Lords Sitting of 19 December 1934

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM): My Lords, I beg to move that leave be given to the Lord Ampthill to postpone the Motion standing in his name for this day until after the Motion standing in the name of the Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent. I have put down this Motion with the assent of all parties interested. Your Lordships appreciate that we are sitting a little earlier than usual because of the amount of business that has to be got through, and my noble friend Lord Ampthill is unable to be here at three o'clock, having previously made arrangements to be here at the time he anticipated his Motion would come on, about four o'clock.
Moved, That leave be given to the Lord Ampthill to postpone the Motion standing in his name for this day until after the Motion standing in the name of the Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent.—(Discount Hailsham.)
LORD MARLEY: My Lords, the Opposition were consulted on this and are very much obliged to the Government for their courtesy. We are entirely in agreement with the Motion.
On Question, Motion agreed to, and leave given accordingly.

HAMILTON BURGH ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.
ABERDEEN CORPORATION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.

ROAD CROSSINGS FOR PEDESTRIANS.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL THE EARL OF KINNOULL rose to draw the attention of His Majesty's Government to the present anomalous position
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of pedestrian crossings, and to ask what regulations, if any, are to be introduced with regard to pedestrians; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, in view of the fact that there was considerable discussion last night in another place in regard to the matter of pedestrian crossings, I do not intend to take up more than a few moments of your Lordships' time. Unfortunately the OFFICIAL REPORT this morning did not give the speech of the Minister of Transport, and therefore, except from what I have been able to gather from Press reports, I have not been able to read that speech or to know exactly what the Minister said. I must, therefore, ask your Lordships' pardon if in my remarks I cover any ground that the Minister has already been over.
I think an anomalous position has arisen with regard to these crossings. As I understand it—I may be wrong—if a pedestrian is crossing between the studs and he unnecessarily loiters, he can be what is commonly called "pinched"and fined 40s. by a magistrate. On the other hand, if he should be a few yards outside the crossing then, I understand—again, I may be wrong—that he is liable to no fine. That seems to me rather an anomalous position. I should have thought it would have been far better to fine people who do not use the crossings than to fine those who do use them. The next point I want to mention is that the average pedestrian takes very little notice of these crossings. People crossing the road wander about at all sorts of angles. I am not saying that that is very reprehensible when there is little traffic, but in a busy street it is very annoying. While I drive a car myself, I am also a pedestrian and have to cross the road like anyone else; but when one is driving it is annoying to have pedestrians running across the road at all angles when, within a few yards, there is a crossing of which as a motorist I take some notice.
You may also have another very irritating experience when you are driving along a thoroughfare like Oxford Street. If at one of the side roads the light is green you naturally accelerate in order to get over the crossing without delaying other people and also because you are probably in a hurry yourself. Pedestrians, however, take no notice of

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the lights at all. Exactly the same thing happens when you are held up by a policeman. At the last moment, just as the policeman waves you on, a pedestrian makes a dart for it and you have to stamp on your foot brake in order not to knock him down. Things like these cause very bad feeling between motorists and pedestrians. The motorist gets annoyed and thinks that the pedestrian can jolly well get out of the way of the car and, if not, it serves him right for being knocked down, while the pedestrian has the feeling that the motorist ought to stop for him. I think the Government ought to make quite clear what the regulations really mean.
There may have been cases of pedestrians being fined for loitering on a crossing, but I have not seen any case reported. There is this further point that where, for instance, there are subterranean crossings or perfectly good "Belisha crossings" pedestrians take no notice of them at all. I have many times seen pedestrians cross the road within three or four yards of a crossing. Motorists are equally to blame because often they take no notice of the crossings. The other day I was passing the entrance to this House on my way to Transport House when a couple of people, who, no doubt, had been looking over the Houses of Parliament, started across the "Belisha crossing." I pulled up and waited for them to cross, but to my intense astonishment a motor van came up on my near side and these people had to jump very hurriedly back to the pavement in order to avoid being knocked down. That is the sort of thing that is going on. Most motorists will not pull up, and pedestrians are equally to blame because they take no notice of the crossings.
Another point I want to make is that these crossings are frequently placed in awkward positions. Very often the crossing is placed just in front of an omnibus stop. If a pedestrian wishes to cross when an omnibus is stationary there he has to walk in front of the bonnet of the omnibus. The pedestrian cannot see what traffic there is behind the omnibus and drivers coming up behind the omnibus cannot see if a pedestrian is crossing in front. I noticed an instance of that this morning. A man twice began to cross and twice had to jump back to avoid being knocked down. I think the
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Ministry of Transport in fixing the position of these crossings should have more regard to that point.
There are also other cases of crossings being badly placed. Practically outside where I live at Regent's Park, you have an island refuge in the middle of the road. It is not exactly outside the main entrance to the Underground Station but it is within five or six yards of the entrance. The "Belisha crossing" has been placed no further away from the refuge than the steps of the Throne are from where I am standing now. Would it not have been very much better to have put the crossing where there is this refuge in the roadway? The average pedestrian would far rather cross the road where there is a refuge on which he can stand for a moment, if necessary, than cross at a point five or ten yards away where there is no refuge. Naturally a pedestrian standing in the middle of the road is more nervous of being knocked down than if he is standing on a refuge which no vehicle is likely to run into. I would like to ask the noble Earl who will reply whether the Ministry can consider these two points.
Another example which I might give of a badly placed crossing is to be found at the top of Great Portland Street where the road divides. The crossing has been placed at a point where pedestrians cannot see traffic coming round the corner and motorists cannot see pedestrians. If the "Belisha crossing" were put a few yards down the road both would be able to see each other. Another matter with which I want to deal is the question of the way in which the crossings are marked. I have always thought that the painted lines which were used at first were much better than the steel studs that are now being put down. You could see the painted lines whereas the studs, especially on a wet day, are very difficult to see. They are set at a considerable distance apart and if you cannot see the "Belisha beacon," which is sometimes hidden by an omnibus, it is very difficult to note that there is a crossing. In some places the white line which used to be put down in the middle of the road has been replaced by a strip of metal. You can see that and it also has the advantage of being more flush with the road surface than the stud. I can understand there is difficulty in renewing

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the painted lines, but I think something ought to be done in the matter because motorists cannot see the studs on a wet day or at night.
There have been complaints also—I noticed an article in a local newspaper published in Bromley—that because the studs are above the level of the road they have caused motor cars to skid. I cannot say that I have suffered in that way—my own car, fortunately, does not skid much—but people have complained of that and I would respectfully draw the attention of the noble Earl to that point. But to my mind the question comes down to night driving, because in the day-time people know more or less where these crossings are, but at night it is difficult to see them. On wet nights, when you can see only a very short distance by the aid of the windscreen wiper for the driver, I am quite certain that it is very easy to run over a pedestrian simply because you do not see him at all and you do not know where the crossing is. I understand from the Press to-day that the Minister is considering lighting these beacons. I think that would be a very excellent thing; or if he does not light them could he at any rate see that at these crossings there is sufficient light to enable people to see? I know myself what the difficulty of the motorist is. It is all right in Piccadilly or in Regent Street or at any place where you can see well, but if you get into some of these dark side roads, or roads next to parks—for instance, next to Battersea Park, where there are a lot of "Belisha beacons"—you really cannot see a thing if it is dark.
The street lighting is very bad there. If you switch on your headlights you are very apt to get a driver coming towards you switching his on also, in which case neither of you can see anything at all. If you keep them off you cannot see any pedestrian who is dressed in dark clothes unless he is immediately in front of you. I would suggest lighting the beacons, but really more important still is good lighting at the crossing places. I would also suggest that it is easier for the motorist to see when the light is in the centre of the road, as it is in many places, because with a light on the left-hand side, if it is a wet night and you have only one windscreen wiper, you have the dazzle of the drops on your wind-
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screen to obstruct your view and it is really very difficult to see at all. I hope that the Minister may consider some suggestion which would deal with that matter.
I have nothing further to say except that I hope that the reply which we shall hear from the noble Earl will rather clarify these regulations and tell us what is the actual position of a pedestrian—whether he should wait for the policeman's hand or the traffic lights and let traffic go through, or what is the real position—because I think that no motorists and very few pedestrians to whom I have talked really understand what they should do. Each bows to the other if they are polite, and each crosses in front of the other if they are not polite. I think it would be of benefit to the public generally, to know exactly what the Minister does mean by his regulations. I beg to move.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for the fairness with which he has dealt with this matter. I think everybody is now agreed that pedestrian crossings of some kind are necessary. Parliament confirmed it in the Road Traffic Act of this year; and as I see it, the only issue which now remains is in regard to the construction of these crossings. Upon this particular point experiments are being made by those who are dealing with this matter, and clearly it is only experience that can show us in time what type of crossing is the best suited for the particular purpose which is in view. The acid test in the last resort must clearly be as to whether these crossings will have the effect of lessening the number of accidents upon the roads It is of course much too early to attempt to draw any kind of conclusion from the experiments which have up to now been made, but I have some figures here which I think may be of interest to your Lordships, and which, even if, as I say, one is not justified in drawing any conclusions from them, are at any rate encouraging.
During the quarter ended September 30, 1933, an average of 4.1 persons were killed every day in the Metropolitan Police District. In the corresponding quarter of this year the number was reduced to 3.7, but the point of particular

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interest is that out of the reduction of 43 persons, 42 were pedestrians. In the case of injuries, though the daily average has gone up in the September quarter of this year as compared with the September quarter of last year, the number of pedestrians injured has been actually reduced by 584. I think those are interesting figures, though, as I say, it would be extremely rash to attempt to draw any conclusions from them.
Shortly the case for the yellow beacon can be put in this way. The most careful examinations, tests and investigations have been carried out recently with regard to these crossings, and those who have been conducting the examinations have definitely, and I think everybody will agree rightly, come to the conclusion that the studs which are now being used by themselves under certain conditions are not sufficiently visible, and indeed are very often not visible at all until the vehicle in question is very close upon them. It was therefore clear that something further was necessary in order to draw the attention of motorists to these crossings. The only satisfactory way of marking these crossings, having regard to the limitations of cost, was found to be the placing of these beacons at the various crossing places. It is absolutely necessary for the crossing to be indicated both to motorist and to pedestrian, and no other form of carriageway marking overcomes the difficulties of visibility so well. A good deal of attention has been drawn to these beacons and people have attempted to pour ridicule on them, but I would like to remind the House that these beacons are not entirely new. They have been used in connection with various signs in the Metropolitan area for some considerable time past. I think it was as long ago as 1926 that they were used to mark alternative routes running parallel to Oxford Street, and they have also been used in connection with the indications of one-way streets.
But I do not wish to pursue that matter for the moment, and I should like now if I may to refer to the various points which the noble Earl raised. The first point to which he referred was the anomaly, as he put it, of people being liable to fines for loitering between crossings, whereas they are not liable to fines if they loiter on the carriageway outside these crossings. I really do not think that there is anything very
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anomalous in this if you examine the actual position which obtains. The regulations say that:
"No foot passenger shall remain upon any crossing longer than is necessary for the purpose of passing from one side of the road to the other with reasonable dispatch."
Drivers of vehicles approaching a crossing are required to proceed at such a speed as to be able, if necessary, to stop before reaching the crossing unless they can see that there is no foot passenger on the crossing. Drivers are also required to allow free and uninterrupted passage to any foot passenger who is on a crossing at any point where traffic is not for the time being controlled by a police officer or by light signal, and to give precedence to pedestrians on the crossing.
In view of the great responsibility and onus which is placed upon the drivers of motor vehicles, it would be possible for a pedestrian to hold up the traffic unnecessarily by loitering on a crossing where there is no control, unless it were made an offence for him to do so. As a matter of fact I believe that in certain parts of the Metropolis it was found that children, discovering the power they wielded so far as these crossings were concerned, proceeded to walk on to them and remain there dancing a jig and holding up the traffic. I understand that they could be dealt with by being charged with obstruction, but this is perhaps a rather unwieldy way of dealing with the situation, and it was thought, therefore, that regulations of this kind would be more appropriate. The pedestrians outside these crossings are not given any special protection by regulation. It is perfectly true that the Minister has power, which was given to him under the Road Traffic Act of this year, to make regulations governing the actions of pedestrians in the vicinity of crossings, and it may eventually be found necessary for him to make use of this power and to pass regulations, but the Minister does feel that this should be avoided unless experience definitely shows that it is necessary.
Then the noble Earl referred to the fact that pedestrians take little notice, if any, of the lights and policeman's signals in crowded crossings, such as an Oxford Street crossing. I do not know whether that is true or not. My experience, on the other hand, tells me that

