Lords Sitting of 24 June 1931

Preamble
The House met at a quarter before four of the clock, LORD STANMORE on the Woolsack.
The Marquess of Dufferin and Ava—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

EBENEZER CHAPEL BIRMING HAM BILL. [H.L.]
THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (LORD MARLEY): My Lords, in the absence of the Chairman of Committees, I beg to move, That Standing Order No. 91 be considered in order to its being dispensed with in respect of the said Bill, and that the Bill be now read 2a.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to: Bill read 2a accordingly.

LINDSEY COUNTY COUNCIL (SANDHILLS) BILL.
LORD MARLEY: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in the name of the Lord Chairman.
Moved, That the Order made on the 10th day of March last, "That no Private Bill brought from the House of Commons shall be read a second time after Tuesday the 23rd of June. next," be dispensed with, and that the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Marley.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and Bill read 2a accordingly.

LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL.
Read 3a, and passed.

DESTRUCTIVE FOREIGN ANIMALS BILL. [H.L.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY on AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (EARL DE LA WARR): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to make provision for prohibiting or controlling the importation into and the
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keeping within Great Britain of destructive foreign animals, for exterminating any such animals which may be at large, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid; and to move that it be read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Earl De La Warr.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

PREVENTION OF IMPORTS OF PRODUCTS OF CONVICT OR FORCED LABOUR BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD PHILLIMORE: My Lords, it may not be a very inspiriting thought but I am afraid there is very little that can be said to be new under the sun. There is certainly very little that is new about the battle of human liberty. There is certainly very little new about slavery. There is even very little that is new about that form of slavery which is now conveniently known as forced labour. There is even very little new in these evils finding defenders. And I hereby most solemnly aver that I am no pioneer striking out a new line, but a very humble follower in the steps of many who have already blazed the trail. I am anxious from the very outset to show that this Bill, whatever its minor defects may be, is in principle a Bill which carries out the avowed policy of this country. It is primarily in my opinion a Bill for the suppression of forced labour and only secondarily a Bill for the protection of our own standards of civilisation, important though that factor may be. It is, in the words of the Socialist Committee appointed to consider the sweated goods problem, a Bill in which there is no question of a tariff, but a Bill for the rigorous prohibition of imports; and it will perhaps mitigate any feelings your Lordships may have that I am over-bold in my bringing forward a Bill of such first-rate importance, if I go very briefly through the recent history of our country on this subject.
It is hardly necessary to remind your Lordships that ever since the days of Wilberforce we have put ourselves in the forefront of resistance to slavery. I need not, therefore, go back beyond the

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year 1913, when many of your Lordships will remember that a strong Committee was set up to consider the question of the Putumayo atrocities. That was a comparatively minor affair, but it did lead to Sir Edward Grey laying down in a circular Despatch a principle which is certainly applicable to my Bill. Sir Edward Grey said:
"It is certainly desirable that sufficient information should be supplied to the Foreign Office to enable His Majesty's Government to take what action is necessary in order to expose or prosecute British employers responsible for oppressive or inhuman labour conditions."
And the Despatch went on to call for annual reports from consular officers to this end.
Perhaps the next step of importance to which I need refer your Lordships is the adoption by the greater part of the whole world of the Covenant of the League of Nations. It is too little remembered that Article 23 (a) of the Covenant lays down that the Members of the League:
"Will endeavour to secure and maintain fair and humane conditions of labour for men, women and children, both in their own countries and in all countries to which their commercial and industrial relations extend."
Here, as far as I know, it is laid down and accepted by this country for the first time, quite definitely, that we should use our external commercial relations in order to obtain not in this country only but also abroad fair and humane conditions of labour. Your Lordships will not dispute that forced labour cannot be considered a fair or humane condition of labour; so that in this Covenant there is a principle of vital importance to my Bill. I venture to say that it does not lie in the mouth of anyone to accept the principle of the Covenant of the League of Nations and to refuse the principle of my Bill. The Article in the Covenant goes on to say:
"and for that purpose will establish and maintain the necessary international organisations."
Now, so far am I from decrying international organisation and international action in these affairs, that, after pointing out that what is a duty for one is necessarily a duty for all, I am going to bring up as my strongest reinforcement the action of that international organisation. The appropriate organisation in this case is the International Labour
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Conference, and the International Labour Conference, as your Lordships all know, appointed a Committee in 1929, and in 1930 adopted a Draft Convention for the suppression of forced labour. There was complete agreement in that Committee that it was desirable to lay down the principle of the prohibition of forced labour in all its forms. A Convention was drawn up defining forced labour—it is the definition of that Convention that is employed in my Bill—and imposing on each Member of the Conference who ratified the Convention an undertaking to suppress the use of forced or compulsory labour in all its forms within the shortest period.
The Convention was finally adopted by the Conference by 93 votes to 0, and, what is more, throughout all the discussions the British representative played the principal part, and it was largely due to British advocacy that the Convention was finally adopted. I think we may be proud of that, and I think, further, that we may be glad that His Majesty's Government did not rest content until they had announced their intention to ratify that Convention. They only waited for Liberia and Southern Ireland to give them a lead, and, first among the great Powers, they have announced their intention of ratifying that Convention. Nay, more, the Government propose to apply the Convention without any modification in all the non-self-governing Colonies, Protectorates, and Mandated Territories. There is a formidable list of these put out with the Command Paper, a list of 63 different, States. The only curious omission is that of the name of Great Britain, for how His Majesty's present Government could contend that the word "non-self-governing" was inapplicable to this country I cannot understand. Be that as it may, this short retrospect of our attitude towards the question of forced labour shows this country still in the forefront of resistance.
If I were here and now to put it to your Lordships that you were in favour of the suppression of forced labour at once without any modification, noble Lords of either Party would have to say: "We are." Yet, the evil persists. Nay, more, it grows. It has lately taken to itself a great extension. It has cloaked itself with a new authority. In at least one great nation it

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has taken on the sanction of the law. Now what is our attitude? It is no longer a question of challenging the obsolete customs of some barbarous prince-let. It is a question now of resisting the policy of a powerful oligarchy in control of a great white people. John Stuart Mill, whom, perhaps, some noble Lords will still regard as a great thinker, in his introductory chapter on Liberty says on this question of freedom:
"In the stage of progress into which the more civilised portions of the species have now entered this question presents itself under new conditions."
He goes on to say that under new conditions different treatment is required. It is in my belief that no compromise with slavery is possible that I venture to bring forward this Bill.
The Bill attempts to provide machinery by which this country shall use its commercial relations, in the words of the Covenant, if not to secure "fair and humane conditions of labour," at least to suppress forced labour in the countries with which we deal. Again, I claim that in this I am clearly and indisputably in line with the avowed policy of my country. The Bill includes in its scope the question of convict labour, and it does so mainly for the reason so recently and so cogently expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Buckmaster. I hope he will forgive me for quoting his words. He said:
"People can be exiled from their homes or sentenced to work in penal labour camps through the medium of a conviction prefaced by nothing that we should recognise in the nature of a trial."
In short, where there is the will, there is no difficulty in disguising forced labour as convict labour and the two, therefore, must receive the same treatment.
As your Lordships know, there is already on the Statute Book an Act known as the Foreign Prison-made Goods Act of 1897 under which the importation of prison-made goods is prohibited. Unfortunately, this Act has proved unworkable in practice, laying as it does the whole burden of proof—and this is a very important point—not on the Customs, not on the importer, not on any one in particular, but on the general citizen who, prima facie, is dealing with a country foreign to him-
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self, is giving evidence with relation to goods produced in a foreign country and, what is more, in a country naturally anxious for concealment. The Act having failed of its purpose it is in this Bill repealed. It is a very great testimony to the acuteness of the late Mr. Labouchere that I think the only remark he made when that Bill was debated was:
"This Bill will have no practical effect whatever. Let us, therefore, vote upon it as soon as we may."
However, the principle of it remains and has been re-stated so lately as November 20 last in words which I could not better; that is to say, in the words of the noble and learned Lord, the Lord President of the Council, who will remember that he said in your Lordships' House:
"If you ask me for my opinion for what it is worth, I think that to allow prison-made goods to be imported so as to compete with free-made goods would be to permit unfair competition, and in a case of that kind I for one would rejoice in prohibition."
With those weighty words echoing in our ears I think I should deal, with your Lordships' leave, with the clauses of the Bill, and I think it will conduce to clearness if I begin with Clause 5. Clause 5 is the clause which defines "forced labour" and "convict labour." It is unnecessary for me to say more than that I have adopted the definition of the International Labour Conference used in the Draft Convention which has been approved by His Majesty's Government. With regard to the definition of "convict labour" I have also followed the lines of the same Conference, merely adding a few words to show that stone walls alone will not a prison make.
Clause 4 follows established practice. I have already quoted to your Lordships the Report of the Putumayo Committee in this connection as to laying on consular officers the duty of transmitting the intelligence required "for the purpose of giving effect to this Act," and I venture to think it will be a useful provision. The Putumayo Report said, amongst other things:
"There is already a specific instruction to consuls to keep the Secretary of State and the diplomatic representatives fully informed on matters of interest in connection with slavery and the slave trade."
Again, Sir Harry Johnston testified to the value of visits in Siberia of British

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consuls equipped with a liberal travelling allowance. I venture to lay emphasis upon that because it shows an obvious method. Further,
"given the means of obtaining disinterested information, the Commercial Department of the Foreign Office would be the natural channel through which it would come home. The Department, it is understood, does not regard itself as more than a channel of information for other Government Departments or for the services of the public. It is not an administrative Department. But if its information disclosed a serious state of affairs the matter would be passed on to the Board of Trade."
I think those statements show a certain amount of machinery already available to our hands.
Reserving for the moment consideration of Clause 3, I pass to Clause 1, which follows the Act of 1897 in prohibiting the tainted imports and prohibiting them with reference to the Customs Consolidation Act of 1876. Incidentally, I think I should mention here that the Customs Act of 1876, which is a very long Act, provides a whole quantity of useful machinery and a great many precedents which it is useful to consider with reference to this particular subject. The clause in this Bill I am now venturing to bring before you does not, however, contain the words "goods proved to the satisfaction of the Commissioners of Customs by evidence tendered to them." That was the clause on which the Act of 1897 broke down. On the other hand, this Bill retains two of the three exceptions, though they are not important. "Goods not imported for the purpose of trade" were thought too trifling to invoke any machinery. "Goods of a description not produced or manufactured in the British Empire" are, and were presumably, excepted, because we might have debarred ourselves from the import of some essential product in war or peace, such as radium might have been.
Clauses 2 and 3 are, I venture to say, the most important clauses in the Bill, and both use the phrase "which the Commissioners of Customs and Excise have cause to believe." They both deal with the burden of proof, and in this respect there is an important change from the Act of 1897. I shall undoubtedly be asked: What will give the Commissioners of Customs cause to believe? The answer is, of course, information from
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any credible source and inter alia information from the Commercial Department of the Foreign Office. At this juncture it is well to bear in mind that under the Customs Act of 1876 the Commissioners of Customs have already many semi-judicial duties. They are called upon constantly to form judgments based on prima facie evidence. There is, of course, attached to this power a balancing right of any one aggrieved to have recourse to the law—for example, in the case of certain things to a Judge in Chambers. It may be objected in this connection that the Act of 1876 deals with goods by categories and not by origin. That is a very important difference, but, important though that may be, the case of the Commissioners having to exercise their own judgment is very far from excluded. For instance, the Commissioners are brought in connection with obscene books, and have to exercise their judgment as to whether or not a book is obscene. I can think of nothing more arguable than the obscenity or otherwise of a book. As a fact, all through the Customs Regulations runs this right to take Parliamentary action based on prima facie evidence, and it is that right we are extending by this Bill.
It should also be noted—and I apologise for spending some time on this point, but this question of machinery will, I am sure, prove of importance—that the Customs have every facility given to them for obtaining the information they require. For example, Section 43 says:
"The master of every ship arriving from ports beyond the seas shall at the time of making report answer also all such questions relating to the ship, cargo, crew and voyage as shall be put to him by the collector or other proper officer."
That power already exists.
I pass on now to Clause 3 (1) of my Bill. This for the first time introduces the presumption that goods imported from a tainted country are themselves tainted. In other words, goods imported from a country where the Commissioners, in the words of the Bill, "have cause to believe forced labour is exacted" are prohibited entry unless evidence can be tendered that they are of innocent origin. That clause adopts a theory put forward by Sir Harry Johnston, who was, of course, a man of great experience, and adopted again by the Putumayo Committee—a theory of special areas of pro-

