Lords Sitting of 17 July 1918

THE EARL OF ATHLONE.
Sir Alexander Augustus Frederick William Alfred George Cambridge, G.C.B., G.C.V.O., C.M.G., D.S.O., formerly known as His Serene Highness Prince Alexander Augustus Frederick William Alfred George of Teck, having been created Viscount TREMATON in the County of Cambridge, and Earl of ATHLONE—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.

A PERSONAL STATEMENT.
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON): I ask your Lordships' permission, before the commencement of public business, to make a brief personal statement with regard to an incident which happened yesterday afternoon. There was a discussion here on a Motion that had been placed upon the Paper by my noble friend Lord Wimborne, and I was unfortunately prevented by illness from being present on that occasion; nor ought I to be here this afternoon. But I felt compelled to come to the House without delay in order to correct the misapprehensions—serious misapprehensions—under which your Lordships must have been left by certain statements that were made by my noble friend. In the course of his remarks Lord Wimborne three times stated to your Lordships' House that his Motion had been postponed at my instigation. That, my Lords, is not the case. I never asked the noble Lord to postpone his Motion. What I did—more than once—was to ask him not to pursue it, in the public interest, and to that appeal from me he turned a deaf ear.
The second point is this. In the course of the speech, in reply, that was made by my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal, I read in the OFFICIAL REPORT the following passage—
"The EARL of CRAWFORD: Lord Curzon invited the noble Lord to withdraw his Motion, and he had tried on several occasions to see the noble Lord in this House.
"LORD WIMBORNE: That is not true."
My noble friend is at liberty to pronounce in your Lordships' House upon his own actions and his own movements, but he is not at liberty to pronounce on mine. What
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the noble Earl, Lord Crawford, said was true in every particular. On two separate occasions I came down to your Lordships' House with the desire to have a conversation with my noble friend on the matter. My duty commonly keeps me closely seated on this Bench, and I am not as free to leave it as other members of your Lordships' House may be; but on two occasions, after my duties here were discharged, I sought the noble Lord, unfortunately without success.
The third point is this. The noble Lord, in his remarks, made a great point of his willingness to tell me what he proposed to say. I acknowledge his courtesy in that respect, and I was much obliged for it. But I was not concerned with what the noble Lord proposed to say; I was concerned with his not saying anything at all. I had consulted the representatives of the Foreign Office, and been told by them that a discussion upon the matter raised by the noble Lord's Questions—the subject of Herr von Kühlmann's speech, and the question of peace terms, and so on—would be singularly inappropriate at the present time. In these circumstances I was not the least likely to ask the noble Lord the details of a speech which more than once I had asked him in the public interest not to deliver.
To sum up, the facts of the case are these. The noble Lord, in the first place, put his Motion upon the Paper without consulting me in advance as to its terms—a course which, in the case of Foreign Office questions of a very delicate character, particularly during the course of the war and at a peculiarly critical moment of the war, is most unusual. Secondly, I intimated to the noble Lord that in the view of the Foreign Office it was undesirable that a discussion of his Motion should take place. Thirdly, I told him that if he persisted in making his Motion I should not be in a position to reply. And, lastly, I appealed to him, in these circumstances, to take his Motion off the Paper. Nevertheless my noble friend felt it consistent with his duty to keep his Motion on the Paper, and to make the speech which he did yesterday afternoon. He made no communication to me or to the Foreign Office of the points that he proposed to raise, and when my noble friend Lord Crawford, in my absence, entered the House to speak on my behalf he knew no more of what the noble Lord proposed to say than I did.

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Finally, Lord Wimborne concluded his remarks by reading a Resolution, the terms of which he had not placed on the Paper, and which he only divulged at the close of his observations. I do not suppose for a moment that my noble friend Lord Wimborne, in the series of incidents to which I have referred, meant to be either discourteous to me or unfair to the Foreign Office, which for the moment I represent in your Lordships' House; but I am bound to say that he adopted a most unusual procedure, and one for which I can find no precedent in my own experience of your Lordships' House.
LORD WIMBORNE: My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to offer one or two observations on the speech of the noble Earl the Leader of the House. The points that he has raised seem to me to vary considerably in importance. Some are almost of microscopic interest—for instance, the question of postponement as against total withdrawal. The noble Earl says that he never asked me to postpone my Motion. May I refresh his memory to this extent? On the day that I put down the Motion I wrote in the morning and told the noble Earl of my intention to do so. He sent me a message, by what I am sure he will regard as a peculiarly trustworthy messenger, asking me to postpone the Motion, on the ground that he had a great many speeches to make, was overburdened with public work, and could not possibly, at short notice, deal with a subject of magnitude and importance. I came down to your Lordships' House and I saw my noble friend Lord Colebrooke, and told him that I was quite willing to meet the noble Earl with regard to dates. I left the House, but I understand that the noble Earl subsequently saw Lord Colebrooke, and, after conversation, Lord Colebrooke went to the Table and took my Motion off the Paper. I do not complain of that; I am sure the noble Lord wished to act in the interests of all parties. But it proves that I was asked to postpone the Motion.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: I am loth to interrupt my noble friend. But surely what he alleges now in itself disproves his argument that he was asked to postpone the Motion. When Lord Colebrooke spoke to me on the matter he said he had been invited by the noble Lord, Lord Wimborne, to act as he thought best. I agreed with him, and accepted the re-
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sponsibility of removing the Motion instead of postponing it.
LORD WIMBORNE: If the noble Earl will permit me to read a letter which he sent to me privately, I think I could show him that this was the point I made. It is a very small point whether the Motion was to be postponed or definitely withdrawn. With regard to the other matter, I understand that the noble Earl does not complain of lack of courtesy; indeed, he knows that I was only too anxious to give him the substance of the speech I wished to make, so as to equip him with all that I could for any reply he desired to make, and that I placed myself entirely at his disposal. I suggested a conversation as the quickest way of dealing with the business, and I came up to London, waited here entirely at his disposal, but never heard from him. It is true that I met the noble Earl quite accidentally walking into your Lordships' House, and he pressed me again to withdraw the Motion altogether, as he took no interest in the matter that I proposed to raise. He said that he was not concerned with what I was going to say, because he was totally opposed to my saying anything at all. It is on this point that I think I am entitled to make some observation.
It is certainly the first time I have ever heard that any Minister of the Crown takes upon himself, and claims the right, to dictate what subjects may or may not be discussed in your Lordships' House. That is a doctrine to which I certainly find it impossible to subscribe. It seems to me to be totally subversive of the theory and practice of free Parliaments. There is a method by which this House can protect itself, and, if necessary, the alleged public interest, from indiscreet observations. That method is well known to your Lordships' House, and it is to move "that the noble Lord be no longer heard." There is another method to which also recourse can be had, and I think was adopted in this case—to maintain a total silence on the points raised in the Motion. The noble Earl, Lord Crawford, admitted that he was totally unable to make any reply to the not very recondite subject which I ventured to bring to your Lordships' notice. That, surely, ought to satisfy the noble Earl who leads the House. In so far as in his view my observations were indiscreet, he has, by the silence he imposed on his colleague, protected the public interest. I think, on the point of the right of members

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to speak on any matter, subject to the views that your Lordships as a body take upon it, that this right is one with which we cannot part.
LORD LAMINGTON: May I say that the noble Lord is incorrect in saying that, at the request of members of the Government, a Question is not always put off. For months I have asked the noble Earl the Leader of the House for permission to raise a question about Persia, and I have not yet been allowed to obtain information upon it.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: My Lords, I should be the last to wish to pursue the question with my noble friend Lord Wimborne, who has not in substance denied the greater part of what I said in my remarks; but I must repudiate the doctrine that he has just laid down. No one is, I hope, more vigilant than I am in the defence and guardianship of the rights of your Lordships' House, and noble Lords will bear me out when I say that it is very seldom, indeed, that I shirk an encounter. There is scarcely any question which noble Lords raise—and they raise a good many from day to day and week to week—in which I do not to the best of my ability give them an answer; but that is a different thing from the proposition that any member of your Lordships' House is to be at liberty on any subject whatever to compel the Government to reply. That is a position which I dispute.
LORD WIMBORNE: You did not reply to me.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: I dare say, but I extended as much courtesy as I possibly could to the noble Lord. I did not want him to submit the matter and then be subjected to the indignity of not receiving a reply to his remarks. Having the honour of the friendship of the noble Lord, I appealed to him, in advance, not to pursue the course that he desired to pursue. That appeal he rejected. As regards the practice in these matters, may I point out to the noble Lord that foreign affairs are questions in which I have been much interested in your Lordships' House, and when I sat in the past on the benches opposite I have often proposed to put down Motions on the Paper relating to critical matters of foreign policy, and on no occasion that I can recall, when I have been
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appealed to by the spokesman of the Foreign Office sitting upon this Bench to refrain from dealing with a subject, have I refused to postpone or withdraw my Motion or Question. It is an understood law, which every one of your Lordships observes. I have nothing more to say about the matter.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My Lords, I hope that the discussion may be regarded as closed. I was not able to be in the House during the progress of the discussion yesterday on the Motion of my noble friend opposite. I had not been aware of his intention to raise the question further than from seeing his Notice on the Paper. The noble Earl who leads the House considers, I gather from his remarks now, that a breach of the ordinary comity of the House was committed by my noble friend in persisting in his Motion. I should hesitate to lay down any general rule on a subject of this kind. There may be cases in which a man feels it his duty to pursue the discussion of a subject even though His Majesty's Government may desire, for good reasons or bad—in this case, I fully admit, good reasons—that the subject should not be discussed, and I cannot help feeling that in a matter of this kind it is a misfortune for the credit and reputation of your Lordships' House that any discussion of this sort should take place in public. My experience in these affairs, which is not altogether short, has led me to believe that a difficulty of this kind can almost always be removed by a frank interchange of views outside the House; that it is possible for free and sometimes quite intimate revelations of facts and policy to be made privately, and by an honourable understanding with His Majesty's Government, which can convinces any noble Lord who has put down a Motion on the Paper that it is not in the public interest that the Motion should be proceeded with. Whether any attempt was made in this instance to conclude the matter in that way, I do not know; but, if not, I sincerely wish that it had, because we must all feel, I think, that a discussion such as has taken place is not advantageous to your Lordships' House, and does not in fact add to the dignity of our debates.

EDUCATION BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: May I ask the Lord President whether he is able to tell us anything regarding the course of business during the next week, and in particular with regard to the Education Bill, which we have just read a first time.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: My Lords, in reply to the noble Marquess, I think that I had better extend my vision over a rather wider range than the next week, to which the noble Marquess suggested that I should confine my attention. Your Lordships really want to know what is the course of business that is proposed up to the time of the adjournment. It is contemplated that Parliament should rise for the Recess if possible on August 8, and your Lordships will desire to know what is the bill of fare that His Majesty's Government propose to place before you in the interim.
The most important measure that will come under your notice is the Education Bill, to which you have just given a First Reading. That Bill will be circulated and be in your Lordships' hands, I hope, tomorrow. I trust, therefore, that we may be able to pass it through all its stages in this House before we rise on or about August 8. I think that there should be ample time to do so, and the arrangements that I would suggest to your Lordships are the following. The Bill being in your Lordships' hands to-morrow, I hope that you will be willing to take the Second Reading on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, July 23 and 24. I hope that two days will suffice for the Second Reading, and if necessary, of course, we could sit after dinner on both days. Then I propose to put the Committee stage down for a week later—Wednesday, July 31, and Thursday, August 1; extending that period if it be necessary for your Lordships' convenience. If we succeed in passing those stages of the Bill by that date, I think there ought to be no difficulty in securing the remaining stages before we adjourn.
I do not think that I need say much, or indeed anything at all, about the Education Bill now, except this—that I hope your Lordships will be willing to treat it as I think it has been treated in another place, and as we may fairly claim to have it treated here—namely, as a non-con-
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troversial measure. It is quite true that there may be differences of opinion about particular provisions of the Bill, but it is a Bill about the general principles and scheme of which there is almost universal agreement; and I believe that the friends of the Bill, of whom there are many in your Lordships' House on both sides, will themselves be most anxious not merely that it should receive full consideration at your hands, but that it should be passed into law with as little delay as possible. Of course, it is true that a measure of that sort could be postponed to a later date. But the risks of the future are not inconsiderable, and I think there will be a general feeling that if, with due regard to your Lordships' wish to discuss this Bill very thoroughly, we can succeed in passing it through all its stages and enable it to be placed on the Statute Book before we rise in August, it will be very much to the public advantage.
As for the other Bills coming from another place to which we shall ask your Lordships' attention, there are two or three of some importance. The first of these is the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Bill. This is a Bill giving wider powers for the revocation of certificates of naturalisation. The Bill was approved in principle at the Imperial Conference of 1917. A draft Bill was then drawn up and circulated to the self-governing Dominions and to India, and it has now been introduced into Parliament, having been approved by them. The Bill has passed its Second Reading in the House of Commons, and it remains to go through its final stages there. The next Bill is the Statutory Undertakings (Temporary Increase of Charges) Bill. This Bill has been framed to give effect to the recommendations made by the Select Committees of the House of Commons which have recently reported on the case of gas and tramway undertakings whose financial position has been adversely affected by circumstances arising out of the war. This Bill has also obtained its Second Reading in another place. Thirdly, there is the Trade Boards Bill, a Bill to enable the Minister of Labour to bring a new trade under the Trade Boards Act, 1909, by means of a special Order instead of by means of a Provisional Order. There are, further, three Money Bills, entitled respectively the War Loan Bill, the War Obligations Bill, the Public Works Loans Bill—the last an annual measure—none of which, I think, can occupy your Lordships very long.

