for the Colonies or the Statesman who now fills that post. What I would like briefly to point out to your Lordships is the view which is taken of this question—you may think it an unimportant question, but it is not really so—in our Dominions overseas. The Imperial Conference meets from time to time to discuss questions of co-operation—what I may call the organisation of co-operation—between the different parts of the Empire, and also questions of Imperial policy, and sometimes questions of general legislation, such as that of naturalisation which was discussed at the last Conference. These matters are really of vital importance, because although some of them may not appear as important as others, they are all links in the chain of that increased common co-operation which is becoming so increasingly important to the different parts of the Empire. Consequently the meetings of these Conferences are watched and their discussions followed with even greater attention in the Dominions than is perhaps the case in the United Kingdom. Therefore no one can say that the business which comes before these Conferences is unworthy of 1048 the attention of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
§ But it may be said that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is a very busy man, and it is not reasonable to expect that he should take an active part in these Conferences when he has a colleague whose special duty it is to do so. It is not in that way that the matter strikes the Dominions. They know that the Prime Minister is a very busy man, but the Prime Minister to them is a much greater person than any Member of his Cabinet. And if we think of the Cabinets and Governments of the Dominions themselves, how many of us can tell the names of the Cabinet Ministers, although we know the names of the Prime Ministers and follow their doings with great interest and attention. If that is the case here, it is very much more the case in the Dominions. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is a personality of absorbing interest in the Dominions, not equally so in the case of his colleagues, and from the Dominion point of view it is not easy for them to understand how the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom should not have time to preside at these Conferences when their own Prime Ministers find time to leave their Governments for months together, at the greatest possible inconvenience to the administration and to their Parliamentary work, because of the all-absorbing importance of the Imperial Conference. At the earlier Conferences the Prime Ministers of the Dominions came to England, but the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom took no part in the proceedings.
§ At the last Conference, if I remember rightly, the Prime Minister did welcome the members of the Conference in the first instance, and then he left the presidency over the deliberations to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. It is my earnest hope that on this occasion a better precedent is going to be set, and that at all the really important sessions and sittings of the Conference the Prime Minister himself will find time to preside over the deliberations. I can assure His Majesty's Government that that decision would be welcomed throughout all the Dominions of the Empire. The action would be immensely appreciated. If, unfortunately, the old rule should prevail, I think there will be a very serious disposition on the part of some of the Dominions to think that the 1049 action of their. Prime Ministers has not met with the response on this side that it deserves. Because, my Lords, if you try to picture to yourselves the complete dislocation of Parliamentary business in South Africa, or in Australia, or in Canada, when the Prime Minister and one or more of the principal Ministers leave for several weeks or even for two months together, it must appear to them almost impossible to believe that, if they can do that, hard worked as he is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom cannot find time to preside at the more important sessions of the Conference. I have ventured to put this matter briefly before your Lordships in the full anticipation and hope that the general sense of my remarks is shared by His Majesty's Government. I beg to ask the question standing in my name.
THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (LORD LUCAS)My Lords, in answer to the noble Earl's Question, I have to say that the Prime Minister proposes to preside over the first sitting of the Imperial Conference and over as many subsequent sittings as he finds it practicable to attend. In his absence the Secretary of State for the Colonies will preside.