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tection, which he suggested should be set up. It is, alas, only too clear now that there are many special areas and one great one where protection should be exercised. It is only too clear that there are now countries where the Commissioners would undoubtedly have cause to believe that forced labour was exacted. That is beyond dispute. In such a case the burden of proof under this Bill falls quite definitely on the importer. It is for him to prove that, though his consignment emanates from a tainted country—a country where forced labour is known to exist—yet that that particular consignment is free from taint.
It would take too long, and I should weary your Lordships to follow out all the workings of this clause. Suffice it to say that it is quite obvious to anyone at any rate who has had any commercial training, that any tainted country would speedily find it to its advantage to provide its exporters with such proofs or certificates of purity of origin as would satisfy the importing country. Further, it would very soon be quite clear to that country that it would be to its own advantage to allow our consular officers to visit places of manufacture of a suspicious character. Your Lordships will remember that our Foreign Secretary has had to repeat on many occasions that that permission has lately been refused to us. I regret that the noble Lord, Lord Newton, is not here to-day, because he was instrumental in bringing about some part of the arrangement I am going to mention. You will remember that no great difficulty was found when we were at death grapple with Germany in arranging for visits by friendly official representatives to the prison camps in Germany, and that at a crisis in the world's history such as we may never see again. To Clause 3 (1) I attach the greatest importance. Before I leave it I should perhaps point out that the difficulty as to the source of origin has fairly recently been dealt with by the Revenue Act of 1909.
Now I have dealt with the clauses of the Bill. It may well be that the machinery I have put before you is defective for the purpose, and I wish to state with all the emphasis in my power that I welcome any attempt and any assistance towards improving that machinery, with this proviso only, that that attempt
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is not an attempt to put sand into the machinery solely with a view to avoid having to deal with the great issue which this Bill brings up. It may have been remarked by your Lordships that I have said nothing so far as to the other side of this question. I have said nothing as to the effect which the prohibition will have upon conditions in our own country. It would be hypocritical in me not to say that I set a very high value indeed on the aid which will be given to our distressed labour conditions and commercial conditions in this country if this Bill should reach the Statute Book. In that I find myself in complete sympathy with the Socialist Party who, in their Conference in 1928, laid it down that where there were glaring examples of sweated goods produced under conditions against which British people could not compete without lowering their standard of life, the remedy was not safeguarding but prohibiting the entry of those goods.
A few years ago—say three years ago—I suppose no British statesman, no British industrialist, no British labourer would have admitted for one moment that a system based on conscript labour could possibly succeed, still less that it could succeed against a system based on free labour. But would they all say so to-day? I see reiterated again and again, and by no one more than by members of the Labour Party—is it not dinned into our ears?—that we must take the five-year plan of Russia seriously and that it is likely to succeed. And on what is that system based? But whether or not conditions in this country would benefit, I venture to suggest to your Lordships that you should pass this Bill even if it involves this country in loss. I at any rate would recommend this Bill to your Lordships as our bounden duty to hundreds of thousands of people who are now condemned to misery. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Phillimore.)
The LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (LORD PARMOOR): My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord paid the compliment to me of recognising that there has been no more consistent opponent of forced labour for many years than I have been. In fact, often I think when his father was present in this House he and I expressed our very

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strong agreement with Lord Cromer—I mean the great Lord Cromer who was Governor of Egypt—who laid it down that in his view forced labour could not really be differentiated from slave labour although slavery imported a change in status whereas forced labour only denoted the terms under which any actual labour was carried on. I say at once that I certainly have not altered my opinion, and I believe it is in accordance with the view held by all my noble colleagues here; and also by the Party to which I belong, which I rejoice to know is designated by the name Socialist, for that denotes a strong sense of social duty as against a mere claim of national or individual right.
Although I hold that view in the very strongest way, I think that the noble Lord foresaw what the nature of our objections to this Bill is likely to be. It is not in the principles that he has indicated, but it is in the formal way which he thinks could be conveniently and properly adopted for carrying out the objects which he has in view. As he has agreed with me in other matters, perhaps he will agree with mo in this: that if in seeking a solution of difficulties of this kind you propose a remedy which is not effective, instead of furthering the cause you have at heart you almost essentially and necessarily defer it for a, considerable time. The particular method which the noble Lord has suggested is the amendment of one of the clauses of the Customs Consolidation Act, 1876. That Act has of course already been amended, in 1897, and made applicable to prison-made goods. There is no difference between us about that. The clause in the original Act has been amended to include prison-made goods. What does he go on to propose? He wants to include these words:
"Goods wholly or in part produced, manufactured or transported by convict labour or by forced labour."
He knows that in subsequent clauses of this Bill a distinction is drawn between convict labour and forced labour—I do not mean to say in the principle involved, but in the method of dealing with the principle which he has indicated.
Goods referred to there must mean particular goods, the particular parcel or lot of goods which is under the con-
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sideration of the Commissioners at the time of import. I am obliged to say upon this point that in my opinion it would be perfectly futile to introduce words of this kind because they could not be made effective by the action of the Commissioners. I say that advisedly because on more than one occasion lately in another place the same point has been raised in terms, as the noble Lord, of course, knows. Usually Russia has been pointed to, but I do not wish to refer to any particular country. The question has been asked whether these difficulties which exist—perhaps I ought to say which are said to exist—and to which the noble Lord referred, cannot be met by an amendment, as the noble Lord proposes, of the Customs Consolidation Act, 1876. That question has been answered by three very competent expert members of the Government in the other House. The President of the Board of Trade has said more than once that the Government could not undertake to make this amendment of the Customs Consolidation Act, 1876. Not only has the President of the Board of Trade made that statement, but the Foreign Secretary has also made it, and, as I shall have to point out in order to show what our position is, the objections raised by the Foreign Secretary and by the President of the Board of Trade involve matters which cannot be overlooked if you desire to make an amendment of this kind effective in order to carry out the ends aimed at by the noble Lord who has proposed the Second Reading of this Bill.
Perhaps I may say at this stage that there has been experience in this matter, but only as regards convict labour, for reasons I will state in a moment, in the United States of America. In Section 307 of the United States Tariff Act, 1930, is a provision undoubtedly dealing with convict labour and forced labour, and I do not think I shall go very far wrong—it is a matter of drafting—in suggesting that the noble Lord must almost have adopted his wording from the clause of the American Statute. What has been the effect? For a long time there have been attempts to provide the Secretary of State in America with a practical method by which the general principle accepted by the United States Government could be enforced. The noble Lord is, no doubt, well aware of that. So far

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as convict labour is concerned, there were cases of ships from Russia being held up on the ground that the goods in them were imported under conditions of manufacture by convict labour. The attempts to deal with the question in these cases failed. I think the last ship was released not very long ago. A number of ships were detained for inquiry in order that a provision of this kind might be enforced, but it was found to be impossible—and no country is more anxious than the United States to make this method a success—to enforce a condition of this kind. The provision speaks of the import of goods either manufactured, produced or mined by convict labour.
That being so, there has been a constant attempt in the United States to enforce the other part of the provision, directed against forced labour. The present position is that no prohibition regarding forced labour is to be attempted before February, 1932. It has been considered, and various objections have been raised, and at present it is postponed until that date. Let me read the words. I do not think any noble Lord will accept such words for a moment, but they show the trend of this legislation. The words are:
"In no case shall such provisions"—
that is, the prohibition—
"be applicable to goods, wares, articles or merchandise so mined, produced, or manufactured"—
that is, by forced labour—
"which are not mined, produced or manufactured in such quantities in the United States as to meet the consumptive demands of the United States."
That is not a proclamation against the principle of forced labour. I agree with what the noble Lord said as to the question of unfair competition arising, but that is not the matter with which we are dealing here. That is not the view of the United States, and I shall point out in a moment that it is not the view which the noble Lord takes in his proposed Bill.
What the United States say is that they wish to get rid of forced labour only where the products of it come into competition with goods produced in the United States. I understand that point, because we have so often argued it, but I am not arguing it at the present moment. That is not a declaration
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against forced labour. It is an acceptance of the principle of forced labour in all cases where the goods produced or manufactured are produced or manufactured in such quantities in the United States as not to meet the consumptive demand of the United States. In other words, given that the United States and those who live there desire these manufactured goods—although they are produced by forced labour—because there is not a sufficient production in the United States, they are to be admitted. That is not at all the principle which I understood the noble Lord to advocate.
Just let me put this to him. Look at his own Bill, which, as I say, seems to be largely copied from the Act of the United States. In subsection (2) of Clause 1 it says:
"This Act shall not apply to goods not imported for the purpose of trade"—
that is, if they are not imported for the purpose of trade and trade competition, the Act is not to come into operation, and yet they may be made by forced labour—
"or to goods of a description not produced or manufactured in the British Empire."
Suppose certain goods are not produced or manufactured in the British Empire. Docs that palliate the evil of forced labour? Of course he will not say that it does. I would suggest that the real motive here, at any rate so far as these words are concerned, is not the abolition or prohibition of forced labour but quite another point of view. It says in effect: "Do not let us have these goods introduced here unless they are goods of a description not produced or manufactured in the British Empire." That means that it is a trade consideration, and what you are to have in mind is the trade consumer, if I may use that expression, as you do in other economic conditions.
LORD PHILLIMORE: I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord will allow me to answer that point—
LORD PARMOOR: If you want to answer it, perhaps you will wait until presently. If you think I am saying anything wrong, I will give way in a moment, but I want to get my argument consecutive if I can. Let me follow it a little further. I do not want to quote Russia particularly to-day, because it is

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known that Russia, is a large factor in discussions of this kind and always has been. I accept entirely, as regards Russia, the various evidence from the Report of Sir Alan Pim, and the late Judge of the Egyptian Mixed Tribunals, Mr. Edward Bateson, which has been made to the association against slavery and forced labour and matters of that kind. Lord Buckmaster—I do not think it is necessary to go further than that—very ably summarises, in the preface to that Report, just what he thinks the conditions are. I will not read any more than I need, because on a future occasion we may have to consider this and it is only as an illustration that I mention it now, but lie says:
"That some of the labour in the timber camps is not voluntary is clearly established"—
I think that is quite true—
"but the greater part of it is drawn from people accustomed to the work"—
that is local seasonal work, as it is called—
"who work freely and at wages and under conditions fixed after consultation with their trade unions."
He goes on to say that those conditions are certainly not worse than the conditions of voluntary labour under the old Tsarist days. I should have thought from the evidence contained in the book that they were better, but I do not care to consider that now. Nor do I use the word "timber" at the moment, because it always seems to raise difficulty and prejudice.
If you have commodities imported from a district where the work is carried on "largely by voluntary labour"—those are the words used in the Report itself—but to some extent by convict labour, how are the Commission to deal with a matter of that kind? It is all very well to say that these things are easy to determine. They are exceedingly difficult, and that was found out by the United States in their attempt to prohibit, in very similar words, imports on the ground that they were made by convict labour. We also have, to consider this. Of course you cannot make a rule of this kind—the noble Lord did not argue for it, I admit—unless it is made general. You have special protective arrangements, for instance, in the Anglo-German Treaty, where in a Note
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given at the time by Lord D'Abernon, the only exception in matters of this kind was the Customs Act as it then operated.
It is well known what were the terms of the Russian Agreement with us. The Agreement provides, generally, for mutual accord of most-favoured-nation treatment, and in particular stipulates that the natural produce and manufactures of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics shall enjoy in the United Kingdom all the facilities, rights and privileges which are at present, or may be hereafter, accorded to the natural produce and manufactures of any other foreign country in all that relates to the prohibition and restriction of imports. It is quite clear, therefore, that you could not impose a condition of this kind with regard to Russia without at the same time imposing a similar condition upon all other foreign countries. It is a difficult matter. I am told that the ruling opinion is that this provision, unless it is imposed generally, is inconsistent with what is called the most-favoured-nation clause, because there you have it stated that like commodities should be treated in a like way. It does not refer to the way in which they are produced, but to the commodities themselves.
I am not going to attempt to lay down any general principle with regard to the interpretation of these difficult matters, but it has been pointed out to me by those who are experts—by the Foreign Office—that they do not see how the difficulty in this way could be got over satisfactorily, either in the form of the Bill or of the special provision which the noble Lord proposes to introduce. He knows, as well as I do, and I think he has stated it, that the imports from Russia, so far as timber is concerned, are of the greatest importance. They are bartered, if I may use the expression, for machinery produced here, and in the great business which we now have in the building of houses for the working classes cheap timber is of enormous importance. Mr. Meyer, head of what is called the Consortium, illustrated that in a letter to The Times. We are dealing not with a small matter but with a big matter, because the value of soft timber and pit timber amounts to £9,500,000 a year—for which we get a market for our manufactured goods—as nearly as possible to the same level as existed in the old Tsarist days.

