THE ROYAL AIRCRAFT FACTORY.

HL Deb 01 August 1916 vol 22 cc1005-29

LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU had the following Question on the Paper—

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they are prepared to circulate the recent Report upon the Royal Aircraft Factory; what steps will be or have been taken to carry out its recommendations, and what alterations, if any, have been made in the higher staff at the Factory.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, on Thursday week I deferred this Question in deference to the generally expressed wish from all sides of the House that the whole of that afternoon should be free for the debate on Mesopotamia. But, my Lords, I have come to-day to put the case before you. It has been, from my point of view, strengthened in the interval, because there has been a great effort on the part of those responsible for the Royal Aircraft Factory to put their house in order—a salutary process which is still proceeding. I desire to-day to discuss this subject in as calm and dispassionate a manner as possible, first, because I am delighted to know that the noble Earl opposite (Earl Curzon of Kedleston) and his Air Board have the matter under their serious consideration; and, secondly, because I realise, as I have said, that the authorities, now that the very irregular proceedings which were characteristic of the Royal Aircraft Factory in past months have been brought to their notice, are themselves trying to do what they can to remedy the state of things.

The Question standing in my name on the Paper has been to a large extent answered by what has happened since I originally put it down, now nearly two months ago. The Report for which I ask in my Question has been produced, largely due, probably, to interrogations in both Houses of Parliament; and no doubt the Air Board and the other members of the Executive thought it wise that it should be produced in its somewhat shortened form. Then we are given to understand, with regard to the second part of my Question referring to the higher command, that Colonel O'Gorman has been or will shortly be transferred from the Factory at Farnborough to London to act in another capacity. So that, as a matter of fact, my inquiries in the form in which they stand on the Paper have to a large extent been answered. However, I do not think it will be out of place if I give the House to-day a brief history of the growth of the Royal Aircraft Factory, and then venture upon some remarks with regard to the two Reports—the Report of Sir Richard Burbidge's Committee, and the Report thereon by the noble Earl and his colleagues on the Air Board.

The Royal Aircraft Factory as it is known to-day began in a very humble and modest way. Years ago it was the depôt of the ballooning section of the Royal Engineers, who were at that time in charge of all the ballooning and aeronautics in the Army. They found that they needed a factory, and eventually they established a depôt at Farnborough. From 1909, when military aviation in this country may be said to have begun as regards aeroplanes, the Royal Engineers still had charge of that factory, and until 1911 they practically superintended the experiments of all kinds. I and others foresaw that the Royal Engineers could not retain control of what was going to be a very important service, and it is admitted that they were not equal to the task of conducting it. Towards the end of 1911 the Royal Flying Corps was established as a separate unit, and the control of the Royal Engineers over this service vanished.

After that came what is known to-day as the Royal Flying Corps; but in those days it included the naval as well as the military wing. It was not until July, 1914, that the Royal Flying Corps became separate from the Royal Naval Air Service.

In the Spring of 1911 Colonel O'Gorman, a member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, a distinguished scientific gentleman, I am proud to say a friend of my own, and one whose versatility and fertility of mind is well known, took over the charge of this Factory, largely at the instance of the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Haldane, who was then Secretary of State for War. He had during the first year of his work there, the greatest difficulty in obtaining from the Treasury sufficient money to carry on his experiments in a reasonable manner. He was starved of money remorselessly, and he could neither obtain materials nor men sufficient to make his experiments a great success. However, he struggled on; and whatever may be said of Colonel O'Gorman in his later capacity as manager of a great Factory with over 4,200 men, at that time, undoubtedly, his services were of great value to this country. About that time, or a little later, Mr. De Havilland, whose name is well known in connection with aviation, joined Colonel O'Gorman there, and brought into that establishment all the knowledge he had gained of aviation in civil life; and other officials were added from outside.

In July, 1911, the first R.A.F. aeroplane was produced; but, unfortunately, it killed its pilot, Mr. Ridge, on August 18, 1911. In saying that, I wish to remind your Lordships that experiments in regard to aviation must always involve a large toll of human life. They cause less toil, luckily, now than they did originally, but all developments in flying are bound to involve loss of life. I venture to say that the lives lost by the early pioneers in trying to perfect and in testing machines, which were far from being what they ought to have been, were just as much given to the service of this country as any lives have been during the war, because if those lives had not been sacrificed we should not have been in the position in which we were at the beginning of the war in regard to aviation. Although we then had less than one-tenth of the aeroplanes possessed by the German Army, those which we had were highly efficient and the pilots were well trained.

I pass on to 1912, when, after trials held by the aeronautical authorities, the first B E 2 plane was produced. It was a tractor biplane, and it really put up a very good performance and answered expectations. It was thought to be too slow, and so a more powerful engine was put into it; and necessarily—because we had not the same knowledge then as we have now—it became more dangerous, and killed several pilots. During 1912–13 various machines of the B E 2 type were produced. In 1914, just before the war, the Royal Aircraft Factory lost Mr. De Havilland, who went over to a private firm which is now manufacturing aeroplanes on a large scale. A few days before the war broke out our first real auto stable plane was produced—the B E 2 C. Although at the beginning of the war these machines did good work, they are admittedly out of date now. At that time this was the only machine we had in quantities, and the only really well-designed machine. Therefore I do not blame the authorities for having built them in considerable quantities. The B E 2 C was the work of Mr. Busk, who was very well known at the Factory as a skilful designer and a good pilot. Unfortunately he was killed in a B E 2 C, not from any fault of the plane, but because something went wrong with his engine and the plane caught fire and crashed to earth. I think it only fair to Mr. Busk's memory to say that the results of the examination showed that the faults were not due to any bad design in the aeroplane, but probably to faults in the air-cooled engine, now known as the 90 horse raf, which was the product of the Royal Aircraft Factory.