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on the whole they do pay as much attention as they can to the traffic signals and to the police constables who are controlling various crossings, but there undoubtedly is a difficulty in regard to a number of crossings, which, if your Lordships will allow me, I will try very shortly to explain. There are certain crossings controlled by traffic lights where there is what is known as an "all red" period, and in that case the pedestrian is able to make use of these crossings with 100 per cent. security. I mean it stops the traffic completely, and he has a considerable time in which he can cross the road. There are other crossings where, owing to traffic reasons, this is not possible, and it is necessary, that is to say for traffic reasons, to allow vehicles to filter through, and in that particular case the position of the pedestrian is undoubtedly a very difficult one. Quite frankly, we have not been able to find the correct solution of this difficulty up to now, but the matter is being very closely examined and it is hoped that in a comparatively short time we shall be able to find some kind of method by which it will be possible to give more assistance to the pedestrians, and a better lead to pedestrians, than it is possible to do at present, as to when they should cross the road at these particular points.
I pass to another matter. There are the dual points that the noble Earl made—namely, the refusal of motorists to slow up where there are crossings used by pedestrians, and the refusal of pedestrians, on the other hand, to use these crossings and other means that are given to them, such as subways, to get to the other side of the road. This question really is almost entirely a matter of education, and it is bound to take some time until all motorists will conform properly to the regulations as they are laid down. I think, on the whole, both motorists and pedestrians have taken very well to the new regulations, but without a doubt there are a limited number of motorists who do not conform to regulations in the right spirit, and still a certain number of pedestrians who make reckless use of the roads. As I think was stated recently in another place, more active measures are to be taken by way of prosecution to secure a compliance with these regulations. So far as pedestrians are concerned, once again
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that is really a matter of education. I think in time pedestrians will find that they are quite definitely safer upon the crossings than they are upon the rest of the carriageway, and will no doubt use these crossings to an increasing extent. In that connection I may quote these figures. Out of 35 people killed last week in the Metropolitan District 20 were pedestrians, and not a single one of these was killed at a pedestrian crossing. Therefore it is perfectly clear that these crossings do afford security to the pedestrians, and as that truth is realised by the pedestrians so will they use these crossings to an increasing extent.
The noble Earl made some complaint of the positions in which these crossings had been placed, and, I am quite prepared to admit, probably not without some justification. It must be realised, however, that it has been an enormous undertaking to put down these crossings in a comparatively short space of time, and in spite of the enormous amount of care and attention given to individual problems, I do not think it is a matter of surprise that there should be one or two cases where the ideal position has not been found. The consideration of omnibus stops, which the noble Earl particularly mentioned, in relation to pedestrian crossings, is being actively pursued, but some time must elapse before final adjustments can be made, and I want to assure the House that the Minister is always very ready to investigate any representation that may be made to him that a particular crossing place is badly sited, or that any omnibus stop in its vicinity needs alteration.
Then the noble Earl referred to the question of the steel studs, and intimated that he thought it possible that the old white-line crossing might be more suitable than the steel-stud crossing. I am afraid that on this point I disagree with him. Not only is there the question of cost to be taken into account—and in this connection I would like to inform your Lordships that in busy streets it would cost something between £30 and £40 a year to keep these painted line crossings in such a condition as to be of any effect or value, whereas you can institute one of these steel-stud crossings, together with the beacon, for something

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under £10, and that, of course, is permanent—but, apart from that, I think it is generally accepted now that these painted crossings really are liable to disappear altogether in wet weather, and so long as the weather remains wet it is practically impossible to repaint them. We have been in very close contact with Paris on this particular question of studs. Those who have studied this question have expressed certain doubts as to whether we have discovered the best type of stud, and as to whether we have made use of it in the proper way, but as the result of these representations a consignment of studs has been ordered direct from Paris. They are now on their way, and although they are very little different from the studs we use here, it is intended to experiment with them and see whether any better method can be found.
The noble Earl also dealt with the question of lighting the beacons. This is a question which concerns the general lighting of the highways and a good many of our London streets are not at present adequately lighted. But the beacons are designed primarily to attract the notice of drivers, and they should do, I think, without any doubt where the street lighting is adequate. Where it is not adequate, and where the local authority is unable to improve it, the Minister again has indicated his willingness to approve of illuminated beacons which are situated in places where there is not sufficient light to make them reasonably visible at night. It might interest your Lordships to know that up till now no local authority has made an application for this purpose. I think I have dealt with the main points which the noble Earl raised. I would like, in conclusion, to refer to his complaint that the regulations were not clear in the minds of the public. There has been a great deal of publicity, through the Press and by broadcast addresses, to bring home to all classes of road users as simply as possible the effect of the regulations with regard to these pedestrian crossings. Further reiteration will, no doubt, be necessary, and the revised edition of the Highway Code for which, as your Lordships know, we secure a very large circulation indeed, will contain clear instructions on the subject. We hope and believe that, as a result of experience, we shall in due course find the best method of dealing with this difficult problem.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, I must thank the noble Earl for his very full reply. I was pleased to hear some of the things he said. It is perfectly true that the education of both motorist and pedestrian is the only real solution of this question. The studs at present are not very visible, as the noble Earl agrees, and the object of the beacons was to ensure that people should know where these crossings are. But the main trouble to-day is that, in the case of a road where there is a lot of traffic, you cannot see the beacon. If they were placed in the middle of the road, say at the corners of a refuge, that, I think, would be better. I should like the noble Earl, when he confers with the honourable gentleman the Minister of Transport, to bear that in mind. His figures are exceedingly interesting and definitely show that these crossings are doing something to bring down the terrible death rate on the road. I was also particularly pleased to hear that in places where the lighting is not very good the Minister is considering the illumination of the beacons. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

INDIA: PROPOSED TRANSFER OF TANGASSERI.
VISCOUNT FITZALAN OF DERWENT VISCOUNT FITZALAN OF DERWENT had the following Notice on the Paper: To ask His Majesty's Government whether their attention has been called to a memorial to the Viceroy of India from the inhabitants of Tangasseri now in the Trimwelly district of Madras against a rumoured proposal that they should be handed over to the neighbouring State of Travancore; whether the 2,000 inhabitants of Tangasseri are not almost entirely members of the Roman Catholic Church; whether for about 500 years they have not been under the rule of European nations and for the last 140 years enjoyed the protection of the British Government; whether there is any precedent for the British Government handing over a purely Christian community against the wishes of the people to a Hindu State, and what, if the alleged intention of so doing is true, is the motive inspiring such a proposal; and to move for Papers.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I am afraid your Lordships may feel that you are suffering from rather a surfeit

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of India, but I must explain that my Question was put down for a much earlier date, and I postponed it to suit the convenience of the House. I have made the Question very full. I think it covers most of the points. Tangasseri is a romantic spot, I understand, and appeals to our imagination. It covers only ninety-nine acres. It is absolutely and entirely British territory, and though I have in my Question put the population as 2,000, I understand from the statement made in the House of Commons by the Under-Secretary of State for India that it is, to be exact, 1,733. I take it that there have undoubtedly been intrigues going on between certain Tranvancoreans and Tangasserians with regard to this matter, and no doubt it originates with questions connected with trade. According to the Under-Secretary of State, this question has been cropping up at different periods ever since 1860. He alludes to 1860, 1882, 1884 and 1897, so it is an old story.
I do not want to suggest for a moment that the present position is due to the situation of the whole Indian question. I have no doubt, from what I have been told, that the administrative difficulties of managing this small isolated tract of land are rather considerable, and our nearest government post is something like seventy odd miles from this territory. But I want also to point out, à propos of an expression used by the Under-Secretary to the effect that he did not think the Christians in Tangasseri had much grievance because there were several of their fellow-Christians in Travancore, that that is no doubt true, in fact, I am sure it is, for this very reason. According to the evidence I have received, there is no doubt whatever that Christians in Travancore are losing their jobs, but I do not say that they have been persecuted because of their religion. The reason, I understand, is this. As we all know, there is in India a great deal of nepotism and a great deal of employment given because of caste. As I understand, in the last year or two there have been in Travancore changes in caste management and in some of the industries there, with the result that the Christians have been turned out wholesale. But I repeat that that is not on account of their religion.
I have no evidence whatever that there has been any persecution of Christians in Travancore on account of their religion, and I do not know to what denomination these Christians belong. I have no evidence to show that they belong to my own denomination. But in this little place, Tangasseri, they apparently all belong to the Catholic religion. I was very relieved by the statement made by the Under-Secretary in another place that he was quite certain that we might rest assured that the people in this small territory would not be handed over to another State against their will. I hope my noble friend below me (Lord Halifax) will re-echo that statement. I should like to quote words which, I am sure, are most familiar to him, and no doubt to your Lordships—words taken from King Edward's Proclamation of 1908:
"No man amongst My subjects has been favoured, molested, or disquieted by reason of his religious belief or worship."
Those words might be interpreted as applying to the past, but I submit they apply also to the present and to the future for all time. It is quite impossible to believe that any Government could hand over this community, no matter how small the population may be, no matter what their religious denomination may be, to a Hindu State if they object.
I hope that the Papers which the noble Viscount will be able to lay will give us some explanation of the history of this question, and that he himself will give an absolute confirmation of the forecast issued by the Under-Secretary in another place. The only criticism I have to make at the moment about this question is, to use a term which I think is rather familiar to my noble friend at this moment— "dilatory"—I think the Government have been very dilatory in obtaining information on this Question. They have had plenty of time; my own Question has been down long enough. Madras is a long way from Simla and from Delhi, but I really think a little more expedition might have been shown in obtaining information on the matter. I beg to move for Papers.
LORD AMPTHILL: My Lords, I hope you will forgive me for intervening for a moment on a trivial matter. It is only a matter of a misprint. It is stated on the Paper that Tangasseri is in the

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"Trimwelly" district of Madras. There is no such district in the Madras Presidency. It is undoubtedly the Tinevelly district which is referred to. I think the first five letters should be "Tinev" instead of "Trimw." I think it is a pity to have a misprint of this kind included in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
VISCOUNT FITZALAN OF DERWENT: I am obliged to the noble Lord. I have no doubt it is my mistake.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (VISCOUNT HALIFAX): My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, for correcting the printer's error. As we have had experience in another place, such errors sometimes exercise a deleterious influence upon the proceedings of Parliament. As a matter of fact, while correcting the printer's error, the noble Lord said the first five letters should be "Tinev." Should I not be right if I corrected him and said that the first five letters are "Tinne"?
LORD AMPTHTLL: I accept the noble Viscount's correction.
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE: I do not intend to move the adjournment.
VISCOUNT HALIFAX: I am extremely glad that the noble Lord opposite has relieved any apprehension I might have otherwise entertained. That point being settled, I am at liberty to turn to the point of greater substance that my noble friend has introduced to our notice. He has introduced it, as always, with the lucidity and conciseness that your Lordships have learned to expect. He began by saying that this place, Tangasseri, is one of considerable romance. It is indeed a place that perhaps exhibits as well as any other the quality of that mosaic which is India, that is responsible for a great many of the difficulties that your Lordships have had in mind during the four days' debate on Indian Constitutional Reform. It is quite true that it is only ninety-nine acres in size, but both by its history and by its present geographical position it has an interest all its own. Perhaps your Lordships will allow me to tell you, if you do not already know it, that it was formerly a Dutch and Portuguese settlement, and was acquired by the East India Company from the Dutch at the end of the
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eighteenth century when Cochin was captured, and has therefore been a British East-Indian territory since 1795.
The noble Viscount asks whether His Majesty's Government are aware of the Memorial that has been submitted to the Viceroy by the inhabitants of this place against the rumoured proposal that they should be handed over. The answer is that we are aware of that Memorial being submitted. The next part of the Question is whether the population is almost entirely composed of members of the Roman Catholic Church. I am not able to give him precise figures, but I am inclined to think, on the information available, that the majority of them are members of the Orthodox Syrian Church, but there are a great many of his co-religionists among them, and he is quite correct in saying that the population is almost completely Christian.
The difficulty is that to which he has quite fairly called attention—namely, that this little enclave is now administered as part of the Tinnevelly district, but the headquarters of that district are some seventy miles away as the crow flies, across the intervening territory of the State of Travancore. The present administrative arrangement is that the State of Travancore, by a system of annual leases, controls the manufacture, import, and sale of liquor, opium, and, I think, salt, and handles the Customs, but the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the place remains in British hands. The quite evident inconvenience of that arrangement has given rise, as the noble Viscount told us, to various proposals in past years for the cession of this enclave to the State of Travancore. I was rather sorry to hear the noble Viscount suggest that the emergence of this question again was due to intrigues going on because, if that is so, intrigues have been going on for the last three-quarters of a century.
VISCOUNT FITZALAN OF DERWENT: That is exactly what I meant. I did not mean that there was anything particularly novel in the situation. I did not mean intrigues by the Government but by the two populations.
VISCOUNT HALIFAX: As to that have no information, and I was only concerned to make it plain, what indeed I hope was not in the noble Viscount's mind, that there was nothing in any way