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It is possible that in order to deal adequately with this programme we may have to ask your Lordships to sit sometimes after dinner—for instance, in the Committee stage of the Education Bill, following the example which we set in the Committee stage of the Representation of the People Bill and of the Corn Production Bill last year; and it is also not unlikely that in order to discharge this duty I may ask your Lordships to meet sometimes on Monday and Friday. That is all that is at present contemplated; but it is possible that other legislation may reach us from another place; it depends upon the progress of business there, as to which I can say nothing. Your Lordships may rely upon me, if any such event occurs, to give you due warning as to the intentions or hopes of His Majesty's Government in the matter. I trust that this brief explanation will enable your Lordships to understand the programme that we respectfully place before you, and that the arrangements which I have suggested will be suitable to your Lordships' convenience.
VISCOUNT MIDLETON: My Lords, I rise to ask my noble friend one question on a subject which he has not touched upon. I think your Lordships will see that the programme sketched by the noble Earl is a pretty considerable one to be filled out in three weeks, and I am sure that many members on this side of the House will wish to guard themselves against accepting complete responsibility for carrying the Education Bill through all its stages before we adjourn. I think it must be left open until the debate on the Second Reading to see whether it is possible that the very important questions which may have to be discussed can be dealt with in the following week in Committee, or whether it is really feasible to get rid of the Bill in the short space of time which will then be left to us. I only wish to put in a caveat on that point. I am sure your Lordships will desire to discuss so urgent a Bill as the Aliens Bill before rising, and the necessary money measures, of course. It is a very considerable demand to make to ask that all these Bills, some of which have been for many months before the House of Commons, should be dealt with here as usual in a very short space of time.
I should also like to ask the noble Earl whether he proposes in any form to invite the House to discuss the Indian proposals
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of Mr. Montagu before we adjourn. I think it is important that we should know what the intention of the Government is in that respect.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: I have not had the opportunity of consulting either the Secretary of State for India or my noble friend Lord Islington, and therefore I hesitate to give a definite reply. So far as I know, it is not in contemplation on the part of the Government to seek a discussion now. The proposals have, as your Lordships know, been printed and circulated, and an expression of public opinion, both from responsible quarters in India and also from this country, is sought. No doubt a time will arrive when your Lordships will think it part of your duty to have a discussion upon the matter. Whether or not you will wish to do so before the adjournment does not rest with me to say. Other noble Lords will decide as they think best. I should not have thought that there was any great urgency in having a discussion at this moment. I should have been inclined to say that on the whole it would be better to wait to see the reception which these proposals meet with, both in this country and in India, before noble Lords commit themselves to any final expression of opinion.

IPSWICH DOCK BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a and passed, and sent to the Commons.

A MINISTRY OF HEALTH.
LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE rose to call attention to the desirability of establishing a Ministry of Health without undue delay; and to move to resolve—
That this House urges His Majesty's Government to introduce at an early date a Bill to constitute a Ministry of Health.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving the Resolution that stands in my name I make no apology for bringing before your Lordships' House such an extremely important subject. It is particularly appropriate that it should be debated in the House of Lords, because it has been barked

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and blocked and put into the background in the House of Commons. We have heard something to-day in a debate which took place just now with regard to free speech in this House, and I believe that the general public outside is proud of the privileges of this House and would be very sorry indeed to see any diminution of those privileges. I do not wish to go into the controversy which we have just had, except to re-affirm, as far as a private member may do, that the only ultimate constitutional authority with regard to free speech in this House is a majority of the members of your Lordships' House present on a particular occasion.
With regard to the Ministry of Health, there is no doubt that this is the most important subject to which we could possibly address ourselves. I could cite many historical authorities in favour of the principle of health as affecting the life of the nation. If your Lordships will allow me, I will only take one. It is that of Disraeli, who, you will remember, reminded an audience I think at Manchester in 1872 that the Vulgate version of Solomon's words, "Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas" was really intended by that wise and witty king to be "sanitas sanitatum omnia sanitas."
LORD WHITTENHAM: Mr. Gladstone said it.
LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE: I do not advise the noble Lord to say too much about Mr. Gladstone in this respect. The contemporary Whigs of the day called all this sort of thing "the policy of sewage." I should be very sorry to enter into a controversy about it, but I believe that it is common knowledge that Disraeli said that. Am I not right?
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: Yes, you are right.
LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE: He went on to say—
"After all, you cannot possibly over-estimate the importance of this subject. Your land may be covered by historic trophies, you may have museums of art and of science, and you may have galleries, and your people may be covered by historic trophies, you may have museums of art and of science, and you may have galleries, and your people may be even famous in the annals and action of the time, but if the stature of the people every ten years decreases and the population every ten years diminishes, the history of your nation will very soon be a history of the past."
I would only add to this one more saying of contemporary historical importance, and that is one which I have quoted to your
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Lordships before of the illustrious Sovereign who rules over these Islands, and who has reminded us, in his own immortal phrase, that "the foundations of glory are set in the homes of the people."
With regard to the particular principle of the Ministry of Health, we have on our side all the principal pioneers of racial reconstruction. We have among others Dr. Saleeby, who is one of the greatest prophets of eugenics in this country, and who has spared neither time nor trouble to address meetings on this great subject throughout the land where innumerable resolutions have been proposed and passed; and he himself proposed the first resolution on a public platform with regard to the Ministry of Health as an urgent war measure at a meeting at the Duchess of Marlborough's house as far back as three years ago. We have also Major Waldorf Astor, who has taken a great interest in this matter, and who calls it "a sound business proposition." Lord Milner said the other day that he was in full agreement as to the urgency of a Ministry of Health. That is my position too. Lord Milner said—
"We could not expect to have it in its final and complete form now, but a substantial benefit will be obtained by unifying control at the centre under one head."
We have also Major-General Sir Bertrand Dawson, who said—
"The foundation of the Ministry of Health is the most pressing of all reconstruction problems."
And last, but not least, we have the late Lord Rhondda, who said—
"The Prime Minister was heart and soul with the movement, and the Ministry of Health was a most urgent war measure, for 1,000 babies were lost every week through maladministration of the Health Services."
I suggest to your Lordships that the foundation of a Ministry of Health would be a more fitting and a more enduring memorial to the memory of that great man than all the perorations that have ever been uttered inside the doors of Westminster Palace.
Then we have the Bishop of Birmingham, the President of the Birth-rate Commission which is now sitting. Resolutions have been passed by all enlightened voluntary bodies who are entitled to have a say in this matter; and a large and influential memorial is about to be presented—or, I think, has just been presented—to the Prime Minister on this extremely important subject. It is important because we have to face among other things the loss of the actual fathers

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of the race in the war; many of our best men who should be the healthy fathers of the next generation have sacrificed their lives. Owing to the war we have an actual loss of babies. Sir Bernard Mallet, the Registrar-General, said at the Royal Institute of Public Health that, but for the war, there would probably have been 650,000 more babies born in England and Wales since 1914 than have been born. We have to face the lowest birth rate on record. We have to face the fact that venereal disease and tuberculosis are greatly on the increase. And in this regard I should very much like to know what has happened to the Joint Committee that was promised not long ago to sit on those two Bills with regard to venereal disease. Has that Committee gone the same way as other things? But that is not really in the Ministry of Health, though it is germane to what I was saying, and if I can get an answer about that presently it might be well.
We have also to face the fact that 1,000,000 children in our elementary schools are either physically or mentally defective, so that we need not be surprised that the lists of Grade III men fill up remarkably well. Not only that, but the present and the future fathers of the race, owing to our having lost so many of the best of our manhood, will not be recruited as heretofore from the strongest. That is why their children will want additional care. Further, we have to face diseases that are brought home, and will be brought home, from the war—such as malaria, trench fever, and dysentery. We have the admitted neglect of maternity; and I submit to your Lordships that we have, in fact, an overwhelming case for constituting a Ministry to deal with the public health.
Now, how is this being dealt with at the present time? What I am going to say is illustrative of some of the methods we employ in this country. We have now, dealing with the public health, the Local Government Board (including the Registrar-General's department), the National Health Insurance Commission, the Board of Education, two Departments of the Home Office, a Department of the Privy Council dealing with midwives—though I should be glad if the noble Earl the Lord President of the Council could tell us what the relationship between these two classes of the community is; at present it is one of the anomalies of the Constitution which
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has not been explained—the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Pensions, the Ministry of Munitions, the Ministry of Food, the Ministry of Reconstruction, the Railway Traffic Control Board, the Admiralty, the War Office, the Air Council, the Colonial Office, the Indian Office, the Foreign Office, and the Board of Agriculture, which is responsible for pure milk, and therefore is acutely connected with the spread of tuberculosis. In addition to all those Departments, we have 1,800 sanitary authorities, 630 boards of guardians, 238 local insurance committees, 318 education authorities, and 320 new pensions committees. All these bodies deal either directly or indirectly—and for the most part independently of each other, therefore having no common or concerted action and no clearly defined object—with the health of the country.
There is no safeguard in this extraordinary system against overlapping, and, what is still worse, there is no safeguard against overlooking which is much more important. Yon may have what you consider to be a perfectly water-tight system, but if you have a great many of these bodies operating in the same area the very thing you want to check may easily slip between the crevices. All these bodies are conducting their own investigations on their own account. It is, of course, no very wide exaggeration to say that a representative from each of these bodies might conceivably be in the same house looking at different members of the same family at the same moment. In the old days Lord Chatham used to say—and this quotation has been given to the House, I believe, by Lord Rosebery— that "however the storm, or the rain, or the wind, may enter the cottage of a poor man; the King of England could not enter; all the forces of the Crown dare not cross the threshold of that ruined tenement." But we heard the other day in evidence before the Birthrate Commission that at least eleven forces of the Crown had entered the tenement of one man in order to inspect him and his family from various points of view.
These are not highly coloured exaggerations which I have brought in for the purpose of giving point to what I have to say. I will corroborate my statements by reading one or two sentences from the Report of the Local Government Committee of the Ministry of Reconstruction, a very powerful

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Government Committee—which reported not very long ago—
"There are at this moment a large number of different bodies giving various forms of public assistance out of rates and taxes, with very inexact delimitation of the persons eligible. Many of these bodies deal on different lines, and for different reasons, with members of the same family. There are, for instance, seven different public authorities giving money in the home, leaving out of account the exceptional cases of money payments by the education and health authorities. All these are found contributing towards maintenance in various forms, institutional or other. At least six are providing various forms of medical treatment. Three are giving educational training of one sort or another. The able-bodied unemployed may be subsidised by five of them. These public bodies, many of them extending over different areas, have, with a few exceptions, no common system of registration of cases; so that even the names of persons receiving assistance from one or more of the bodies may be unknown to some other body which may be considering their case. This absence of common knowledge results in much overlapping, and also in occasional failure to detect cases of need. Not only are there many public authorities dispensing assistance out of the rates and taxes, but new ones are frequently being improvised to meet emergencies. The extent, variety, and overlapping of the activities of these various bodies cannot adequately be set out, but there may be, often with little co-ordination between them, dealing with:—infants and maternity, five different bodies; with children of school age, three different bodies; with persons of unsound mind or mentally defective, six different bodies; with sick persons, four different bodies; with the aged, three different bodies; and with the able-bodied, not fewer than five different bodies."
In the face of all this, my Lords, he would be a very brave man who tried to disentangle it, but a still braver one who would agree in Parliament to let things remain where they are at the present moment.
Now we have brought to bear upon this question two different frames of mind. We have that frame of mind which says, "Oh! we don't want to have anything to do with this at all. We have too many Ministries already"; and then you have the frame of mind which will agree that the matter is urgent but wishes the treatment of it to be postponed till after the war. I would say to that noble Lord, or to that member of the public, who thinks the argument that there are too many Ministries already is sufficient to dispose of this great subject, that he is bringing forward a consideration which is not worthy of the issues that are at stake. The second answer to him is that it is not proposed to create a new Ministry at all, and I shall show your Lordships in a moment that we do not propose to create a new Ministry but are actually
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trying to save an existing Ministry. Even it we had to create a new Ministry I see no reason why it should not be done; the case is sufficiently urgent to warrant it. Because since the war we have created a great many new Ministries and left out the most important one of all is no excuse for not appointing it at the present moment; and those people in the country who are anxious to see a Ministry of Health established, and who intend to see it established, are not going to be put off by arguments of this kind, and will not be put off by the plea of expense, because they believe, and they believe with great truth, that the expenditure of lives is the greatest extravagance of which a nation can possibly be capable, and that to create a Ministry of Health, so far from being an extravagance, will be national salvage all round. It will be national salvage of officials, national salvage of money, and national salvage of lives, and it will be the most important part of construction and reconstruction that we can possibly imagine. Nor, my Lords, are we going to be put off by allowing children to be thrown to the wolves in the shape of the Maternity Bill. Your Lordships will shortly, I believe, be asked to discuss a Maternity Bill which has been passed at the other end of the passage.
VISCOUNT PEEL: To-morrow.
LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE: If anybody tells your Lordships that it is a substitute for all this, do not believe it; it is nothing of the kind.
VISCOUNT PEEL: Nobody said so.
LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE: It is the frame of mind which those responsible for the Bill are trying to create.
VISCOUNT PEEL: Nobody said so.
LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE: I am very glad to hear it. May I produce, my Lords, one or two reasons why I am saying this? This Maternity Bill is all very well in its own way, and I shall do everything I can to assist in passing it into law and to make it a success. I am not going to be guilty of the same thing which I understand is going on downstairs, in the shape of Departmental jealousy. But the Maternity Bill does not deal with the three great killing agencies of the human race. It does not deal with tuberculosis, venereal