During this time the Navy were asked whether they would support the Royal Aircraft Factory. Personally I think they were wise in saying that they could obtain as good machines, or better, outside the Royal Aircraft Factory. Therefore they decided to have nothing to do with it. Whether that has been of advantage to the Royal Aircraft Factory I will not say; but as far as the Navy is concerned, the Navy started unhampered with official restrictions and ordered the best machines obtainable in the outside market. About that time—at the beginning of the war—the Royal Aircraft Factory began to antagonise the aircraft trade, which has supplied something like 97½ per cent. of our requirements as against 2½ per cent. produced by the Royal Aircraft Factory.

If we have to depend in this or in any other war on the product of the Government Factory, we shall be badly left behind. We have to try and establish a strong aircraft trade, and see that we enlist their sympathies, and that the aircraft trade look upon the Air Board and the Aircraft Factory as friends, not as enemies. From what I hear I think this feeling is beginning to grow again, and the spirit of antagonism is, I hope, dying out.

It was understood during the years 1911 to 1914, from every person in authority, that the Royal Aircraft Factory was an establishment for testing inventions, for research, and for experiments, and that it was not intended to be the great manufacturing establishment which it grew into. I do not mean to say that it turned cut a very large number of planes and engines, but it turned out a great many spare parts and went in very heavily for repairs, and it is rather difficult to draw the line where manufacturing begins and where it ends. If you are going to employ a couple of thousand men in doing manufacturing work, it does not matter from the point of view of the State whether you are employing them in production or in repairs. The question is whether you should run a big establishment for that sort of work at all, or whether you should not confine it mainly, as I think ought to be done, to research and experiment. Thus things drifted on during the first eighteen months of the war, and the Aircraft Factory became. I am sorry to say, less of an experimental and research, and more of a manufacturing establishment. The Royal Flying Corps had also an experimental and scientific department at Feltham, near Staines. This seems to be sufficient for Certain purposes, and it works, of course, closely in touch with the Royal National Physical Laboratory at Teddington. This laboratory carries out the scientific, mathematical, and other experiments with regard to models and engines; it carries them out mainly in model form, and it is quite right that the State should take the results of experiments in the model form and work them up on the full-size machine or engine later. For that purpose the Factory at Farnborough is very suitable, and if it had confined itself to that work the critics would not have had so much to say.

There was a great deal of discussion on this question last autumn and winter and through the spring, and when I first met Lord Derby on the Air Committee, from which we eventually felt bound to resign, I was glad to hear from him that he had taken the wise step of stating to Sir David Henderson that he thought it advisable that a Committee should be appointed to go into the question of the Royal Aircraft Factory, and he eventually was instrumental in getting the Committee appointed whose Report is incorporated in this White Paper. That Committee consisted of three distinguished persons—Sir Frederick Donaldson, who had been the head of Woolwich and whose loss in the "Hampshire" we all deplore; Sir Richard Burbidge; and Sir Charles Parsons, of turbine fame, whose great scientific reputation we all know. Those three gentlemen inquired into the Factory, and the Report which they produced is in my opinion a very valuable one, though there are here and there things in it which might have been unsaid, and things which they might have said are omitted; but considering that they did not devote a large portion of their time to this Inquiry, I think the Report on the whole is well worthy of your Lordships' consideration. I may add that I think it justifies any remarks which I have made about the Royal Aircraft Factory, and a great many of the reforms for which I have pleaded are contained in the body of the Report. That Report was made on May 12 last, but it was not issued to either House of Parliament until July 28. There may have been good reasons for this delay, but I think it was an undue time to elapse, especially as it was known that the Report had a great bearing on other Inquiries that were coming on. One can, however, understand the reluctance on the part of the Aeronautical Department to publish the Report on account of its not being wholly favourable to themselves, but I think it would have been better from every point of view had the Report been published earlier.

In this Report I notice that the Committee leave out certain facts and figures, in the place of which are placed asterisks, with the footnote "It is not considered desirable in the public interest to publish the exact figures." Nobody is keener than I am to see that the enemy get no information which could be of use to them, but in some cases the asterisk has been inserted in a quite unnecessary fashion, a great many of the figures having been already stated before the Judicial Committee. It is ridiculous that there should be any secrecy about some of these figures when the chairman, Mr. Justice Bailhache, and other members of the Judicial Committee stated the figures, and they were reported in the newspapers. For instance, the Committee say— The Royal Aircraft Factory has produced ^* new machines in all since the commencement of the war, while the trade supplies have exceeded ^* machines. I think it would be valuable if the public had been given some kind of idea of the number of new machines produced by the Royal Aircraft Factory. I know the number, but I am not going to give it. I can say, however, that the proportion produced by the aircraft trade was over thirty as against one produced by the Royal Aircraft Factory, which shows the small output of the Factory compared with that of the trade. Then the Committee say— The approximate value of orders placed by Military Aeronautics Directorate from 1st August, 1914, to 31st March, 1916, for aeroplanes, engines, and spares of Royal Aircraft Factory design is ^*, and of private design about half this amount. It would appear, on the face of this statement, that half of the amount spent has been given to the aircraft trade; but, as a matter of fact, two-thirds of the orders were given to the Royal Aircraft Factory and only one-third to the aircraft trade. I am not concerned to defend the trade—I have no interest, direct or indirect, in it—and I will leave it to your Lordships to decide whether the statement which I have quoted from the Committee's Report is suppressio veri or suggestio falsi. In these circumstances you cannot wonder that the aircraft trade is somewhat jealous of the competition of the Royal Aircraft Factory.

