§ LORD PARMOOR rose to call attention to a statement by the Chairman of the Forestry Commission, Lord Clinton, on the timber supplies of Great Britain, and the decline of private woodlands. The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, I desire in no hostile spirit to draw attention to a statement made by the Chairman of the Forestry Commission, Lord Clinton, on the timber supplies of Great Britain, and the decline of private woodlands. The statement was made by Trim in a speech upon the timber supplies of Great Britain delivered to the Federation of Home-Grown Timber Merchants Associations. In that speech there are two notes of warning, about which I desire to ask further questions this afternoon. On a question of this kind, with which many of your Lordships are cognisant, it is a great advantage that we have the head of the Forestry Commission in this House. We have also in this House, though he cannot be present to-day, his predecessor in that office, Lord Lovat.
§ Before coming to the actual terms of the speech to which I wish to draw attention quite shortly, I think it necessary to say a word or two on the history of the matter to see exactly how we 435 stand. I am indebted to the noble Lord opposite, Lord Clinton, for sending me a most interesting paper on forestry matters and also the seventh Annual Report of the Forestry Commissioners. I think we may start from this point in considering modern developments of forestry in this country. The Sir Francis Acland Commission, which I think was appointed in 1916, made a Report and an Act of Parliament was passed in 1919. That Act constituted the Forestry Commission and also laid down a programme. You must have a programme for some distance ahead in these forestry matters. The Commission laid down a programme for ten years. It is rather remarkable and shows the importance of this point, that I find it stated that in this country we only have a sufficient supply of timber ourselves for three weeks requirements, and that seems to be due to two things: first, the insufficiency of our public forests, and secondly, the state of decline or decay into which our private woodlands are falling.
§ The Report of the Forestry Commission for the year ending September 30, 1926, shows that up to that date under the forestry scheme 68,000 acres were planted by the Forestry Commission. That has since been increased to 114,000 acres up to a certain date, and for the last two years there has been an average of 23,000 acres planted per year. That is no small achievement, although it is hardly adequate for the supply that we require. The result, if I may put it quite shortly, is that of the 150,000 acres contemplated in the ten-year period 140,000 acres will have been planted during that period. In addition there has been expenditure on research and training, and, what is extremely important, the provision of 700 small holdings in connection with the timber scheme. I regard it as a matter of very great importance that these small heldings should be provided, because a forester's work does not take up the whole of his time and it is right from every point of view that he should be at the same time a small holder. There is also a Reconstruction Commission or Committee. I am not sure I appreciate what that is, but apparently it has laid down a long programme.
§ LORD CLINTONThat is the same Committee as the Acland Committee.
§ LORD PARMOORI am much obliged to the noble Lord for telling me that. It has laid down a long programme which contemplates the planting of no less than 1,750,000 acres in 80 years. It is not necessary to go into the actual figures, but a large portion would be planted in the first 40 years. So greatly has this Forestry Commission extended its work in various directions that at the present time it has as many as 3,000 men in its employment, so that it is giving much employment in connection with its duties. The noble Lord opposite, Lord Clinton, in the speech to which I have referred, stated that the extensive work which has been done by the Forestry Commission indicated that in the future still greater progress should be required. I think the amount allocated by the Treasury for the first ten years was £3,250,000, a sum which, as I understand, has been to a large extent utilised in the work already done.
The first Question which I wish to ask the noble Lord, arising out of the speech he made, is whether he is contented with the prospects of public planting by the Forestry Commission in the future. I am assuming for the moment that the ten-year scheme has been practically and substantially carried out, and I want to ask whether, having regard to the public interests and public requirements, he is satisfied with the prospect in respect to finance and other matters with which the Forestry Commission is confronted. There is no doubt whatever that you must take a long outlook in these forestry matters and look far enough ahead if you want to avoid a timber famine. The noble Lord himself has pointed out that there are enormous resources in our Dominions. That is what he calls Imperial forestry. I do not go into that topic this afternoon, but one assumes that there is that large background for our timber supply. I believe that we import more timber than any other country and that we get a very large supply of imported timber from our Dominions as well as from other countries. I was almost startled by the figures which the noble Lord gave—I have no doubt they are perfectly accurate—in regard to Imperial forestry, and to find the enormous areas of the potential supply of timber that there are if they are properly looked after. Of course, no timber supply can 437 be relied upon unless it is properly looked after and proper forestry conditions are applied. That is the first matter, and I think I have said sufficient upon it, in order that the noble Lord may give his answer. As I have said, I do not raise the matter in any hostile spirit. I am glad to say this is a matter in which we may all be agreed.