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disease, and alcoholism, and although it is a useful measure it touches only a small part of the great problem of health.
Now, we can do all that is necessary without creating a new Ministry. We shall save a Ministry, as I ventured to say just now, and if it is a matter of saving a Ministry, there are a certain number of old-fashioned and archaiac Ministries which are approaching a period of senile decay or even obsolescence; and in the very able book written by Mr. Henry Higgs, who was appointed by the Government to unravel the working of the Civil Service in South Africa and Egypt, it is stated that a Minister without a Portfolio is a greater expense than a Portfolio without a Minister. Those who have studied the subject advise that what should be done is to bring together the Insurance Commission and the Local Government Board. I should like to say that, I, for one, sincerely hope that the new Ministry of Health will not confine itself to the orbit which now controls both these Ministries. The idea of merging the Local Government Board and the Insurance Commission is already agreed in principle, but it is being delayed, as I understand, either because the Local Government Board and the Insurance Commission are fighting with one another or jealous of one another or are not on sufficient terms to live in the same house. I understand that a good deal of difficulty arises over the Poor Law, and that the position of the Poor Law is being exploited, either honestly or dishonestly, by Departmental interests as an excuse for holding up the Ministry of Health.
All insurance interests, whether industrial, friendly, or approved, naturally object to being mixed up with the Poor Law. That is intelligible. But the attitude of the Local Government Board towards it is a little more difficult to fathom. I wonder if the Local Government Board hope that the Poor Law will survive, and will cling to the Poor Law; or is it suggested that they are afraid to let any one into their house until the poor relation has been despatched and got rid of? Is that the reason? Whatever the reasons may be, the public have a right to know what it is that is hanging up this very vital reform. I say that the first step is to merge the Local Government Board and the Insurance Commission, because practically all the functions of the Local Government Board are already health functions. I know
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there are other functions—non-health functions—which could be properly allocated to other Departments, but the bulk of the Poor Law, concerned as it is with infirmity, sickness and infancy, performs in elect a health function. If it is necessary to get rid of the non-health functions of the Poor Law, the Poor Law schools, for instance, could be handed over to the local education authorities and the Board of Education, while unemployment could be transferred to the Ministry of Labour. But it does seem that the break-up of the Poor Law is a condition precedent to a Ministry of Health.
Those who are interested in the matter hope most earnestly, and we urge upon the Government, that they will introduce a Bill at an early date, and either follow it or accompany it, if they like, by the announcement that their policy will be that which has long been arrived at by those who are qualified to judge in this matter—that their policy will be to follow it by the break-up of the Poor Law. I do not know whether this occasions noble Lords opposite any great surprise, but I should have thought that they were sufficiently hardened not to mind announcing any number of policies, in view of the fact that they have already announced that they can pass Home Rule for Ireland and enforce Conscription at the same time, and have abandoned the intention. At any rate, there will be no difficulty in announcing that you are going to do away with the Poor Law. You cannot object to that. Let us make a beginning at any rate, and let the Ministry of Health, at its inception, be a central authority to disentangle, co-ordinate, superintend, and make collective and coherent all investigation that is now being carried on by a hundred and one different Departments. Let it stand to the other Departments of the country with regard to health in the same relation as, say, the Board of Works stands to other Departments in relation to architecture, or the Stationery Department stands to other Departments in the matter of buying their paper and, I believe, their furniture at a cheap and uniform rate.
In establishing this Ministry (it is rather early, perhaps, to talk about what it should do until we have seen the Bill) it is not too much to hope that we shall be able to keep in view the following principles—that we shall place science in its proper position, and that, as Sir Bertrand Dawson said in his extremely able letter in the British

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Medical Journal, the skilled shall no longer be under the control of the unskilled; and that the proper people to decide about doctoring are the doctors. It is not necessary in this regard—we are not asking—that the new Minister of Health should be a doctor, but it does seem essential that the permanent Under-Secretary should be a medical man, and that there should be somebody responsible of technical training who has direct access to his chief. It is to be hoped also that the new Ministry, as soon as it is formed, will call to its counsels representatives of all medicines, and will link up both the preventive and curative sides. People talk a great deal now about preventive medicine on the one hand and curative medicine on the other. It is not out of place to remark here that, with regard to all infectious and contagious diseases, the curative side of medicine becomes preventive, inasmuch as you prevent other people catching the disease by curing the sufferers, and the two branches of medicine become practically indistinguishable.
There are other questions which it will be appropriate for the new Minister to examine as soon as he is appointed. They are rather important questions, about which the nation would like to know, and Parliament ought to know, the answer. How much do we spend on public health? I do not suppose anybody knows. By what Departments is it spent? How much is spent by each Department? What does each Department regard as its proper functions in the matter of health? How far do we get value for the money that we spend? How far do various bodies—this is a very important question—concerned in health compete with one another in administering health functions? Surely all this is of first-class importance, and it is worth doing and it is worth doing now. The noble Earl the Leader of the House, Lord Curzon, I suppose admits the urgency of it. At any rate, he says that the postponement is due to nothing else except acute and deep-seated difference between the various Departments concerned. This is not a very satisfactory state of things. It means either that the Government is not master in its own house—that the Government cannot manage its own servants—or else that it is taking advantage of a squabble that is going on downstairs in order to postpone the introduction of the Ministry of Health. I believe that the
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general public will not stand this sort of thing very much longer, but will want to know what this quarrel is about, and how soon the Government is going to take steps to put it right. I am sanguine enough to believe that many of your Lordships will agree with me as to the urgency of dealing with the health of the nation by at least forming a Ministry of Health and doing it at the earliest possible date.
Several NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear.
LORD WILLOUGHBY DE BROKE: I have spoken to some noble Lords and to friends outside the House, and I find a disposition to admit the force of all this, but, at the same time, to say "You had better do it after the war." I am getting a little tired of the phrase "after the war." I believe that to say you will do a thing after the war—the noble Viscount who is going to follow will, perhaps, tell me whether my law is right—means, in the opinion of lawyers, to "void for perpetuity," or something near it. Nobody can tell how long the war is likely to last. The war may last for a very great number of years. And there is this point. Unless you set up a Ministry of Health and do every single thing in your power to arrest the consequences of the war on the public health, you are doing the very best thing you can to prolong the war.
This is a war measure. It is an urgent war measure, and every day that it is postponed we take the responsibility of postponing the conclusion of hostilities. No one knows when the war will be over. Then people say that you are not to have any fresh legislation during the war. That is really not bad, considering that just before your Lordships allowed me to get up to speak a gentleman came from the end of the passage and said that the Education Bill had just passed the House of Commons, and that we have been told by the noble Earl, Lord Curzon, that we are going to sit up all night for some weeks to come in order to give consideration to the Education Bill. Let me say this about the Education Bill. If you have time to pass an Education Bill you can equally make time to pass a Health Bill, and it is no good whatever passing an Education Bill and deciding how you are going to educate your children until you have taken measures to ensure that there will be a proper supply of children to educate.

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To pass an Education Bill before a Health Bill is to put the cart before the horse.
I believe, with all my heart, that this matter is urgent. Anybody who does not think it is urgent had better read the Casualty Lists which appear every morning in the Press, and he will see that it is becoming very urgent. We may wait in this matter, but nature is not going to wait, and we should not be doing our duty to the nation if we did not take this matter in hand at the earliest possible moment. I am extremely anxious, and I entreat your Lordships to pass this Resolution, or at any rate a Resolution something like it. I will make an offer to the noble Lord who is going to answer for the Government. I will modify the Resolution if necessary, and make it as wide as possible, short of admitting that this reform can be held up until after the war is over.
We may be told by the Government that they are going to produce their Bill. If they are going to produce their Bill they cannot possibly have any objection to the Resolution. If they do not intend to produce a Bill, then we must take the only means we can to bring pressure on them by passing a Resolution urging them to produce a Bill at the earliest possible moment. I do not want to embarrass the Government, but they are like all other Governments. They have acquired a knack of yielding at the proper moment to pressure. They are like a certain type of horse that I know very well, and have ridden a good many times. They are a very good type, whose principal characteristics are that they are not overburdened with courage; they have an excellent notion how to take care of themselves, have unlimited staying power, and every now and then surprise themselves and their friends by winning a race, provided you kick and cuff them every yard of the way. That does not apply particularly to this Government, and I hope noble Lords opposite will understand that I say this in no offensive sense, but it is a characteristic that long tenure of the Front Bench is bound to develop. I hope your Lordships will affirm the principle of a Ministry of Health, which has been to long neglected.
I should like it to be clearly understood that those who wish to promote a Ministry of Health have no idea, as some people seem to fear, of nationalising either the medical service of the country or the hospitals. Our hospitals are one of the
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finest monuments of this country. What we would like to do is not to nationalise our hospitals, but, if possible, to make them superfluous. We wish also to place the medical profession on a higher level than it occupies at the present moment; to place it on the same sort of level which it occupies in the United States. In short, my Lords, I hope I shall not be out of place if I implore you to pass this Resolution. Lord Beaconsfield really did say this, and not Mr. Gladstone—" I beg your Lordships, on this occasion, to be on the side of the angels." We are not threatening any interest; we are not attacking anything at all except disease. I honestly believe, from many communications I have received from outside, that the general public look to this House to stimulate the formation of a Ministry of Health, and to announce that the welfare and health of the race is the primary function of Government.
Moved to resolve, That this House urges His Majesty's Government to introduce at an early date a Bill to constitute a Ministry of Health.—(Lord Willoughby de Broke.)
VISCOUNT HALDANE: My Lords, I rise to second the Motion, and I shall be able to do so very briefly because I do not wish to go over the ground which the noble Lord has covered. One thing, however, I wish to emphasise. I think this is a war measure, and a very urgent war measure. The noble Lord quoted statistics given by Sir Bernard Mallet, the Registrar-General, as to the loss of births since the commencement of the war, but these statistics do not merely represent the peril to which we are exposed—a peril which arises not out of the war but which existed before it, and which constitutes a serious danger. After the war we shall have to do our utmost to build up our population, and we require, as early as possible, to take the steps requisite for that purpose.
I do not think it is generally realised that by far the greatest loss in population is not post-natal, but ante-natal. Statistics show that the number of children who ought to be born into the world and who are not, by reason of various diseases, is enormous, and it is due to the three causes which the noble Lord mentioned—alcoholism, venereal disease, and phthisis. These are subjects which require the most careful scientific investigation. To pass a Maternity Bill is to scratch on the surface, and to try and solve questions which the Motion raises by means of a Maternity Bill is, I

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assure the Government, to bring down presently ridicule on their own heads. They do not realise the depth of feeling which has been awakened on this question, and the immense importance it presents to the nation, and to try to deal with it by any method other than one which will go to the root of the whole matter and provide a system which will afford us some redress from what we are suffering as a people, is only to bring down very hostile criticism indeed upon their heads.
This brings me to what I want to say as to what is necessary in a measure of this kind. There are three things which have to be seen to—population; the prevention of disease generally (which is a very wide thing); and also what the noble Lord alluded to, the training of health officers. I think this is a very wide subject indeed, and one beyond the scope of any Department. They must come to some extent, and to a very important extent, within the scope of a Public Health Ministry, and to suppose that the Local Government Board, as at present constituted, could even approach such a problem is simply to show that you do not know what you are talking about.
The question of medical education in this country is in urgent need of consideration. We have not only fallen behind the United States in many particulars, but we peculiarly require the systematic training of a body of health officers who can discharge the necessary work we have to do. It is not merely the question of the medical men; it is also the question of the training of nurses, of inspectors, and of a variety of people, who will have to deal with the carrying out of a practical measure of this kind. It will require the best thought of the Universities, and the best thought of the medical profession to be brought to bear on it, and it will require the sympathy and stimulation of a great Government Department which really is furnished with the knowledge that this great problem requires. This means that before you can make progress you must know what it is that you have to do. You must have your principles clear; and fortunately as regards this Bill, I think that the principle has become very fairly clear.
The noble Lord referred to the very valuable Report with which I also have provided myself—the Report of the Local
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Government Committee on the Transfer of the Functions of Poor Law Authorities in England and Wales, a Report which goes far beyond that mere subject, for it dealt with the general question of the co-ordination of public assistance which is germane to the Poor Law. That was a very striking Committee. It included Lord George Hamilton and Mrs. Sydney Webb, the rival antagonists of the two Reports, Majority and Minority, of the Poor Law Commission, and it had the happy result of a complete agreement being reached between those representing the two views upon Poor Law reconstruction. It was reached in this way, and it has the most direct bearing on the subject of which the noble Lord opposite is going to speak. It is quite clear, and if proof were wanted of it this Report makes it clear, that the only way of dealing with the public health of this country is by devolution—devolution under the direction of a highly competent Minister with a Department from which he can supervise it.
To talk of local government is to use an expression which was admirable in the old days when we had no local government properly so-called, in the times when the Poor Law was first the subject of attention by statesmen, and when, very slowly, laws relating to sanitation and other subjects were being evolved. To-day we have got far beyond the stage of treating these things by the Local Government Board. They are too many and too varied to be handled by any one Minister except in a Lilliputian fashion. What is recommended on all hands, and what is recommended by this Report—and I think that nobody has dissented from that view, and that countenance has been given to it by some members of the Government—is that you should take the method of devolution, and in time that you should distinguish between the forms of public assistance and the functions which you wish to evolve.
Take, for example, what we have to-day. The noble Lord truly said, quoting the Report, that there are no less than six authorities who administer the public health of the nation. I will not go over them again, because we know them. The boards of guardians do a good deal. It is very simple to split up the public assistance which you give into its various forms, and to take public health and treat that as one of the forms. Then you will have the thing mapped out for you. You have an