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peculiar about the raising of the question at the present time which had not been implicit in its emergence at all these various intervals to which he alluded during the last seventy-five years.
VISCOUNT FITZALAN OF DERIATENT: I specifically said so.
VISCOUNT HALIFAX: I accept, of course, entirely everything the noble Viscount says. When the question was raised on one of these occasions—in 1882, I think—the Secretary of State used these words, which are perhaps worth quoting, in a Despatch to the Government of India:
"The inhabitants of Tangasseri object strongly to the proposed transfer, and although your Government have made inquiries and have apparently satisfied yourselves that they would suffer no substantial hardship thereby, I am unable, in the fare of their distinct opposition, to assent to the measure proposed."
In 1927 the matter was raised again, and was very strongly argued, but on that occasion again the Government of Madras did not feel able to give any support to the request of the Government of Travancore, having regard to the same considerations that had influenced the Secretary of State—namely, the strong objections likely to be felt by the inhabitants. That, therefore, has been in the past the position of the Government, although, I think, it would be true to say that the Government of India, certainly when I was there and the question was raised in 1927, was inclined to agree that there was a very strong case on every administration ground for the transfer, and we are inclined to think that the apprehensions of the inhabitants might in fact be groundless, having regard to the fact that the noble Viscount mentioned, to which perhaps I should attach greater importance than he did, of the very large percentage of Christians among the total population of the State of Travancore. I believe I am right in saying that the Christian population totals something like a quarter of the total Indian Christian population in India.
The proposal was renewed by the State of Travancore this year. I think my noble friend Lord Hastings, when he was in India on the States Inquiry Committee, was made aware that the State of Travancore intended so to renew it, and it has been renewed on substantially the
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same grounds as have been prayed in support of it on all these previous occasions. The Government of India have not, as yet, had the views of the Government of Madras upon it, and I do not think it is entirely reasonable on the part of my noble friend to reproach His Majesty's Government here of being dilatory when I am sure he would be the first to recognise that it is quite impossible for my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for India to express an opinion on a matter of this kind without having before him the considered views both of the Government of Madras and the Government of India. Therefore it is not possible for me to answer the last Question of the noble Lord's on the Order Paper without further knowledge.
As far as I am aware there are no precedents for the British Government handing over a purely Christian community to a Hindu State against the wishes of the people concerned, and I can only repeat to him quite definitely what was said by the Under-Secretary to the India Office in the House of Commons, that although, as I have tried to make plain I think, there is a very strong case indeed on grounds of administrative convenience for the cession, and although I personally hope, from my own knowledge of the question, that on further examination the inhabitants may not feel it incumbent upon them to maintain their attitude of opposition, yet, if that opposition is ineradicable, I am quite sure my noble friend may rest content that neither this Government nor any other would wish to insist upon any transfer being made.
VISCOUNT FITZALAN OF DERWENT: My Lords, I am much obliged to my noble friend for the answer he has given. I want to make it quite clear—I do not think he understood; I dare say it is my fault—that I made no suggestion or insinuation whatever that the present suggestion or attempt to hand this small population over to a Hindu State was due to the present controversy about India. I thought I had made that quite clear. At the same time I want to repeat what I said, that in Travancore itself not only great dissatisfaction but great unhappiness and discomfort are being caused to the Christians by the fact that they are losing their posts in some of the big public works in that territory. My noble

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friend has assured me that in no circumstances whatever will this small population be handed over if it is quite clear that it is against their will. I admit what he said, from what I have been told and have learned, that the administrative difficulties are considerable, and I quite understand that from the administrative point of view it might be a popular move to hand these people over, but it would be an absolutely impossible thing to do, I repeat, against their wishes, and I am very glad to learn from my noble friend that that is his opinion too.
VISCOUNT HALIFAX: My Lords, with the leave of your Lordships may I say in one word to my noble friend that if appeared to misinterpret anything he had said I would ask him to allow me to express to him my regrets and apologies?
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

ARMY RESERVE.
LORD AMPTHILL LORD AMPTHILL had given Notice that he would call attention to the fact that there is no adequate Reserve for the Regular Army seeing that the Militia is no longer in being and that the Territorial Army may not be used for drafting; ask His Majesty's Government whether the Militia will be reconstituted in the event of war or whether it is intended to introduce some new system of providing the Army Reserve which will be required before the Reserve Army is sent abroad; and move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to explain the Motion that stands in my name. It is a long time since I have asked your Lordships to listen to a Motion of mine and I make no apology for doing so now. It was against all my personal inclinations—the inclinations of a man who is advanced in years—to place my Motion on the Order Paper and thus commit myself to a certain amount of unwelcome effort. But I am in the position of one who has chanced to observe signs of some danger and has to choose between passing on or going out of his way to give warning to any persons who may be concerned. There was a time long years ago when I took part in many a Militia debate in this House, but little did I think that it would ever fall to my lot again to raise the question of the
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Militia. The time, however, is opportune for calling attention to the existence, though merely on paper, of that Militia which is older than the Regular Army and used to be known by the significant names of the People's Army or the old Constitutional Force.
Strangely enough the Militia has again and again been forgotten during the course of our history until a national emergency forced our statesmen to realise the existence of the force. During the South African War it was left to the Sovereign, to Her Majesty Queen Victoria herself, to remind her Ministers that the Militia was there, and the result of that timely reminder was that the Militia was embodied and sixty-one infantry battalions were sent to the front while a further nine battalions were sent overseas to serve in Egypt and elsewhere. Those momentous facts, however, were forgotten by the late Lord Haldane on the last occasion when he took part in a Militia debate in this House and it fell to the lot of my noble friends, Lord Salisbury and Lord Selborne, to tell him that they themselves had taken their battalions abroad. I am very sorry that both my noble friends are obliged to be absent on acount of ill-health as they have assured me that I have their full support.
I say that the time is opportune for again calling the Militia to remembrance and I say so because during the past six months we have been obliged to reconsider the whole question of national defence. The policy of universal disarmament which we strove to get adopted by setting an example fraught with grave danger to ourselves has definitely failed for the time being. Europe has been rearming while we have been disarming and there is now general agreement in this country that we must raise all our armed forces to a more adequate strength. We have also had occasion to recognise that nothing except a state of military preparedness can give us an effective voice in the counsels of Europe. The Navy and the Air Force have received some attention in Parliament and also on the public platform, but not so the Army. The Army, however, is no less important than the other two branches of the forces of the Crown. Ships and aircraft cannot go everywhere but there are many places on land to which the British soldier might have to

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go. So long as we maintain an Army at all we must envisage the possibility of that Army having to go to war. Our Army, therefore, must be ready to take the field at any moment and what is more, it must be ready to keep the field. An Army which cannot last out for even a short campaign is, of course, not fit to take the field. Every Army in the field requires constant reinforcement after the first few weeks. Even if there are no casualties from actual fighting there is always a great drain caused by sickness, a drain which is usually greater than that caused by killing and wounding. That means that the Army must have a Reserve over and above those men who have not completed their engagements and had to rejoin on mobilisation.
An Army without such a Reserve is not an effective instrument of war and our Army is at present in that position—that very dangerous position. We have a Reserve Army but not an Army Reserve and the nation has been lulled into a false sense of security because the general public cannot discern the immense difference which is connoted by the transposition of those two words. The Reserve Army is, of course, the Territorial Army which cannot be used for furnishing drafts to the Regular Army and is, therefore, not an Army Reserve. The only possible Army Reserve under our present system is the Militia which has been reduced to a state of suspended animation. The Militia, in short, only exists on paper. My object to-day is to show that in that event of war, which we cannot rule out as impossible, the Army will be useless until the Militia has been reconstituted, and I also wish to suggest that nothing is more likely to tempt foreign nations to go to war than the spectacle of England in a state of military weakness. The latter, however, is too large a theme for discussion on this particular issue. What I have said is an explanation as brief and concise as I can make it, of the object of my Motion, and now I want to show that the re-constitution of the Militia may prove to be the solution of other great difficulties which are causing us much anxiety and perplexity at the present time.
Recruiting for the Regular Army has become slack to an alarming extent and the Territorial Army is rapidly vanishing. Those are the difficulties to which I refer and I have now to show that they
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are closely connected with this question of the Militia. Just about three weeks ago the noble Viscount, the Secretary of State for War, made a speech which delighted me even more than most of his speeches do. It was a speech after my own heart and when I chanced to see the report in a provincial paper I was encouraged to hope that the noble Viscount would be sympathetic and not disappoint me this afternoon. The occasion for the speech was the opening of the Scots Guards Loan Exhibition. The noble Viscount said that ever since he had assumed his present high office it had "seemed to him a very curious thing, and a very unfortunate thing, that there should be any difficulty at all in these days in getting enough recruits to join the Army," and he went on to expatiate in stirring words on the advantages of Army life. I may perhaps quote some of the things he said a little later on. Now, will the noble Viscount allow me to tell him why there is this difficulty about getting recruits for the Army? The reason is well known to every regimental officer, but, judging from past experience, it is very probably ignored at the War Office. The reason is simply and solely because the Militia has ceased to exist.
Before the War the Army used to rely on a large and constant stream of recruits from the Militia. The Militia was regarded as a sort of ante-chamber to the Regular Army because most young men preferred to get a taste of military life by a trial trip in the Militia before they would commit themselves to an Army engagement. If, therefore, the Secretary of State wishes to revive recruiting for the Army he has a sure and certain means of doing it by merely re-constituting the Militia. He will at the same time be extending to a large number of physically fit young men who are unhappily among the unemployed all those physical and moral advantages of Army life of which he spoke so eloquently and so truly. I said that the Territorial Army was vanishing and I must, of course, explain what I meant by that. The facts, so far as I have been able to ascertain them, are as follows: The latest War Office returns reveal a total loss in eight months—that is, from the 31st December, 1933, to the 31st August, 1934—of 6,679 officers and men of the Territorial Army. The worst previous

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Territorial year was 1932 with an all-ranks total of 127,068 men. The total strength of the Territorial Army as shown in the last return—up to the 1st September, 1934—is now 126,057. This is a loss of 1,011 men on 1932 and is the lowest total ever reached. The establishment of the Territorial Army is 172,086 all ranks. Therefore, there is now a shortage—mark this, please, my Lords—of 46,029 officers and men. It is of course a very serious matter that our Reserve Army, with all its new responsibilities, should be in that condition and it behoves us to look into the causes in order that some remedy may be found.
Now here again, may I be allowed to tell the Secretary of State for War what causes this alarming falling off in recruiting for the Territorial Army? What I have to tell the noble Viscount is not merely my own opinion but the opinion. which is widely prevalent among officers and men of the Territorial Army. It is again simply because we have no Militia. The Territorial soldier is afraid that in spite of all pledges to the contrary, he will be used for drafting to the Regular Army as soon as war breaks out. He has sense enough to see that that is bound to happen as long as the Army is without its time-honoured and unfailing source of reinforcements in the shape of the Militia. He communicates that fear to his friends and neighbours, and the mothers, above all, who cannot forget the Great War, take alarm and will not let their sons join the Territorial Army. That really is at the root of the whole matter. That is the chief reason why recruiting for the Territorial Army is falling off, in spite of the general belief that war is no longer unthinkable, and it will continue to fall off until His Majesty's Government make some definite statement as to what they intend to do to provide the necessary Army Reserve. What is wanted is some definite statement such as that which the late Lord Haldane made in 1907. The "Haldane Plan," as it was called, told us where we were and rendered it possible to make those detailed preparations which enabled us to enter upon the Great War without initial chaos and disaster.
All these things are set forth and explained in detail in a pamphlet which has been written for the Militia Club, an association of old Militia officers which
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has had a Field Marshal and several eminent Generals among its members and is concerned to preserve the Militia tradition for the good of the nation. The writer of that pamphlet was Major Breffit, a Staff officer of recent and wide experience who has just retired from the Army. I have of course submitted copies of that pamphlet to the noble Viscount, the Secretary of State for War, and his advisers at the War Office, and I shall be happy to send a copy to any noble Lord who may do me the honour and favour of asking for one. I do not wish to take up your Lordships' time by showing how the British Army has always depended upon the Militia for reinforcements in time of war. It seems to me and to all those with whom I have been able to discuss this matter that the Army will undoubtedly require the reconstitution of the Militia whenever we have to go to war again unless meanwhile we adopt the Continental system of universal military service. But nothing short of a revolution is likely to bring about such a change in our military system, and if we wish to avoid revolutionary movements like those which are disturbing the nations of the Continent we cannot do better than adhere to the Militia tradition, the tradition of that old Constitutional Force which used to be described as the People's Army.
The present position is that we are depriving half the population of the opportunity of military service under that voluntary system on which Englishmen pin their faith. We are only affording that opportunity to those who can give Territorial Army service, that is to say, who can do mid-week drills or week-end soldiering throughout the year. But the other half of our young manhood, who are equally keen and make equally good soldiers, can only give Militia service, which means one month of continuous training in each year. This difference, of course, is a matter of occupation and place of residence. For instance, it is obviously not possible for the agricultural worker to attend weekly drills on Saturdays and Sundays in a town which is some distance from his village, but he can attend a Militia training at the time of year when agriculture is slack. Similar difficulties apply to the man who works in great towns. No system which does not give equal opportunity to all classes