The second point to which I wish to refer is one which, in the report that I have, is termed "Lord Clinton's warning." It deals with the timber supply at home. It appears both from what he said, and from the seventh Annual Report of the Forestry Commissioners, in 1926, that the outlook requires very serious consideration. According to that Report, the actual timber area is just under 3,000,000 acres—2,958,630 acres—but less than half of that acreage is the only source of anything like an effective supply of timber for public usage. The whole area which is really useful for the purposes of timber supply is under 1,500,000 acres—1,416,870 acres. Lord Clinton points out, quite rightly, that the causes which have brought about this decline in our timber supplies are likely to continue. He points to taxation, poverty of owners, and the breaking up of big estates. I should like to add one further cause from my own experience. Lord Clinton knows the position of the woods in which I am personally interested. Within a comparatively short distance of them is one of our great consuming centres, High Wycombe, which is a great centre for furniture making. It is not always easy, however, to get a market for sale on ordinary terms, simply because you are near a town of that kind. What I find is that portions of woods are constantly being sold in my district, nearly always with the intention of felling all the timber upon the ground. They are bought as a speculation, and immediately they are bought they are cut to pieces.
Lord Clinton has been good enough to have a look at my woods. I have struggled to preserve the character of the woods, but it is not easy for the reason that it means postponing profits for some indefinite period. A scheme which was brought forward from Oxford University by a man with very skilled knowledge of forestry matters, Mr. Bourne, would really have put any prospect 438 of profit long beyond one's great-grandchildren. You cannot postpone, or at any rate it is very difficult to postpone sufficiently the profit you are likely to obtain if you are to keep your woods in an efficient condition. Woods are like a bank. If the woods are sufficiently stocked with timber, you have something to cut against, and you are in the same position as a man with a large balance at the bank. But with woods as I know them in a beech district, if they are to be preserved you must postpone any hope of profit for a considerable time. I do not say you will get no profit, but it will be exceedingly small in relation to the real value of the woods. I know woods which, if cut down, are worth £50 to £60 per acre, which is a very large sum, but if you attempt to deal with them as they ought to be dealt with, the profit is practically nil. The cost of looking after them is very nearly equal to any revenue derived from them. I recollect that years ago Lord Bathurst gave evidence before a Royal Commission in reference to his estate at Cirencester. He had over 1,000,000 trees worth £1 each, but., owing to the expense of keeping up the roads and keeping the woods in order, they were an actual out-of-pocket expense to him every year.
What is to be done in these circumstances? I know that the word "Nationalisation" is supposed to have some special vice about it, but I would put forward the suggestion that if you really want to preserve your forests, if you want to have your timber supplies conserved, you must put them under public control and public ownership. We are all familiar with the great forests on the Continent. Nearly all of them, I think, are under public ownership. The great majority are controlled in the public interest. And take the case of Canada. If I am rightly informed, there is a larger supply of timber in Canada than in any other given area in the world. I should think that nearly half the timber supply of the world is there. The Canadian Government do not sell the land. They let the timber on it. That is to say, they keep the freehold of the forests, and they have power to use them in such way as they think best in the future. It is really melancholy that our woods should be depleted to the extent that they are. I would like to read a sentence from Lord Clinton's speech. He said: 439
If the nation is to have proper security for its timber supplies in the future, the Government must go in for afforestation on a much larger scale than at present.He went on to say that nominally there were 3,000,000 acres of private woodlands, but that not half of that acreage was productive. I think that is everyone's knowledge.There is one other point about which I want to ask the noble Lord. There are large areas of what I would call vacant land in this country; that is, uncultivated land. Some of it, no doubt, is quite unsuited for planting trees. I might give peat areas as an illustration. The Question I wish to ask is whether the Forestry Commission are making experiments as to the character of trees which could grow and would be likely to flourish in some of the waste areas in Scotland, for instance. That is obviously very important as regards our future timber supply. I do not propose to say more, because I think I have indicated what the position is, and have shown that Lord Clinton's warning was thoroughly well justified. To sum up my three points, they are: firstly, increased afforestation; secondly, how to deal with the devastation of our private woodlands; and thirdly, experiments as to the conditions under which timber can be grown. I will not use the expression "profitably grown." We must grow it if we can. Those are the points which I hope the noble Lord will be able to answer.