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Education Department which does not administer education at Whitehall. It is a common delusion that it does. Education is administered, is carried out and worked, by the 390 local education authorities which Whitehall superintends. And so it ought to be with the Public Health Ministry, which ought to be exactly in the position of the Board of Education, and which ought to work through the borough and county councils.
If this analogy were followed, what would be the result? Every borough council, every county council, would have its health committee as it has its education committee; that is a statutory committee on which experts should be co-opted—as has been done with such good results in the case of education—and you would then devolve the whole of public health assistance to that committee, working of course under the responsibility of the council to which it belonged. In the same way, you would take the provision of employment for able-bodied and all questions connected with out-relief and so on, and you would hand those over to a statutory committee of the county council, and so you would break up the bundle of special forms of public assistance which are to-day all included under the general name of "local government" without rhyme and without reason.
What would be the effect of this? You would get devolution, and you would look to your local parliaments, your county and borough councils, to do the work that you would like them to do through the medium of these statutory committees. You would gain, I think, a great advantage, because these local bodies have become enormously important, and you would relieve Parliament of an immense deal of work which it has at the present time to do. What is the use of our considering quite minor measures connected with public health? Everybody approaches them from a different point of view. There is no unity, no conception, no scientific view of the nature of the services, and the result is that a great deal of our time is consumed uselessly, and a great deal of legislation is undertaken which never ought to come before Parliament at all. I believe that if we were in earnest about this notion of devolving the responsibility to local authorities with the assistance of expert statutory committees, such as the education system provides, we should have gone a long way towards solving one of the
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most pressing features of the problem of Home Rule.
This question of devolution is, therefore, a big one. If that be so, however far it goes and however much further you can extend the problem of devolution, what is the effect upon the existing state of things? The effect is this. The Local Government Board will become what it ought to be primarily—the Ministry of Public Health. It would be only secondarily a Ministry of Local Government, because there would be little local government to look after. Certain questions in connection with the able-bodied and other forms of public assistance would remain, but they are trifles compared to those referred to by my noble and gallant friend, and they are subjects which would take up only secondarily the attention of the Local Government Board.
There are other services performed by the Local Government Board which I think would be better performed by other Departments to which they are more germane. The result would be that you would have a Ministry of Public Health, and such residue of local government as remained after you had broken up the fasciculus of special service and devolved the administration of that to the local bodies concerned. I can honestly say that I cannot think of any measure which, if passed speedily and put vigorously into operation under a really sympathetic man, would do more completely to change for the better the state of things in this country and bring people to realise not only that the remedy for their condition was in their own hands, but that the nature of that remedy had been pointed out to them, and that they had the wise and benign supervision of a Ministry of Public Health, comprising within itself the best expert knowledge that the country could command for the purpose of guiding the local authorities in the very important duties which they would have to discharge. I beg to second the Motion.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: My Lords, I have no wish to take up any of your Lordships' time; indeed, it would be difficult, on what is a comparatively restricted field, to add to what has been said by the noble Lord who moved this Resolution and by the noble Viscount who has just seconded it, but I should be very sorry if before the noble Lord replies on behalf of the Government—I hope

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in a favourable sense—no voice were raised from the Episcopal members on this subject to support the Motion. Naturally the subject is one which continually, day by day, concerns those with whom I and other Bishops have to work in every part of the country.
The war has brought indeed many calamities, but it has brought this great blessing—that it has, in a manner which we have not known in the life of this country before, aroused and directed public opinion in regard to the vitally important question of public health. I do not think there ever has been a time when a larger number of able and thoughtful people have been deeply concerned with this problem and when there has been aroused in every part of the country a more convinced, united, and determined public opinion. But this quickened public opinion has discovered two things. One is the unity of health problems. There is scarcely one which can be really considered apart from the other. The noble Lord has given many instances. For example, you cannot make any real distinction between the medical treatment which should be given to a mother in the vitally important days, not only of birth, but before and after birth, and the provision of satisfactory nourishment both for the mother and the child. You cannot isolate the efforts made to promote the health of the children in our elementary schools and the sanitary conditions of their homes and the facilities which are open to the mothers for obtaining proper nourishment for their children. You cannot separate—that is a vast and most interesting matter to which the noble Viscount has only just referred—you can less and less separate all that is meant by the prevention and all that is meant by the cure of disease. You cannot possibly separate the schemes, which I hope will be more abundant and more intelligent after the war than they were before, for the housing of the people from the most complicated questions of sanitation and public health generally. And, above all, you cannot possibly separate research in these matters from administration.
Wherever you turn you find the same conclusions, that health problems are fundamental ones and must be thought out and administered in unison. That is what public opinion has everywhere come to see with increasing clearness and force. At the same time the second thing it has come to realise, with this unity of the problem,
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is the extraordinary diversity of administration on a question which, more and more, as people come to see it, depends on unity of treatment. There is what, to the outsider, seems a most inextricable confusion and overlapping of administrative bodies. What those who realise the necessary unity of the problem want to know is, What is it that stands in the way of bringing all these operations which closely concern public health under the one Ministry? Is it a difficulty of principle? I cannot see where such a difficulty of principle can arise. Is it a difficulty of administration? Then surely it is one which ought to be at once set right. I agree with every word that the noble Lord said about the urgency of the problem. In the conduct of the war it has been found necessary to create new Ministries. It seems to me that even during the war it ought to be possible, not, as the noble Lord has pointed out, to create a new Ministry, but to correlate existing Ministries and put this matter under unity of control, which is the only way of meeting the unity of the problem itself.
I feel sure the noble Lord will not think that this is a problem which can be safely entrusted to the vague days after the war. There is not one of us who knows what the problems will be when that occurs. We may be faced with difficulties which will tax to the uttermost the thoughts and energies of the whole people. Moreover, as I think the noble Lord has himself pointed out, this is a matter that directly concerns war conditions. It is not a matter that one wishes to speak of in any detail or at any length, but it must be obvious that questions gravely affecting public health will immediately arise in proportion as the Army begins to be demobilised, and we ought to be ready. Moreover the question of raising up a population to meet the terrible depletion which has occurred in the ranks of the citizens of the country is not one that can be postponed for a single day. It has an urgency which arises out of the very conditions of the war.
It is no good attempting to bring in piecemeal legislation on these questions until a united Ministry has been created, because there is always the difficulty—either you postpone that legislation until questions of administration are more satisfactory, or you bring in a measure and entrust it to some branch of administration which admittedly is not satisfactory and which may in a very short time be removed.

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Just, therefore, at a time when measures affecting the public health are so necessary those who are concerned in them are perplexed and paralysed by this apparently unintelligible and inextricable variety of administration. I am sure that there is a larger force of public opinion than is, perhaps, realised pressing at this moment to know precisely why it is that this Ministry, so long promised, has been delayed. I am sure, with the noble Lord, that people will not be satisfied with the answer that the reason really is departmental difficulty. These are things that a strong Government exists to overcome.
I associate myself with the appeal that has been made to-day by the noble Lords who have just spoken that at any rate a beginning shall be made in the direction of making the administration of public health as united as the problem with which it has to deal. I think that we must look to the Government to show that it is not merely in word but in fact the case that we are not less concerned with measures which will assist in winning the war than we are with measures which may bring about that better order of our national life without which in many ways the war will have been waged in vain.
LORD SYDENHAM: My Lords, since I came into contact with the very numerous bodies which are dealing with public health in one way or another I could only come to the conclusion that the confusion was perfectly appalling, and I most cordially agree with the noble Lord that we must have a Ministry of Health as soon as it is possible to set one up. But I think that some of the advocates of a Ministry of Health have not quite clearly thought out all the difficulties, and those of us who have listened to the speech of the noble and learned Viscount, which was full of constructive proposals, will, understand how very much has to be done before a Ministry of Health can be made as effective as it should be. The Local Government Board was only established in 1871, and though it has still imperfect powers I think it has accomplished a considerable amount of excellent work, which is too little realised. But all the most important developments in the direction on public health, however they are initiated, must depend for their administration and for their executive power upon the local authorities, as the noble and learned Viscount has said. That is neces-
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sary, and it should always be necessary; therefore the efficiency of the local government system will really be a test of the efficiency of the health arrangements which we all hope to see set up.
Among many developments in late years I should like to mention the setting up of venereal disease clinics, fever and small-pox hospitals, clinics for expectant mothers, asylums for insane and feeble-minded, and tuberculosis hospitals and sanatoria. To give some little idea of how one part of the work is done, I may say that the public health authorities provide 170,000 beds, the Poor Law guardians 96,000 beds, and the voluntary hospitals somewhere about 45,000 beds. I think it may be fairly said that under the œgis of the Local Government Board the average of life has been prolonged, that there has been a diminution of nearly one-third in the death rate, and that there has been a considerable reduction in the mortality among infants, though that is not nearly so great as would be possible with better arrangements. Meanwhile the National Insurance system was set up. That was a bad copy of the German system, and was never properly thought out. It seems to me to be a most striking instance and warning of the evils of too hurried legislation. I believe that the principle of that Act is really wrong. It picked out about one-third of the population for medical assistance but left out their families, and it also neglected other people equally deserving, and, in some cases, equally poor. That scheme, I believe, is now practically bankrupt for women, and it would be bankrupt for men if full medical assistance could be given, as it is not given now. That whole system must be transferred bodily to the Ministry of Health. This, the noble Lord said, was one of the first steps, and I entirely agree with him. But probably the best course would be to abandon medical benefit altogether and to provide medical assistance on general lines for the insured persons, for their families, and for all other classes who are equally poor and in equal need of it. That is a great principle, which will have to be decided by somebody, and which will have to be approved by Parliament.
Bu there is another great difficulty which arises from the fact, as the noble and learned Viscount has stated, that the important proposals of the Poor Law Commission have not been carried out. It would have made an immense difference

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and facilitated the measures for which we wish, if those proposals had been carried out. Then there is the whole question of the work of the Poor Law guardians. Is this to be transferred to the public health authorities or not? That is a question of principle, and a question which must be decided before we know where we are with regard to the Ministry of Health.
So far as I can see a Ministry of Health can only be really effective on certain conditions. It must, as I have said, absorb the whole work of the National Insurance Commission; and all the chief medical state services must, I believe, be brought under one control. A new Ministry of Health must exercise power over the local authorities, to watch over them, to guide them, and to keep them up to the mark; but they must always be administrating agencies. There must be central authority, and each area must also be under one central authority. All this means great changes and reforms in our whole system of local government, as the noble and learned Viscount has pointed out. That system has been described not quite unjustly as "a crazy patchwork," and one of the first things to do is to reorganise that system in order that it may perform these duties and the much larger duties in relation to national health which are so urgently needed. But even then I am doubtful whether all health work can be brought under the Ministry. The health of school children must be to a great extent under the administration of the education authorities; the health of seamen and the sanitary conditions on board ship, and so on, can hardly be taken away altogether from the Board of Trade; while factory and mining laws may to some extent still have to be administered under the Home Office. But, of course, in an ideal system all these other bodies dealing with those aspects of the question would have to be brought into the closest touch with the Ministry of Health, which should be the real inspiring source of knowledge, and science in its best form.
I hope I have said enough to show that this question is a most complicated one. I do not think that we have enough guidance at present to enable us to reach a sound conclusion. We have made many mistakes in the past, and it is most important that we should not repeat them. In ordinary times, of course, a Royal Commission would
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be set up at once to say exactly what should be done, what duties the new Ministry should perform, and how it should be organised. But we cannot do that now. Yet I believe that a well-selected body of only three thoroughly competent people, with all the mass of information they have at their disposal, could in three mouths lay down the lines of a really constructive policy for administering national health under a single Ministry, and that a Bill might then be drafted and passed during the next session. We have had, especially lately, far too much hurried legislation, and I am certain that out of that legislation much trouble will arise in the future. While I strongly support the Resolution of the noble Lord, I feel that we must not leave this matter to be fought out and wrangled out between Departments behind the scene. That is not the way to get at the best solution. Therefore I would beg of the Government to consider the suggestion I have made, and to make sure of their ground before they are committed to what must be an exceedingly complicated and at the same time a most important Bill.
VISCOUNT PEEL: My Lords, I will do my best to try and answer, or to deal in some form with the very complicated matters that have been fully discussed this afternoon. The whole object of this movement, I understand, is to urge the Government to bring in legislation on the subject at an early date. The point is rather what should be the precise nature of that particular legislation; and I could not help thinking, while I was listening to the very important and informed speeches which have been made this afternoon, how difficult it would be to construct any Bill on those speeches, because on important points they differed so profoundly among themselves. I was rather grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sydenham, because he to some extent lightened my task by dwelling briefly on the very profound differences and on the difficulties in the way; and I think he realised that to deal with this matter immediately by a three-clause Bill—as one of its enthusiastic advocates suggested in the other House—would really be doing great injustice to the complexity of the matters which we have to solve.
My noble friend Lord Willoughby de Broke introduced this subject in an eloquent and figurative speech, supported by quotations from Solomon and from Lord Beaconsfield. I should like if I may, before I deal with the large matters that