Then we come to the statement in the Committee's Report— The strength of the Royal Aircraft Factory on March 26, 1916, was stated to be ^*. I will give your Lordships the missing figure, because it was stated by Mr. Justice Bailhache. It is 4,222. He said that the output was a small one for 4,222 men, and that of these men half were occupied in experimental work and half in productive work. These facts have been published in the Press, and there is no harm in giving them here. I will not state what the exact amount of wages was or the materials, though I do not think this information would help the German Army very much. But the expenditure this year will probably be in the neighbourhood of £1,000,000. That is a great deal of money to spend on a Factory which is theoretically doing experimental work, though it is doing a great deal of repair work also.

I pass on to the table of percentages set out on page 3 of the Report. The Air Board have made some rather cogent remarks on these percentages. The table, as we see it in the Report, shows that only 22 per cent. of the total work done was in the nature of experiments. We know from what the Air Board tell us later on that 35 per cent., in their judgment, has to be added, making 57 per cent. in all, which corresponds more or less with the number of men engaged in experimental work and in constructional work. It is stated that Colonel O'Gorman had checked his figures. Well, he must have unwittingly misled the Burbidge Committee, because they would never have put this figure down in their Report if they had thought it incorrect. I notice that in the Report, on page 4, there is another paragraph in which it is not thought advisable to give the exact number. The statement is— The Central Office and Stores are manned by ^* employees out of a total of ^*. Surely this information could not help the enemy. I am sure that if I state to the House that 560 men are occupied in the Stores Department I shall not be giving any information which will be of assistance to the enemy. Although I believe that the work of checking stores and of tracing back individual parts is exceedingly accurately done, this is, in my opinion, an undue number of men to have in the Stores Department. I have nothing more to say on the Report itself. I think it is a document worthy of your Lordships' consideration. It recommends that there should be skilled civil management, that there should be management by a person accustomed to the control of large factories. If the Factory is to continue in its present form, I think that is wise; but if it is only to continue as an experimental depot, it does not matter having a skilled commercial man at the head, and I think that very likely on the staff at present there are people quite capable of managing it.

I pass to the Report made by the Air Board to the War Committee on the subject of the Royal Aircraft Factory I congratulate the Air Board on the courageous way in which they have handled the matter, and there are one or two sentences in their Report to which I wish to call your Lordships' attention. There may be reasons that I do not know of, but I think it would be a pity if Colonel O'Gorman's services to the State were lost in an experimental sense. I am, therefore, glad to see the suggestion that he should be appointed as consulting engineer to the Director-General of Military Aeronautics at the War Office. But I would caution the Air Board that, in my opinion, Sir David Henderson has far too much to do. He is not only a member of the Army Council and in command of the Royal Flying Corps, but he is also the responsible head of the Royal Aircraft Factory, and it is not possible for any one to manage all these concerns efficiently. I think the time has come when this distinguished officer should choose whether he prefers to remain a member of the Army Council or the officer commanding the Royal Flying Corps, or to have nominal control of the Aircraft Factory. It is quite impossible that he can continue in the three capacities, and his continuance in them will only lead to further trouble.

There is one sentence at the end of the Air Board's Report in which I concur and to which I hope the Air Board will stick. They say— Any measures of reorganisation of the Royal Aircraft Factory should be adopted with the concurrence of the Air Board. I was delighted to see that paragraph, because it appears to me that in it the Air Board take up the right position. They say that now that they are responsible to Parliament—though they have not yet, in my opinion, anything like the powers which they should possess—they think their views ought to be heard in any changes which are carried out at the Royal Aircraft Factory.

I have made a good many criticisms on the conduct of the Royal Aircraft Factory. I say, first of all, that the Farnborough Factory is quite unsuitable for being made into a large engineering factory. It is a mile and a half from a station; it has no siding and no facilities for getting its coal and iron; therefore the cost must necessarily be higher than in the case of factories which are situated near the rail. Then there is no doubt that it has been the home of numbers of "dud" mechanics, and there are any number of unmarried men of military age taking shelter there. When I have been there I have seen some of these men, who I recommend should be combed out; and I hope that my noble friend Lord Derby, who has taken such an interest in recruiting, will give some attention to this matter. It is quite clear also that discipline has been woefully slack—I do not say it is so slack now—and there has been a good deal of pilfering and excessive scrapping, and a considerable amount of private work done in Government time. I am not going into detail in regard to this last, although I have a great deal of evidence on the point. For all this somebody is responsible. Primarily Colonel O'Gorman is responsible, he having been head of the Factory; but we cannot exonerate Sir David Henderson, because, on his own admission, he is senior officer of the Factory, and Colonel O'Gorman has had to do what he was told by him. In fact, I often wonder whether there has not been too much interference from London and too little left to Colonel O'Gorman. I am sure that in the earlier days it would have been much better had Colonel O'Gorman and his staff been given a freer hand. However that may be, we cannot exonerate Colonel O'Gorman or Sir David Henderson from blame in this matter. They were jointly responsible for directing the shops, and there are serious faults in the Factory which should have been attended to long before this.