§ LORD CLINTONMy Lords, I am very much obliged to the noble and learned Lord for the way in which he has addressed himself to this subject, and I am grateful to him for the terms in which he has spoken of the work of the Forestry Commission, all the more as they come from one who is himself, as he has told us, a forester on a considerable scale. I know that he is not only very closely interested personally in his own woodlands but has a very good knowledge of the business side of forestry. I like to think, particularly having regard to the political Party which he represents, that he regards with some sense of security the land and forests of this country, for he has adopted for his beech woods a very modern system—a scientific rotation of 160 years. I cannot hope—perhaps he would not wish it—that he will himself be there to reap the harvest, but I do trust very sincerely that there may be 440 some of his own name, at all events, who will get some profit out of his very large expenditure on woodlands.
The noble Lord has dealt mainly with a speech—it was a very minor matter—which I delivered at a public luncheon of the Home Grown Timber Merchants Association. There was really nothing new in that speech. It dealt with matters on which most of us have been well informed for some years and which are fully set forth in the Annual Report of the Forestry Commission for the year ending September, 1926, to which the noble Lord alluded. But it does represent, to my mind, a very disquieting state of things—not perhaps quite so bad as the noble Lord has represented in one particular, because I think, misled by a figure, he told us that we have only three weeks' supply of timber in this country. What I think we said (I have not checked this) is that the increment of the timber in this country is equivalent to only three weeks' supply. We have not, of course, a very large supply, but it is not quite so bad as that figure would appear to suggest.
The only doubt that I have as to the correctness of the extracts from my speech that the noble Lord read was when he quoted me, I think, as saying that not one half of the timber land in this country was productive. What I imagine that I said, or ought to have said, was that it was not fully productive. A great deal of the 3,000,000 acres of forest land is productive in a sense. About one-half of it is high forest, mainly conifers, which I think may be regarded generally as fully productive. The other half is nowadays not productive, from various causes, largely through changes in trade and the changed demand for timber in our present markets. Probably all of your Lordships are aware that the oldest system of forestry that we know of is that of standards with coppice. We class that as only partially productive, but it was a very useful system in the days when it was carried on, a hundred or more years ago, because that low timber, with small short boles and spreading branches giving knees and crooks, was of enormous value for the shipbuilding purposes for which it was intended.
Consider also the value of the coppice. I can remember, as no doubt the noble Lord can remember, that thirty and forty 441 years ago coppice was a very valuable part of a woodland estate, because it produced bark for tanning purposes, for which there was a very big demand, and also a good deal of material for colliery purposes and for minor industries such as hurdle making. Nearly all that has gone out, and the only really valuable coppice that we have now is the chestnut coppice, which is still in very considerable demand for unclimbable fences. Collieries require a good deal of coppice, but unfortunately, owing to the very regrettable and, I am afraid, unavoidable increase of railway rates, this coppice cannot be brought from any distant place to the collieries. Accordingly we class this as only partially productive.
The serious part of this census of woodlands, as we term it, is the extent of the devastated area—that is to say, the 500,000 acres which at one time or another have been felled, partially through the War and partially through causes connected with taxation and Death Duties, which are apparent to the noble Lord's mind. They have been cut and are not being replanted. This is, of course, a very serious matter. The Commission are dealing with those areas as they come to them. They can in many cases be bought at a low price, but of course they are not all suitable for the work of the Commission. To begin with, the areas are in many cases too small for us to deal with (because the ordinary piece of woodland in this country is frequently very small) and we desire so far as we can to deal with the larger areas. Many of them are too far from our centres to be in any way economic in their working. But the Commission are quite alive to the importance of getting these areas, and they have already purchased a considerable quantity of them.
While the census of woodlands brings out the position of the forests in this country, there is another census which we have not yet published but the figures of which are in my mind. This shows how the home forests are being worked at this moment. We find that about 55,000,000 cubic feet are being produced from forests at home, and that means, roughly, the felling of something like 25,000 acres, while the area which is being annually planted is about 12,000 acres. Accordingly there must be a steady annual diminution even of the small forests that we have in this country. In 442 miniature that is typical of what is going on all over the world. The whole world, to-day, is cutting into its capital of timber. Reports that we have received from our correspondents, mainly on the American continent, which is the great supplier of soft-wood timber, the timber most required for industries now, show definitely, in each of the States or areas, the expectation of life of its forests. It is alarmingly short.