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of able-bodied and patriotic young men can possibly be regarded as efficient seeing that it wastes half the human material available for the making of soldiers. The officer class is in precisely the same position. There are those who could do an annual training but cannot do week-end drills throughout the year.
There is one other point that I must mention and that is that a reconstitution of the Militia, which might in the first instance be confined to certain districts, would be a wonderful palliative of the present evils of unemployment. With the six months recruit training of former days you would be doing for a considerable number of young men all those things which our numerous voluntary agencies are trying to do at the present time, and you would be doing it in a much more effective way as you would be giving those young men the self-respect which comes from the knowledge that they are actually serving King and country and that they have got a definite job. You would be giving them all those things which were so eloquently described by the noble Viscount, the Secretary of State for War, in his eloquent speech to the Scots Guards. I cannot resist quoting the noble Viscount's words once more. He said:
"When one sees the kind of career which is offered to the young men of to-day to join the ranks of any great regiment, the physical training which they get, the educational advantages which are given to them, the life of interest and adventure which they are likely to embark upon, and finally the opportunity for employment and the vocational training which the Army affords, one would have thought that so long as there are any physically fit young men unemployed there ought to be no dearth of candidates for the Army."
I am very much afraid that I shall be told that this is all very well, but where is the money to come from? I have an answer to that probable objection. I suggest that you have got the money and that something can be done on the lines which I have suggested without any increase of the sums at present voted for national expenditure.
In the first place, there will be a large saving on the money voted for the Territorial Army so long as there is a shortage of nearly 50,000 officers and men. Secondly, you will be making a permanent saving of money at present expended to mitigate the evils of unemployment if you give healthy physical and
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moral training in the Militia to, say, 100,000 of the young men who have never even had a job. And thirdly, I suggest that some retrenchment of present Army expenditure ought to be possible when it is a matter of providing a necessary Reserve for the Regular Army. I am asking for Papers and I can best explain what sort of Papers I want by putting a single question to the noble Viscount. My question is this: If war broke out and our Army were sent abroad, what would happen three weeks after the war had started? I beg to move.
LORD JESSEL: My Lords, I think we must all agree that we have heard a very informative speech from the noble Lord who has just sat down. He said in the course of his speech that the cream of the Militia went into the Army. I must confess that I quite agree with him because I entered the Army through the Militia. However, I am not going to discuss the Militia, because the noble Lord has told us in the course of his interesting speech a great many facts as to which I thoroughly agree with him. Everyone connected with military matters knows what a tremendous interest the noble Lord has taken in this subject and how well he did during the War. I well remember him at Felixstowe at the head of his regiment; and there was no finer regiment. The brigade was commanded by the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, and I well remember going to Lord Salisbury and asking how he liked it. He said that his most efficient battalion was the noble Lord's, and he said that he himself has never in his life felt such a "swell" as when he commanded the brigade, though having, as your Lordships know, filled very many high offices of State. But as I said at the commencement of my remarks, I do not propose to deal with the Militia, with many of the facts connected with which I am fairly conversant, but, talking about reserves, I should like to say a few words about the Territorials.
Your Lordships may well question me as to my right to do so. After having served in the Army for a good many years, I was connected as honorary Colonel with one of the most splendid battalions in the County of London. Last February, the matter came before the Association of London Mayors, of which I am President, and it was then agreed to look into the

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whole question of the Territorials as part of our civic duties; because I may remind your Lordships that out of the ten divisions two are London divisions and those London divisions are 40 per cent. under strength. The question was how they could be helped to recruit. Various suggestions were made, and I sat upon a committee which was helped by the secretary of the County of London Territorial Association.
We came to the conclusion that the trouble lay firstly in the location of the various headquarters, some of which were old and some of which are now rather remote from the industrial portions of the population. Another reason was the fact that men moved—for labour is very mobile in London—and that to go back to their old regiment they had to travel. That took up a lot of time for which they received no travelling allowance. You can quite understand that a man who has been attached, say, to a corps in St. Pancras and goes to live at Battersea, while he does not want to leave his corps, finds after a time that it costs him so much to go that he has to give it up. One of our suggestions was that travelling allowance should be given. Above all, your Lordships will remember that during the time of economy measures only 30s. bounty was allowed; it was cut down from £5, and we suggested that a further grant should be given for the bounty. A recent illustration of the movement of population is afforded by what happened the other day in the City of Westminster. Curiously enough it was named the City of London Fusiliers, but its headquarters were in Westminster. That battalion was very much under strength. It then moved to Wandsworth, end had new headquarters there—its old headquarters were not bad—and it struck a new patch altogether. The result is that the battalion is now over strength.
There is also art opportunity now of looking into this question in London—because, as I have said, it is practically one-fifth of the whole of the Territorials of this country—and of seeing whether arrangements cannot be made to move some of the headquarters and get better drill-grounds in less populated areas. We are very much concerned in this matter, because we feel that London should not be behindhand in doing its best for the Territorial Army. I cannot help thinking
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that the noble Lord has done very good service in bringing the matter forward, and drawing attention to the lack of Reserve. I am not going to argue, the question of the Militia. His figures have thoroughly demonstrated how lacking we are in the matter of the Reserve. No one who went through the last War will be in favour of war, but it is no use pretending to the country at large that we have a Reserve at all adequate even for the police duties required in this great Empire. I do not want to take up more of your Lordships' time, but the Mayors of London have been very anxious about this matter. They have represented their views very strongly to the War Office, and have suggested all manner of means for improving recruiting. Our object is the same as that of the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, to try and help the country to get a better Reserve for whatever needs the country may be called upon to fulfil.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, may If be allowed first of all to say how grateful I am to my noble friend Lord Ampthill for the very clear and emphatic words he used with regard to the necessity of being prepared for emergency, and of not overlooking or ignoring the claims of the Army owing to the inure popular needs of its younger brother in the air. I am grateful to him, too, because the fact that this debate is taking place and the Question which he has been good enough to put to me give me an opportunity of clearing up certain misconceptions and, I hope, of relieving to some extent, at any rate, certain anxieties. The sense of public duty which has moved my noble friend to bring this matter forward is, I think, shown by the fact that my noble friend and those associated with him have actually gone so far in their desire to help the War Office, as to intimate that they were willing that the principal function of the Militia—which, as he truly said, is the old Constitutional Force of the country—should be to find drafts for the Regular Army, rather than remaining in its own units to go overseas as a separate branch of the forces. I know that in making that suggestion he is making a very great concession from what he would himself best wish to see.
I have to thank him, too, for his courtesy in supplying to me the pamphlet to which he made reference, and which

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sets out very clearly the case of the Militia Club and those interested in it—their case for the revival of the Militia, either in its own name or under the title of Special Reserve. I notice that in that pamphlet the Secretary of State for War is exhorted to "put his cards on the table," and a little later on I am urged, not to declare, but confess, "with tragic veracity," that I have got nothing up my sleeve. I am going as far as I can to respond to this invitation. I shall put my cards on the table, so far as is possible without betraying important military secrets, and I hope to show, even if I am not as fully equipped as I should wish, that I have one or two cards of whose existence, I think, my noble friend bad no suspicion.
Before I come to deal with the arguments which my noble friend put forward, not in a spirit of controversy, and I do not wish to be contentious, I should like to begin quite frankly by saying that if I had unlimited funds available for Army purposes I should be very glad to see the Militia resuscitated. I recognise that it would be undoubtedly of use, because it would tap recruiting sources which at present are not touched by the Territorial Army. I am not quite sure that they would be quite such freely flowing springs as my noble friend thinks, but undoubtedly it is true that the existence of the Militia or Special Reserve would enable a certain number of people to give military services which at present they do not feel themselves able to give. In addition, the existence of the Militia or Special Reserve would relieve the Regular Army of one of the manifold tasks which it has to carry out to-day, and that is the task of creating out of its own resources the machinery for absorbing the immature and temporarily unfit men on mobilisation, and for training drafts for the maintenance of the Regular Army in the field. Unfortunately it is not true to say that I have unlimited resources. We have to cut our coat according to our cloth, and I am afraid the result under present conditions is that the coat is not nearly big enough properly to fit the body which it is designed to cover. We have not just to accept all the suggestions which we think useful, but we have to see how far the funds available can be distributed so as to get the best possible value for
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every penny we are able to obtain from the Exchequer.
My noble friend, I think, foresaw that that difficulty might be present in my mind, and he made three suggestions with regard to the provision of the necessary funds. He said, first of all, as is unfortunately true, that the Territorial Army was far below its peace establishment, and he said, "There you have a lot of money saved." Of course in the Budget estimates we do not take the funds necessary to maintain the Territorial Army at its peace establishment. I wish we did. All we take are the funds which are necessary to maintain it at what we think will be its recruited strength during the coming year. Then my noble friend said that money would be saved on unemployment expenditure if we got men into the Army or Militia. It is true it would be, and I should be personally glad if I could only hope to see some of the funds diverted to that purpose, but I am afraid that there I should find very considerable difficulty in persuading the Chancellor of the Exchequer to take quite the same view. Then he said that we could make a retrenchment on Army expenditure in order to make up the deficiency. That is only saying in another way that we could spend the money on the Militia instead of spending it on something else. The fact is that we have not got enough to spend even on the things which we regard as necessary, and that there is nothing which we could cut down in order to provide the necessary money which would be required.
The actual cost of the Militia, as my noble friend knows very well, but as some of your Lordships may not know, was, I think, in the last year before the War £1,380,000. When in 1923 there was a good deal of consideration given to the question of its resuscitation, there was a Committee set up and the estimate of what it would then cost was in the neighbourhood of £2,500,000 per annum; so that your Lordships see that a very considerable sum of money is necessarily involved. But because we have not been able to afford to revive the Militia or the Special Reserve in the shape which it took before the War, that does not mean that we have been content not to devise any means to provide for the need which that force was designed to supply in 1914.

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My noble friend put a very pertinent and conclusive question when he concluded his speech by enquiring what would happen three weeks after war broke out, if the Army had to take the field under existing conditions, and his case, as I understood it, was largely based on the hypothesis that although in the Territorial Army we had a Reserve Army, we had to-day, in the absence of the Militia, no Army Reserve. That, of course, if it were true, would he a complete condemnation of the whole of our military organisation to-day because, as my noble friend truly said, it is quite useless to have an Army which is at the necessary minimum war strength when war breaks out, but which has nothing to fall back upon to make good the wastage in the early days of the war before fresh recruits can be trained. Your Lordships, I hope, will not be surprised to know that that somewhat elementary truth had not escaped the notice of those very brilliant and skilful generals and soldiers whose duty it has been to conduct the organisation of the Army and to advise Secretaries of State at the War Office. To have done nothing in the direction of supplying an Army Reserve would have meant, as my noble friend himself indicates, that the mobilisation of the Regular Army would be practically impossible or, if it were mobilised, it would be practically a useless force.
In fact, that position has been considered and has been met. I know that my noble friend will be relieved, and I think your Lordships will be relieved, to learn that measures have been taken to deal with it. I propose to deal principally with infantry, because it is the infantry which the Militia mainly supplied. It is not only the largest arm, but also it is the one which is, I think, principally in the mind of my noble friend. There are, of course, technical corps, the Engineers, the Signals, the Royal Army Service Corps, the Medical Corps, and so on; and with regard to all of those we have at this time what is known as a Supplementary Reserve, which is substantially the same as the Special Reserve of those arms was before the War, but fortunately their establishment is larger than it used to be in pre-War days.
THE EARL OF MIDLETON: What is the strength of that Reserve?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: I am afraid I shall have to get those figures. I can give them in a moment. Then, if I may, I will deal with the infantry position. The hypothesis, I think, on which my noble friend's argument proceeds is that the number of Army reservists which would be available on the outbreak of war would only suffice to bring up the Regular Army units from peace establishment to war establishment strength; and that it follows that there would be no supply of reservists to make good any wastage until the time at which post-war recruits would be sufficiently trained to take their place in the field. And I think also he would say, if he were pressed, that in the absence of the Militia there is no adequate machinery, such as existed by virtue of the Militia before the War, for training these post-war recruits and to make them fit.
Now I am glad to be able to tell your Lordships that that is not, in fact, the position. What we have done is this. We have provided by the terms of service in the infantry battalions a scheme under which there will be at any given moment sufficient reservists not merely to bring the units up to their war establishment, but also to replace casualties during those months which must elapse before post-war recruits are available to act as drafts. In addition to that we have evolved machinery for the reception of any soldiers who, on medical grounds, or age, or lack of training are not able to accompany their units overseas and to train men also who join the Colours after the outbreak of war. That latter machinery is provided by the altered system of regimental depots, which would be suitably expanded as soon as war actually broke out. That does mean that the Regular Army is to that extent undertaking functions which were discharged by the Militia in 1914, and it is a fair question to ask whether that can be a cheaper method than reviving the Special Reserve for the purpose. The answer is that it is a cheaper method, and I should like, if I may, to explain how the method works.
I hope I shall state these matters, which are perhaps a little technical, in simple language. Your Lordships will realise that the war establishment of any unit is based primarily on military considerations; that is to say, in fixing what