I made some statements before the Judicial Committee the other day which were shut out to a certain extent owing to the chairman of the Committee thinking that I should not bring them in at that moment as another Committee had sat on this subject. I feel that I must justify what I said in general terms on that occasion, so I have prepared a short précis of the evidence, though, of course, I will not mention names. One of the charges—if you can call it a charge—made was that unfair preparations had taken place at the Factory for the visit of His Majesty, not on the occasion when he was unable to walk very well owing to his accident, but on a subsequent occasion, and also on Committee visits. This evidence was taken down in my presence and sworn before a commissioner for oaths. The man who gave it said— Careful preparations were made for the King's visit. The day before, machines old, new, complete, partially wrecked, and otherwise were piled in from other shops. In certain cases the machines were just stuck together, canvas stretched across the nacelles, and wings temporarily attached. Vacant or partially filled shops were furnished with spare parts, etc., providing an appearance of tremendous congestion. Of one shop, to my knowledge, a photograph was taken for the War Office to show the congested state of the premises. I myself helped to set up machines, already condemned, for show purposes. Twenty-four hours afterwards only three machines were in one such shop. I cannot say which officer was responsible for having what I call "faked" the Factory for the visit of the Committee, but it was not a fair or right thing to have done. The evidence of another man is as follows— I am aware that instructions were given previous to the visits to the shops of the Royal Flying Corps Investigation Committee, called to me the Munitions Committee, on April 9, and that work was slackened up the night before the visit occurred in order that there might be an appearance of business the following day. I could give the name of the man who told me this, if desired, and the one from whom he received instructions; but I do not wish their names mentioned without permission. The result of this was that when the Committee came there were shops that would otherwise have been idle apparently very busy. I have that kind of evidence ad infinitum. At the end this man said— There is nothing to prevent German spies walking through the Factory at any time of night or day, and on occasions of shutting down when Zeppelin raids were near no check was put on men going in and out, and signalling to the enemy might have been possible. I believe that this has been improved lately, and that now it is difficult for any unauthorised person to go through the Factory; but at that time the words which I have read were perfectly true, and I think it reveals a slack state of things. Another man writes to say that "on the occasion of the Committee's visit an attempt was made to produce an air of activity," and so on.

The wife of a late member of this House, a lady of unimpeachable integrity, writes to me as follows— It occurs to me to let you know that a very valuable artisan of ours who did all the painting and plumbing on this estate has now been for nearly three months at the Aircraft Factory at Farnborough and has never yet done a full day's work. I should be far from grudging him or any other man to the national service at this time, but why should our cottages and farmhouses go unmended for this? This lady is anxious to keep her estate in good order, and I sympathise with the view she has expressed.

I have evidence of unsuitable people being employed on different jobs. For instance, here is a lad of about 17, unskilled and rather delicate, whose extreme value in any commercial employment is 15s. a week. He was put on at the Royal Aircraft Factory at £2 2s. a week as over-looker, to walk round and see whether there was any smoking, and so on. Asked "Do they take any notice when you speak to them? "he replied "No." Then he was asked "What do you do then?" and he replied "I have to go and tell some one else." I submit that such work is not worth £2 2s. a week. Another man who had been junior assistant to a grocer, at perhaps 25s. a week, took shelter in the Aircraft Factory and was put into the stores at £3 a week, with extra pay for overtime and Sundays. Again, a police constable retiring with pension was employed as doorkeeper at the Aircraft Factory. A gamekeeper, who lost his job through the shooting being unlet, makes no secret that he "gets lots of money and very little work," and says he is going to stay at the Aircraft Factory as long as he can. Two farm labourers were taken on at the Factory at a great increase of pay over their previous agricultural wages. They were said to be "urgently needed," and were told to "hurry up"; but when they got there they were employed all Sunday at double pay turning over a dungheap. I have any number of these instances. The general impression from this evidence is that there has been a great slackness of administration, and that the Aircraft Factory badly needs reform.

Then there was a case tried at Aldershot last week, a man named MacDonald being rightly convicted for having in his possession Government stores. His case was such a notable one of want of discipline in the Aircraft Factory that I will quote it. This man made no secret of the fact that he was building an aeroplane of his own design outside the Factory; and he told me—though this appears to have been wrong—that he had leave from various people in the Aircraft Factory to take away material. When I state that he took away a propeller twelve feet long, the whole of the body of a motor-car, and other parts almost as big, you cannot accuse him of taking things away secretly. In fact, it was jocularly remarked that if he had been strong enough he would have taken away the whole shed. It is clear that there has been a great want of supervision, and the chairman of the Aldershot Bench commented very strongly on the fact that such a large amount of material could have been taken away without the officials, according to their evidence, being aware of it. He criticised the officials for not having interested themselves to discover what material was being taken away, especially as they were in the position of looking after the shed in which this man was working. It is a rather curious coincidence—though I do not blame the Superintendent or Assistant-Superintendent of the Factory, who had nothing to do with it—that this man had not been back twelve hours from Westminster, after giving evidence, before he was arrested, whereas this thing had been going on for a year. I am willing to admit that this was a coincidence, but it was a very curious one; especially after we had had a pledge from Sir David Henderson, with the consent of the Committee, that witnesses who came up and gave evidence should not be victimised in any way.