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have been raised, to say a few words on some specific points on which the noble Lord challenged me for an answer. The first point I noted was with reference to the Joint Committee. I have to inform the noble Lord that this Joint Committee has now been set up. That, I think, will satisfy my noble friend so far. The next point was the question of the Maternity Bill, the Second Reading of which I hope to have the honour of proposing to-morrow to your Lordships. I understand that my noble friend is a supporter of that measure. I was rather sorry, if I may say so, that my noble friend, and, I think, the noble and learned Viscount opposite, re-introduced what I may call the old story, that anyone in authority had suggested that this particular Bill was regarded as a substitute for this great question of co-ordinating all the health powers in a central authority. I cannot conceive how that idea can seriously have arisen, because the two subjects are quite apart. The matter with which we are dealing this afternoon is the question of a central authority and the co-ordination of powers, many of which are now exercised by different authorities. I do not want to anticipate the Bill of to-morrow, but that Bill is for extending powers, very valuable and far-reaching powers as they are, to the local authorities; and I rather regret that my two noble friends should have alluded in that way to this Bill, because the President of the Local Government Board, who is responsible for the Bill, has emphatically stated in another place, and stated more than once, that he certainly did not regard the Maternity Bill as any substitute for, or as related to, the other very much larger question we are discussing this afternoon. Let me, therefore, dismiss that matter.
There is one more observation which I would like to make to my noble friend. He was, I think, a little ready to deal with Departmental differences, and with what he called Departmental jealousies. I was much refreshed, if I may say so, by the speech of the most rev. Prelate, who dealt not at all with these matters but with the larger question of the co-ordination of powers, because I think it must have been obvious to your Lordships, not only those well informed on these matters but also those who have listened to the discussion this afternoon, that an amount of legitimate difference of opinion is quite possible upon these difficult matters of co-ordination of powers, and the question as to what powers should be centred in one authority and what
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powers should be left to other authorities. There is clearly room on this matter for much consideration and much thought.
There was one omission, if I may allude to it, in the well informed speech of my noble friend. He was no doubt, in making his speech, convinced that he was addressing an assembly very well informed on all these matters of local administration, because I think that if any stranger had come into this House who was not acquainted with our local administration he would have gained a very false idea of the existing situation from the speech of my noble friend. My noble friend, no doubt for considerations of space, did not dwell upon the vast work of public health which has been carried on by the Local Government Board for the last thirty or forty years. He did not tell your Lordships that the Local Government Board is and has been for years a great health authority. In fact, it is rather difficult in running over the different duties discharged by the Local Government Board to say what duties it does discharge which are not closely connected with health. For instance, the whole of the work done by the Local Government Board under the Public Health Acts, the whole matter of sanitation, the whole matter of the disposal of sewerage, and of administration under the Housing Act, are all matters directly connected with the question of public health. Moreover, take such matters, less sonorous perhaps but most important to the health of the people, as the administration of the Food and Drugs Act, the notification of births, the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, and other matters of that kind.
Even then one comes to the whole question of the Poor Law. I think possibly I misunderstood the first observation which fell from the noble Viscount opposite, because I thought at first he was criticising the administration by the local authorities; but then I understood that he really wanted to hand over the whole public assistance to the local authorities. Dealing with the Poor Law as it is, there is a vast amount of public health connected with the Poor Law, and the question which I should rather like to have put to my noble friend opposite is, What division is he going to make between the health administration of the Poor Law and the rest of the administration of the Poor Law? He waves his hand. I do not know whether it is a very significant

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gesture or not, but is he going to divide these two functions? Is he going to put on one side perhaps the work in the infirmary and the medical relief, and hand over to the Local Government Board the work in the poorhouse and the administration of Poor Law relief? I do not gather what his proposals are from his speech, but I only suggest that in the administration of the Poor Law itself you have an immense problem even as it is at present, and the division or diversion of some of its functions to a Health Ministry ought to be a matter of careful and very close consideration.
Moreover, I should like to allude to one distinction which I think has been referred to by some of the speakers, as to the growth of opinion on some of these great subjects. The bulk of the work for the last thirty or forty years carried out by the Local Government Board has been on what one may call public health generally—that is to say, it has attacked the question of health in the mass rather than in the individual; rather on the preventive than on the curative side. That situation has been changing, because during the last few years there is no question that great new powers have been exercised of a distinctly curative nature by the Local Government Board in connection with tuberculosis, venereal disease, and matters of that kind; and incidentally I was rather surprised to hear my noble friend allude to the vast increase in these diseases. I have seen no figures, and I do not know whether he has seen any, which establish the truth of his statement. Anyhow, what I want to point out is this, that before the war, and before public opinion had been stimulated as regards the curative treatment of disease by the war and the great losses we have sustained in the war, there was growing up a feeling, which was reflected also in the administration of the Local Government Board and in our legislation, of the necessity not only for dealing with health and disease in the mass but also in the individual as well.
What I should like to try to get clear is this point as regards the setting up of a Ministry of Health. My noble friend dealt rather scornfully with any one who thought that the creation of a new Ministry was a matter to be considered, and therefore I was led, wrongly, I believe, to think that he proposed to set up a definite Ministry of Health under a definite Minister. Undoubtedly one view of this proposal is that
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there should be a totally new Ministry set up under a separate Minister, to whom all the health duties of the Local Government Board are to be transferred and other duties now discharged by other public authorities. That would leave the Local Government Board as a sort of shell with certain local government duties to discharge, and I suppose certain financial duties as well in connection with loans and matters of that kind. I was rather glad to see from the later portions of the speech of my noble friend that he did not support any view of that kind; and I do not think that view has succeeded in obtaining much support from noble Lords who have spoken to-night. Indeed, I think that would be a deplorable result, because to try and separate local government and the administration of local government from the health question would be, as I think the noble Viscount would say, most deplorable, because his own suggestion for dealing with the matter, so far from diminishing the work of the local government authorities, was that their work should be increased and that more burdens and duties should be put upon them in connection with health and other matters.
If I may be allowed, as an old member of the greatest municipality in this country, and as one, I suppose, who has attended either as a member or as spokesman more deputations to more Ministers than most people, I should say that one would very much regret looking at it from the local authority end, to have a new set of masters or a double set of masters set up to whom one should be responsible and whose criticism one would have to meet. I should like to quote in this connection two resolutions passed by the London County Council in November last on this very subject. These Resolutions were to the effect, firstly, that the functions of a Ministry of Health should not be separated from those of the Department entrusted with the central supervision of local powers, such as those relating to housing, drainage, water supply, and the like, which are closely and essentially connected with the health of the community; and, secondly, that any further powers which may be granted by Parliament with regard to public health should form part of the existing system of local government. I gather that most of those who have spoken are in general agreement that there should be no dissociation, as there really cannot be, between the existing and new health powers

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and local government; that still the local authority should be used as the great instrument for carrying out these complicated powers and duties.
It then becomes, perhaps, rather a question of whether you keep the Local Government Board anyhow—under another name if you like, as the local governing health authority—as a centre of the powers, and add new powers to it, whether drawn from existing authorities or powers, or newly conferred by Parliament. There, I think, we come into what I may call rather difficult and complicated questions. First of all there is the question of the transfer of the powers, or perhaps the transfer of the whole of the Insurance Commission to, I will not call it the Local Government Board, because there has been a criticism of that name, but we will say the Local Government and Health Board, if my noble friend prefers that. The most rev. Prelate told us that it would really be inexplicable to a New Zealander if he were to examine into the way powers are distributed; he would wonder at there not being greater concentration. The most rev. Prelate knows extremely well how things are done in this country and how these different powers arise, in response to public opinion expressed in particular ways at particular times, and find utterance a legislation passed by Parliament. No doubt times do occur when it may be wise to revise all these powers and their distribution, and to consider whether some greater concentration may not be possible or necessary.
May I say just one word on the question of the Insurance Commission? The noble Lord, Lord Sydenham, referred to it, and he suggested that these powers may be at once handed over. Your Lordships are very well aware that these Insurance Commissioners do much more than merely administer medical relief. They have two sides. They administer a series of benefits—the maternity benefits, the sick benefits, and the breakdown benefit—and they also, through a system of panel doctors, local committees, and approved societies, administer the medical benefits. No doubt these powers may easily be transferred to a new central authority, but then my noble friend Lord Sydenham raised a very interesting point. There is a considerable school of thought in this country which thinks that, up to a certain point at least, medical attendance for the great mass of
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the population should be free. If this were decided upon, it is quite clear that the insurance side of medical benefits would drop away, and that either the contributions to insurance would be reduced or the other benefits would be enlarged, as no one would then find it necessary to insure for medical benefits when he could get the benefit free under the other arrangement. I only want to cite this for the purpose of pointing out how closely policy is connected with administration, and how, while you may desire to set up your central authority, you must at the same time consider your policy, and not, as I think was suggested, leave your policy entirely to the new body, because on the constitution of that new body your policy must largely depend.
I do not wish to delay your Lordships too long with details, but I am doing this for a special purpose, because I want to give some idea of the complexity of these matters and of the difficulty of dealing with them in a moment by legislation. I have already alluded to the question of the Poor Law—I will say nothing further about that—and to the great difficulty there would be, first of all, in separating the health functions and the administration of the Poor Law from the other functions connected with what is now to be called, I believe, public assistance. Then there are, of course, a great many other powers of a health character which are administered by other authorities. My noble friend, Lord Sydenham, in dealing with the subject, rather indicated that he thought that perhaps some of these powers should be left with the existing authorities. I should like to allude to one of them, which I think may possibly be considered of the nature of a borderline case, which ought certainly to be closely considered. That is the medical side administered by the Board of Education. I do not know, of course, what are the views of my right hon. friend the Minister of Education on this subject, but this is a very specific form of administration which deals with children in the schools, with certain particular illnesses and diseases incident to children of school age. The Board has, through its medical inspection, an enormous advantage in dealing with these children, because it deals with them as special communities in the schools. Moreover, as regards treatment in clinics and so on, and as regards health in schools, light, ventilation, and often such matters as the size of the printing of books—all those matters are

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really so special to children in schools that it is quite possible that even though you did concentrate in one body all the powers that have been mentioned you might still, I think, require specialists to deal particularly with these problems affecting children in schools. I cite that as an instance of the complexity of the problem and of the necessity of thinking before you say, "Oh! let us give all these particular powers at once to some new authority."
May I allude also to another Department? Possibly your Lordships may forgive me for alluding to it, because as I represent the Department of National Service in this House I feel rather hurt that my noble friend, in enumerating all the authorities that deal with health, should have left out the most important of all, and that is the great system of medical control and organisation which has been set up under National Service. There are now all these great Boards which cover the whole country—there are ten Commissioners and 133 sub-Commissioners—dealing with everyman from eighteen to fifty-one years of age and these Boards have gathered together an amount of knowledge about the health of the community which must be of immense value to whoever deals in the future with questions of public health. These Boards deal with much more, because they not only deal with their proper work of recruiting, for which they were set up, but they examine and keep records of all the men who are sent away from the Army at the discharge centres, and recently they have taken up the work of examining men as regards pensions. So in these three ways, through a network of medical men all over the country, you have set up a system of which, I regret to say, my noble friend seems unacquainted, or I am sure he would have mentioned it as one of the authorities dealing with medical matters. I think, at least, that all the information so gathered will not be valueless when the time comes.
One word, if I may say it, on two other matters which are germane and practical matters, and closely related to this subject. What are you going to do with the Home Office? You might, I suppose, without any great difficulty, take away the administration of the lunatics, and so on, from the Home Office and hand the duty over to the new health authority. I do not know whether the Home Secretary would be ready to do so immediately on his return from
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Holland or not. Take the other question of the administration of factories and the Factory Acts, a matter far more complicated because, no doubt, a great deal of that administration is connected with health and the prevention of disease. But there are innumerable other matters which are administered under the Home Office. Are you going to hand over all these duties to the new authority' or are you going to separate them? If you separate them, are you going to have double sets of inspectors in the same place—a matter which, in another connection, I have heard criticised in this House. Take the Board of Trade and their action and duties with regard to the health of seamen, and also the arrangements made during last year by the Ministry of Munitions for dealing with the health and food mainly of the women who are working so well in the factories. I think we are bound to come, to some extent, to this result, that health administration is indeed all pervading, and it is so all pervading that it is very difficult to concentrate all these duties under one authority, because that one authority would almost be too vast for the administrative power of any single Minister. Once you have arrived at this conclusion you have to agree that the matter is more difficult and complex than it has been treated in another place, and outside. It is a matter which requires close thought and consideration. I do not say it should be relegated to that vague and dismal period "after the war." That may be too late to deal with these things. No doubt the matter should be dealt with at once.
On the general question I must confess to your Lordships—and it is a confession I ought to have made at the beginning—that I am in somewhat of a difficulty in giving you a precise reply to the Motion. This matter is really now under the very close consideration of a Government Committee. They have been sitting already on several occasions, and sit again to-morrow, and if they had been able to come to a decision before it was my duty to address your Lordships on the Motion to-day my task would have been much easier. I come to the precise nature of the Motion which my noble friend has introduced to the House. A committee of the Cabinet are now considering this question very closely, and they are no doubt considering it with a view to action. The question is what should be our attitude here towards the particular