But when I speak, as I have often spoken, of the danger of a world shortage, I do not wish to rely upon any computation of the period of life. I rely upon the absolutely certain fact that, day by day and year by year, the world is cutting into its capital and is not replanting or regenerating to anything like a sufficient amount. Accordingly some day or another, whether it be soon or late, that capital will be exhausted and we shall be in very great danger of a serious shortage, in fact of a famine, unless States really take upon themselves the responsibility of looking far enough forward to provide the timber that is required. In many countries on the Continent of Europe States took this matter in hand more than a century ago, and, although there are very few European countries that are themselves independent of foreign wood, yet they have large areas which, no doubt, in a difficult time would at all events enable them to exist for some years until further supplies had been created.
The noble Lord's remedy, I think, is some form of nationalisation of timber; that is, that the State should take over the whole control. He will agree with me, I think, that the main objects of any forest policy are, first, to preserve and to increase the national resources in timber; secondly, to provide timber to supply our own industries, and to have a pool, or fund, or capital of timber, on which you may rely in case of emergency, when either timber cannot be brought from abroad or there is such a shortage as I have suggested. In addition there is the more domestic concern, that it is already the work of the State to employ a considerable amount of labour, which will be considerably increased as the forests get beyond the planting stage and are being exploited and the timber is being used for our own commercial and industrial purposes Those are the main grounds on which a nation would naturally 443 go in for a forest policy. Those objects are to be reached, I am going to suggest, in three ways—by State nationalisation, as was suggested by the noble Lord, or, under happier circumstances, by the private owner, the method on which we relied before the War and before heavier taxation came in, or by a combination of the two forms of ownership. That is the policy which we are adopting to-day. That policy is not confined to this country. I think the noble and learned Lord implied a little too much when he suggested that in European countries the bulk of the woodlands are in the hands of the State.
§ LORD PARMOORI do not know that used the word "bulk," but a large portion of it.
§ LORD CLINTONThat, of course, is correct, but we still have the combination of two methods in every European country. I have no knowledge of the newer nationalities which have arisen since the War, but in the older nations which have forest policies of their own, worked upon practical, scientific and very intensive lines, I think not more than 50 per cent. of the forest land is in national hands, and in most of them a great deal less. Some, of course, of the remainder is communal, which amounts to very much the same thing, but a large portion of the remainder is in private ownership. It is evident that these nations, which are very skilled in forest work, do rely upon the assistance of the private owner, because they do give the private owners considerable inducements to plant. On the other hand they put pretty heavy restrictions upon them, in the way of restrictions upon cutting immature timber and alienating land from forest, and orders for compulsory planting. In return for that they give them, in many cases, entire remission of taxation for periods of immaturity, and very frequently a supply of plants at small cost, or free. So we have throughout Europe, where forest policy is practised more than anywhere else, generally speaking a combination of State ownership and private ownership with State assistance to the private owner. We go some way in that direction ourselves, because we give grants to private individuals under certain conditions and supervision, and there are also certain advantages which are given to forest land in the 444 direction of Death Duties. Thus we do recognise that private forests are to the advantage of the State, and should be carried on. Of course they are an advantage to the State, because they are working in the exact direction which we require, and that is to increase the timber supply of the country.
The noble and learned Lord, I think, would like to take forest land out of the hands of private owners and put the full burden of carrying it on upon the State. I do not believe there is the least advantage in doing that, at all events at the present moment. The noble and learned Lord must not forget that we, the Forestry Commission, are the only nationalisers in the country at the present moment. We are the only practical nationalisers, and we have nationalised half a million acres, and are working that land for the State, but we have never contemplated that there would be any advantage in buying up existing forests that are being worked by the owners themselves. The present work in private forests is very good indeed. There has been an enormous improvement in forest methods and management during the last quarter of a century, and it would be a misfortune, rather than an advantage, to the State to do away with this carrying on of forests by private individuals. We have plenty of work to do outside privately-owned forests. We have no difficulty in getting land at a price, we have no difficulty in getting plants, and we can buy as many acres and plant as many acres as the State will give us money to deal with, and we can do the work, in my opinion, very much better in that way, and at greater advantage, than by spending what would be a stupendous sum, because I presume that the noble and learned Lord contemplates that we should pay for this privately-owned land.
§ LORD PARMOORI certainly do.