There was another rather serious matter, of which I think the noble Earl would like to be aware. A gentleman came up to give evidence—a Mr. Valentine. He was at Rugby, and is a man of superior education and standing. His evidence has never been shaken to this day. Mr. Valentine went back after the Inquiry was concluded in the afternoon to get some papers which he had left behind, and as he passed Colonel O'Gorman and Captain Green he was grossly insulted. Colonel O'Gorman said, "That is the adventurer who went up and gave evidence"; and Captain Green said, "Yes, you never can tell what sort of fellows you have in the Factory in these days." I venture to say that this was highly improper conduct, and if it had taken place in a Court of Law it would have been only right to have called the Judge's attention to it, and they would, at any rate, have been in danger of being committed for contempt of Court. Your Lordships can see in this incident an attempt to browbeat and intimidate witnesses which is not in accordance with the magnificent traditions of our Courts of Law. If I had thought it worth while I should have taken it up at the time and made it public, but although it was disgraceful it was not, in my opinion, of sufficient importance to trouble about at the moment. I have brought these cases to your Lordships' notice because I think they have a great bearing on the conduct of the Factory.

Then we come to the question of what our policy should be in the future. No doubt the noble Earl will take this into careful consideration. But, as a matter of fact, I am one of those who think that the Government never does anything as well as a private individual. I do not care whether you take the history of the telegraphs, telephones, factories, armaments, or dockyards. The noble and gallant Lord by my side knows that although the dockyards are kept on, it is only for the purpose of keeping a check on private builders, and that the ships built by the private yards are as a rule the better ships of the two. [Lord BERESFORD indicated dissent.] The noble and gallant Admiral will not admit this; but a great many people in the Navy hold this opinion. At any rate, the ships built in the Government dockyards, even if they are better, are certainly more expensive ships to the country. One has only to ask any responsible official of the Treasury what his opinion is of a Government factory. The opinion is that a Government factory does less efficiently and more expensively than the private individual or the private firm. Personally I think it is an illusion to think that the personnel in a Government factory is equal to that of the ordinary well managed commercial factory. If you take the Royal Aircraft Factory and the few engines and planes they have built, the figures run to I do not know how many times as much as in the case of those built by private individuals or private firms.

I do not propose to detain the House further this afternoon. I think I may say that the Report of Sir Richard Burbidge's Committee amply justifies many things that I have said in this House and elsewhere. I have put before your Lordships on several occasions reports on the Royal Aircraft Factory and have shown that the result has been inefficiency and waste. I want to warn the House of this, that we shall have to depend more and more in coming years on the quantity and quality of our aircraft, and no Government factory will be able to give us machines in sufficient numbers unless it is a factory employing tens of thousands of men. The conclusion, therefore, that we have to come to is, first, that our object should be to encourage a strongly established aircraft trade, strong financially and strong in the power of carrying out experiments and big contracts. That has answered admirably in the case of motor transport, and I think it would also answer well in the case of aircraft. In my opinion the best machines are those produced outside the Government Factory; and nobody will deny that our pilots, with all their bravery, deserve the best machines, whether they are Government built or factory built. I sincerely trust that the noble Earl, together with his Board, will take these matters into consideration. I know that their powers are limited and hampered by inter-Departmental difficulties; but it is their duty—and I believe they realise it—to see that the bravery of our pilots at the Front is not in any way wasted by inefficiency at home. I hope that the noble Earl will be able to give us some indication of what his Board think of this and other questions.

THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON)

My Lords, the speech of the noble Lord has afforded a remarkable illustration of the curious, anomalous, and, as I think, grossly inconvenient practice that prevails in this House—I allude to the practice of putting down a Question upon the Paper of a narrowly limited type relating to certain specific matters upon which the opinion of the Government or information from a Department is sought, and then upon that peg hanging a long and discursive oration covering a wide field, it may be of inquiry, sometimes of controversy, to which the Minister challenged is expected, point by point, to reply, without having been given any idea in advance of the subjects that are going to be raised. All sorts of personal charges against this or that individual are brought forward; the Minister is supposed to know all about them; no intimation is given to him that these matters are to be raised; and the speaker, having occupied perhaps three-quarters of an hour of your Lordships' time, sits down with an expression of pious hope that he will receive a satisfactory reply on all these subjects.

LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU

All these things are contained in the Report.

EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON

I beg the noble Lord's pardon. The greater part of his speech had nothing to do with the Report, and still less with the Question that he put upon the Paper. Now what is his Question as it appears on the Paper? It consists of three parts. First, he asks His Majesty's Government whether they are prepared to circulate the recent Report upon the Royal Aircraft Factory. As the noble Lord himself pointed out, that question has already been answered by the appearance of the Report. I do not know whether the noble Lord was disappointed at its publication, but I do know this—that only a little while ago, in an article of which he sent me a copy, he was good enough to say, "It will be interesting to see whether the Government will have the courage to publish the Burbidge Report," and he added that "there was at least a danger lest they might refuse to do so on the ground that it is not in the interest of the Public Service." And then this afternoon he led your Lordships to believe that it was due in some form or another to pressure, either from himself or from other high authorities in the House of Commons, that its publication had been decided upon.

LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU

I think the noble Earl does me an injustice. I put this Question down about two months ago.

EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON

The facts are that there never was any intention to withhold the Report. The noble Lord has spoken of the delay in publishing it. That delay was due simply to the desire of the Air Board, of which I happen to be chairman, to investigate very closely, after careful examination of the principal parties concerned, the case that was placed before them. We held that inquiry, I think, within three weeks or a month after the appearance of the Report. We then drew up our own Report upon it. That Report had to go to the War Office; it was submitted to the Army Council and accepted by them, and it has been laid before Parliament. The noble Lord has not the slightest justification for suggesting, either that there was any reluctance to publish the Report in the first place, or any undue delay in publishing it when publication did take place.

The second part of the noble Lord's Question as it appears on the Paper is, What steps will be or have been taken to carry out the recommendations of the Burbidge Report? As the noble Lord was kind enough to notice, an answer to that question has been given in the Report which has been drawn up by the Air Board and which is published along with the Report of the Burbidge Committee. The third part of the Question is, What alterations, if any, have been made in the higher staff at the Factory? That also has been answered in the Papers laid before Parliament. My reply to the Question upon the Paper might therefore be delivered in a couple of minutes, and I might cease to occupy your Lordships' attention further. I will come presently to my reasons for saying a word or two in reply to the observations that fell from my noble friend. As regards the alterations in the higher staff of the Factory, the noble Lord has himself correctly indicated what they will be. Nobody knows better than he that there are two aspects of the work of a great organisation like this. One is the business and administrative aspect, the running of a great concern in which vast sums of money are involved and in which several thousands of workmen are employed. For that you want administrative ability and capacity of the highest order, and probably some previous experience of work of a similar description. Then there is the scientific and technical side of the work—quite different; and these two sets of qualifications are not necessarily or invariably found in the same person. It is for that reason that Colonel O'Gorman—the tribute paid to whom by the noble Lord I was very glad to hear, and who possesses, as your Lordships know, scientific attainments of the very highest order—is to be transferred to the War Office as an adviser on the scientific side of the case to the Director-General of Military Aeronautics; while we are now on the search for, and hope soon to find, a thoroughly first-rate and competent business organiser of the Factory as it will be at Farnborough. It is further proposed, as your Lordships will have seen in the Report, to appoint a separate head of the Design branch and a separate head of the Production branch. Those are the administrative changes that are now in course of being carried out.

The noble Lord, at one point in his speech, went a little further and included in his critical survey the present position of Sir David Henderson, the Director of Military Aeronautics. I must confess I thought he was not quite fair in what he said on that point. He gave us to understand that Sir David Henderson is a pluralist of an undesirable character, combining in his person two or three functions that ought not to be joined in the same individual. Nobody knows better than the noble Lord that General Henderson is placed upon the Army Council because he is Director of Military Aeronautics; and nobody ought to be better pleased than the noble Lord, who is always urging the claims of the Air Service, that the head of the military branch of it should be able to enforce his views by a seat on the Army Council. Then, again, is it not being a little captious to suggest that there is anything wrong in an arrangement by which this distinguished officer who is responsible for the whole Service has at the same time the responsibility for the Aircraft Factory at Farnborough? It seems to me to be an inevitable situation, and I cannot conceive of an officer being placed in the position of Director-General without that responsibility for the Aircraft Factory—a War Office organisation—which General Henderson enjoys. We know that in what the noble Lord said there was nothing personal to General Henderson; but I am bound to say, for my own part, that his criticism of the combination of several functions in a single person was not justified.

As I say, I have now answered the Question on the Paper, and I need go no further. But courtesy compels me to pay some attention to the greater part of the noble Lord's speech, little though the relevance was that it bore to the Question put to me. The noble Lord gave us, in the first place, an interesting essay upon the history of the Royal Aircraft Factory. I do not desire to question his summary of what has happened in the past. But may I say that that does not concern me ill the least. The Royal Aircraft Factory is a War Office institution. It was started, as the noble Lord himself told us, some time before the war; it has been in existence during the war, acting under the orders of the War Office; and the Air Board, for which I speak, had nothing to do with the Aircraft Factory up to the moment we came into existence. I might therefore claim not to say one word about the charges that have been made by the noble Lord relating to the past. What the Air Board are concerned to see, if they can, is, now that this Factory has been the subject of examination by a competent Committee and we ourselves have taken evidence about it, that the changes necessary shall be put into operation with as little delay as may be.