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Your Lordships will recollect that in the Tsarist days the commodities from Russia included timber from Latvia, Esthonia and Finland, and parts of Poland. Figures show that Soviet Russia, with regard to her importations, has just reached the level of pre-War days, and beyond that there does not seem any immediate progress in amount; but it is quite certain, as pointed out by Mr. Meyer in a letter to The Times, that if you excluded by a stroke of the pen, as is suggested, imports of that kind, you would very seriously increase the cost of manufactured timber, that is, doors and windows and things of that kind, to the detriment of cheap building, and the cost of building would be considerably enhanced. I do not want to go too far into this to-day but only to indicate some of the difficulties.
Let me take the next part of the noble Lord's Bill. I think Clause 2 I have dealt with sufficiently, because that is a question of convict labour. In Clause 3 we come to the question of forced labour. Up to recently—I am not sure what it is now—there was a considerable amount of forced labour, particularly in backward countries, where forced labour was said to be required for public utility puposes, and was used for other purposes too. I am not quite certain, that all forced labour has been stopped entirely wherever we are in authority, but I recollect very well that in the old discussions at Geneva, when we were represented by the noble Viscount, Lord Cecil of Chelwood, not only was forced labour not ruled out entirely but it was argued that when dealing with backward people, especially in tropical countries, some form of forced labour could not be avoided. I think myself that all forced labour ought to be avoided, but you would find a very large area where what is called "forced labour" is still in operation, because forced labour includes, according to the noble Lord's definition, I think, what we call indentured labour.
LORD PHILLIMORE: No.
LORD PARMOOR: The definition is:
"all work or service exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty for its non-performance and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily."
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!
LORD PARMOOR: Noble Lords say "Hear, hear." I find no fault with those "Hear, hears." If you ask me, I would make forced labour even wider than that, but even if you take the definition in the Bill it means to say that compulsory labour is what the noble Lord calls "forced labour." Well, it has been often argued that in backward districts and territories, particularly in tropical regions, some form of forced labour is almost essential if you are to press on what are called civilised methods and civilised principles.
I think I ought to say one word about the League of Nations, and one word on the question of consuls. Great Britain desires that the conditions of Russia should, if possible, be considered, in order that we might get a thoroughly impartial expert view of what the conditions are. But the League of Nations could not investigate conditions of that kind in a country which is not a Member of the League. It is only through membership of the League that the League as a whole has authority to make investigations of that sort, and I suppose that such a proposal would probably be met with what we met with. As the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Henderson, stated, some suggestions were made that we might make independent investigations, but I think ho was quite right in saying that unless he had a clear field and a clear opportunity of ascertaining the whole truth it would be unwise for him to enter upon this matter at all.
Then as regards consuls in these timber districts, I do not think we have any consular representatives at the present time. We have, I believe, two or three consuls in Russia—one in Leningrad, one in Moscow and also a vice-consul. It is not impossible, I presume, to make arrangements for more consuls and consular services, but that is the condition now. I do not in the least take any adverse view to the statement of the noble Viscount, Lord Grey, of Falloden, but if we are to have this consular investigation—that is, if we could arrange it, because I do not know—large changes would have to be made as compared with things as they are at the present time. I want to say quite frankly, as I have often said, that

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we cannot take this action in regard to forced labour in other countries. It cannot be done in this way. This has been considered and carefully considered by the Foreign Office, by Mr. Gillett of the Department of Overseas Trade and by the President of the Board of Trade. And therefore the attitude I am going to advise my noble friends here to take is this. I think it would very likely be misunderstood if we voted against the Second Heading of this Bill.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear.
LORD PARMOOR: Well, do you want us to? It is very funny how merriment arises in an unexpected way in this House. It seems as though numbers gave force to merriment. But that, I think, is the right thing to do. At the same time, we state—I do not say we warn the noble Lord, but we state—that it is, of course, quite impossible that this Bill can go forward in the present Parliament. It is quite impossible for us to give any facilities. In our opinion there are a number of very important and difficult points which would have to be thrashed out, and therefore so far as we are concerned, although there may be value in discussion, particularly such kindly discussion as the noble Lord has suggested, we think there can be no use whatever in going beyond discussion; and if the Bill goes to a Committee we shall leave the matter to be discussed by your Lordships, but the Government will not be able to give any assistance.
LORD DANESFORT: My Lords, if anything coming from the Bench opposite could astonish me, it would be the speech of the noble and learned Lord to which we have just listened. The attitude of the Government on this Bill appears to me absolutely indefensible, all the more so because of the noble and learned Lord's opening words. He told us he was against forced labour and that he had no objection in principle to this Bill. If that is his real attitude, in the name of common sense, why did not he say: "I agree to the Second Reading of this Bill, and I shall help to make it a good one"? It appears to me that what the noble and learned Lord had in his mind when he spoke was not to help to make this Bill effective, not to amend it so as to make it enforceable, but to put forward a certain number of objections,
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which appear to me for the most part largely frivolous, suggesting why the Bill is useless. There may be some undisclosed reasons, owing to the composition of his Party or other domestic reasons, why he thought it desirable to throw discredit upon this Bill. If there are such reasons, he was probably very wise not to disclose them. At any rate, the reasons that he gave why this Bill is likely to be useless, and why if he had had the courage to do it, he would have opposed the Second Reading, appear to me to be perfectly flimsy, unsubstantial and unconvincing.
I propose first to say why the Government cannot possibly, as I think, with any decency or reason, oppose the passage of this Bill. In order to justify the Second Reading you must be prepared to show, first of all, that there is forced labour in Russia or elsewhere, and that large imports are coming into this country which are the product of forced labour or convict labour. The second point you would have to show in order to justify the Second Reading would be that the proper remedy is by prohibition. On both those points I have the advantage of quoting the actual opinions of members of the Government. We had a debate in your Lordships' House on February 5, in the course of which striking and deplorable evidence was produced by Lord Newton, Lord Phillimore, and Lord Brentford as to the appalling conditions of forced and convict labour in Russia. And what did the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, say in winding up the debate for the Government? He said:
"I do not dispute the evidence for one moment."
I think he was quite right in that. He went on to emphasise it further. He said:
"We have heard a great deal said by the noble Viscount"—
that is Lord Brentford—
"with regard to these horrors. They may be true. I am not disputing the fact. They are very horrible."
In the face of that strong and deliberate declaration—because the noble Lord knew what was going to be brought forward—is it possible for anyone to say that the conditions of forced and convict labour in Russia do not exist, or is it possible for them to say that they

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are not of a most horrible kind? That is the first point, as to the existence of forced labour.
The second point is as to the propriety of the remedy which the Bill proposes for prohibition. There again we have statements by very prominent and important Ministers; I have them here. The first important statement, which I think was referred to shortly by the noble Lord, Lord Phillimore, is a quotation from the Socialist Party Committee on Sweated Imports set up in 1925, of which the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Arthur Henderson, Mr. Johnston, the Lord Privy Seal, Mr. Tom Shaw, the Secretary of State for War, and a very important person whom we rejoice to see here, Lord Passfield, and Mr. Arthur Greenwood, who is Minister of Health, were members. They stated:
"We do not suggest that cheap goods should be excluded because they are cheap."
I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Pass-field, recognises these words as his own. He was on the Committee, and I will read them so that he may confirm them if necessary presently—
"But we suggest that goods, whether cheap or not, should be excluded if they are made under conditions which violate the world standard."
I presume that the noble Lord opposite agrees with that statement made by himself and his colleagues in 1925. The conditions of humanity and morality I do not suppose have altered greatly since 1925 and, therefore, he would accept the views which he most properly laid down in that year.
When I speak of cheap goods may I say that I was surprised to hear some suggestion from the noble and learned Lord opposite that we should let in timber or other goods because they were cheap. If Lord Passfield and those other prominent members of the Government are right there is no reason whatever for letting these goods in if they are made under conditions which violate the world standard. So that, on both those points—the existence of this forced and horrible labour in Soviet Russia and the necessity for prohibiting the import of goods made under those conditions into this country—the declarations of Ministerialists appear to me to be absolutely conclusive.
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I might stop there, but may I be allowed in very few words to give some reasons why, apart from these Ministerial declarations, I think your Lordships would be very well advised to give a Second Reading to this Bill? The evidence as to the nature of labour in Russia is twofold. In the first place, there is the evidence afforded by that remarkable set of documents representing labour legislation in Soviet Russia published in a Blue-book, Command Paper No. 2775, showing what the Russian Government have laid down as to the conditions under which labour should be and could be recruited and made compulsory. That is one class of evidence. The second class of evidence is the evidence of eye witnesses who saw these things for themselves in Russia and made affidavits and wrote accounts which appear in many public documents. Put shortly the effect of that evidence is, I venture to submit, that Russia is a country of almost universal forced or compulsory labour. If anyone takes the trouble to look at those documents he will see that is not an overstatement. If anyone takes the trouble, as the noble Lord, Lord Newton, and others did the other day, to quote some of the conditions under which labour is exercised in Russia he will find—again, I do not think Lord Ponsonby would dispute it—that men and many women and even children of 15 or 16 are compulsorily deported from their homes in Russia day by day in many, many thousands. As regards men, they are deported to timber camps in Northern Russia, to mines on the Don, to oilfields in Baku, and to State farms—agricultural farms they are called, slavery farms practically—in the Ukraine. They are there forced to work with no alternative except that of death or starvation.
I think I should be occupying your Lordships' attention unnecessarily if I were to quote from what was to me the most heartrending report or rather series of articles by a correspondent of the Chicago Tribune. Those articles appeared in that paper not so long ago—between March 8 and 31, 1931—as the result of his experiences while on a visit to Russia. I can only say that if there is anyone who doubts the horrors of that forced labour let him read those letters. The writer deals specially with the tim-

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ber camps in Northern Russia and with the treatment of that unfortunate section of the community the kulaks, the better to-do peasants, who are subject not merely to the most horrible indignities but to cruelties and are sent to work with the alternative of being starved.
I will not go into the question of the amount of these products of forced labour which are imported into this, country day by day and year by year. It is sufficient to say that last year there were something like £24,000,000 of imports of Russian goods and products—timber, wheat, china, glass-ware, fruit, pulp, and many other articles. One can guess, at any rate, under what conditions they were produced, and not merely guess but affirm. If that is so, surely there are two reasons why this Bill should be carried and made effective with the help (and I hope we shall get it) of the Front Government Bench. In the first place, there is the economic question and there I cannot do better than quote the words of the Bishop of Durham in his speech in your Lordships' House on February 5 of this year. He said this:
"… when this five-year plan is carried through"—
we all know what that means; it is for the destruction of our industries here and the setting up if possible, by means of discontent and starvation, the world revolution here and elsewhere—
"this country will be subjected to a strain of unfair competition against which no modern organised industrial community could hold out."
There is a worse thing than economic menace; there is the moral disgrace which would fall upon this country if we did not take measures to stop bringing into this country, and to discourage bringing into this country, the fruits of these abominable horrors which are being carried out in Russia. If we do not take steps for that purpose we shall be guilty to a large extent of condoning the horrors under which these goods are made. More than that, we may be justly accused of being wholly indifferent to the appalling misery and degradation to which these unfortunate defenceless men and women of Russia are subject. Why? For the sake of getting some cheap goods and saving an awkward moment for the councils of the Socialist Party.
LORD JOICEY: My Lords, I think this question is a much more serious one than many of your Lordships yet realise. This is a question which has been taken up by a large number of the wage-earning classes of this country. They are beginning to get information as to what is going on in Russia, and depend upon it, whatever Government may be in power, I feel sure that the principle contained in this Bill will have to be dealt with in some way or other by a Government which has the power to do it. We know what is going on at the present time. There is no doubt that the Russian Central Government has complete control of the whole of the labour conditions in Russia. It fixes the wages, it fixes the hours, it fixes the quantity that has to be produced, and if the quantity is not produced, most serious claims are made against those who fail to produce what they have to produce. I realise the difficulty of the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House, who spoke with regard to this matter, that if you deal with this principle you might have to deal with various other countries where possibly conditions do not exist such as exist in Russia, but in my judgment this is a Russian question, and unless something is done you will find that competition from Russia will be such as this country has not had to face, in my time certainly.
Timber has been mentioned. Russia supplies timber cheap, and merchants who have to make their Jiving do not object to it. It is not only timber. We are beginning to feel it all round. I read not long ago that in Turkey the Turks even were complaining of the import of coal from Russia below cost price, because it was taking away their trade. I need not go further than last week. There was an important contract of about 35,000 or 40,000 tons of gas coal, which has belonged to this country for years, captured by Russia selling at shillings a ton below the cost at which we can produce the coal in this country. How is that done? It is not done by fair conditions such as we have. It is done by conditions imposed upon the workmen by a central Government which is determined to injure us as much as possible. This question will have to be dealt with. The Government may put