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is to be the war strength of any particular unit, you decide on military grounds what would be the proper strength, and you do not take some arbitrary figure based on the number of men whom you think likely to be available at any given moment. But while the war establishment of a unit to-day is, for technical reasons, substantially lower than it was in 1914, the reduction in the peace establishment of an infantry battalion as compared with 1914 is very much less, and the reason for that is that, in fixing the strength of the peace establishment of an infantry battalion at home, the factor to which you have regard is the main function of an infantry battalion in peace time, that is to say, the function of supplying drafts for its linked battalion which is engaged on duty overseas. As your Lordships know, under the Cardwell system each battalion going overseas has its linked battalion at home, and we fix the strength in peace time of the home battalion with reference to the number of men necessary to supply drafts in time of peace.
THE EARL OF MIDLETON: Would my noble friend give us the figures—what is the establishment and what was the establishment—so that we can form a judgment?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: I did not anticipate that this House was going to form itself into an expert Committee to decide whether or not the establishment was adequate. If I had imagined that I should have been able to bring forward every figure. I can, however, give the figures the noble Earl asks. In July last the figures for the Supplementary Reserve were: 1,234 officers, 17,333 other ranks. The point is not what the figures were, the point is what the relative figures are. The relative figures are so arranged that you will have on the outbreak of war the necessary number of reservists in order to bring any given battalion up to its war strength, and sufficient surplus to constitute the necessary reserve strength to make good the wastages which in prewar days were supplied by the members of the Special Reserve. I am not saying, and I hope neither my noble friend nor the House will imagine I am saying, that I am prepared to undertake that at any given moment—at this given moment—there is every man that we need or every reserve that we need either in men or
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in material. The whole scheme on which the Army plan is now based consists in so regulating and adjusting the comparative war strength and peace strength as to ensure that, given normal recruiting, there will be available in the existing Army Reserve—the people who have done their service with the Colours and are still on the Reserve—sufficient men not only to bring the battalion up to war strength but also to supply the wastage which will normally arise during the first months of a campaign.
My noble friend has said that he realises that recruiting is not altogether satisfactory. I have said it myself, and I am very grateful to him for reinforcing that observation. I had not known that the speech which I was privileged to make at the luncheon of the Scots Guards had obtained any wider publicity than that particular dining room, and I am grateful to him for giving it a wider currency. I stand by every word I said then. I think it is a matter of profound regret that when, there are so many young men who would benefit immensely by the Army training, physically and mentally, who would gain opportunities of widening their whole outlook on life, who would gain the chance of interesting times abroad in time of peace, who would gain an opportunity for that vocational training which the Army affords, who would have the greatly improved prospect of obtaining work at the end of their Colour service which those who leave the Army, I am glad to think, to-day enjoy—that when there are all these young men available they are somehow dissuaded, I am afraid, often by people who ought to know better, from availing themselves of these opportunities. Anything that could be done to make these advantages and opportunities better known would be a real national service. Unfortunately it is not only in men that there is a shortage to-day. The policy of unilateral disarmament which every successive Government in this country has pursued in the hone of inducing other countries to follow our example has undoubtedly resulted in the accumulation of serious deficiencies, particularly as regards stores and material; but I am glad to think that these deficiencies, serious as they are, are not so serious in the way of man-power as my noble friend, not unnaturally, had supposed.

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I do not propose this afternoon to go into the question of the Territorial Army, because my noble friend Lord Jessel will forgive me for saying that is not directly raised by the Motion which Lord Ampthill has on the Order Paper; but I should like to say that the suggestions which were made by the conference to which he drew our attention—the conference of the London Mayors—have been communicated, as he knows, to me personally. They have been discussed by me with my noble friend Lord Strathcona, who is immediately responsible for the Territorial Army, and with the Director-General and other prominent officials, and the suggestions which that conference put forward are among the suggestions which are under very careful examination at the present moment. I am not in a position to make a statement about them, for reasons which my noble friend will understand. I am sorry I cannot say to my noble friend Lord Ampthill that we are going immediately or at any given moment in the future to reconstitute the Special Reserve. We still have it, as he knows, in the Army List. It is true it is only a skeleton at present. It may happen as circumstances alter and as opportunities arise, that we may find it necessary or possible to revive that force in some shape or another, but for the time being the financial position does not lead me to hope that is possible. The fact to which he called such pointed attention—namely, that the Territorial Army is so much below its strength—makes me feel that the first thing we have to do in the way of increasing our man-power is to try and get a better response to the appeal for Territorial recruits.
I should like to see the Reserve Army brought up to strength before I explore this fresh avenue for the supplementation of the Army Reserve. If the opportunity should occur, if the necessity should arise, and if the funds were available, we have there in existence the names, at any rate, of the old Militia who have, as he truly said, for so many man centuries rendered yeoman service to this country, and I am quite sure if those in authority, whenever the time comes, think that is the best way of increasing our strength either for recruiting purposes or for the purpose of reserve, they will find in any Militia force which they call upon to come to their aid the same patriotism end the same material as we have so often
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relied upon in the past. I am sorry I have not any Papers to lay, but I have given such information as is in my power, and I hope my noble friend therefore will not press his Motion.
THE EARL OF MIDLETON: My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, has done great service by bringing this Question forward, but I must honestly say the answers of my noble friend seem to be wholly inadequate. I have never in my life heard the Secretary of State for War asked such a Question in this form—"to call attention to the fact that there is no adequate Reserve for the Regular Army." He might have condescended to figures to show whether there is or not an adequate Reserve. He has given us the War Office theory as to how the Regular Army is to be mobilised, but what I ask him is, what numbers are available? Unfortunately, he has not provided us with those figures. There are officers all over the country who know perfectly well that if you want to make a regiment a thousand strong for the purpose of mobilisation, you must be able to count upon a certain figure already existing in the regiment before you proceed to pour in the Reserve. There have been discussions over and over again in the House of Commons in days gone by as to whether the normal strength of a battalion should be, say, 700 or 800. Surely my noble friend is in a position to tell us what the normal strength is at the present time. Everybody has a right to know. We ought to be told whether the normal strength is 700 or 800 or what it is, so that we may be able to judge whether the total strength is so weak that it will really imperil the condition of the whole battalion if it is sent into the field.
I am not going to pursue the matter to-night, because I regard a great deal of what fell from my noble friend as to the position of the Government with respect to the Army at the present time as being very grave. I know perfectly well the difficulties in which we are at this moment. We are in the absurd position of having a large number of young men with nothing whatever to do, drawing Government pay for doing nothing because they can find nothing to do, yet who must not be trained even voluntarily so that they might serve their country if they were ever called upon to

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do so. All that makes the position of the Secretary for War very difficult. I notice that the opinion of both the Under-Secretaries of State in that office who have served in this House is the same as my own. In the new year, not at this the tail end of the sittings this year, it is absolutely necessary that this House should know, and that the country should know, what Army we have to depend upon.
I hope that under no circumstances for many years may we have to send an Army on to the Continent again, but I feel that we ought to know what really is the condition of the Army, and whether the figures which have been put before us on this occasion to some extent by my noble friend opposite as regards our national defence generally, are correct. We had some discussion on a Motion by the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, the other day, and some figures were then given. We ought to be told whether these figures really represent the proper and safe position in which, in the opinion of the Government, we ought to stand. If the Army is, let us say, one-third less than it was in 1914, I think we ought to know it. I am sure my noble friend will not feel it discourteous if I ask him when we bring forward this question again to arm himself with all those figures which we must know in order to form a proper judgment on the question.
LORD PHILLIMORE: My Lords, I will not take up more than two minutes of your time, but I should like, and I think your Lordships would like, to get the comparison a little clearer. So far as my memory serves me, before the War there was a class of men known as Schedule D men. Do they exist now or are they now included in the figure of, I think, 17,000, which the noble Viscount gave us as the Reserve for casualties? I am using the term "Reserve for casualties" in rather a loose way, but I understood him to say that after filling up the battalions to war strength there was a further Reserve of 17,000 on which we would be able to draw to replace the first casualties in the field. I gather that they may, or may not, include what we knew as Schedule D men before the War, but, from the point of view of the argument, the figures seem to compare with a force of 63,000 men which I think constituted the Militia or the Special Reserve in 1913–14. The noble Viscount shakes
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his head. It is just to clear up those points that I have ventured to ask these questions.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I can only speak again by leave of the House, but the Supplementary Reserve to which I called attention is a Reserve merely for what I call the technical units—that is to say, it does not include the infantry battalions. I am sorry it was not clear. It includes the Engineers, the Army Service Corps, the Medical Corps and so on. It has nothing to do with the Infantry Reserve, which is quite a different figure, and a figure which I do not wish to give to the House even if I had it at the moment because it involves disclosing our mobilisation figures which we do not make public. The peace figures of the battalions can be given and are to be found in the Estimates.
LORD AMPTHILL: My Lords, I hope the House will not think that my interpellation has wasted the time of your Lordships, because we have obtained a very interesting statement from the noble Viscount the Secretary of State for War. If I may, I should like to thank him for having been at such pains to answer my Question with so much elaboration. I fully appreciate the fact that he has been overburdened with other work, and I am, therefore, all the more grateful to him for having taken so much trouble over the matter. I quite understand that we could not expect any different kind of answer at the present time, but I am not going to let this matter drop and I am going to do my best to see that others keep it up. I hope that by that means we shall persuade His Majesty's Government to reconsider their attitude about this matter. As I understand it, a neat calculation has been made between peace establishments and war establishments which will give us a rather larger Reserve on the outbreak of war. That is a matter of actuarial calculations of which it is impossible to judge when you hear them put by word of mouth across the floor of the House. I hope the noble Viscount will seize an early opportunity of presenting such Papers as would enable people to understand the system.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: I am sorry, but it really would be most undesirable to do that, and I am sure my noble friend would not wish to press me to give our war figures for mobilisation.
LORD AMPTHILL: We must content ourselves then with the noble Viscount's statement. I do not wish to take up your Lordships' time and I will, of course, withdraw my Motion for Papers. But I do want to make my own position clear. The noble Viscount seized the opportunity of pinning me down, or he thought he had pinned me down, to what he considered a very important concession—namely, that the Militia, if reconstituted, was to be used solely for furnishing reinforcements. I want to make my attitude clear. I should agree to the Militia, the Third Battalions, being used for furnishing drafts in the first instance, but I should not agree to see the terribly fatal mistake repeated which was made in the Great War. That was in not sending the Third Battalions out after a certain stage when the casualties had come home and together with recruits had swollen those battalions to three times their establishment, so that an ample training nucleus would have remained at home while the Third Battalion at war strength went abroad. It was a matter of bitter regret and resentment to all true Militia officers at the time of the War that that honour, as we regarded it, was only given to the Fourth Battalion. Most of us had to find other means of getting to the Front by joining other battalions. I admit that Third Battalions must be used for drafts in the first instance but a stage comes when they reach enormous numbers. I had 2,000 under my command as a battalion. When they come to that stage obviously they can go out as a unit and leave behind a drafting battalion of more than ordinary strength. Once more allow me to thank the noble Viscount. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

JUDICIARY (SAFEGUARDING) BILL. [H.L.]
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment.