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Motion which the noble Lord has introduced. The words of his Motion are—
"That this House urges His Majesty's Government to introduce at an early date a Bill to constitute a Ministry of Health."
I am not quite sure whether it would be constitutionally right for His Majesty's Government to resist "urging" on the part of either House of Parliament. I think it is hardly possible for it to do so, and I do not think it would be right to offer any opposition to any insistance of that kind. I hope my noble friend will realise—he uses the words, "at an early date"—that in view of the considerations with which I have dealt, and the difficulties and complexities of the whole matter dealing with so many Departments, the words "early date" (though I do not wish to push it over to the period I have alluded to) will be given a very large and liberal interpretation. In these circumstances, if my noble friend will accept those assurances, I think I should be justified is not offering any opposition to his Motion.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

TERRITORIAL FORCE SECRETARIES AND INCOME TAX.
THE EARL OF DARTMOUTH THE EARL OF DARTMOUTH had the following Notice on the Paper—
To ask His Majesty's Government for information with respect to the claim of secretaries of Territorial Force Associations for relief under the Finance Act, 1916, on account of the military character of the work they are engaged on; and to ask whether, in view of the facts—

1. That the Commissioners of Inland Revenue insisted upon a "case" being stated for the decision of the Higher Courts;

2. That a revised case was so stated and forwarded to the Solicitor of the Department on 17th April;

3. That letters were subsequently written on 29th April, 6th May, and 24th May, asking if the revised case was approved;

4. That, as no reply to any of these letters was received, a final letter was written on 3th June asking if the appeal was abandoned;

5. That no reply has been vouchsafed to this letter;

it may be assumed from this continued silence that the case has been abandoned.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I do not propose to repeat the arguments that I
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brought forward when this matter was considered on February 20, but I should like to emphasise the fact that our contention is, that as under Clause 30 of the Finance Act, 1915, certain benefits are contemplated to those engaged in work of a military character, secretaries of Territorial Force Associations are entitled to those benefits. That is our contention.
I understand from the debate which took place that this claim is questioned by the Inland Revenue Department, answered for by the noble Lord opposite. He went on to say that it is not for the War Office to demand Income Tax; that is entirely a matter for the Inland Revenue, and their view is that the duties of secretaries are mainly of a clerical, or secretarial, kind. I venture to suggest that it does not require the King's Bench to tell your Lordships that the work of a secretary is secretarial. What we claim is that the work of the secretaries of Territorial Force Associations is distinctly military in character, and we claim further that it is the War Office which ought to say what is work of a military character. We must bear in mind that the Territorial Force Associations are statutory bodies, set up to give effect to military plans, inaugurated by the military authorities in the War Office for military purposes, and they have to carry them out without any discretion of their own. I am quite sure there is no president, or chairman, of a Territorial Force Association who would not bear me out in saying that without the assistance of these secretaires it would have been impossible for us to do the work we were called upon to do.
Since the debate—I am not going back on the arguments, because they were fully stated on that occasion—what has taken place is this. On February 27 I wrote a letter to Lord Derby, who was then Secretary of State for War, stating distinctly our position. In that letter I emphasised the point that in view of the fact that we, the Council of the Territorial Force Associations, did not consider it fair to put the onus on the shoulder of the individual secretary, we, as a Council, were taking up the question. I gave various reasons, to which I have refereed, and I received subsequently a letter from Lord Derby, written on March 7, in which he proposed a solution of the difficulty. His proposal was that the War Office and the Board of Inland Revenue should draw up a joint case

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to lay before the Law Officers of the Crown for their decision, as the point at issue was really one of law. We were quite prepared to accept that; but subsequently, on April 8, I received another letter from Lord Derby, in which he pointed out that the Board of Inland Revenue, having considered this proposal, found themselves unable to accept it. Meanwhile a case has actually arisen in connection with the claim of a secretary of a Territorial Force Association for the allowance of the special rate of Income Tax. It will be observed that it was owing to the action of the Board of Inland Revenue that the proposal of Lord Derby, then Secretary of State for War, which we were prepared to accept, was turned down.
I understand that there has been a little misunderstanding about my Question. I gather that they have been looking in the Inland Revenue Offices for letters written by myself. Well, they will not find them, because when you transfer your business into the hands of a solicitor you do not continue to take part in the matter yourself, and the corrrespondence which has taken place, as I think must have been made clear from the terms of my Question, has been between the solicitor of the Council (who was the original solicitor of the individual) and the solicitor of the Board. In view of what has taken place, in view of our debate, and in view of the subsequent letters, it appears to me rather an extraordinary thing that no reply should have been received to any of those letters.
The noble Lord, in the course of the debate to which I have referred, said that the matter would be shortly brought before the King's Bench. That debate took place on February 20; to-day is July 18, and I should like to know what interpretation the noble Lord puts upon the word "shortly." We have had reference in the debate that has just taken place to another expression which means the same thing. My only experience of the word "shortly" in connection with a Government Department was an occasion on which I asked a rather important question, and was told that the matter was "under consideration." I waited six months, and wrote again. I was told the matter was under consideration, and that I might shortly expect an answer. I asked further what interpretation I could put on the word "shortly." I got no answer. But I was able to deduce that with a Government Department
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"shortly" means anything between eighteen months and two years.
In this matter the actual amount involved is a very small sum. Nevertheless the secretaries of Territorial Associations are not very wealthy men, and it is a question of principle. To them the question is one of considerable moment; therefore I think that, in view of what has taken place, the matter should not be held up by the Inland Revenue themselves, and that we should receive an answer as to the position in which the matter really stands. I am perhaps inclined to be optimistic, and I have assumed in the last line of my Question that silence gives consent. I do not know whether I am too optimistic or not. If silence is not accepted as consent, might I suggest that in any case the Government should secure that this matter shall be decided by the High Court as one of urgency before the Courts rise for the Long Vacation on August 1; or, failing that, will the Government authorise the payment of Income Tax on the scale appropriate to serving officers without prejudice to the further payment if the High Court's decision should rescind that? If the noble Lord can give me an assurance that the matter is really going to be shortly settled it will give considerable satisfaction to those who are interested.
LORD HYLTON: My Lords, the question that the noble Earl has brought before your Lordships this afternoon is one which was raised in this House on February 20 last. I was instructed at that time to inform the noble Earl that the Department concerned hoped that the case would soon be brought before the Law Courts. As events have turned out, it appears that we were rather too sanguine in hoping that the case would be heard as speedily as at the outset we had anticipated. I will not trouble your Lordships this afternoon by going into the question between the noble Earl and the Department which I represent here (debated on a previous occasion) as to whether the matter is one which concerns the War Office or whether it is one for the Inland Revenue. The noble Earl on that occasion contended, as of course he was quite entitled to do, that it was a question which ought to be decided by the War Office. On the other hand the Treasury, of which I am the humble mouthpiece in this House, held the diametrically opposite view, that it was a Treasury question. If, therefore, the noble Earl has any complaint

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either against Lord Derby or against the present Secretary of State for War, he must address his remonstrances to the present Secretary of State or to my noble friend Lord Stanhope, who, I have no doubt, will give him every assistance they can in the matter. But I have no responsibility for the War Office in this or in any other matter.
The draft case as to whether these officials are or are not entitled to be relieved from Income Tax being deducted from their salary has been the subject of careful consideration both by the solicitor for Colonel Simpson, who I believe is the officer concerning whose salary a test case is being taken, and the solicitors of the Inland Revenue, and this draft case was transmitted, I am informed, to the Clerk of the Commissioners in an approved form on the 11th of this month. The case, I am told, will be brought before the Courts with as little delay as possible, and I hope that my noble friend will be glad to hear that the Crown is willing to bear the costs of the action in the Divisional Court whether the event goes in favour of the Inland Revenue or not. I much regret that delay has taken place in having this case decided. The Treasury are in no way, I believe, responsible for the delay, A legal question is involved, and everybody knows that when lawyers are concerned it is quite impossible, according to the experience of most of us, to got anything speedily settled.
With regard to Question No. 3 of the noble Earl, inquiring about certain letters which were written on April 29, May 6, and May 24, asking if the revised case was approved, I naturally, before coming down to the House, endeavoured to supply myself with as full an answer as I could to the noble Earl, but the Department to which I applied was placed in some dilemma, for it did not appear from the wording of the noble Earl's Question by whom or to whom these letters were written. I wrongly assumed that they had been written by the noble Earl, who was good enough to inform me privately that he had not written them, and I then inquired as to whether letters had been received by the solicitor to the Inland Revenue from Mr. Hunt, who, it appears, is the solicitor of Colonel Simpson. I am told I hat the last letter received by the solicitor to the Inland Revenue from Mr. Hunt was on March 14—that is, prior to the dates mentioned in the noble Earl's Question.
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The Department has hitherto. I am sorry to say, been unable to discover any trace of the later letters. I am bound to tell the noble Earl it is quite out of my power to give him any promise that the case will be heard and decided in the High Court before it rises for the Long Vacation. I have no power whatever to say when the High Court shall hear or decide any particular case.
THE EARL OF DARTMOUTH: With regard to the statement that the noble Lord has made, I stated very clearly in my second Question that the revised case was forwarded to the Solicitor of the Department on April 17, and I do not understand how the date to which he refers comes in, because the information I have received was most definitely that stated in the Question. I went through the revised case myself before it was forwarded. I went through it in the early part of April, and it was certainly forwarded, as far as I know, on the date given, and these letters were subsequently sent on the dates set out in the Question. I do not understand how they have gone amiss, or that the last letter received was one written some tune in March.
LORD HYLTON: I am afraid I can add nothing more to the answer I have given.
THE EARL OF DARTMOUTH: Then as the noble Lord cannot give any definite answer, I shall assume that I can inform these unfortunate secretaries that they can pay the Income Tax at the lower rate, without question.

THE CASE OF DR. NAIR.
LORD LAMINGTON LORD LAMINGTON rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether there is any precedent for debarring an elector of this country who has committed no offence against the law from speaking in public, and whether they will not reconsider their decision prohibiting Dr. Nair from addressing public meetings or writing to the Press.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Question that stands in my name is entirely founded on the notice which appeared in The Times on July 8. I may say I have not had any communication whatever, directly or indirectly, with Dr. Nair, whom I have never met in my life. Put quite briefly, what has occurred is that Dr. Nair, who is a very well-known editor in the Madras

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Presidency in India, many months ago had arranged to come over to this country for private reasons and for medical treatment. He is a very ardent supporter of our system of administration in India, and also, as I understand from writings of his that I have seen, he views with considerable anxiety, if not alarm, the proposals that have just been put before the public, the so-called reforms of our system of administration in India.
According to The Times, when Dr. Nair, arrived in this country, towards the end of June, he was informed that he would not be allowed to address any meeting or to publish his views on these Indian reforms. According to The Times, this was because in April some Indians who strongly favoured Home Rule for India were coining over as delegates to this country to put their views before the public here. They had passports for that purpose, but at the instance of the War Cabinet in this country these passports were cancelled. Among those Indians was Mr. Tilak. In the meanwhile Mr. Tilak who, like his comrades, had been debarred from coming here, had instituted a suit against Sir Valentine Chirol, a well-known writer on Indian affairs, and consequently he has been granted a permit to come and bring his suit against Sir Valentine Chirol. But he equally has been told that he is not to be allowed to indulge in any propaganda on Indian Home Rule.
Dr. Nair's visit to this country was not in any way connected with political propaganda, but certain friends of his apparently had wished him to express his very strong views about the sufficiency of our rule in India and his anxieties concerning these reforms. I can see no justification for putting Mr. Tilak and Dr. Nair on the same plane. Mr. Tilak is well known in India for his pronounced hostility to our rule there; in fact he was described to me to-day by an Indian gentleman as one who is irreconcilable to our rule in India. It is quite true, I saw recently in the Press that he had proposed that if his views on Home Rule were adopted he would collect a great army to support us in this conflict against Germany. Beyond that, I never heard in my life any pretence on the part of Mr. Tilak that he advocated British rule in India in any form. He has been twice convicted for sedition, and sentenced to the Andaman Islands, and it was only on grounds of ill-health that he was not sent there. I have no wish to press my case against Mr. Tilak, but it is very obvious that the Government were afraid of his
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stirring up the people here and doctrinating them with his views of Home Rule. He was regarded as a source of danger.
The Government of India have information at their command which I have not—I have not read Mr. Tilak's utterances in recent years—and I cannot say whether they were right or wrong in their decisions. But I do maintain that it is most unfortunate that a gentleman like Dr. Nair, a supporter of our rule in India, who has not come here for the express purpose of propaganda, should be debarred from expressing his views, his admiration indeed, of our rule in India. Above all, he is an elector for Edinburgh University. I really do not know under what powers the Government propose to debar him from writing or speaking. I would even say, let us by all means allow both Mr. Tilak and Dr. Nair to speak, so that we may hear freely the views of eminent Indians on these very vast and far-reaching proposals that have just been laid before Parliament. For myself, I would welcome the free ventilation of opinion so that we might see to what extent Parliament is justified in passing these new Indian reforms. I would rather have both sides speaking in this country than that a gentleman like Dr. Nair should be debarred from giving expression to his views.
LORD SYDENHAM: My Lords, may I say a few words in support of the plea of my noble friend? Dr. Nair is a loyal Indian moderate, and he is the leader of the non-Brahmins of Southern India who, as Your Lordships know, are in an enormous majority. When the war broke out he gave up a large practice and went with the Expeditionary Forces to East Africa and to Mesopotamia as a medical officer. He did that at a time when the little Home Rule Party led by Mrs. Besant was taking advantage of our difficulties and trying to raise a ferment throughout India. It is true, as my noble friend has said, that two Home Rule deputations have been stopped, one at Colombo and the other at Gibraltar; but the objects of those deputations have really adequate support in this country already. There are two subsidised papers, a considerable Home Rule organisation, and a large number of very facile writers who sometimes show great economy in the matter of truth. There is also a very active speaker who has been going about the country addressing labour meetings and trying to persuade his audiences that