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it off now, but I feel sure it will not be long before the wage-earning classes of this country will see that it is absolutely necessary to put some check upon this competition, so that at all events competition may be on fair grounds. With competition on fair grounds I am sure this country has nothing to fear.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I confess that I have listened to this debate with some feeling of disappointment. The mover of the Second Reading in a speech which, if he will allow me to say so, seemed to me of the utmost cogency and to present most impartially and most forcibly the case for his measure, stated in terms that he was not wedded to any particular form of words provided the principles underlying this Bill were accepted and were made effective. On a Second Reading debate, as I have always understood it, the rule is that the House comes to its decision as to whether or not it approves the principle of a Bill. If it does approve the principle it votes in favour of the Second Reading and leaves Committee points to the Committee stage. If it believes the principle is a wrong principle, then naturally enough it votes against it. What are the principles which underlie this Bill? As I understand them there are two principles, one economic, one moral. The economic principle, I think, may be stated, perhaps not with precision but sufficiently accurately, as being this, that it is not right or reasonable to erect standards of living for our own people and then to allow those standards to be destroyed by competition of goods produced under conditions of forced or convict labour. The moral principle, I think, may be enunciated somewhat in these terms. It is not right for a country that calls itself a Christian country to make itself an accessory after the fact to the enslavement of populations less happily situated than our own by profiting from the cheapness of goods produced under slave conditions.
Are those principles to which this House gives its adhesion? Both of them have been recognised over and over again, both by legislation and by the voluntary action of people in this country. The argument in favour of the economic proposition I think is an overwhelming one. As has been pointed out, in the Socialist Party's own Committee
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it was explicitly stated that there was here no question of tariff or of free trade. If we in this country insist on a standard of living for our workpeople and if we then allow the goods produced by those people to be driven out of our own markets by goods produced under slave or forced labour conditions, that must involve that our own people are either driven out of work altogether or else are compelled to lower their own standard so as to compete with slave conditions. The only remedy, as the Socialist Committee itself pointed out, is to prohibit the entry into this country of goods produced under those conditions. Now that principle has been recognised; we do not allow in this country goods produced in our own prisons to be sold in competition with goods produced under trade union free labour. Why not? Because we recognise that it is an impossibility to maintain cur standards of living if they have to face competition of that kind, and, as has been pointed out, as long ago as 1897 a similar prohibition was enacted with regard to goods produced in foreign prisons. It is true enough that that enactment has not in practice proved effective, because the condition necessary to bring is into operation—the condition that you must prove that the particular parcel of goods which you are challenging was produced in a prison by prison labour—is so difficult that it can never be complied with. But if the condition has proved difficult of application, the remedy is not to abandon your principles but to make your legislation effective.
And similarly with the moral argument. Have we forgotten how in the days of Wilberforce for many years large numbers of our people voluntarily refused to partake of sugar at all because they would not lend themselves to the production of sugar by slave labour in the West Indies, and that their action and voluntary sacrifice was a very potent factor in awakening the conscience of this country and in abolishing slave conditions in our own Dominions? Have we changed so much since the War? Have our consciences been so deadened that we do not care now under what conditions goods are produced so long only as they are cheap? Russian timber, said the noble and learned Lord the Leader

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of the House, cannot be shut out as it might be under this Bill because, remember, Russian timber is cheap and it will possibly raise the cost of building working-class houses if you refuse to allow the use of timber produced in Russia under slave conditions. A magnificent exhibition of high moral standing!
But what were the arguments of the noble and learned Lord? I hope I shall not do him an injustice when I try to summarise them. He began by telling us that an Act was passed in the United States prohibiting the importation of goods produced by convict labour, and he said that in fact that had not proved effective in practice. No more has our own of 1897. The result is that in the United States, as the noble and learned Lord knows, they are now introducing legislation very like the legislation which my noble friend Lord Phillimore has introduced to-day, which it is hoped will be effective. Then, he said, the exemption in subsection (2) of Clause 1 of the Bill was too wide because it lets in goods which are not produced or manufactured in the British Empire. Well, it may be that it would be advisable to tighten up the exemption. I am quite sure my noble friend would be willing to consider an amendment for that purpose. But that is not against the principle of the Bill.
"Then," says the noble and learned Lord, "we, the Socialist Government, have negotiated a Treaty with Russia and that Treaty has in it a most-favoured-nation clause and I think it is very doubtful," said he—or rather he did not say that, but "I am advised by some people that it is very doubtful whether or not this legislation would not infringe the most-favoured-nation clause in that Treaty." If that was true it would seem to me a most scathing indictment of the Government of which he is a member, but I think he is doing his colleagues and himself an injustice. I should not like to say of any argument of the noble and learned Lord that it is a quibble, but I would remind him that at the time he negotiated that Treaty, there was in existence the Foreign Prison-made Goods Act of 1897, which is to-day the law of the land and which is just as much an infringement of the most-favoured-nation clause as the Bill which my noble friend Lord Philli-
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more has introduced. The difference between the two is one of machinery and of application to forced labour as well as to convict labour. If this is an infringement of the most-favoured-nation clause, how then could they have negotiated that Treaty two years ago when there was that legislation in existence which, if the present argument is right, prevented them making that Treaty?
Of course, in truth, it does nothing of the kind. It would be an infringement of the most-favoured-nation clause to introduce prohibition of the goods of one country only, but this Bill does not do that. It is not an infringement if it applies to every other country. This Bill does not differentiate between countries. It says with regard to any foreign country that if their goods are produced under what I may call for shortness slave conditions, those goods shall not come in, and it does not matter whether they are Russian goods or the goods of any other country in the world. Therefore there is no differentiation between countries. The only differentiation is between classes of commodities. The noble and learned Lord also said—in fact he said it twice—that there were difficulties seen by the President of the Board of Trade, by the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of the Department of Overseas Trade. He told us that in the early part of his speech, and I waited anxiously to hear what they were; but we never heard. All that happened was that towards the end of his speech the noble and learned Lord told us that difficulties were foreseen by these colleagues of his (distinguished colleagues, no doubt) and that therefore—therefore what? One would have thought, that therefore the Government would be anxious to co-operate in removing them, but the answer he makes is that therefore the Government will take no part in the Committee stage of the Bill.
The noble and learned Lord, in an eloquent peroration, said that the principles of this Bill had been dear to his heart for twenty years. He has for twenty years been anxious to carry out the objects which this Bill purports to enact. But (he sees in the particular machinery which this Bill proposes some difficulties. Therefore, he says, so dear is this principle to him that he will not

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support it in the Division Lobby and will do nothing to help to bring it into practice. It is difficult within the limits of language which is approved in this House adequately to characterise an attitude of that kind. The truth is—and I think everyone in this House who has listened to the debate must appreciate it—that the Government are not afraid of passing this Bill because it will not be effective. The truth is that they are afraid it will be effective.
The truth is not that the Government have doubts whether or not slave labour and forced labour is in existence in Russia. They have repeatedly admitted in this House and in the other place that they know that the evidence cannot be controverted of the conditions which exist. The noble and learned Lord himself said this evening that they accepted the Report of the Anti-Slavery Society which actually found that such labour was being used in the timber trade. They know, therefore, that if this Bill becomes an Act the result will be to prevent goods produced under forced labour conditions being introduced from Russia. But unfortunately they have a considerable section of their Party which is passionately wedded to Russia. Therefore, the real difficulty which the Government see is not in bringing this Bill into operation, but in the conflict which will inevitably arise in their own Party if they try to give it effect.
I venture to submit to your Lordships that the attitude which the noble and learned Lord adopts as the representative of the Government is an attitude which does not commend itself to any impartial tribunal and will not receive the support of your Lordships' House. If it be true that the Government do not wish to make this Bill as good a Bill as it can be made, then let us do it without them. For myself, I congratulate the introducer of this Bill on the courage he has shown in bringing it forward. I hope he will press it through all its stages. I believe we on this side of the House will do all in our power to make it effective, and I hope very much, in spite of the prophecies of the noble and learned Lord, that those in another place will be given an opportunity of registering themselves either in favour of or against the im-
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portation of goods produced under forced labour conditions to the detriment of the conditions of our own people.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE): My Lords, the noble and learned Viscount who has just sat down referred to the limits of language allowed in this House. I am afraid I have not been long enough in your Lordships' House really to know what those limits are, but they seem always to me to be stretched a little further whenever I hear the noble and learned Viscount speak. I want to keep very well within the limits of any heated language and to copy the noble Lord who introduced this Bill in such an admirable, clear and persuasive speech. I can assure him that in spite of what the noble and learned Viscount said with regard to the attitude of His Majesty's Government and of my noble and learned friend the Leader of the House, we are absolutely in sympathy with the underlying principle of this Bill. The noble and learned Viscount who has just sat down described these two principles—he economic principle and the moral principle—ith great lucidity and I subscribe to the definitions which he gave of both. There is no difference of opinion in that respect. We should like to see forced labour and convict labour abolished, but we cannot sit here and give our assistance and blessing to a measure which quite obviously will not carry out that purpose.
That has been gone into very carefully by my noble friend the Lord President. If I may have the attention of the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading, I should like to put a specific case to him. I do not want to enter into a heated argument with regard to Russia, but we know perfectly well that it is against Russia that this measure is directed. Judging by all the reports that have come in from various quarters, with a bias one way or the other, there is no question that forced labour and convict labour exist in the timber trade in Russia.
A NOBLE LORD: And in other trades.
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE: On the other hand, we have been informed by the Soviet Government that, so far as the export of timber is concerned, no convict labour or forced labour is used. Say that this is not true, that they are not speaking the truth. After

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all, it is a perfectly credible, statement, because the amount of timber that is used for export is a very small percentage of the total trade, since there is a very large consumption of timber in Russia itself. Therefore, although noble Lords may say that the Soviet Government are not speaking the truth, it is a perfectly credible statement. It may be that the export of timber is carried on by convict labour or forced labour, but how are we to find out under the noble Lord's Bill? How are the Commissioners of Customs and Excise to be satisfied? How are they going to have "cause to believe"? By investigation? By report? Well, we cannot make investigations and reports in a foreign country that will not submit to have the reports made. I do not think any sovereign State would allow another sovereign State to conduct an investigation within their boundaries; and they are perfectly within their powers and rights in refusing. We cannot ascertain, under the noble Lord's Bill, whether convict labour or forced labour is used in the production of the timber that comes over here.
The general principles that were laid down by the noble and learned Viscount who has just sat down are very far-reaching and very interesting, and are worthy of very careful debate in both Houses of Parliament, but it is impossible to nibble at a great principle by an entirely inadequate measure which cannot effect its purpose and which, although it may be supported by moral indignation and by economic considerations, must not leave out of account further considerations of a diplomatic nature. We have to consider that, if any extreme measures of this sort could be taken against Russia, not only would it mean a rupture of our Agreement with Russia, but it would very likely lead to the breaking off of our diplomatic relations. The diplomatic side of the question must be borne in mind. I rose only because I thought it was not quite fair on the part of the noble and learned Viscount to taunt my noble friend the Leader of the House with insincerity in his declaration of adherence to the principle which underlies this Bill, as presented and advocated by the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading, because that principle must be sincerely held by all the inhabitants of the British Isles, without any differentiation, and it is not
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because of a difference of principle, it is because we see that the method adopted by the noble Lord is impracticable, that we can allow the Second Reading but cannot take any part in further stages of the Bill.
LORD PHILLIMORE: My Lords, I will not detain you for more than a few moments, but I think I am entitled to say that this debate has been of some use. We have, at any rate, and I welcome it with all my heart, common ground between all Parties that it is the policy of this country to suppress forced labour wherever we find it. By that I do not mean that this commits the Party opposite to take any definite action. I am not trying to twist their words in any way. But that is the object to be gained, and I have to thank the noble Lord who has just sat down for the very kind way in which he has treated my speech and for putting questions to which I can give a definite answer. I think he asked me two questions. The first was: How can I expect any sovereign State to allow an investigation that Russia, has refused? I thought I had already given that answer when I made my speech. It was that Germany, a far greater State, if I may say so, allowed such an investigation to a foreign country in the interests of a foreign country, during the heat of the War, and that we did the same. I think that is a very valuable precedent, and one which even Russia need not be ashamed to follow.
Then he asked me—I think this was his second question—how, in the case of a given parcel of timber, it was to be known whether that parcel was produced by convict labour, by forced labour or by free labour. No one is certain of that in the case of a country which is suspect. It can only be ascertained by investigation and, to be quite frank and open about, it, if a country openly practises forced labour it is the intention of my Bill that the goods from that country should not be imported into this country unless that country can see its way to prove that those goods are free from the taint. I do not think there can be anything clearer than that, and I cannot for the life of me see how it is an unworkable principle.
I was greatly honoured by the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House venturing to pay so much atten-