§ LORD CLINTONWhat it would cost I do not know, but at a rough guess I may say £100,000,000. If you apply that money, or even a fraction of it, in the way in which we are working now you will plant up much more than 3,000,000 acres, and as forest land becomes bare and devastated we can always purchase without going outside. Under our present methods we are annually increasing 445 the country's forest area, while under the noble and learned Lord's method we should only be buying up existing forest land, and not be increasing it. The noble and learned Lord asked me what we were doing with peat land—with entirely unproductive land. It is a most difficult matter to deal with. Those lands have presumably at one time been under forest. Those forests have disappeared, and the land has lost its forest condition, and it will take a long period to bring it back. We believe it can be brought back, and we are conducting many hundreds of experiments in different areas. Some of them already show results which make us very hopeful that we may be able to apply them on a large scale. All forest experiments are matters of a long period, and I would not like to hold out hopes which may not be fulfilled, although in our minds there are appearances that there are methods of dealing with this class of land which will make it possible to plant it.
One Question which the noble and learned Lord put to me, and which I have not answered, is whether I am contented with the prospects of the future with regard to finance. I would not like to say I am contented, because I have not the remotest idea what are the prospects of the future; but I know that the matter is under the careful consideration of the Government. In fact, we have placed before them perfectly definitely all the facts of which I have spoken to-night and many others, and I hope it will be recognised that while the position at the time when the actual Report of the Reconstruction Committee was published showed the necessity for a planting programme by the State, the facts that we have come to know since then—one of them the position of the home forests, the other the little reliance we can place upon permanent importation from abroad—may lead the Government to decide that more assistance should be given. I am myself quite confident that the forest policy is here to stay, and will remain whatever Party is in power, and I am equally confident that we shall be allowed to go on, I think at a greater speed at all events than we have been going on in the past. In my view, that is very necessary. Whether any Government will see the matter in the light in which 446 I see it, and will provide the sums which are necessary really to create the great national forests which I hope to see in time, is a matter of doubt. The demand for economy on all sides is very great now, and is bound to impress itself upon every Government. All I can say is that, while I hope for the best, I am confident that the policy will remain, and will be more vigorously pursued, but it will be for the Government to state, as I hope they will do this year, what the future of forestry will be during the next ten-year period.
§ LORD LAMINGTONMy Lords, my noble friend has very amply refuted any idea that complete nationalisation of the woodlands of this country would be desirable. Usually the noble Lord opposite and those who share his political views advocate the nationalisation of things which are going concerns and which are admittedly prosperous, but, as he himself said, the production of timber in this country is a very losing game, certainly for the private owner. And, as Lord Clinton mentioned the private owner is under a very great disability here, owing to his having to pay heavy taxes and Death Duties. State competition with private owners appears to me very unfair. I think the noble Lord, Lord Clinton, indicated in his remarks that private ownership of woods is far more desirable than State ownership; and one of his colleagues admitted that to me in private conversation. Here I must say that if we are to have this afforestation scheme there is no body of men in this country more competent to deal with it than the noble Lord and his colleagues on the Forestry Commission.
But I confess that the production of timber in this country, as compared to the demand, is a mere fleabite, and I have not the high estimate that most people have of the value of our own woods. If any of your Lordships would ask a carpenter what woods he wants to work with, whether foreign or homegrown, you would find he would invariably reply "foreign." Even foreign pit props are preferred by the miner to home-grown pit props, because the wood is lighter, better grown and freer from knots. To give one instance of the preference for foreign woods, I remember the Speaker's Chair being presented to 447 the Canadian Parliament some few years ago. I said to somebody who had been responsible for the execution of the work: "Of course in this case you have used home-grown wood for making this chair," but he admitted that it was made from foreign-grown oak. Anybody who looks at our woods, and compares them with the woods on the Continent, will see how much better, how much more valuable, is the wood grown abroad. A few favoured localities, I admit, are an exception to the rule; but in the main trees cannot be so well grown here as abroad.
I attribute that to two reasons. One is that we are so exposed to constant storms in these islands, and the other is the absence of hot summers to ripen the wood. Even countries lying further north than this country, which are not exposed to the constant winds which we have, owing to the Gulf Stream, are better placed in this respect. Therefore I am not one of those violent optimists who think that this country is going to be saved by growing timber. I confess I am very sceptical about the danger of a wood shortage. I remember reading in one of the afforestation journals that in the time of Queen Elizabeth there was great fear that the country would be denuded of trees and would be short of wood. These scares take place from time to time. A few years ago we were told that our mineral resources were being depleted, and that in three or four hundred years there would be no coal left: just now it is the custom to say that there will be a world-wide shortage of wood. I will not follow the noble Lord in his review of the world supplies of wood, but I certainly do not believe that these small islands are going to do anything of any value towards the provision of timber, as contrasted with the great public demand for it. We shall always have to depend on foreign countries to supply us.