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the Brahmins and the lawyers are the only democrats in India. So that the Home Rule movement is very well represented in this country.
Dr. Nair is the champion of the working-classes, whose interests I am bound to say are neglected in the Report of the Secretary of State. He is, as my noble friend has said, a voter for University College, and I think he can fairly claim to be in a somewhat different position from Mr. Tilak or the deputations. Mr. Tilak, I understand, is coming, and it is natural that the Government might feel reluctant to give any privilege to Dr. Nair and not to give it to Mr. Tilak; but I see no reason why Mr. Tilak should not have complete freedom to speak and to write as he likes when he gets here. The kind of attacks that he has been making in India would be exceedingly ineffective here, and it would be very probable that he would be answered.
Now, the Secretary of State has published this great Report and said that it is to be sent out for general discussion. That Report does not inform this country that all moderate opinion has strongly and in some cases passionately criticised what that Report contains. Is it right that a very able Indian moderate should be prevented from giving his views at a time when views are asked for? Sir Satyendra Sinha, who is a high public official of Bengal, has publicly blessed the Report, although, of course, no other official of any Government would be allowed to do so. Then after a decent interval the Maharajah of Patiala, who could not give his opinion directly on any question relating to British India, and who with his brother chiefs would die rather than let the proposals which the Secretary of State has made be applied in his case, expressed general approval of Sir Satyendra Sinha's views. There have been some other attempts for the creation of an atmosphere which are not fair to the opponents of Mrs. Besant in this country; and I hope that the noble Lord will say that this muzzling order may be relaxed in this country, or at any rate relaxed so far that Dr. Nair may be able, if not to address public meetings, at least to write as he pleases in the papers.
TEE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (LORD ISLINGTON): My Lords, in rising to answer the Question which my noble friend has put on the Paper, I am afraid I cannot maintain that any precise
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precedent can he found for the course of action to be taken with regard to Dr. Nair. The circumstances of Dr. Nair's arrival in this country from India, which I will explain in the course of my answer to my noble friend's Question, are of such a character that I think no English precedents can well be given as relevant. The question of prohibiting an Indian coming to this country from addressing public meetings on the subject of Indian reforms, now that the Report of the Secretary of State and of the Viceroy has been published, is undoubtedly a matter of some difficulty, and I may say that it has received prolonged and careful consideration by His Majesty's Government. The question at issue is complicated by the former decision which His Majesty's Government found themselves obliged to make, before the publication of the Report, in the case of Mr. Tilak.
As the House is aware, some months ago Mr. Tilak and a group of his associates were given passports in India to come to this country to advocate a policy of Home Rule for India. His Majesty's Government when they heard of it decided to prohibit these gentlemen proceeding on their journey here, and instructions were immediately given for those who had already started to be shipped back to India. Subsequently it was found necessary to modify this order so far as Mr. Tilak was concerned in order to permit him to come to this country, if he so desired, to be present at the action for libel which he is bringing against Sir Valentine Chirol, alluded to by my noble friend. In offering this concession His Majesty's Government imposed the strict condition on Mr. Tilak that he should be obliged to confine himself when in this country to the law suit proceedings; that he should not be allowed in any circumstances to take part in public meetings, or to express in public any views on Home Rule for India.
I may say here that it is not yet definitely known whether Mr. Tilak has decided to come to the United Kingdom and to comply with these conditions. I need not justify at any length the restrictions which His Majesty's Government thought it necessary to impose on the grant of a passport to Mr. Tilak. It must be remembered that in India, as indeed in other parts of the Empire, the necessary and reasonable rule has been laid down that passports to proceed to Europe from India and those other countries during the war are re-

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stricted to persons who can show that there is a public or private necessity for the journey. His Majesty's Government decided, and I think your Lordships will agree decided rightly, that there was no public necessity for a group of persons to come here from India for the avowed purpose of conducting a violent agitation in favour of Home Rule for that country, and at the same time for denouncing the Secretary of State's and the Viceroy's inquiries as altogether inadequate and perfunctory in their character. Therefore the passports of Mr. Tilak and his friends were accordingly cancelled.
But when Mr. Tilak represented that he had also an important private object for the journey, and that the embargo would place him at a great disadvantage in the prosecution of his libel action, the Government of India and the Secretary of State for India recognised that he had a legitimate grievance. The question then was whether, if granted a passport to enable him to carry on his action, he should be under restrictions or not as regards political activities and agitations while in this country. If no conditions were imposed there was no reason why the other Home Rule delegates who had been turned back with him should not similarly obtain passports on the pretext of private business, and that would thereby defeat the policy which His Majesty's Government have thought necessary to adopt towards the Home Rule propaganda in this country. The condition which I have mentioned has accordingly been strictly imposed upon Mr. Tilak.
I consider that it would be inopportune for me to attempt to give any detailed description of Mr. Tilak's past career at this particular juncture when his libel action against Sir Valentine Chirol is about to come before the Courts. I will merely say this, that his career and his personality are sufficiently well known throughout the country here and in India, and it is not difficult to imagine the sort of campaign which he would conduct against the Reforms Report and against British rule in India if he were permitted to come here and to have freedom of speech as part of the conditions.
I now come to the case of Dr. Nair. Let me say at starting that I entirely agree with my noble friend that Dr. Nair is a very different gentleman from Mr. Tilak. I have the pleasure of the acquaintance of
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Dr. Nair. I met him when I was in India, and I know that as a resident of Madras he is a gentleman of the highest integrity and loyalty to the Crown; and in any course of action which the Government find it incumbent upon them now to take with regard to Dr. Nair, I wish emphatically to say that it in no sense is a reflection upon the character of that gentleman. Dr. Nair, I understand, is stated to have announced publicly his intention of coming to England to combat the views of Mr. Tilak in the event of Mr. Tilak coming to this country and holding meetings in favour of Home Rule. It is true that now Dr. Nair has come to this country for the purpose of receiving medical advice for his health. He was given a passport by the Government of Madras, and the permit was granted unconditionally. The Secretary of State for India, directly he heard that Dr. Nair was coming to England, felt himself obliged on grounds of justice and fair play to request Dr. Nair to give an undertaking to observe the same conditions of reticence during his visit to England as had been imposed upon Mr. Tilak in the event of his coining here for his law suit. This course had the Prime Minister's approval.
Your Lordships, I trust, will appreciate the difficulty of the situation from the brief history of this case which I have given. Three alternatives were open to His Majesty's Government. They could, in the first place, have reversed the action which they took in refusing to allow Mr. Tilak and his friends to come here on a Home Rule mission, and of course in that event no undertaking would have been asked from Dr. Nair; and there may be arguments, as they have been advanced by my noble friend, for that course of action. However, His Majesty's Government, in view of all the circumstances in which we are engaged in this war, and of the great preoccupation of Government Departments, and especially those which are engaged in this particular branch of the Service, rejected that course after long and careful consideration, because in view of all the circumstances surrounding Mr. Tilak's career and avowed opinions they were not prepared at this juncture to give him freedom to start an agitation.
The second alternative would have been to retain the prohibition on Mr. Tilak and to leave Dr. Nair free to speak. Your Lordships will, I think, see from what I have said and the peculiar circumstances

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of this case that there are and would arise the very strongest objections if that course were taken. Undoubtedly it would have caused many Indians throughout India to have misinterpreted seriously the attitude of his Majesty's Government towards Indian Reform, and would have given a handle to many in that country to contend that the bona fides of His Majesty's Government in their announcement on August 20 of last year was in question.
My Lords, the third alternative, which the Government have found themselves compelled after consideration to adopt, is to continue for the time to impose the prohibition in both cases. I quite admit that the action taken may be open to criticism, but I hope that Dr. Nair will continue to display that loyalty which has characterised him in the past by abiding faithfully and honourably by the under-taking which he gave upon landing in this country, and thereby placing the position of himself and of Mr. Tilak, in the event of that gentleman coming to this country for his own private purposes, on the same footing. I hope you Lordships will agree that at any rate for the time being and at the present juncture, after hearing what I have said, this course, of the three alternatives, presents the least objection.
LORD LAMINGTON: May I, with the permission of the House, ask whether I correctly understand that Dr. Nair was informed before he left India.
LORD ISLINGTON: No, he was given a permit without any conditions imposed, and he was asked on landing here to sign an undertaking.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: My Lords, I cannot help reflecting that we are a most extraordinary people. Because in time of war and of great national emergency the Government think it unwise to allow an avowed enemy of this country to come here and agitate against. British rule in India, fair-play demands that we should not allow an avowed and loyal friend to speak up for the country to which he is proud to belong at the same time. I have no personal experience of India, and therefore can give no opinion from the Indian point of view; but I wholly disbelieve in this principle of government, and I should be sorry by my silence to have connived at it.

GERMANS AS BRITISH CONSULS.
LORD LAMINGTON LORD LAMINGTON had the following Question on the Paper—
To ask His Majesty's Government whether their attention has been called to a statement made by Lord Morris at Brighton on 2nd July to the effect that before the war Great Briitain had 1,000 consuls, of whom 900 were Germans, and to the statement by Lord Beresford in the House of Lards on 8th July that before the war 900 Germans were British consuls, and that 57 of these consuls are now Germans; and whether His Majesty's Government can give the House any official figures to support or to disprove these statements.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the question which I have to ask is simply with reference to certain statements which have been made. I am not sure whether the figures have been given in another place, but I think it is desirable, owing to the agitated state of the public mind about this question of the employment of Germans, that the Government should make some statement which will put before the public the exact state of affairs.
LORD STANMORE: My Lords, the attention of His Majesty's Government has been called to the statement made by Lord Morris at Brighton on July 2 in regard to the number of Germans in the British Consular Service, and to the statement made by Lord Beresford in this House on July 8 on the same subject. The following are the correct figures:—In 1913 there were 1,120 British Consular Officers. Of these, 311 were in the salaried Service and were therefore British subjects. Of the remaining 809 unsalaried officers, 454 were British subjects and 355 of foreign nationality. Of the 355 of foreign nationality, thirty-seven were Germans and thirteen were Austro-Hungarians. On the outbreak of war the appointment of those Consular officers who were of enemy nationality ceased automatically, and there are at present no Consular officers of enemy nationality in the Service.
LORD LAMINGTON: I thank the noble Lord for his statement.