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tion to my few remarks, but it was rather, as I had anticipated, the sand that the noble and learned Lord managed to find to put into the machinery that was sought far and wide, and I cannot help thinking that, in one or two cases, he shut his eyes when he reached out for the bucket. For instance, one of his objections was that this Bill would apply to countries administered by Great Britain herself. How can he bring up that objection when he knows perfectly well that his own Government has just agreed in terms that all forced labour in all our mandated territories and non-self-governing Colonies, and so on, for which we are responsible should be immediately and forthwith suppressed—or, at any rate, suppressed in the shortest possible time? How can that be a valid objection?. Then the noble and learned Lord took, I venture to say, another handful of sand out of the bucket on the subject of indentured labour. I expect he knows very well and has followed the debate that took place at Geneva on the question of the Draft Convention. If he has, be will know perfectly well that the definition that is incorporated in the Bill was expressly arrived at in order to exclude the question of indentured labour. The question of indentured labour was very carefully considered by the Committee, and the Committee decided not to deal with it.
Again, the noble and learned Lord adduced an Act—I could not quite catch the date, but I believe it was 1837—of the United States of America, which he said failed. I would like to remind the noble and learned Lord that whatever was the action of the United States in 1837, the present position is that the United States' imports from Soviet Russia are less than any of the other great Powers. The noble and learned Lord even went so far as to produce Mr. Meyer as another bit of sand. That point, as to whether the noble and learned Lord wants cheapness at the expense of forced labour, has already been very ably dealt with by those who sit below me.
I would like, if I may, just to put this consideration to noble Lords opposite. Are they really anxious—have they really at heart the question of the suppression of forced labour? If they have, and do
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not like the machinery of this Bill, where is their Bill? Is it an unimportant question to-day, or is it an important question? Are there many greater questions which trouble the world at the present moment? To pass to a very homely illustration, which may perhaps appeal in a different way to the noble and learned Lord opposite, in Victorian times, when children used to make objection to a course which seemed otherwise desirable and which was advocated by their parents, the answer of the parents was: "Well, if you do not like to do it, still you can truly try." I would recommend to the noble and learned Lord that he should truly try to find a remedy for this great evil.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: May I ask whether, if this Bill goes to another place, the Government will give an opportunity for its Second Reading to be discussed?
LOKD PARMOOR: I cannot answer that, but I should say that in the present state of business it would be quite impossible.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

BRITISH COLONIAL SUGAR INDUSTRY.
LORD OLIVIER LORD OLIVIER had the following Notice on the Paper—To call attention to the plight of the British Colonial sugar industry, and to ask His Majesty's Government for information upon the subject and invite a considered justification of the policy of His Majesty's Government in regard thereto, particularly in view of the contradictory reasons given in this House and in another place for inaction in regard to that industry, and for the increase of subsidy to the British beet sugar industry, its competitor, respectively; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, you have had your interest greatly excited by a subject which is perhaps of more interest to many of your Lordships than that upon which I desire to address you, and Lord Passfield has informed me that it is necessary for him to leave this House at no very distant hour. Therefore I am afraid that I shall have rather to curtail what I wish to put before your

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Lordships on this matter, which I think raises more than immediate questions of our commercial policy generally. I have desired to call attention to the plight of our Colonial sugar industry, but I will curtail that part of my observations, because I think there, is no difference with regard to the facts between my noble friend and myself. Generally speaking the industry is suffering, as we have always told you it was bound to suffer, under present conditions. In some of the Islands the conditions are extremely severe and distressing, but are largely due to drought and to shortage of crops, and I will not deal at length with those places where the conditions are aggravated by drought and shortage of crops.
With regard to Barbados, that Island is now suffering, as we foretold, very severely from conditions which are described to me in a letter by a distinguished member of the commercial community, which I will read to your Lordships:
"The situation locally is still very uncertain. The entire sugar crop has been disposed of to Canada at prices which net the factory about £8 8s. per ton. This of course means a heavy loss in practically all cases, particularly as the crop, owing to severe drought, has fallen short of last year's by about 30,000 tons, or a little more than one-third. … No arrangements have been made to assist the industry by the local Government up to the present. The only action taken has been to place before the Legislature certain measures for the relief of unemployment. Those involve the expenditure of about £5,000, and relate to work on roads, and repairs and improvements to elementary schools. It is understood that further measures are in contemplation. There is undoubtedly want and suffering among the labouring population, slightly mitigated by the fact that their chief imported food rice, biscuits, etc, are much lower in price than at this time last year. They are behaving wonderfully well under trying conditions, and there is no unrest up to the present. Whether this state of affairs will continue later on this year, when money received during the crop is completely exhausted, is a matter for conjecture.
"The position among the plantation owners is very serious in many cases. Several estates are being put up for forced sale, and I doubt if any buyers will be found; probably mortgagees will be forced to take them over to protect themselves, and endeavour to make arrangements to carry on. In a large number of other cases the means of carrying on for another year has not yet been settled. Except in a few instances no actual abandonment of land has taken place. In Bridgetown trade is suffering considerably; deductions in salaries
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among shop assistants, etc., has been made and many dismissals have occurred. It is among these at present that the distress is at its worst as they cannot find fresh employment. There is no means of their emigrating and they are compelled to live on charity. It goes against the grain very much for these people to have to beg, particularly as they meet with many refusals; the incomes of nearly every one being so much reduced that they cannot afford to help others.
"Although in the Government estimates for the current year revenue is expected to quadrate expenditure, I am certain that those concerned have considerably underestimated the reduction in imports, which is bound to take place owing to the very much reduced spending power of all classes."
With regard to British Guiana, as Parliament is already aware it has been found necessary by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to make applications for liberal assistance for the Colony owing to the very severe distress which is now being experienced there. In both Barbados and British Guiana wages have been much reduced. In Trinidad and British Guiana they have had extraordinarily heavy crops owing to a favourable season and that will relieve the difficulties of those Colonies to a considerable extent, because where the chief difficulty is the cost of cultivation it helps very much when you have a crop which is 10 per cent, above the average. In Jamaica, where I have spent three months this year, the sugar industry is in very great difficulties, largely owing, or to a great extent owing, to the fact that by reason of the heavy duty upon it there is no market in this country for rum. There is severe distress all round these Colonies. It does not move me to be told that there is depression of trade and industry all over the world, because in a country like this we take care that the workers out of work shall not suffer actual deprivation, but in the West Indies no assistance that can be given can prevent severe suffering being experienced by the West Indian population. Certain Governments came to the assistance of the industry and gave it subsidies. This year again the Government of Jamaica is giving a subsidy to the sugar industry. Without that assistance the industry could not be carried on, even in the struggling manner in which it is being carried on.
We have appealed again and again to o the Government to give the West Indies

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that slight assistance to tide them over their difficulty which was almost promised to us two years ago, and the easiest form in which we put our plea for that assistance was that there should be a slight increase in the Preference, that is to say, increase the Preference by about Is. a cwt. so that the West Indian Preference might be made equal to the Canadian Preference. The last occasion when that proposal was made was in the House of Commons, not very long ago, and at that time the reply given was that since the decision had been taken on the Report of the Sugar Commission of last year, that that assistance could not be given, nothing had occurred to alter the situation, and that the arguments which were good then are equally good now.
Now I come to what I call the inconsistency of the Government. In some respects it is an inconsistency which I applaud. They have acted inconsistently in their arguments and in their policy with regard, on the one hand, to the British Colonial industry and, on the other hand, to the British beet sugar industry; because in regard to the British beet sugar industry they have taken an entirely different attitude from their attitude on the West Indian and Mauritius industry. The Minister of Agriculture gave what, from his point of view, were very good reasons why assistance should be given again to the British beet sugar industry in just such a pinch and for just such reasons as are affecting the West Indian sugar industry. He used two arguments. I may say that, with the subsidy, the British sugar beet industry and the British West Indian sugar industry were on about equal terms. The British sugar beet industry gets a subsidy of 6s. 6d. a cwt. It cannot produce so economically as the British West Indian sugar industry, but with its subsidy of 6s. 6d. per cwt. it may be said to be on about equal terms. Well, we have established by law that it shall have a subsidy of 6s. 6d. a cwt. It may be a good policy, or it may not. Anyhow, that is the accepted position. When that position had become impaired by the fact that the price of sugar had fallen, as it has fallen within the last year, the British beet sugar industry came to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and persuaded him to take account of that fact, and Dr. Addison in another place said, in effect: "The price has fallen. That is a
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reason for putting up the subsidy, so that they may compete on equal terms with the foreign producer."
That is precisely the argument that I have again and again put before my noble friends in this House—that since the Preference was fixed, since you gave your decision on the Sugar Commission's Report of last year, the price has fallen and your consumers in England are getting their sugar still more cheaply than the beggarly price at which they were getting it. You accept that argument in respect to the British beet sugar industry, but you have refused to accept it in regard to the West Indian and Colonial sugar industry. Again, Dr. Addison said that one reason why His Majesty's Government thought it desirable to ask for this additional 1s. 3d. a cwt. in the subsidy to the British beet sugar industry was that otherwise severe unemployment would befall. Very well, we told the British Government that severe unemployment would be caused in the West Indies, and it is being caused. With regard to the West Indies, the British Government have told us: "No, we cannot help that. If your people are starving, we will give them a little poor relief and unemployment works." There is a discrepancy in the policy, and it is that discrepancy which, rightly or wrongly, the West Indian and Colonial subjects of His Majesty complain of; because they say British commercial policy is determined apparently without the slightest regard to their interests.
When, you come to the policy of the production of sugar in this country, you take what, from our point of view, is a reasonable line. You say the British public has received its sugar at an enormous reduction, and it is only reasonable that a little of this should be given away in bringing up the subsidy. Unemployment has been produced in the British Colonies, and we have used that as an argument. You rejected that argument with regard to the British Colonies, but you accepted it with regard to this country. Therefore I want to know whether it is the policy of the Government that British Colonial interests are not to be taken account of in the commercial policy of this country.
I want to come next to a further aspect of this subject. We have been having a debate upon the question of forced labour,