DEPRESSED AREAS (DEVELOPMENT AND IMPROVEMENT) BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (LORD ROCHESTER): My Lords, in moving the
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Second Reading of this Bill, I should, in the first place, like to present it as a Government contribution to the great national movement to assist the depressed areas, which has been one of the most encouraging features of a difficult and at times tragic situation. One of the leading members of the Party represented by the noble Lords opposite stated in his speech on the Third Reading of the Bill in another place that he wished to pay a tribute to the great section of public opinion which had not only been deeply disturbed and concerned by this problem, but had at times shown that concern, in a voluntary and magnificent way, worthy of the best traditions and sentiments of this country. I very fully concur in that expression of view, and I hope that I shall be able to convince your Lordships that the Bill, if it does not fully satisfy the wishes and expectations of all your Lordships, does at least go some way to respond to the general public desire for action, and suggests a hopeful and experimental course, which may ultimately lead to a large measure of success. If I cannot succeed in commanding the complete assent of noble Lords opposite, I do at least hope that they will agree to the contention that this Bill does in a concrete, definite, if in their view limited, way attempt to grapple with the problem on orderly and carefully planned lines.
I will not trouble your Lordships by rehearsing at length the history which has led up to the presentation of this Bill. It will be enough to remind you of the fact that there was an investigation by four investigators into the conditions of what are known as the depressed areas, though if I may repeat the observation of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, they may be distressed but they are not depressed. The Government have very carefully considered the Reports of the investigators to which tributes have been widely paid in the Press and in the country, and I should like, if I may, to add my voice to that eulogistic chores. As a result of those investigations, taking into account the broad lines which were common in the Reports, the Government have prepared this Bill which I am now submitting to your Lordships for Second Reading. I will, in a moment, briefly explain the various clauses one by one. I would, however, anticipate that detailed explanation by two or three

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general observations, which I hope will tend to clarify certain doubts which have arisen in the course of the debates in another place, and which may also help to exhibit the broad lines of the Bill.
In the first place it is a Bill to set up two Commissioners with regional Sub-Commissioners, who are charged with the duty of initiating, organising, prosecuting and assisting measures designed to facilitate the economic development and social improvement of the depressed areas scheduled to the Bill. It will be observed that these two Commissioners are completely separate from all Government Departments, and the object has been to concentrate in the hands of two people duties which, if spread among a number of Departments, would tend, or might tend, to be too much dissipated to serve the purposes of the emergency in which admittedly we find ourselves. In order to secure that the Commissioners shall be able to do the work imposed upon them, the Bill is so framed, as within the powers conferred upon the Commissioners, to give them the freest possible power of movement. They are necessarily, in both cases, responsible to a Minister of the Crown; this is in order to bring them within the four corners of constitutional practice. Subject to this, however, and to the necessary financial control which the voting of their monies imposes, they will be in a freer position than any other executive officers of the Crown.
It is the Government's policy, and wish, that they should be encouraged to experiment freely, with the knowledge that some of such experiments may fail; they may even make mistakes and thus prove that mistakes are not the sole prerogative of members of the Government! The first striking point, therefore, in the proposals in the Bill, is that the Commissioners have wide powers which they can freely exercise. The second point of general importance is the amount of money placed at their disposal. Here I do not for a moment desire to shirk the issue. It has been freely alleged that £2,000,000 is a pill to cure an earthquake. That, however, is a question of the size and contents of the pill and the seismic powers of the disturbance to which reference is made. If the pill is not merely gilded, but solid gold, and if the extent of the depressed area more especially affected by the economic earthquake is
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not unduly exaggerated, I submit to your Lordships, that the amounts placed at the disposal of the Commissioners are not insufficient for the experimental purposes for which they are intended. It is stated in the Bill, in terms, that the £2,000,000 are voted for the existing financial year, that is, up to the end of March, covering, therefore, a period of roughly three months. It is also clearly laid down that further sums thereafter may be voted, to the amount that Parliament may determine.
It would, I suggest, have been rash and inexpedient to devote a larger sum for the first three months, until the Commissioners had, as a result of their preliminary investigation of their problem, been able to submit to Ministers their view as to any additional funds they would ultimately need for their purposes. It is both unfair and premature to assume that this sum is the whole or indeed necessarily a considerable part of what the Government, at the request of the Commissioners, may subsequently ask Parliament to allot. I should, therefore, like to make it abundantly clear to your Lordships, that the £2,000,000 is in the nature of a token vote and merely a preliminary figure for the three months ending next March, and therefore that the criticism of the smallness of the amount is beside the point in view of the definite provision in Clause 3, subsection (2), to the effect that this amount can be augmented as Parliament may determine. The idea of this arrangement is that the Commissioners shall start off with enough money to make it certain that they will be enabled to undertake any experimental work which they think is necessary and that thereafter, as and when the Government and Parliament think that more money should be given to them, that will be done.
In the third place there has been much discussion on the area to which the Bill applies. It has been argued that the four selected areas, which are scheduled in detail to the Bill, by no means exhaust those parts of the country in which distress is prevalent and extensive. Upon this, I would emphasise that the Bill is experimental in its nature, and relates in the first place to those areas by common consent the worst in respect of unemployment, the worst in average, in particular localities, and in duration. Secondly, it is essential for successful ex-

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periment that it should be concentrated as narrowly as possible on the areas most urgently in need of assistance; and thirdly, while it is true that there are other areas in need of assistance, in those other areas there are in nearly every case internal powers of recovery and otherwise favourable circumstances which make their case at least less urgent and less compelling. We have therefore three general points. First, that the Commissioners have wide powers to be freely exercised; secondly, that the moneys to be placed at their disposal are by no means limited to the £2,000,000 mentioned in the Bill; and thirdly, that the areas chosen are deliberately chosen as those which, for the purposes of the present experiment, are most urgently in need of aid.
I come now to the clauses, which I will attempt to explain as briefly as possible. Clause 1 provides for the establishment of the two Commissioners. I have already stated their general functions as designed by the Bill. In particular they are: (a) To act in association with the Unemployment Assistance Board in matters relating to the promotion of the welfare of persons covered by the Unemployment Act, 1934—a very wide power if the powers of the Unemployment Assistance Board are borne in mind—and (b) to recommendations to Government Departments and local authorities, as to the removal of existing difficulties in the exercise of their powers. Here again I anticipate that the intervention of the Commissioner, as a sympathetic third party, will in many eases act as the solvent of those interdepartmental difficulties which, often despite the good will of the Departments, are an inevitable deterrent to rapid progress. The Commissioners coming in from outside with the single object of improving the condition of the depressed areas will certainly be able to exercise a wide and useful influence in this regard.
On the other hand their powers are limited, and I think your Lordships will agree, properly limited, in certain respects. I have already indicated the first limitation, which is that of area, and I have explained the reasons for that limitation. There is the second important limitation of not being able to assist undertakings carried on for the purposes of gain, except in the class of case that is covered by proviso (i) to subsection 5
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of Clause 1, namely, those whose primary object is to establish an unemployed person in a position of independence or partial independence. I would say in further explanation of this proviso, which has given rise to certain misapprehensions in another place, that its principal object is to assist such undertakings as those of the cultivation of small holdings where some part of the produce may be sold, but which are not conducted primarily for profit, but only for securing a livelihood for the persons engaged therein. In other words, this limitation is to prevent assisting private enterprise which involves competition. In the next place, the Commissioners' powers do not permit them to grant financial assistance by way of grant or loan to any local authority except in respect of expenditure on works by local authorities not covered by grants from Government Departments, or towards the provision of small holdings or allotments. The object of this provision is to prevent the otherwise inevitable overlapping between the powers of local authorities and the Commissioners, an overlapping which would tend to rob the Commissioners' work of much of its usefulness. There is, however, a wide field of effort in the ground left open to them, and in order to secure that, even here, there shall be no confusion of function, it is provided that help shall only be given in such cases with the consent of the appropriate Minister.
Clause 2 is a new clause interpolated as a result of representations made in another place and provides for the possible appointment of a Deputy Commissioner for England and Wales. It was represented in another place that the Bill as then drawn only made it possible to appoint two Commissioners, and it was felt in some quarters that experience might indicate the wisdom of appointing a third Commissioner, while the terms of the Bill as originally drawn gave the Minister no powers in that behalf. The Government were not of opinion then, and I want to make it abundantly plain to your Lordships that they are not of opinion now, that a third Commissioner will be necessary, seeing that the Commissioner in England will already be assisted by Regional Sub-Commissioners. The Government are, however, perfectly ready to provide for the possible contingency of the appointment of a further

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Deputy Commissioner, and the provision in Clause 2 is therefore inserted.
Clause 3 contains the financial provisions of the Bill. I have already made a reference to the £2,000,000 to be provided by Parliament; in addition sums received by the Commissioners in the exercise of their functions, as for instance from sale of land, will be paid into the Depressed Areas Fund. The Commissioners may with the consent of the Treasury accept any gift or bequest for purposes within their functions as is set out in the Second Schedule, but any sums so received will be administered separately under Clause 3, subsection (3). The remaining subsections of Clause 3 provide that the necessary Parliamentary control shall be exercised over the expenditure of the Commissioners by means of Estimates and for the preparation of accounts and their audit and submission to Parliament by the Comptroller and Auditor General. The Commissioners may appoint and pay such officers and servants as are required, subject to the consent of the Minister of Labour or the Secretary of State as the case may be, and the Treasury. The cost of this staff, together with such sums as may be paid (with similar consent) to the Commissioners should such payment be necessary (although in point of fact the proposed Commissioners will in fact, like the Paymaster-General, be unpaid), will be regarded as part of the expenses of the Commissioners as is set out in the Second Schedule.
Clause 4 enables the Commissioners to acquire land. Read with the relevant Schedule—namely, the Third Schedule—its intention is to provide an expeditious means in the Commissioners for this purpose. It will be realised that it may be necessary in the course of the Commissioners' work that the normal methods of acquisition of land should in this particular emergency be amplified. The provisions, however, are carefully drawn to safeguard existing rights. With necessary modifications they are the same as those contained in the Public Works Facilities Act, 1930, which your Lordships will remember was an Act passed to expedite the procedure for empowering local authorities and statutory undertakings to execute works which would contribute to the relief of unemployment and facilitate the acquisition of land required for the purposes of their
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function. That latter Act was passed in order to provide more speedy machinery in this direction, in substitution of the somewhat protracted methods provided by the Land Clauses Acts.
The object of Clause 5 is to enable the Commissioner for England and Wales to work through the local authority, if he so desires, in the provision of land for cultivation by unemployed men in the depressed areas. The county councils may wish to act as agents for the Commissioner, and the clause would permit of this. On the other hand, if they prefer to exercise powers already vested in them in the Small Holdings and Allotments Acts, for the purpose of providing such land, the Commissioners will proceed in accordance with subsection (1) of Clause 5. In that event the land will be acquired by the small holdings authority and will be vested in them as part of their small holdings estate, and will be used by them for letting to unemployed men. The subsection in such cases will enable the Commissioner to give a supplementary grant if it be required.
Clause 6 provides for the application of the Bill to Scotland, and needs no further explanation, but I am sure my noble friend Lord Strathcona, who so ably represents the Scottish Office in your Lordships' House, will heartily agree that the appointment of a separate Commissioner for Scotland is both necessary and desirable. Clause 7 provides for the continuance of any powers or duties which may still be regarded as appropriate or necessary, in the Unemployment Assistance Board upon the termination of the Act. The Unemployment Assistance Board are charged with the promotion of the welfare of persons covered by the Unemployment Act, and therefore it appears appropriate that the similar functions more widely exercised, though over a limited area, should, when they are no longer exercised by the Commissioners, be handed over to the Board. The reference to such transfer of powers is only to those powers which concern the welfare of the unemployed. Any other powers or holdings of land are to be transferred to the appropriate Government Department, so far as may be necessary for completing or carrying on something already begun, or winding up the Commissioners' affairs, but not so as to enable a new exercise of the powers to be begun. Clause 8 is the short title,

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extent and duration of the Bill. The duration of the Commissioners powers under this clause is roughly two years and a quarter—namely, to the 31st March, 1937. Then I come to the Schedules. The First Schedule specifies the depressed areas, and I have already explained the grounds upon which these particular areas are chosen. The Second Schedule relates to the proceedings of the Commissioners and is in common form, so far as appointment of officers, etc. is concerned and I think needs no further comment. The Third Schedule is also in common form and relates to the acquisition of land.
This, my Lords, is a brief statement of the detailed provisions of the Bill. I have not claimed for it, and the Government do not claim for it, anything more than that it is a beginning, but we believe it to be a spirited beginning to the ultimate solution of the acute difficulties that have arisen in these particular areas. We know that the final cure rests, not in the acts of the Government, but in the good will and determination of the British people to continue to assert themselves until they reach their full and merited prosperity. Nevertheless, the acts of Government are an essential ingredient in that recovery, and in so far as this Bill, in a particular direction, starts a new and hopeful process, I confidently submit this Bill to your Lordships for Second Reading. I would only add that it must not be supposed that this particular measure is the whole of the Government's programme in respect of the general problem of unemployment. Nothing is further from the facts, for there has been steady and continuous action, and I think that we are justified in claiming that the employment figures, which are over 800,000 more than they were when the Government took office, are in themselves proof that the Government have not been idle. I would not have your Lordships suppose that we are content with the progress made. We are not. We are continuing our efforts in all the directions already initiated, and in others also, of which this Bill is but one, and I hope a fertile, example. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Rochester)
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, let me say at once, and let me assure my noble friend who introduced this Bill,
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that those of us who occupy these Benches welcome, just as warmly as those immediately responsible for the measure, any steps that may be taken, whether voluntary or obligatory, whether their source is private initiative or legislation passed through Parliament, towards alleviating the lot of those who must be counted as the outcasts of our present social order. We welcome the opening of social clubs in these distressed areas; we welcome the planting of settlements; we welcome the setting up of centres where unemployed men can learn to produce things with their hands that are of use to them in their homes; and we welcome the admirable work that has been done by the National Council of Social Service and by the Personal Service League. These are signs that the spirit of Christianity, a spirit which lives in individual minds rather than in institutions of orthodox religion, is still alive, and that the sentiment of solidarity is able to overcome even the most rigid of class barriers.
But, and it is evident in this matter that the Government are of our opinion, voluntary effort, however widely it may be supported, can only scratch the surface of the problem. We are glad to see that the Government, realising the gravity of the situation and seeing quite clearly that men of goodwill cannot meet single-handed a national emergency, have stepped into the breach and produced the present measure; but, glad as we are to see that public money is to be spent in these areas, that a large sum of money is to be thus spent, we regret very deeply, and must express our profound dissatisfaction at, the inability of the Government to implement the recommendations of those members of Parliament they themselves appointed to investigate the economic and social conditions in these areas.
I would refer very briefly not to the more general, and admittedly more difficult, proposals that these Commissioners suggested, but to two very practical schemes which the Government Bill appears to have neglected. In the first place, a suggestion was put forward by at least two of the four individuals who were responsible for this Report, that encouragement should be given to local industries, and that they might be developed on the spot by some such scheme as a Public Development