There is another fact which dispenses me from saying much about a good deal that fell from the noble Lord, and it is this. The conduct, the organisation and the management of the Aircraft Factory have been the subject only recently of a most minute and careful Inquiry by the Committee presided over by Mr. Justice Bailhache. That Committee was constituted in order to examine certain charges which it was understood had been brought against the Royal Flying Corps. I am bound to say, reading the evidence that was given before that Committee from day to day, that I was astonished and even scandalised at the manner in which gossip, rumour, invention, and charges—very often wholly unsupported by evidence—were brought before that Committee. The noble Lord himself gave evidence before it. I am not suggesting for one moment that his evidence could deserve such epithets, but nobody knows better than he does that the adjectives I have employed correctly describe a great deal of the, I cannot call it evidence—a great deal of the random utterance that was heard by the Committee. This Committee has not yet reported, but I believe its Report is now under consideration; and really I was surprised to hear the noble Lord this afternoon come down and repeat in this House, as if your Lordships were a tribunal properly constituted for the purpose, a good deal of the evidence he has given before the Committee.

LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU

May I say that I read out to the House evidence which was, except in one case, totally new. I asked Mr. Justice Bailhache whether I might give it before the Committee, and he said he would not take it. That is why I have brought it up here.

EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON

There were two parts to the noble Lord's speech. In one part, familiar as I am with his evidence before the Committee, I heard evidence that he had given before them. Then there are the cases to which he is now alluding, occurring since he gave evidence before the Committee. [LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULTEU indicated dissent.] It is all very well for the noble Lord to shake his head. I am alluding to the two cases which he read out at some length just now—cases which he was precluded from giving to the Committee, either because he was not allowed by the learned president to do so, or because they have occurred since. I suggest that it is a wholly improper thing for the noble Lord to come down to the House and raise matters about which nobody here knows and which I have not had an opportunity of investigating, and to take advantage of his position as a Peer to give in detail and at length charges such as I have referred to. I may say on the authority of the officials of the Air Factory, as regards certain of the charges made by the noble Lord, that they wholly deny them and say they are absolutely untrue. The noble Lord told a story about "window dressing" at Farnborough for the visit of the King with an amplitude of detail absolutely denied by the officials. He went further, and at considerable length entered into the cases of two men named Valentine and MacDonald as cases illustrating the lack of discipline and the improper things that go on at the factory. I will only so far depart from my attitude of declining to go into these matters as to give noble Lords the facts about MacDonald's case. This man asked for one day's leave, and was absent two and a half days. During his absence he gave evidence before the Committee, and on his return he boasted, in the section of the Royal Aircraft Factory where he worked, that "Me and Montagu have got them cold." Apparently he works in close co-operation with my noble friend. During MacDonald's absence the works manager had reported to the Assistant Superintendent that MacDonald was wrongly in possession of Government property. As MacDonald was a soldier, the Assistant Superintendent informed the Aldershot Command, who informed the Police. The latter visited MacDonald's house and found a complete aeroplane there which he had built, the parts having been taken from the Factory. On MacDonald's return from London he was put under military detention by the Assistant Superintendent; he was subsequently handed over to the Police and admitted to bail, and was then charged in due course. When charged he said on oath that he had taken nothing out of the Factory. The magistrate did not, as the noble Lord said in his speech, comment on the Factory at all. The man was found guilty, and fined the maximum penalty of £5. I apologise to your Lordships for troubling you with petty matters of this description, but as the noble Lord dealt at length with this particular charge I thought I ought to mention it.

I pass to the rather larger issues raised by my noble friend in his speech. The first is as to the degree to which the Royal Aircraft Factory has been or ought to be a manufacturing concern. I am very familiar with statements that have been made by the noble Lord at an earlier date in this House and elsewhere that the Aircraft Factory is departing from its proper sphere and becoming a great manufacturing concern in competition with the trade, but, as he himself admitted to-night, that is a charge that finds no support in the figures that have been published. The actual construction work of the Aircraft Factory is shown in the Report of the Air Board, to which the noble Lord referred, as having been less than 10 per cent. of the whole work. Then the noble Lord said, "But how do you account for the fact that Colonel O'Gorman is said, in the Report of the Burbidge Committee, to have given the figure at 35 per cent. for the construction of aeroplanes?" That is a misstatement on the part of the Committee. It was not an error on the part of Colonel O'Gorman. It was a mistake on the part of the Committee which we undertook in the Report of the Air Board to correct. The fact remains that the Aircraft Factory can hardly be described as having been a manufacturing concern at all. Let me tell your Lordships that since the beginning of the war it has manufactured only four engines; that the total number of aeroplanes which it has made—I think the number was given by the noble Lord himself—consisted of 50 machines constructed in the early days of the war when it was impossible to get them from elsewhere; and that a very limited number of experimental machines have been made since. Since the war began less than 2 per cent. of the total aeroplanes have been made in the Royal Aircraft Factory.

Nevertheless, in spite of the views that are held—I think rightly held—by the noble Lord as to the undesirability of turning this Factory into a considerable manufacturing concern, the Burbidge Committee, as we know, recommended that manufacture should be increased. No doubt it would be an excellent thing for the Factory and for the War Office from one point of view if that could be done, because it would give us a balance sheet better than anything we can now producer. But the reasons against it, which are really overwhelming, are, in the first place, that it is no part of the work of the Factory to undertake manufacture on a large scale. In the second place— agreeing here with the noble Lord when he said that we ought to do nothing to antagonise the trade—I am convinced in my own mind that if we undertook manufacture on a large scale we should revive and increase that hostility which he told us himself was now rapidly disappearing. In the third place, as nobody knows better than the noble Lord, it is a physical impossibility. I went down to see the Factory two or three days ago. The whole ground is congested; there is no room for more shops; there is no room at Farnborough or in the neighbourhood for the accommodation of more workmen; and these conditions preclude any expansion on the manufacturing side. The view taken by the Government and by all those concerned is that the main work of the Factory must continue to be experimental, and that it ought to be a designing rather than a manufacturing institution.