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and very sound quotations were made as to the attitude of the Labour Party with regard to forced labour and sweated labour in the past, and with regard to the position taken up by the International Labour Organisation on the subject of sweated labour. At the present time you are buying your sugar in England for less than one-half of what it costs to produce anywhere in the world. That is owing to mass over-production for speculative purposes, which has flooded the world with an enormous surplus of sugar. I should have liked to give your Lordships a rather careful account of what is happening in Cuba. The state of Cuba is terrible. The Island is in a state of seething unrest, complete unemployment. All the Jamaicans and others who used to work in Cuba have been turned out because there is not enough employment for their own people, and nobody is getting paid for the work they do. I read a recent account of Cuba by Mr. Raymond Leslie Buell, a very well known American economist, who has just visited there. He says people are not getting paid at all for their canes, not getting more than the cost of transport; for, he says, owing to the fact that Cuba has been parcelled out into large factory areas, the Cuban farmer, who used to be a, small cultivator, has become practically a forced labourer for the factory. He has to supply his canes there, he cannot supply them anywhere else; and he gets paid no more for them than the cost of cutting and transport.
That is to say that the American exploitation of Cuba has, in Mr. Buell's words, succeeded in reducing the Cuban colons into the position of serfs tied to the soil, and working for practically no adequate remuneration at all. That is a sweating system, and I have again and again appealed to my colleagues to take into consideration whether it is decent for the British public to buy sugar much below cost price under a system which in Cuba, Java, and elsewhere is reducing the population to this condition of bond slaves working for a very small pittance.
I say it is a disreputable policy for a Government to encourage. But they say: "We want sugar to reach the consumer in the cheapest possible manner." Again and again, they have said: "It is our policy not to tax sugar. We want free food." Are you aware of what the
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present price of sugar is? The present price of sugar in grocers' shops, is 2½d. per lb. Do you know what is the price of the sugar itself, and what is the Duty? The price of the sugar itself is 1¼d, and 1¼d. represents the Duty. This Government which refuses to tax food is, therefore, taxing the food of the people. We have again and again told them: "Reduce your duty by a halfpenny per lb., and you can still give us a farthing per lb. and pay us a decent price for our sugar." But no! they profess that they must not tax food; they profess that they must not sweat labour, and they refuse to give to Colonial producers a very small fraction of the enormous benefit which consumers in England are getting from the ridiculous price of sugar. I have said that before and I am sorry to have to repeat it.
The final point that I wish to raise is this. I want to hear some considered justification of the attitude of His Majesty's Government in this matter. I must remind your Lordships that we had this controversy about getting cheap sugar for the British public a good many years ago while we were still suffering from foreign bounty-fed sugar. It was then decided by the Government of which Mr. Joseph Chamberlain was a member, that this was not a proper policy and that the Colonies ought to be considered. Then ensued the negotiations which led to the Brussels Convention and the menace of foreign bounty-fed sugar was done away with. The Colonial members of this Empire have always held that that was a sound and proper policy. They say now that it is not a sound and proper policy that is being pursued and that the Colonial Office, whose constituents they are—they have no special representatives in Parliament-ought to keep up their end, and insist that they should be considered in relation to British commercial policy as well as the consumers of this country. That is what they claim.
I was very much impressed and interested to hear my noble friend a few nights ago at a dinner at the Corona Club, talking very soundly, as I thought, of how great an advantage it would be to have one Imperial Colonial service, the officers of which could be freely exchanged between one Colony and another

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without feeling that they belonged to a Colony, but that they belonged, in fact, to the Empire. Some Colonies are always a little jealous of such a policy, because they say: "We are developing ourselves and we like to be able to produce and train our own officers." If anything could induce them to take a more favourable view of that administratively sound proposal it would be if it were definitely considered and recognised as being the duty of His Majesty's Government in dealing with the commercial policy of this country, to take into account the commercial interests of the Colonies. So long as, on the one hand, the Imperial Government says, "No, we cannot consider your producers at all," and, on the other hand, "We would like to have an Imperial Colonial service," so long will you have a great reluctance on the part of the Colonies to enter into more sympathetic relations with this country.
They all desire to come into more sympathetic relations with this country. Communications are becoming more and more rapid. The Imperial sentiment, if I may so call it, in the British Colonies is steadily strengthening; but the thing that disgusts and disheartens them is that when a Party wants cheap votes by talking about taxes on food their interests are thrown to the wind and they are simply regarded as parts of the Empire for which the Colonial Office has no special responsibility. The position is not remedied by saying that you will give a little assistance for industries and so on. Such things do not touch the matter.
Finally, I want to know what, if anything, His Majesty's Government have done on the recommendation I ventured to make to them very strongly, as Mr. Chamberlain did before, that they should take some action to secure an international consideration of this question of dumping. The practice of dumping with regard to sugar is developing to a more ridiculous extent than with regard to any other commodity in the world. Surely His Majesty's Government might have taken some action on that suggestion and called an international conference on the subject of sugar? No! I do not know whether anything was done but nothing has transpired. Action was left to be taken in the matter by Mr. Chadbourne, an American financier who represented
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American and Canadian financial interests in Cuba and elsewhere. He set the ball rolling and went round to the organised sugar industries of the world and to different Governments. He has succeeded in getting a plan agreed to by Cuba, Java, Germany, Czecho-Slovakia and some other nations and by the associated sugar industries of all those nations, that they will put a certain amount of the enormous surplus of sugar which now exists in the world into cold storage and dole it out in five years by instalments. Also that they will restrict their production in Cuba and Java to a certain extent.
When those negotiations were proceeding the West Indian Committee wrote several times to the Colonial Office begging and urging His Majesty's Government to show some kind of interest in this very important movement and to make some kind of motion about coming into it as the German, Czecho-Slovakian and other Governments had done. I asked what had happened in regard to that and I was told that the West Indian Committee had never had any answer to any of those letters from the Secretary of State, not even an acknowledgment of them. I should like to know whether anything was done in regard to the Chadbourne plan. Further, whether anything was done regarding an international concordat about foreign bounties and dumping. I should like some information on those subjects. It is a curious thing if when the West Indies and the Colonies asked His Majesty's Government to take that international action the would not do it; but when the beet sugar industry, who have votes, asked them to take action with regard to the beet industry, Dr. Addison, the Minister of Agriculture, was able to put up a very good argument on behalf of the Government in favour of it.
I have tried to be as brief as I can, and I think the points that I have put have not been the less telling on that account, because I have called attention to the different arguments that are used in dealing with West Indian and1 Mauritius matters and in dealing with the beet sugar industry, and I have called attention, as I hope, to the differences in policy. I want to emphasise the very great and bitter feeling that has been created in all these Colonies against the

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Government that so entirely neglects their productive interests. It is a very serious Imperial matter. I have been all round these Colonies lately, I have been through the principal among them twice, in the last two years, and I have been immensely gratified at their progress both in energy and in what I might call the Imperial spirit. They are most desirous of strengthening the Imperial connection, but they are constantly disheartened by the weak, flabby, inconsistent treatment of their interests as compared with the treatment of the interests of persons who can command the ear of the Government. I have put both of my points to the noble Lord. I gave him notice of both of them beforehand, and, as a matter of form, I beg to move.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOE THE COLONIES (LORD PASSFIELD): My Lord, I ought to apologise to the House for answering my noble friend at once because I must confess that I have an important official engagement to-night which I cannot get out of and which I should be very glad if I could, but it is a duty. I had contemplated that we should have been able to devote the whole of the sitting to this particular question. I will answer as fully as the time permits what my noble friend has put to me. Of course I do not at all complain of his having raised the question again because, as he says, the plight of the West Indies and of all the sugar Colonies is indeed very serious. I am glad to tell your Lordships that it is perhaps not quite so serious as the noble Lord feared eighteen months ago—not yet quite so serious. At that time, your Lordships will remember, we were told there was a prospect that the whole industry would go out and would come to an end, and that we should find on our hands these Colonies absolutely destitute and bankrupt.
I am glad to report that taking the West Indies, in Trinidad, British Guiana, and St. Kitts there has been no reduction in the acreage under cultivation. No doubt those who are producing sugar are doing very badly, but they have not gone out of cultivation. They find it better, quite rightly from an economic point of view, to go on even at no profit, or even making a loss, rather than shut down altogether. Of course they cannot
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go on doing that indefinitely. But in Trinidad, British Guiana and St. Kitts there is no reduction of the acreage under cultivation. In Jamaica the reduction has been about 5 per cent., and in St. Lucia it is email. In Antigua, which is one of the worst off in that respect, there has been a reduction of as much as 13 per cent.—that is to say where eight acres were cultivated before there are now only seven. That is the most serious case from the point of reduction of cultivation, and that means that whilst wages have fallen there has not yet been that amount of unemployment which we had feared. I may mention also—because my noble friend refers only to the West Indies—that we have to take account of other places. There is Mauritius. In Mauritius also the area under cane has been maintained in the same way as, mostly, in the West Indies. Mauritius had a special calamity lately in the great hurricane to which I will refer later. Then we turn to Fiji. There has been no reduction in the area of planting for 1931–1932. So that there has not been that considerable diminution in the industry that was at one time feared.
The noble Lord asked me what was the policy of His Majesty's Government. The policy which has been pressed upon us by the noble Lord, and by the West Indies, and, generally speaking, by most of those connected with the industry, has been to deal with the problem by one uniform measure, and indeed by one specific measure—namely, an increase in the Preference which is given, which is in the nature of a subsidy from this country. That is the one thing that they have wanted. Now I have to point out to your Lordships that His Majesty's Government are not prepared to adopt that policy. I would suggest to the noble Lord, and to any of your Lordships who care to consider the economics of the question, that when you have an industry carried on in a great many different places, under conditions differing very considerably one from the other, and also with the actual plight of the industry differing in the different places, so that in some cases they are suffering hardly at all whilst in others they are suffering a very great deal, no uniform policy is a wise one.
His Majesty's Government did not adopt the policy of giving increased

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Preferences. I would like to point out that what was called lately increase of Preference means a direct gift from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, practically, it is an increase of the expenditure of His Majesty's Government in this country. The right thing to do, the noble Lord suggested, was to give that increased Preference equally to all the different sugar producers in the Empire, but in any case your Lordships must note that it would have meant an increased expenditure by the Government. I wish to ask whether there is any Party in this House, or in another place, which is deliberately going in for a policy of increasing the Government expenditure in this respect or in any other respect. At any rate His Majesty's Government refuse to adopt that policy with regard to the sugar industry. Their policy has been, in the terrible plight into which these sugar Colonies have fallen, to deal with each place separately and differently, according to its need and according to its circumstances.
His Majesty's Government have not opposed additional subsidies to the industry where the locality could itself find a subsidy. In Jamaica and in Trinidad, as the noble Lord has pointed out, a temporary subsidy has been given to the industry out of the local funds. Those Colonies were fortunate enough to be able to afford it. In the other places there were no local funds available, and some other expedient had to be used. In those places the policy of the Government has been to deal with the emergency according to its nature. The particular emergency in Mauritius, for instance, has been due to the coming of this hurricane on the top of the sugar depression. In that case the best policy seemed to be to guarantee a loan by this Government of £750,000 in order to remedy the damage and relieve the distress due in particular to the hurricane; but, of course, the intensity of the distress was owing to the fact that the sugar growing had not been paying. The area under cultivation has not been reduced, and, therefore, the unemployment has not yet become severe, but the hurricane has upset everything.
Other places have other needs. British Guiana is the worst off, although they have had a good sugar crop, but they are the worst off owing to the amount of
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unemployment. There, as your Lordships know, this Government has given very large financial aid in the direction partly of a direct gift, a grant-in-aid, and partly by loan for executing various public works of utility. That is what has been done in British Guiana. Similarly, taking each Colony one after the other, the immediate need has been met in the way most appropriate to the particular circumstances of that Colony. That has been the policy of the Government, and I am glad to say that it has been possible to make some little beginning in the direction the noble Lord who raised the question is specially concerned with; that is, of getting started alternative products and peasant settlements in particular Islands. I cannot go into the details of that now. That has been the policy, and I am unrepentant about it.
I do not think that an increased Preference was a wise way to deal with the matter, and I do not think that any uniform action was a wise way to deal with it. I think the action taken by the Government of dealing with the circumstances of each place according to those circumstances, sometimes by guaranteeing a loan, sometimes by a large grant-in-aid, sometimes by grants from the Colonial Development Fund for public works of utility and public improvements of one sort or another, making a long string of grants for all sorts of public purposes, has been the right policy. When the noble Lord says that the slight assistance that was almost promised two years ago has been denied, I am not aware what was promised in that respect. Certainly there never was any promise made about an increased Preference or any additional subsidy or anything of that kind.
LORD OLIVIER: I am referring to the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he was seeing what could be done to help to tide them over, and was considering recommendations to tide them over.
LORD PASSFIELD: I have been explaining what the Government have tried to do. This is only an attack on Government policy. That policy has been to deal in these various ways with the circumstances of each place as far as it has been possible to do so. The noble Lord—this has been the special purpose of the discussion to-night—declares that the Government have taken an entirely