LAND DRAINAGE BILL.
Amendments reported (according to Order).
LORD STRACHIE LORD STRACHIE moved the insertion of a new clause after Clause 5. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Amendment standing in my name is put down to meet the objections which the noble Lord in charge of the Bill raised when my noble friend Lord Lichfield moved a similar Amendment in regard to land drainage. Then Lord Clinton said that he took objection to Lord Lichfield's Amendment to Clause 5, not on its merits, but because it was not in the proper place and did not come within the four corners of the Bill. I think your Lordships will see that, as regards my Amendment, it is in its proper place, because it is a new clause, and, further, that it deals with agricultural land. If your Lordships look at the title of the Bill you will see that it is designed "to amend the Land Drainage Act, 1861, and to make further provision for the drainage of agricultural land." I venture to think that I have met the objections of the noble Lord the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture on those points.
I would remind the House that when we were in Committee on this Bill the noble Lord said—
"In addition, this is a clause which has nothing to do with powers. It has only to do with expenses, and I do not think it would be suitable to put into it any new set of powers. That is the real objection to the Amendment. I recognise the great advantage there would be of getting it done, but I am inclined to think it cannot be done in this way and under this clause."
Now I have proposed a clause which I hope the noble Lord will receive favourably, as he was not against the principle of the Amendment of Lord Lichfield but only said it was not in the proper place and did not deal with agricultural land.
As regards this Amendment, what does it do? It simply says that where it is shown to the satisfaction of the Board of Agriculture that drainage works are necessary for the effectual draining of some particular land, then the Board may, if they think fit, authorise the local authority to drain that particular area. It does not mean great drainage schemes, but only that the local authority may, in cases where an owner or one or two owners are neglecting their duty and flooding their neighbours' land—and perhaps, in some cases, flooding a small town—be able to secure from the Board of Agriculture permission to remove the obstruction, cleanse the drains, and allow a free passage to the water and so stop the flooding. In these days, when we are always told that we are so anxious to
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have more land under the plough, I suggest that this is one of the clauses which would be of great assistance, because I am sure the noble Lord is aware that frequently objection is taken to ploughing up land on the ground that it is constantly flooded. At the present moment there is no power for any local authority outside the drainage area to drain any of the land which is flooded, or to take proceedings against obstructing owners or tenants.
The Amendment which I propose is not compulsory or mandatory, and the noble Lord cannot object to having the powers to allow the local authority to make provision in their area, if the Board of Agriculture think fit. The local authority will not be anxious to do it, because they have to pay for it, unless there is good cause and reason. Surely in these days, when we are all anxious that land should be cultivated in the best possible manner, it is a right thing for the Board of Agriculture to be willing to assist in that matter. I hope the noble Lord will not refer me to Clause 16 of the Bill. Although it is quite true there is power in Clause 16, it is a different thing from sending officials from Whitehall to look after the matter. The local authority would never ask, and the Board would never give power to the local authority, unless the authority made out a good case, and showed that it was in the interests of the locality to drain an area which is outside the drainage area and could not otherwise be drained.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 5 insert as a new clause:
" Board may authorise local authority or highway authority to execute works.
". Where it is shown to the satisfaction of the Board of Agriculture that drainage works are necessary for the effectual draining and protection of agricultural land situate within the area of a local authority the Board may authorise the local authority or the highway authority, as the case may be, to undertake the drainage works themselves and may direct how and out of what fund or rate the expenses of the execution or maintenance of such drainage works may be defrayed."—(Lord Strachie.)
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (LORD CLINTON): My Lords, the noble Lord has told us that the Amendment which he has put before your Lordships was—I think he said—the same as the Amendment put down by the noble Earl, Lord Lichfield.
LORD STRACHIE: I did not say the same—altered to meet your objections.
LORD CLINTON: Altered to meet my objections. I have not got the Amendments with me, but I do not recognise the similarity between them. As far as I recollect—I may be wrong—Lord Lichfield's Amendment asked for powers for two authorities—the local authority under the Public Health Act, and the highway authority. I think that was the case. Now the noble Lord's Amendment is a very wide one. It gives powers to any local authority, from parish councils upwards, and including the highway authority, I suppose, to undertake drainage works in their area. If your Lordships would be good enough to refer to Clause 5 of the Bill you will see that power is given to two authorities—the local authority under the Public Health Act, and the highway authority—to contribute to the expenses of the execution or maintenance of drainage work where, in the opinion of the Local Government Board, it is advisable for them to do so, either in the interests of public health or the better enjoyment of the highways. I note that clause because I should like to say this. Those powers were very severely criticised in another place on the ground that the authorities might be executing works and improving the property of private owners at the expense of the rates. It was amended to some extent to get over that difficulty, because the Local Government Board had to be consulted and to say that the public benefit derived would be sufficient to justify the expenditure. The noble Lord's proposal is a very wide extension of those powers. It is that any local authority should do any drainage work for agricultural land, and that they do not want the sanction of the Local Government Board.
LORD STRACHIE: That of the Board of Agriculture would be required.
LORD CLINTON: I think they should require the sanction of the Local Government Board, but they do not ask for the Board of Agriculture to say that the cost of their work is not more than the benefit they do. If there was criticism against the smaller powers of Clause 5, I think it would be difficult to get this clause passed. The noble Lord speaks also as if he would have compulsory powers to make owners do their duty. I do not think there is any
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thing in this clause which would enable him to go on to an owner's property without his consent. I do not think there is, and, if there is not, of course that fact would very largely curtail any use to which these powers could be put. Supposing it is, as I have some idea, that this is really for the purpose of highway authorities, or some authority of that kind, to enable them to drain their roads, then obviously the Amendment should go into their particular Act and not in this Land Drainage Bill; and I suggest to the noble Lord—he does not wish me to refer to Clause 16 and so I will not do so, although it is one of the clauses under which the local authorities should get power to get the drainage done—I suggest to him that under Clause 1 there is power for the county councils to apply to the Board of Agriculture. Subsection (2), I think it is.
LORD STRACHIE: Drainage areas?
LORD CLINTON: Transferred to them. Again, there is power under Clause 2 to petition the Board to have a drainage area formed, or the drainage area extended; and then, lastly, there is power in Clause 16. It appears to me that these powers are a great deal more than was asked for originally, and I regret I am not able to accept the Amendment.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
LORD CLINTON: The first Amendment standing in my name is put in at the request of the noble Earl, Lord Ancaster, and some other noble Lords, during the Committee stage, object being more clearly to define Clause 16, and show that it dealt only with small areas.
Amendment moved—
Clause 16, page 8, line 25, after ("of the works") insert ("which shall not exceed an amount equal to five pounds for each acre in the area to be improved, or five thousand pounds in all").—(Lord Clinton.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD CLINTON: The other Amendments are all drafting, and I will move them together.
Amendments moved—
Clause 19, page 10, line 19, after ("Majesty") insert ("in right of the Duchy of Lancaster or")
Clause 19, page 10, line 21, after ("writing") insert ("of the Chancellor of the Duchy or")
Clause 19, page 10, line 24, after ("said") insert ("Chancellor of the Duchy")
Clause 19, at end insert as a new subsection:
"(2) Nothing in this part of this Act affects prejudicially any estate, right, power, privilege or exemption vested in or enjoyed by the Duke of Cornwall or the possessor for the time being of the Duchy of Cornwall."
Clause 21, page 10, line 37, after ("shall") insert ("subject as hereinbefore expressly provided").—(Lord Clinton.)
On Question, Amendments agreed to.

THE PLUM CROP.
LORD HINDLIP LORD HINDLIP rose to ask His Majesty's Government—(1) What is the estimated average crop of plums in the United Kingdom this year. (2) By what Department was the estimate made. (3) Is it the intention of the Ministry of Food to fix prices for plums on the estimated crop of the United Kingdom, adopting the same system of average as in the case of small soft fruits of the 1918 Crop.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, at this time of the evening I will not detain your Lordships more than two or three moments. My reasons for putting down this Question are that the growers, many of them interested in the plum and apple crop, were not very satisfied with the "brief" that was furnished by the Ministry of Food to the Lord Privy Seal, and are much agitated as to the way in which they are to he treated as regards the plum and apple crop by the Ministry of Food. They are not asking for outrageous prices, but only for fair treatment. May I draw the noble Earl's attention to my third Question? On the last Occasion the noble Earl said that the Ministry of Food were going to adhere to their methods of averaging the crop all over the United Kingdom, and that it was impossible to have one price for Worcestershire and one for Middlesex. I do not want to go into that, but in the case of potatoes, both as regards price and yield, it has been done.
Let me also draw the noble Earl's attention to the statement he made, which concerned the plum crop as well as the small fruit crop during the debate a week or ten days ago. He said that according to the calculations of the Ministry of Food small growers were allowed a profit of £10 per acre. I think, if the noble Earl went into the figures given in his own speech, he would see that the Ministry of Food were putting him in a rather difficult position by making him say that a profit of £10 per acre was a reason
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able profit. Consider the case of a man with five, or six, or seven, acres of land, out of which he has to get his livelihood. He is debarred by a Government Department from making more than £10 an acre; say £50, £60 or £70 a year, when wages are 30 s. a week. The noble Earl will agree with me that such a statement will be badly received by the small growers.
I do not know whether I ought to ask the noble Earl this question. I have not given him notice, and therefore I shall not be disappointed if he tells me he cannot answer. I should like to know whether it is possible that any producer of fruit has been on these Committees which fix prices. I am not asking this in regard to the prices of fruit, but I think producers of fruit in the country will be anxious to know that there is some producer of fruit on the Committees which fix prices.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: My Lords, I do not desire to re-open matters which were dealt with the other day. When I said it was impossible to fix county prices I was referring to specified classes of soft fruit. My noble friend will see, from the terms of my answer, that this does not apply in the same way to plums. With regard to the composition of the Committees, I fancy that growers of fruit are under a needless misapprehension. Growers are represented on these Committees. They are not composed solely of jam buyers, as my noble friend suggested the other day, and the Reports in question are obtained by the Ministry of Food and the three Boards of Agriculture, who combine and agree upon a figure which they consider to be just. These Reports, so far as plums are concerned, I regret to say, show that the crop of this season, as far as many varieties are concerned, is a total failure, and there is no intention of attempting to compute the average crop of all varieties taken together, and to fix a flat maximum price for plums. I am not yet in a position to give any estimate of the yield of any particular variety, and I cannot answer the first Question for the moment, at any rate. I have already answered the second Question; that the estimate is made by the three Boards of Agriculture in conjunction with the Ministry of Food. As at present advised, the Food Controller only intends to fix prices for those varieties of plums of which there is a substantial crop, and which are suitable for manufacture into jam. In fixing these prices the general

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principles adopted in the case of the soft fruit this season will be followed, and I am not aware that there is any other method by which the interests of the producer and consumer can both be adequately protected.
LORD HINDLIP: May I take it that the answer refers to special plums grown in the south of England?
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: Certainly. The Pershire plum is one of those which comes into the second category that I mentioned, because it is a first-class plum for jam purposes.

WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION (SILICOSIS) BILL.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
VISCOUNT SANDHURST: My Lords, I move that the House resolve itself into Committee. I promised on this Motion to give my noble and learned friend Lord Buckmaster an explanation on two points. My noble and learned friend is not here, but I feel bound to carry out the undertaking. The first point was whether this matter could not be dealt with under the industrial diseases provisions of the existing Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906. I explained the reasons partially last night. The main reasons are the slow growth of the disease, and the difficulty of diagnosis. It takes so long for the disease to develop. A man may work in the industry for twenty years or more before he becomes incapacitated, and it is considered that it would be unfair to throw the whole burden of the compensation upon the man's last employer, for under the existing Act you can only put the liability on the man's last employer and any other employers who employed him in the same occupation within the twelve months preceding his incapacity. Special arrangements, therefore, are deemed necessary to spread the liability fairly over all the employers, and this can best be done by having a general compensation fund to which all employers are required to contribute.
Further, as the disease comes on very slowly and the man can go on working for a long time after it first begins to affect him, there would be a danger of some men losing their employment when they
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began to show symptoms of the disease in order that the payment of compensation might be avoided. This danger was recognised by the Industrial Diseases Committee which reported in 1907, and which considered the question of the extension of the existing Act to this disease (among others) shortly before the Act of 1906 was passed. The difficulties of diagnosis make it necessary to have a much more elaborate system of medical supervision and examination than is provided for in the Workmen's Compensation Act, and these arrangements I explained yesterday. In view of these and other considerations, it is considered desirable to deal with each of the industries liable to the disease separately by means of the special schemes which I explained on Second Reading.
The second point I understood was, "What would happen, if the Fund was depleted, in regard to compensation for the man?" The reply is that as long as the industry remains solvent the fund will be solvent too. The scheme will require the employers to make such contributions as are necessary in order to keep the fund solvent, and, as I mentioned yesterday, it is hoped by careful medical examinations and by exercising the power of suspension gradually to eliminate the disease from the industry, and the charge for compensation therefore will be heaviest in the earliest years when we are dealing with the cases which have been accumulated in the past.
Lord Buckmaster was apprehensive lest the Bill should take away or impair rights which a diseased workman might have under the existing Compensation Act. A workman suffering from this disease would have no right under the existing Act until the Act had been extended by Order of the Home Secretary to this disease. As I explained last night, it was decided not to recommend that it should be so extended. I think that these are the answers to the questions asked. Of course, it would have been easy to do it by Order if such a means had been adequate.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Viscount Sandhurst.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
Bill reported without amendment.

THE FOURTH OF AUGUST.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD FINLAY): My Lords, I beg to move—
"That this House do attend at St. Margaret's, Westminster, on Sunday, the 4th of August, being the fourth anniversary of the Declaration of War, to invoke the Divine Blessing on our just cause."
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

PRIVATE BILLS.
[From Minutes of July 16.]
The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House, That the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificates from the Examiners that the further Standing Orders applicable to the following Bills have been complied with:

Rotherham Corporation.

Sheffield Corporation (Consolidation).

Lancaster Corporation.

Also the Certificates that no Standing Orders are applicable to the following Bills:

Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Order (No. 2).

Electric Lighting Provisional Orders.

And also the Certificates that the Standing Orders applicable to the following Bills have been complied with:

Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (No. 1).

Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders.

The same were ordered to lie on the Table.

MORECAMBE CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments.
SMITH ESTATE BILL. [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL.
Reported, without amendment.

BELFAST HARBOUR BILL.
Reported, without amendment.
House adjourned at five minute, before eight o'clock.