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Company. That is a small matter, but it is one which would touch the particular economic resources of the localities concerned. Again, one of the immediately practical recommendations of those Commissioners was that powers should be given for the undertaking of land development on a fairly large scale—what we should call general farming as opposed to the very minor agricultural undertakings that are possible when people are limited to small holdings and allotments. It is evident that from an economic point of view larger scale agricultural undertakings are more likely to be profitable and efficient than work done on a smaller scale and without proper co-ordination. We therefore regret that this is another recommendation which seems so practical and yet has been ignored by the Government.
But our dissatisfaction has far deeper roots than those which I have already mentioned because I think it stands to reason that the root causes of this grave malady of unemployment and poverty, which is exhibited at its worst in these depressed and almost derelict areas, are not to be found in the areas themselves, that they cannot be segregated and allotted to one locality, but that they must be sought in the wider sphere of our national economy, and indeed in the sphere of international economic relations. And may I remind your Lordships that this elementary observation was made, and made very pointedly, by one of these Commissioners, if I may use that term, who are supporters of the Government and who drew up the present Report. This Member of Parliament who, being Civil Lord of the Admiralty, is a person of considerable weight, suggests that,
"just as the really derelict towns and villages cannot be dealt with in isolation, so it is impossible to promote effective measures for the rehabilitation of any one area without reference to the country as a whole."
Those are the words of Captain Euan Wallace, a man who has spent much time and much labour in enquiring into the situation on the spot, and who comes back with a Report which, so far as its major recommendations are concerned, is completely neglected by the Government.
When we survey this grave malady from the angle from which it should be approached, that is to say, on the large
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national scale, we see the extraordinary gravity that this domestic question has assumed in recent years. We have—and I hope this is relevant, because after all I am trying to indicate that you can only help the worst-hit areas by helping on a national scale, and that all the social evils which are present in our system are only exhibited to a greater degree in these particular localities—we have in the first place, at a time when economic recovery has set in, a standing army of 2,000,000 unemployed men. We have besides at least 1,000,000 families living under conditions which are unhealthy and unnatural owing to overcrowding, or which have been described by the Minister of Health in another place as "radiating centres of depravity and disease." We have, according to the Chief Medical Officer of Health, approximately 50,000 children who are either malnourished or under-nourished, that is to say, who are not provided with sufficient sustenance or sustenance adequate in quality to make them healthy, normal, happy, human beings. And the statistics do not include many mothers of families who starve themselves because they cannot endure to see their children withering before their eyes. We have besides—and it is all a symptom of this same phenomenon of unemployment and poverty—the rising rate of maternal mortality, and a rate which may be observed in the depressed areas to exceed by a very considerable extent the average over the whole country.
I am not suggesting that the Government do not wish to proceed on broader lines, but I am suggesting that they have not yet produced any measure which can be said to attack at the source the great social problems of unemployment and poverty. We maintain that the remedy should be sought in the first place by a bold scheme of public works on a national scale, and by a greatly accelerated housing programme. I am not denying that the Government have got a housing programme of their own, and one which is unique when compared with housing programmes which have been set up in the past; but the inadequacy and inefficiency of preceding Governments is not a standard that we can take when we wish to judge the merits of the Government now in office. The Commission on Housing, which was not composed of politicians but of housing experts primarily and of

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business men, suggested that a million houses were needed in the next ten years at an inclusive rent of under ten shillings a week. We believe that scheme is one which should be proceeded with, and we challenge the Government to tell us that their housing programme will go anywhere near that, or that they will be able to provide anything like that number of houses at the rent I have mentioned, which alone makes these houses at all a possible economic proposition for the lowest paid members of the working class.
And finally, it should be possible to raise the school-leaving age from fourteen to fifteen, and gradually to approach the upper limit of sixteen years. This, indeed, is a contribution to the unemployment problem on the one hand, because those children are taking work that could be done by men; and on the other hand, it would be a constructive human investment to make our working class more robust and more capable of exploiting the possibilities of life than they are at present. We believe, besides, that it, should be possible to open new channels on the land by afforestation, by land drainage, by schemes for making the surface of the soil fit for agriculture, and that this is a great undertaking which would employ many men and render the land suitable for cultivation in years to come.
My last word is this. We maintain quite frankly that public works, even on a national scale, are not enough. We believe that the roots of unemployment and poverty are fixed in a capitalist economy and that so long as we continue to labour under our present economic régime it will be impossible to cure either unemployment or poverty. Our grounds for that assertion are simply that, on the one hand, owing to the almost complete cessation of international trade, the capitalist system has reached its limits for the production of wealth; and that, on the other hand, under a system in which a small class, owing to its monopoly of the means of production, acquires a major share of the national income, there is bound to be a large section of the population living in poverty in order that a few may enjoy luxury. That is why, looking to these very deep-rooted causes, we challenge any scheme that the Government may intend to set up, and why, judging the present
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measure both as an immediate step to alleviate conditions in these areas and as a more far-reaching step towards alleviating unemployment and poverty, we cannot but consider it is entirely inadequate and merely trifling with a great problem which should be dealt with on an infinitely larger scale.
LORD GAINFORD: My Lords, I am not going to follow the noble Earl who has just addressed you upon the question whether the present difficulties in what I regard as distressed areas can best be met by State regulation of industry and by carrying it on under the different system advocated by the Socialist Party. What I rise to do is to ask two questions of the noble Lord in charge of the Bill. I may say that in the district from which I come, the County of Durham, distress has existed since 1926, when we had a very prolonged cessation of colliery operations in the County. Although things might have improved slightly in 1929, yet the distress of that County has been continuous ever since 1926, and during the last five years it has existed to an even greater extent than is the case at the present time. It does seem to me that the steps the Government are now taking come somewhat late in the day, or rather, I might put it this way, they ought to have taken steps two or three years ago at least to deal with the situation that has arisen. We have got to remember the condition of the men and the families who reside in the County of Durham owing to the loss of work for which they are well suited in the collieries—some 30,000, probably, out of work and their families all suffering; the shipbuilding yards all lying idle, both on the Tyne and Tees; and unemployment in the various limestone quarries, blast furnaces, and other industries in that district. There has been considerable distress, and it has been very sad for us to live amongst it, although we have been doing our utmost to try to secure work for as many people as we possibly could.
What I resent, and what the people of Durham resent, and probably the people of other districts resent as well, is what the noble Lord admitted to be the unfortunate title of the Bill—" depressed areas." I am going to ask the noble Lord and the Leader of this House if they would kindly see if it is not possible

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to meet what may be regarded as a somewhat sentimental objection, but is really a very strong objection that we have to that particular title. I see, on nearly every page of this Bill, the words "depressed areas." Is it not possible to amend the Bill throughout, and instead of calling them "depressed areas," to call them "distressed areas"? I believe it would be quite simple for the Government to introduce Amendments substituting "distressed areas" for "depressed areas" throughout. In that event the Title of the Bill would have to conform to the provisions of the Bill and subsequently be altered in the same way. I press that because we do resent the idea that we are necessarily depressed; we are only distressed owing to the conditions of trade and the lack of work in many of our industries.
The next point I want to press on the noble Lord is whether he cannot introduce an Amendment—I know it is no use our introducing an Amendment from this side of the House, unless it is to be accepted by the Government—to include in these areas the small area across the banks of the Tees. Here in this Bill you propose to deal with the distressed areas on both sides of the river Tyne—places like Wallsend and Newburn, which lie on the north bank, and on the other side, Jarrow and Hebburn, all named in the Bill, all struggling in the depression of the industries on each bank of the Tyne; but when you come to the Tees, you deal with the distress on one bank, and you decline to deal with it on the other. Of course, these districts are contiguous on both sides of the river; there are the same industries and the same class of people, and in the Middlesbrough area, and along the south bank of the Tees, in Cleveland, there is as much distress as there is in any part mentioned in the Bill. It does seem to me to be reasonable that the Commissioner who is dealing with the County of Durham and certain areas in Northumberland might have his duties extended to those places on the south bank of the river Tees. It is a matter that I believe has been raised in another place, and has not been met, but there is no reason whatever why this experiment—and I admit it is an experiment—in Durham and Northumberland should not be extended to this small area on the other side of the river Tees.
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In regard to the Bill generally, I have nothing to say except that I think it ought to have been introduced before this. It is an experimental measure, but it seems to me to go in the right direction. It is admittedly a matter on which £2,000,000 may be spent in the next three months, and the Government may come forward and say how much more may be spent in order to carry out, what is most desirable after this experiment has been made during the next three months. I take no exception to these provisions. I welcome the measure, and I am quite sure those who are associated with me on these Benches do the same.
LORD DANESFORT: My Lords, I would support as strongly as I can the appeal which has just been made by my noble friend Lord Gainford for the omission of the word "depressed," which appears in the Bill repeatedly, and the substitution for it of the word "distressed." The noble Lord speaks with great knowledge, as your Lordships are aware, of the feeling in this matter in the County of Durham; and, indeed, that feeling is not confined to the County of Durham. There have been letters in the newspapers protesting against the unnecessary use of this word, which is calculated to impede, in all probability, the action of the Commissioners, and in some ways to make it less agreeable for the persons concerned to co-operate with them. Indeed there was a remarkable letter in The Times the other day from the Bishop of Jarrow, who has great experience of the distressed area in the County of Durham, in which he expressed very strongly practically the same views as those which have just been stated by my noble friend Lord Gainford. Sentiment goes very far in dealing with such matters as employment, poverty, and social troubles of that sort, and if there is no necessity, as I believe there is no necessity, for using this word "depressed," which is so strongly objected to in many quarters, I do appeal to the Government to make the change necessary.
It will not hurt them; it will not hurt the Bill; it will be an improvement in the Bill. It is quite true that if an alteration is made in the operative part of the Bill a similar alteration will have to be made in the Title of the Bill. There is no difficulty in this House in altering the titles of Bills. It is continually done.

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I have made inquiry as to whether there would be any difficulty in altering the Title when the Bill goes back to another place, and I have been assured upon the highest authority on these matters of procedure in the House of Commons that there would be no difficulty whatever as far as procedure goes. What happens there is that if Amendments are introduced into a Bill which make it desirable to alter the Title, then the Title is altered. There is no Rule or Standing Order or anything else in the House of Commons against it. In these circumstances I urge the Government to make the alteration. I am glad to see in their places not only the noble Lord in charge of the Bill, who commended it to us so admirably, but also the noble Viscount who leads the House, and I appeal as strongly as I can to them to make this alteration which, I believe, will result in the smooth working of the BM and the removal of the objections which have been taken very widely against this wholly inappropriate adjective.
LORD HUTCHISON OF MONTROSE: My Lords, I only want in a few minutes to say how much I support this Bill. I support it because I think it is the beginning of a movement by the Government to deal with this vast problem of our depressed areas, and also with small holding development. We have heard in another place that the Government are only too willing to accept all ideas, from whichever side of the House they may come. I hope, when the debates not only in your Lordships' House but in another place have been read, that many suggestions will have been made which will be of great value to the Commissioners and to the Departments concerned, and that those suggestions may be absorbed by them.
I was surprised to find that the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading of this Bill had expressed the view that the Commissioners were so very independent that they would be able to do practically as they liked in this matter. As a matter of fact, when you begin to look into the Bill, you find that they have to work through Departments and, of course, will have to justify expenditure to the Treasury. To my mind it would have been a better Bill if there had been more freedom, and a Board with an allocation of money. The mem-
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bers of such a Board would have been able to devote their talents to this question. After all, the success of this experiment is bound to rest on the character, quality, brains, and tenacity of the various Commissioners who are appointed. I hope and trust that they will be very successful. It is a problem that requires to be tackled, and it is a scheme, when it has been tried in these areas, which will undoubtedly be used by the Government as the basis of a much wider scheme for the development of small holdings and for helping the country to deal with the vast problem of unemployment. We have this great number of two millions unemployed, and I am certain that the problem of dealing with these two millions must be handled by the Government.
I do not want to delay your Lordships long this evening, but I would like to make a few observations on how best in these areas these Commissioners can work. Some years ago, in another place, I was Chairman of a Committee examining agriculture, and especially the problem of small holdings. I wandered in my search for knowledge into various parts of Europe, and I venture to say that if you are going to tackle the very difficult problem of small holdings you have to do it in a different way from that in which it was tackled by the Government after the War. Money was largely wasted in putting up buildings and all kinds of paraphernalia in connection with these small holdings. The best application of money in relation to small holdings that I have seen was in Germany. There they work from their depressed town or area outwards. First of all there is the provision of suitable land at no great distance from the place where the people live. Then there is the development of very cheap or free transport for individuals from the townships in which they live to the areas where they work their small holdings, and, finally and most important, the provision of markets for the produce. Not only in this way do you get a cheap development of the small holding idea, but afterwards, as it develops, as money is collected by the individual small holders, buildings can he placed on the various holdings.
The importance of markets in relation to small holdings is absolutely essential.