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different idea with regard to the sugar beet production in this country from that which it takes with regard to the sugar industry in the West Indies. I will only say that that is in accordance with the Government policy of dealing with each of these localities according to its specific circumstances and its specific needs. It so happens that the circumstances of beet sugar in this country are different from the circumstances of cane sugar in the West Indies.
I would like to remind the noble Lord that if two years ago the question had been not merely the low price of sugar, but coupled with that low price of sugar the reduction of the subsidy or the Preference by half at one fell swoop, the Colonies would have come with an even greater complaint to His Majesty's Government, and they would have protested not so much against the price of sugar, but with all their might against the reduction of the subsidy at that moment by one-half. That was the position with regard to beet sugar. The fall in the price of sugar fell upon them and the West Indian producers alike, but in the case of the West Indian planters His Majesty's Government did not reduce the subsidy or the Preference. On the contrary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer undertook first of all that so long as the Duty remained the Preference should certainly remain untouched. Then, very shortly afterwards, at the Imperial Conference he went further and said that whilst he could not pledge future Parliaments, he was prepared to promise that the Duty and the subsidy, the Preference, should remain untouched for three years or pending the outcome of the suggested Conference at Ottawa. He would say nothing further about the future.
In the case of beet sugar in this country, under the terms of the Sugar Subsidy Act, 1925—not in the time of the Labour Government, but in 1925—the subsidy was to be reduced from 13 s. in 1930–31 to 6s. 6d. in 1931–32, 1932–33 and 1933–34. Not only did the price of sugar fall, but in addition the subsidy was cut in half. As the policy was to deal with each sugar-producing place according to its special circumstances and special needs, the Government did not apply the same policy where the subsidy was cut in half as they did to the other
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sugar producers where the subsidy was maintained at its full amount. The reduction was from 13 s. to 6s. 6d. but the Chancellor of the Exchequer saw lit to concede, in addition to 6s. 6d., 1s. 3d. That is to say, he allowed the subsidy to be reduced not from 13 s. to 6s. 6d., but to 7s. 9d. He granted that not in order to diminish the loss to the producers of sugar but under the distinct understanding, the distinct arrangement, that the whole of that extra amount of over £200,000—I think it was £225,000— should be passed on to the farmers and in that way to the labourers. Whether that was right or not I leave your Lordships to consider—the noble Lord says he approves of it—but at any rate it is the policy of dealing with each sugar-producing place according to its special needs and not according to any one uniform plan.
It seems to me that that is certainly wise and I would like to point out that this extra 1s. 3d. which is given to the English sugar industry is not given by any increase in price. It is given out of the Exchequer. That means that noble Lords will feel it in their Income Tax and Super-Tax. My view is that it is in that way that help had better be given rather than by any fiscal device. That is an arguable point, but at any rate the Government have been consistent in this matter as between the different sugar producers and in its policy of dealing with each sugar area according to its particular circumstances.
I must pass on, I am sorry to say, quickly. The noble Lord complained that the condition of Cuba was getting desperate. I think it is true that the condition of Cuba is getting desperate, but what does the noble Lord propose to do about it? Cuba is not under our protection. It is not our responsibility and I am afraid I know of no means by which we. can deal with the mad capitalist production of the American speculator to which the noble. Lord referred. The only way would be to have some change of system.
LORD OLIVIER: If I may interrupt the noble Lord, he seems to be going a little off the point. I did not say that he should do anything for Cuba. What I said was that it was a disgraceful thing that a Labour Government subscribing to the principles of the International

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Labour Organisation should be importing goods sweated as goods are sweated in Cuba. That was my argument.
LORD PASSFIELD: The argument is, I suppose, that we import sugar. I cannot say that I know where the sugar comes from, but I rather suspect that not much sugar comes to us from Cuba. As a matter of fact, the import of Empire sugar into this country is now enormously greater than it was twenty or thirty yeans ago. We are increasingly drawing sugar from Empire sources, and less and less from Cuba and other sources. If I could alter the terrible state of Cuba I would do so, but I am afraid it can only be altered by a greatly changed system and by a greater planning of production than we are likely to get from the United States.
The most serious point perhaps was that the noble Lord complained that the commercial interests of the Crown Colonies were not considered by His Majesty's Government. I do not think the noble Lord is quite warranted in saying that. He does not quite know what has been happening. If he means that there has been no fiscal change, no attempt to foster the industries of the Crown Colonies by some new fiscal arrangement, that is perfectly true. But the principles of Preference have been adopted by nearly all the Crown Colonies without any let or hindrance by His Majesty's present Government, and the Government have not interfered to cause the Crown Colonies to give up those principles of Preference in any way whatsoever. We have let them do as they like in that matter. I can only say that a large part of the attention of the Colonial Office is devoted to trying to foster the commercial interests of the Crown Colonies not in the particular way of additional Preference, which some people seem to concentrate on, but in all sorts of ways. The noble Lord referred to the great advance in communications. I think that the biggest commercial interest of the Crown Colonies is certainly that of the education of their people, which we believe would lead to much greater production than at present takes place. That is one of the big necessities which I commend to the noble Lord—the question of education in the Crown Colonies. It is really a much bigger commercial in-
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terest than anything which is to be gained by Customs tariffs.
Finally, there is the suggestion that we have not managed to get more international action with regard to sugar. I can only deplore with the noble Lord that there has been such delay in getting anything done about sugar, but I do not feel that the Government have been to blame in the matter. We have had to pursue a policy which is calculated, as we thought, to bring about international action as quickly as possible and that did not mean calling a sugar conference and getting everything turned down and rejected as we had reason to believe would be the case. It meant lying low and fostering things and not claiming credit for it. I am glad to say some steps have been made in that direction—for instance, the Chadbourne plan. The West Indies apparently ask why did we not come into that. We might probably have gone into it with calamitous results. I venture to think that the Government have pursued the right course of doing what was possible to bring people round to that idea without actually butting in and insisting on forcing the pace or even taking the lead.
The British Government have not even become a constituent part of the agreement, because we were not invited. It is just as well that we were not. We have got over a lot of jealousy and difficulty. We were not invited because the British Empire is not an exporter of sugar; the Empire, on balance, is an importer of sugar. Most of the exporting nations have gone into the agreement, and the sugar producers have agreed, with the consent of their Governments, to a limitation of the export of sugar, on the one hand, for the next five years, in order to reduce world over-production, and, on the other, to a special arrangement for putting into cold storage the world's accumulated stocks of sugar in order that the price may not be depressed. This will take a little time to have its effect, but it is common knowledge that the price has gone up by something like 20 per cent, since this agreement came into effect. The influence on the market has been such that I hope to see a slow rise in the price of sugar in the course of a few years. Those who are in charge of the agreement do not want a spec-

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tacular rise in price, because that would lead to the renewal of the over-production from which the world is now suffering. They look to see a steady rise from the present price of 6s. 4d. a cwt., or thereabouts.
That is not the only thing that has been done internationally. Attempts have been made to see what could be done in the way of getting the nations to agree to some action for regulating the production, or at any rate the export, of sugar. The Chadbourne plan is proving a very promising way to a conclusion, and a very much better way than the Governments of the world could have attempted, because it has come from the associated producers in the several countries. We might have felt bound to take a hand in the game but, as a matter of fact, I do not believe it was possible to have brought off an International Convention of greater value or practical efficacy than that which has now taken place. I do not know what better thing could have been done. It will not remove the distress of the West Indies. It will not apply to them, but it follows the only course which, in my judgment, was useful—namely, to secure a concerted limitation of export by all the sugar-producing countries. They did not ask the West Indies to come in because the amount which the West Indies produce, though important to themselves, is small in relation to the whole world's production. They did not bother about them, any more than about Mauritius and Fiji.
The West Indies stand to gain all that could be gained out of the Convention without losing even the advantage of the limitation of output which is imposed on the other countries. I do not think we could have improved on that. It is the best possible arrangement for the West Indies and the Empire that could have been come to. I rejoice that it has been come to. I have not the honour of the acquaintance of Mr. Chadbourne, but I should like to give him a, laurel wreath for having brought off an exceedingly difficult task. I have endeavoured to answer my noble friend's Question, and I am only sorry that circumstances have cut short this debate so seriously. I will not take up any more time. I am sorry that there are no more Papers, but we will take care to publish future reports upon the state of things in the West
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Indies from time to time as they accumulate. I undertake that, and I hope the noble Lord will not insist upon having Papers now.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I regret that the noble Lord who has just spoken is not able to remain in his place, but I quite appreciate the reason why he has to leave. I regret it especially because there are one or two points that I wish to raise outside those that have been dealt with by the noble Lord, Lord Olivier. We on this side of the House are very grateful indeed to Lord Olivier for raising this question once more. I felt, as I read the noble. Lord's. Motion, that he had wandered into a rather dangerous path in the way the Motion was drawn, and subsequently, as I listened to his speech, I felt also that he was going along a path that might lead us into even greater difficulties in the West Indies than those in which we find ourselves to-day. I hope the. noble Lord, with whom I have been associated for many years on this subject, will pardon me for what I am going to say, but I speak in the full belief that the method of dealing with this matter must be a method applied to the Colonies themselves, and not one that mixes them up with the question of sugar production in this country.
I am bound to say that I think it is wrong to play off, if I may put it in that way, the British sugar beet question against the Colonial sugar question. There may be matters that are applicable to both, but in this country we have our problems, just as the Colonies have their problems, and, so far as the British sugar beet industry is concerned, I think that the Government are bound to regard it from the point of view of this country, and largely apart from any issues that may arise in connection with the Colonial sugar industry. In making this remark I hope that those in the West Indies and Mauritius—(and I speak more particularly for the West Indies, which I know better and in connection with which I hold a somewhat important position even today)—I hope they will not feel that I am going beyond proper bounds. They are absolutely loyal and ready to respond to anything that His Majesty's Government can do for them, but I have never heard anyone connected with the West Indies suggest that, because something