§ LORD BLEDISLOEMy Lords, I am tempted, after listening to my noble friend Lord Lamington, to mention that even in Queen Elizabeth's time the fear that was entertained, which almost amounted to a panic on the arrival of the Spanish Armada, was, in fact, realised, and we are told in the area in which I live, the Forest of Dean, that the whole of that forest was denuded of 448 timber in order to meet national requirements, and proved wholly inadequate to meet the current needs. It was so not only in that area but, I am informed, in other areas too. If we are to trust those experts who during the War informed us in no uncertain voice that if the War was prolonged for any great period there would be a most serious shortage of timber available for essential national requirements, surely we are not in a position to sit down in a state of smug complacency, in view of what may turn out to be a serious national peril in years to come.
Of course, I agree with my noble friend that there really is, if I understand him aright, no sufficient inducement for land-owners and owners of woodland to-day to produce hard wood. I am very doubtful whether there is sufficient inducement to them to produce conifers and other soft wood, which Lord Clinton has described as being in the greatest demand for current industrial purposes. But what I should like to ask the noble Lord. Lord Clinton, if there is really a national need for the production of oak and other hard timbers, is how is that need going to be satisfied if the private owners are not prepared as an economic proposition to face the task, and if the Government itself is not carrying out re-planting of such hard woods on a somewhat large scale.
It is a terrible thing to see the way in which forests are being denuded in certain countries from which we have drawn our supplies to a large extent in days past. The noble and learned Lord opposite has referred to Canada. I am given to understand, as all those of us who took part in the visit of the British Association to Canada three years ago were informed in passing through great tracts of forest in Northern Ontario, that the amount of timber that was being destroyed in Canada by forest fires alone far exceeded the amount that was being felled and turned to economic uses. I have reason to believe that, if you include the ravages of insects and fungoid pests, something like three to four times the amount of timber is being lost from those causes in addition to the forest fires than is actually being felled for commercial purposes. As I happen to know from a visit recently paid to Czecho-Slovakia and the north-eastern parts of Germany where there are very considerable 449 forests, what is known as the nun caterpillar is devastating, or has been devastating in recent years, enormous areas of forest-lands, with apparently no effective means of checking its ravages. Perhaps I shall not be out of order if I mention that President Masaryk informed me that the one reason why they were apprehensive about taking over a large area of forest in Czecho-Slovakia, which they desired to do, was the fear that it would prove a most unremunerative proposition in view of the terrible ravages of the caterpillar to which I have referred.
As regards the coppice, we who live in the West of England realise the serious lack of the demand for coppice for commercial purposes, and at the present time I should have thought it was very difficult to say whether it is really an economic proposition to maintain one's coppice-areas at all. I live in a district where in the old days the charcoal makers of the Forest of Dean turned out most excellent charcoal, which, I believe, is now provided entirely from foreign sources. Also there were the naphtha makers and others who were employed in the destructive distillation of wood for the production of various spirits—methylated spirits and other similar products—all of which work has entirely disappeared, I believe, from the whole of the West of England and Wales. In the old days we used to raise a large number of hop-poles in the West of England for the requirements of Herefordshire and Worcestershire; but now that wire and string are used in place of poles the whole of that industry has gone, and the same is true in regard to mattock handles in the making of which ash was used. With reference to clog-making, periodical visits were paid to us about every five years by clog-makers from Lancashire, who used to buy up the alder for the purpose of making clogs. I suppose that clogs are not quite in such large use in Lancashire and the northern counties to-day, and we do not have visits from these interesting strangers periodically in the same way as in the past.
I should like to ask my noble friend whether any attempt is being made to assess the effect upon us of the ravages of one sort and another which are destructive of timber in the other countries upon which we have depended in part for our essential timber requirements for commercial 450 and other purposes. Quite apart from the question of any national danger that might be hanging over us in the future in the event of another great war, is he satisfied that the present policy of the Forestry Commission will provide for making good the essential requirements of this country in timber which this country has drawn in times of peace from other countries?
§ LORD PARMOORMy Lords, I have no right of reply and I do not intend to do more than thank the noble Lord for the excellent information he has given us and the kindly way in which it was given. He knows perfectly well, of course, as I have often stated in your Lordships' House, that I take no part in nationalisation which does not give a fair compensation to existing owners.