And speaking about the trade, I should like to say that I am certain it is the desire of General Henderson, as it is the express desire of the Air Board, to encourage private manufacturers by every means in our power. I quite agree with the general propositions advanced in that sense. We had a meeting of the Air Board, and asked the representatives of all the principal manufacturing firms in the country to come to us. They attended in force. We listened to everything they had to say, and I myself was rejoiced to hear how small was the area of complaint over which they travelled. Really what it came to in the last resort was, not that they were jealous of the Air Factory or that they had any complaint of unfair competition, but that they wanted more skilled labour to enable them to carry out a larger programme. We entered at once into communication with the proper Department to arrange for the release of more skilled labour from the Army. But everybody is dipping their hands into the same bin, and it is exceedingly difficult to get what you want. But I pray your Lordships to believe, so far as the trade is concerned, that there is no desire on the part of those responsible but to give them every encouragement for the development of their business, which is even more in the interests of the Government than it is in their own.

I will only deal in a sentence with the smaller charges made against the Aircraft Factory, some of which have been repeated by the noble Lord. I mean such charges as these—that there is great idleness there, that there is an excessive number of workmen employed, that it is the refuge of shirkers, that the men are extravagantly paid, and so on. I can only say that, in so far as I have been able personally to go into any of these charges, although it has been no particular part of my business, I have found great difficulty in getting them substantiated. The line which we on the Air Board felt disposed to take was this. Here you are going to make a change in the organisation of the Factory; you are going to appoint a most competent business head; let his first task be to investigate these charges of bad working in the machinery for which he will henceforth be responsible. If there are any of these matters to which the noble Lord alluded to-day about which he is satisfied that the evidence is really sound and incontestable, and if he will put his charges in a way which will admit of investigation, it shall be done. But I pray him not to come down here again and use this House for the purpose of ventilating matters too petty for your Lordships' attention and incapable of reply, because neither I nor anybody else have the material to meet him.

In the latter part of his speech the noble Lord put a perfectly legitimate question. He asked, What, in the view of the Government, are the proper functions of the Air Factory and what is the part that you expect it to play in the future? I think I may define the functions as follows:—(1) trial and experiment; (2) research; (3) preparation of drawings and designs; (4) repairs, both to planes and to engines; (5) the manufacture of "spares." I rather gathered the noble Lord to imply that the two last headings come in the class of manufacture and ought not to be undertaken by the Aircraft Factory. That certainly was not the impression left upon me by my visit. What do you see there? You see in the various sheds and places any number of engines which have come back damaged from the Front. Everybody knows how extraordinary is the amount of repairs required to be done, and nobody knows better than the noble Lord the expense of aerial warfare in the way of material used. Every day engines are coming back for repair. You must have the workmen and the staff and the machinery to undertake these repairs without delay; and just as they are coming in every day, so they are going back every day; there is a constant stream to and fro between Farnborough and France. As regards "spares," the noble Lord would see there workshops filled with every variety of article and part required in the manufacture of the aeroplane. I really do not know how our airmen would have performed the wonderful feats they have at the Front unless there had been a supply, well filled and constantly replenished, of all the oddments required in the construction of aeroplanes, which you cannot get from the trade, and which at the beginning of the war were not to be got anywhere except at the Royal Aircraft Factory.

I think the part which the Royal Aircraft Factory has played has been invaluable, and that it has been an effective instrument in enabling our airmen to play the fine part they have played. I do not think I need argue this to your Lordships. Lord Montagu admits that the experimental part of the work is necessary. You must have a place for the study and design of flying machines, and their accessories from the point of view of their flying only; you must have a place in which to give a standard in design, construction, and cost, and to supply material, raw or manufactured, which it is difficult to procure elsewhere. As regards the production of aircraft, the Factory in future will not undertake anything like bulk manufacture, but there is small special work, even machines for special trials, which the Factory must undertake because there is nobody else to do it. Surely what we want to bring about is this, that if an inventor has a good invention and sends it to the War Office, from which it goes on to one of the Committees and thence to the Aircraft Factory, he ought to be able to have it made and to have a trial of his machine conducted there. It would probably be much more quickly and more cheaply done at the Aircraft Factory than in any other way.

I hope that in my few remarks I have covered a great deal of the ground that was traversed by my noble friend; and I trust I have shown, with regard to his concluding question, that there is a very definite place in the military organisation of this country for the Royal Aircraft Factory, not only while the war is going on, but even afterwards. I believe that the Factory, improved no doubt by the criticisms to which it has been subjected and the trials through which it has gone, will take a definite and increasing part in the air defence of the future.

LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his reply, though I think his strictures on what I said were unnecessarily severe. But perhaps be did not realise that this Question was put down two months ago, and therefore bad a different bearing on the position to-day. As to what the noble Earl said with regard to MacDonald, I think I ought in fairness to point out that this man's pass was extended—

[The noble LORD was here met with cries of "Order" and resumed his seat.]

The subject then dropped.