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is done for the British beet sugar industry, something must necessarily be done for the Colonial sugar industry.
I venture to suggest that there is room for both the British beet sugar industry and the Colonial cane sugar industry in the provision of sugar in this country. To-day we are consuming nearly 2,000,000 tons of sugar, and of that amount some 500,000 tons are produced in this country in the form of beet sugar, whilst some 700,000 tons are imported from Colonial sources, leaving roughly 700,000 tons to tome from foreign countries. If that is the case, is it not far better for us to consider the question of beet sugar from the point of view of this country and that of cane sugar from the point of view of the Colonies? If, for instance, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his Budget two months ago, instead of putting an additional tax on petrol had placed an additional tax on sugar and, at the same time, granted an increased Preference to Colonial sugar, that solution, while a partial solution and not a whole solution, would have been found to have partially solved the difficulty which exists in the West Indies and in Mauritius to-day.
We have heard a great deal about the United States of America, but I should like to point as well to what France has done for her Colonies. France, within the last few months, I think, and certainly within the last year, has practically entered into a state of free trade with her Colonies so far as sugar and other tropical products are concerned. We have here a practical example of what is called Empire Free Trade as between France and her Colonies, with the result that the French Colonies in the West Indies, Guadaloupe and the other Islands, and Madagascar and so on, are now in a far more prosperous condition than any of our islands which lie alongside.
It is because His Majesty's Government will not change their fiscal policy that they are unable to deal with this matter, and indeed unable to deal with any Colonial or Dominion question today. Lord Passfield admitted it just now. He said that they had done everything they could outside a change in their fiscal policy; and to what has it amounted? It has amounted to giving doles, just as doles are given in this country as a panacea for unemployment.
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The Government are to-day giving doles in the West Indies and helping them to create unproductive public works.
The continued fetish of the Government is their belief in free imports and cheapness at any price, whether from forced labour, as we heard a short time ago, or anything else. That it is which is absolutely obsessing them, and which is the ruination of our association with our Colonies and Dominions to-day. The United States of America have just made a great and generous gesture to the world, and if President Hoover's proposal is accepted by the nations it will help the world to make a fresh economic start. This country, however, will still be left with its domestic difficulties, with its economic troubles, with its Budget deficit and its unemployment. Even with Mr. Hoover's proposal it will have to find an additional £10,000,000 in respect of repayments by the Dominions to this country, and how is it going to do this? It makes it all the more necessary to stimulate our trade with our Colonies and Dominions, a trade of which we are sure if we will only enter into proper arrangements with them. It is only in that way that we are going to get out of these difficulties.
I do not know why it is that Great Britain should be the only country which believes in doles, and hands out nothing but doles in this country and to her Colonies. We hand them out until the inhabitants of those Colonies consider themselves almost unfortunate to have been born under the British Flag and look with longing eyes—to my knowledge they do in the West Indies—to the Colonies to the east and west of them, under the French and American Flags, because those Colonies have received from their Governments certain advantages which have created more or less a cure for their ills, whilst all we do is to give our Colonies doles or assist them with loans, which give them only some ephemeral benefit. I do not wish to detain the House at this late hour, and will only conclude by saying that for several centuries these people in the West Indies and Mauritius have been loyal subjects of the Crown. They have served this country to the best of their ability, and I think it is for us to see that in these hard days of poverty and despair we do not let them down.
THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH: My Lords, I do not wish to detain the House for more than a very few moments at this hour of the evening, but I do think that something should be said from this Bench to express how very strongly we feel upon this subject; and I should like to say a few words on the general aspect of the matter which Lord Olivier has raised once again. I do so not because I think that there is anything very new to be said upon the subject, but for the reason that if we go on hammering away it is just possible that we may, in time, get the Government to move, though I do not pretend to be very sanguine upon the point. It would appear, and I am confirmed in that belief by what Lord Passfield said this evening, that the Government have irrevocably made up their minds that however much money they spend on other matters they do not intend to spend enough money to be of any use to the sugar-producing Colonies at the present moment. Lord Passfield rather prided himself upon the fact that the Government were not dealing with this matter as a whole, but were dealing with the separate sugar-producing areas separately according to their circumstances. My complaint is that they are not dealing with this question at all, so far as our Colonies are concerned. They have done nothing which has been in any way of material help to them in the difficulties in which they find themselves.
This subject has been so thoroughly discussed on numerous occasions that I do not intend to repent the old arguments or to go into details, but for the purpose of putting my short argument I would like to explain the position as I sec it at the present moment. Owing to overproduction of sugar throughout the world during recent years there has been an enormous fall in the price of sugar. It is impossible for producers of sugar in our Colonies to obtain profitable prices for their sugar, and in fact they are probably losing money heavily on every ton of sugar manufactured. And this position is bound to persist unless one of two things happens—unless, in the first place, there is a very rapid change in world conditions, which I think everybody who has studied this subject agrees is not at all likely at the present moment,
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or unless, in the second place, the Government do something for our Colonies, and I am afraid we must agree that that is a more unlikely contingency still. Unless either of these two things happens, then it is absolutely certain that the sugar estates in the West Indies will gradually go out of cultivation—not all at once, naturally, but they are bound gradually to go out of cultivation, as they cannot compete in present conditions; and that great industry, upon which practically the whole of the population of the West Indies, both employers and employed, depends, will gradually be ruined. There really can be no two opinions on that point, and, as far as I can see, it is only a question of time and of how long they can continue to hang on.
Well, the Government apparently refuse to move, and one of the reasons—I did not hear the noble Lord, Lord Passfield, give it this evening—that I have often heard brought forward to account for that attitude is that this industry, or at any rate a portion of it in our Colonies, is not economically sound, and that the Government maintain that it is useless and a sheer waste of money to bolster up an uneconomic industry. As a general proposition I think there is possibly a certain amount to be said for that argument, but as applied to the present situation in the Colonies, it really is quite meaningless. Lord Olivier has repeatedly told us that if there were complete free trade in the sugar industry, our Colonies would emerge very successfully. They can produce sugar more cheaply than most other parts of the world, and this industry only appears uneconomic owing to the utterly artificial conditions which at present obtain throughout the world. In order to tide over these difficult times other countries are helping their industry, and I should have thought it almost incredible that our Government were prepared to stand by and watch what was a very flourishing, and what is in normal conditions a quite economically sound industry, being crushed out of existence in our Colonies because of an entirely artificially imposed set of conditions, which ought in the course of time to be put right. That is the argument that I want to stress this evening. The sugar industry in our Colonies is not uneconomic. In normal

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circumstances, it not only pays its way, but it is profitable; and I can hardly conceive that the Government are prepared to see this economic industry in our Colonies wiped out, in order to make room for sugar produced in some other part of the world much more expensively than we can produce it in our Colonies.
I have heard it repeatedly said, and the noble Viscount, Lord Elibank, has said so this evening, that as far as many of our Colonies are concerned they would probably be far better off if they belonged to some other country. It is humiliating beyond words to hear such a thing said, but, as far as this specific matter is concerned, I am sorry to say that that statement cannot be very far from the truth, and I think it is utterly deplorable. If there is any meaning in the decisions of the recent Imperial Conference, and if there is any meaning in the constant protestations of the Government that they are anxious, and more than anxious, to do everything they can to extend and develop trade within the Empire, I say they ought to do something now which is going to be of some material help in the grave crisis in which the Colonies find themselves. I quite agree that this is a case where international arrangements might prove very valuable indeed, and I join with others in urging the Government to try to explore every avenue in order to reach an arrangement of that kind. But one is not very sanguine that, with a thousand and one important questions which have to be considered, this one will receive as much attention as it ought to receive. But in the meantime surely we cannot allow our Colonies to be let down, and if we do eventually come to some international arrangement it is quite obvious that in that case any benefit which resulted from such an arrangement would accrue only to other countries than ours.
Lord Olivier has spoken of the beet sugar industry in this country, and has referred to it as a competitor of the cane sugar industry in our Colonies. This is only true, surely, to a very limited extent, and I think the noble Viscount, Lord Elibank, has explained why. It is really a far vaster question than that. Surely the real competition which our Colonies have to face is not specifically the beet sugar industry in this country but the competition from sugar produced in vast
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quantities throughout the rest of the world. Lord Elibank has said that the amount of sugar consumed in this country is almost twice as much, I think, as the total amount of sugar produced both here at home and in our Colonies; and in those circumstances, it is quite obvious that both these industries can quite well flourish side by side. I do say, however, that if the Government are willing to help our sugar industry here they ought equally to be prepared to help the older-established industry in our Colonies. It is very often said as an excuse by the Government that the people of this country cannot be expected to shoulder any burden in this matter. I think that the heaviness of that burden is very often exaggerated by the Government. Sugar is at a. ridiculously low price at the present moment, and personally I feel absolutely confident that the people of this country would be prepared and willing to make a small—an almost infinitesimal—sacrifice in order to save another part of our Empire from what is virtually ruin.
LORD OLIVIER: My Lords, I greatly wish that the noble Lord, Lord Passfield, had not given me anything to answer, but there are two or three points upon which I should not like his speech to go on the record without a little correction and contradiction. One was that he said the price of sugar had risen 20 per cent, since Mr. Chadbourne made his arrangements. That is hardly correct. The price of imported raw sugar has, I think, not risen much more than. 10 per cent.; and one of the last things I read before coming into this House was a speech made by Mr. Chadbourne, in which he expressed his great astonishment at the very sluggish response of the sugar market to the far-reaching arrangements that had been made. He said: "We have taken about 6,800,000 tons of sugar off the market and put it in cold storage, and reduced the crops of the world by about 2,000,000 tons, and yet sugar does not move, and I do not know when it is going to move. That is a thing I do not understand." And no one that I have met in the sugar world has the least expectation that sugar is going to rise within two or three years to a price at which our Colonial sugar would pay its way, even with the Preference. So we have two or three years at least to wait and there is this large load of over 6,000,000 or 7,000,000 tons of

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sugar in cold storage which is to be fed out upon the market by instalments during the next five years. So the price of sugar is going to keep down and the crisis, as the noble Earl, Lord Plymouth, said, is to continue for a long time. That was one thing.
Then the noble Lord said that he thought that Mr. Chadbourne had done much better by going to the producers themselves than the Government would have done by international negotiation. I am very glad that Lord Plymouth has said that he still believes in international negotiation. We want international negotiation in order to get hold of Governments on a matter which is one of Government policy. The Government of Czecho-Slovakia and other Governments authoritatively and of set policy maintain the policy of dumping. We are suffering not only from over-production. Mr. Chadbourne deals with over-production and only with over-production. He does not deal with dumping. Cuba, at present, is dumping sugar. Czechoslovakia is dumping large quantities. Germany, Poland and Hungary are all dumping sugar. As I say, Mr. Chadbourne does not deal with that; he only deals with over-production and, therefore, the noble Lord left unanswered my argument in behalf of international action on the lines taken by Mr. Chamberlain with regard to bounty-fed sugar.
I was very much surprised to hear my noble friend in the latter part of his speech positively contradicting what he. said in the early part. He must have been in a hurry to get away to his dinner. He said that giving an increased Preference would mean expense, and no Government could possibly face expense by giving away Preference. Then he went on to say that the Government had thought it reasonable to give an increased subsidy to the beet sugar industry which he thought was much better. It was much better to give a. direct subsidy than to incur expense by giving away duties. I could not follow his argument. He seems to think it is much better to give a direct subsidy out of the Exchequer than to fail to take into the Exchequer a certain amount. I do not see the difference myself, but of the two I should have
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said that the subsidy had much more in it of genuine expense than the failure to collect the necessary revenue. With the leave of your Lordships. I beg to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE (GRAD ING AND MARKING) AMENDMENT BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
EARL DE LA WARR: My Lords, at this late hour I do not think it is necessary to detain the House for very long in moving the Second Reading of this Bill It is a comparatively small Bill directed to the extension of the scope of the National Mark scheme which, as your Lordships know, originated from the Agricultural Produce (Grading and Marking) Act,. 1928. Since then certain additions have been made to the scheme. We have already introduced a scheme for a very considerable advertising programme with the assistance of the Empire Marketing Board. We have also extended its scope to a very large number of articles including eggs and dressed poultry, apples and pears, tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, cherries, wheat flour, malt products, home-grown fruit and vegetables, cider, Scottish potatoes, broccoli and home-killed and Scotch-killed beef. We are hoping, during the next few months or at any rate by next year, to have a scheme for possibly mutton and lamb, cheese, butter and honey. Your Lordships will admit, I think, that this is a very considerable extension. As the law stands at the moment there is considerable doubt, amounting almost to certainty, as to whether we can carry the scheme in certain directions in which it is very desirable to do so. At present, it is considered that jam, for instance, which is an important product from an agricultural point of view, is really too far removed from being a direct agricultural product to be included in the scheme. For that reason, mainly, we have decided to introduce this small Bill which, I think, will prove to be non-controversial.
Clause 1 makes provision for applying the National Mark to fishery products. Clause 2 is the clause which deals really with the question of jam. It is drafted

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in very much wider terms so that any other like commodity can be brought into the scheme. Your Lordships may think that the terms are very wide, but I would remind you that schemes are of an entirely voluntary and permissive character and that no industry that does not want a scheme need have one. Once an industry has applied for a scheme, it is for the Minister to approve regulations and lay the Order before Parliament before anything can actually be done. Clause 3 deals with certain charges which have always been made until now In regard to the expense of labels and machinery, but it is doubtful whether in law those charges could really have been made. This clause is therefore inserted in order to regularise an existing practice.
The last point this Bill deals with is the question of safeguarding the words "National Mark" and anything connected with the National Mark. At the present moment, a number of industries quite outside agriculture are using the term "National Mark" or a designation somewhat like it, and we consider it most important that the words "National Mark" which are indicative of a scheme that is being built up by the joint efforts of the agricultural industry and the State should be safeguarded. In that clause there is ample protection for existing interests which are already using this designation. Some people think that it would have been very much
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better to make the legislation retrospective; but it has been felt to be absolutely essential to keep this Bill of a non-controversial order and, as that might be considered controversial, it has not been inserted. Those are the three or four purposes that are aimed at in the Bill, and I trust that it will meet with the agreement of your Lordships. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a. —(Earl Be La Warr.)
THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH: My Lords, I rise to say that we on this Bench do not offer the slightest opposition to the Second Reading of the Bill; indeed, we are willing and anxious to facilitate it. There is just one point which has been. drawn to my attention, and that is that in Clause (4) (a) the date selected is the 17th day of June. It is an arbitrary date and we do not quite know why it has been selected. It is a Committee point but, perhaps, the noble Earl will enlighten us upon it.
EARL DE LA WARR: Yes, it is a Committee point; it was the date of the introduction of the Bill into your Lordships' House.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at twenty minutes past seven o'clock.