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Without markets the small holder gradually drifts into the production of a small amount of food for himself or his family. It is only when he can bring what he produces from a short distance away to townships, when he is able to sell what he produces at first hand to the consumer in the townships, that you can make a success of small holdings. I have examined one or two places in this country, and I am interested in a society dealing with the subject of markets. There is one experiment at East Grinstead, where a lot of ex-soldiers have been developing small holdings, and they have been most successful. In other parts of the country, in Norfolk especially, the marketing development has not been a success, largely because the produce gets into the hands of those who are handling foreign produce. It is that kind of thing which has to be carefully watched. It must be seen that the produce of the small holder does not get into the hands of those who are dealing with overseas produce. Marketing has to be done on a co-operative basis by the small holders themselves. Experiments are also going on now at Salisbury Plain and at Bulford, and I am sure the Secretary of State for War who leads the House will know a great deal of the efforts of the Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Command in this connection. They are just beginning to move in that direction and I congratulate the military authorities on giving an example to the civil authorities of the way in which these markets can be developed.
There is another point I should like to raise in connection with these depressed areas. It is too late for me to develop at any great length the various ways in which the small holding problem can be tackled, but I would like to express the hope that the Commissioners will not make the mistake of putting buildings on the land and trying to start small holdings in that way. The more practical way is to give men cheap transport from the district in which they live so that they can go backwards and forwards to their holdings. Another point I wish to bring to the notice of your Lordships is that very useful work can be done in some of the depressed areas on the coast by dealing with harbours. A lot of small harbours along our coasts are undoubtedly derelict and quite unfit for
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any trade at all. A great deal of work can be done there to develop a useful trade with small craft round the coast. The suggestion has been made before and I am very glad to bring it forward now. The last thing I wish to say is that I hope that this small sum of £2,000,000, which is altogether inadequate to deal with this vast problem—though I realise of course it is only for the rest of the financial year—will not be frittered away on too many different kinds of activities, but that the Commissioners will concentrate on two or three main schemes and try to carry them through to success, so that they may be an example of what can be clone and so that ultimately they can be applied to the whole country.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord who has just spoken with such refreshing vigour will forgive me if I say no more about his speech than that I fully agree with every word. In this non-Party atmosphere perhaps your Lordships will allow me to say that my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition wishes me strongly to support the plea of the noble Lord on the Liberal Benches, Lord Gainford, for a change in the Title of this Bill. We very much hope that the Government will give way to the arguments of the noble Lord and also those of the noble Lord opposite, Lord Danesfort.
I want to offer some very brief observations on this measure. My noble friend the Earl of Listowel, who spoke after the noble Lord, the Paymaster-General, referred to the young people and the tragic spectacle of unemployed youth in these districts, and the noble Lord, Lord Gainford, knows very well that the awful problem in Durham is accentuated by the fact that mothers who used to take pride in their boys going down the pit are now discouraging them from doing so. It is a most dreadful thing that the old family pride of the young men following in their fathers' footsteps is disappearing owing to the appalling conditions of the industry. My noble friend did not mention another very serious problem—that is, that the Commissioners, with the best will in the world, following out all the suggestions of the noble Lord who preceded me, will not be able to do much for the old people. There is a great tragedy for the elderly people who fall out of employment to-day and I very

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much regret that the Government have not undertaken some policy to help the aged. We had a most interesting debate a few months ago in your Lordships' House, initiated by my noble friend Lord Sanderson, with regard to children and the raising of the school age, but this problem of old people is particularly acute and their plight is all the worse in the distressed areas—to adopt what I hope will be the new term—because the younger members of the community will be moved away whenever possible. Surely the time has come when some boldness is required here, and I think the Government should consider lowering the pensionable age and raising the amount of the pension on condition that the pensioners leave gainful employment.
Last Sunday I assisted at an immense meeting held in one of the London suburbs, a non-party meeting attended by 2,000 people, to consider this very question. There is really a rising feeling in the country that there is something wrong with the body politic when you have elderly people toiling because of their poverty when they are really past work, while young men are standing idle at the street corners. If you can get the old people out of industry by lowering the pensionable age and increasing the amount of the pension, I believe you will do a great deal to help the position not only in the distressed areas but throughout the country. Such action needs great boldness, and when the Chancellor of the Exchequer says that we cannot afford it I would remind him that money paid out to old people in the form of pensions is all spent in this country over the shop counters and gives employment, and that in effect it does not cost the country anything.
There is one other matter want to deal with that has not been mentioned in the debate. I am sorry that the Government are not pursuing a vigorous policy with regard to afforestation. This refers particularly to the country from which the noble Lord, Lord Hutchison, comes. We are still importing £70,000,000 worth of timber into the country each year and the visible supplies of timber are diminishing. Except in New Zealand, there is very little new planting going on anywhere in the world although the consumption of timber for all the different industrial uses to which it is put is mount-
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ing all the time. We have only scratched at that problem in this country. This is a policy which, if really pursued in the most vigorous manner, would do a great deal to help the whole question of employment in this country and would help also to balance our economic position.
I want also to draw your Lordships' attention to what I consider is an extraordinary state of affairs, in regard to which I hone the noble Lord the Paymaster-General will be able to give your Lordships some information. It has been ventilated in the Press and it has been referred to in another place, and I think it is time that your Lordships took up the matter. It undoubtedly affects the distressed areas because it affects the shipping industry and therefore also the coal industry and the iron and steel industry. On the one hand, His Majesty's Government propose to subsidise the tramp shipping industry. On the other hand, we had the Bill before your Lordships' House for the Atlantic merger by which the country is committed to pay an immense subsidy for building two gigantic liners for the luxury trade across the Atlantic. So far so good. Many defenders can be found for both policies, for subsidising tramp shipping and for building luxury liners.
But there is a new type of transatlantic traffic that has arisen, traffic that caters for what I may call the small man who wants to go across the Atlantic cheaply. He is not a pauper. If he can get a passage across the Atlantic for £10 or £15 and buy food as he requires it he will be glad to go. He belongs to that great public who go on cruises to the Mediterranean and so on. If you look around industry to-day you will see that the callings that pay are those that cater for small people. Cinemas, cheap restaurants, small hotels, cheap forms of transport, the light motor car industry—all these are flourishing for the simple reason that they cater for the masses of comfortably-off people, not wealthy, not poor, but people who want the best that their money can afford. If you can attract that immense travelling public with a cheap line of special steamships—not the great luxury liners, in which you have to pay about ten pounds a day for the most modest quarters, combined with great luxury in catering and so on; not that type of ship at all, but the moderate-sized liner, which incidentally (and this

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will interest the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, as President of the Navy League) is only of use to you in wartime as an auxiliary cruiser or transport, whereas your great super-liners are not suitable for that purpose—that line will flourish too. It must be a line of smaller or medium-sized liners catering for the small man who wishes to cross the Atlantic cheaply. It is those which, according to the best opinion, could be made to pay.
Very well. Without any subsidies, without any assistance from the Government, a group was formed to purchase from the Americans the Red Star Line, which flies the Blue Ensign. It was to be a British company. The money was available, and a workable scheme was got out. It would have given employment to British officers and seamen, to dockside workers and so on, and later on it was intended to build new ships. And what happened? The Treasury, through the Bank of England, let it be known in the City of London—I am betraying no secret because this has been exposed to the world—that anyone providing that financial assistance would be persona non grata to His Majesty's Government; and things are so that a threat of that kind in the narrow upper circle of high finance in the City of London is equal to a command. I repeat, no subsidy was asked for, no assistance was asked from the State, and here was a businesslike proposal to run a new form of traffic which would not have competed with the luxury traffic organised by the Cunard-White Star Line, but His Majesty's Government come down, through their Treasury and through their connections with the Bank of England, and veto it. I see the Lord Chief Justice in his place; I would have thought that he would have had something to say about this matter, but I bring it to his attention now as a fair example, not of bureaucracy interfering with the liberty of the subject, but of bureaucracy by a sort of invisible form of government exercised by the Treasury, and avowed in another place by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
On the one hand, I repeat, subsidies for tramp shipping at the taxpayer's expense; on the other hand subsidies for the building of great luxury super-liners; immense distress in certain areas which is occasioning this Bill; and yet when people propose to act on their own account and bring in a new line of shipping traffic across the Atlantic they
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are vetoed by the Government, or rather those who are prepared to find the money are told that it will be made very uncomfortable for them, or that they will incur the displeasure of the highest authority who are in touch with the Government, if they do. That is a very extraordinary state of affairs, and I should like the Paymaster-General, if he will be so good, to say whether this matter has received further consideration. I am glad to say that when the matter was ventilated before, the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not completely shut the door. I now understand that those who are fathering this enterprise are prepared to meet the Government with regard to not building ships except after a certain period, and no doubt in collaboration with the Board of Trade. That is the situation. I think it is deserving of your Lordships' attention, and I would request the Paymaster-General to give us what information he can. After all, this country's interest in and dependence upon its shipping are overwhelming, and it is because our overseas trade carried by our shipping is in such a condition of decline that your Lordships are asked to pass this Bill to-night. What I have said, therefore, has a direct bearing upon it, and I would beg your Lordships' attention to it.
LORD MOTTISTONE: My Lords, before the noble Lord replies may I say one word in support of the suggestion which the noble Lord, Lord Hutchison, made with regard to the small harbours of this country? Let some of the money devoted to relieving unemployment be applied to improving the small harbours of this country. I would not detain your Lordships for a moment but for the fact that I have some special knowledge of this question owing to my life-long connection with the lifeboat service. I think it is true to say, and I do not think anybody can contradict it, that although we are the greatest maritime nation, the condition of our smaller harbours in the indented coastline of Great Britain and Ireland is far inferior to the condition of the harbours in almost any other country in the world. I raised this question in the House of Commons when I was first elected nearly thirty years ago, and I have been urging it ever since.
If I may, I would ask the noble Lord, bringing a fresh mind to bear upon the

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problem as he is now doing, to ask his Department to see whether what I say is not true, that totally unlike the small harbours of France, of Belgium, of Holland, of Germany, even of poor Portugal, which is poor in money, even of Spain and of course, of Italy, our small harbours, which used to be so vitally important to our fishing fleets, are now, in many cases, almost derelict. It is a most astonishing thing to see, as I see constantly as I am going about either inspecting lifeboats or in my own boat, wonderful little harbours which even when I was a boy bad a good depth of water and were properly buoyed and marked, now left really derelict, silted up and with no proper marks. If a survey be made of the coast of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and since we are speaking of lifeboats one would wish to include Southern Ireland, because fortunately the lifeboat service is still one, including that country, it will be found that there is an immense amount of work to be done. It would not involve the employment of millions of people, but it would involve the employment of a great many. It ought to be done, and any impartial man or any foreigner would certainly say, as many have said to me, that it ought to be done without delay.
I know that money is not unlimited, but as well as being the greatest maritime nation, we are undoubtedly the richest nation in Europe, and it does seem a strange thing, and it astonishes all those who come from abroad, whether they are here on life-saving service or not, that we allow our small harbours to decay more and more, while all other countries are caring for theirs with a view to encouraging their fishing fleets and facilitating their life-saving service. I would therefore respectfully beg my noble friend to bring his fresh mind to bear upon it and at last take the action which all of us would say is highly desirable in the interests of our naval supremacy on the one hand and our life-saving service on the other.
LORD ELTON: My Lords, I had certainly not intended to take part in this debate, and I am not going to detain your Lordships now for very long, but I have been very much inspired and interested by the succession of contributions made from all angles without any Party feeling, and if I may say so I have
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thoroughly agreed with the suggestions which fell not only from the noble Lord, Lord Hutchison, on this side of the House, but from the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, opposite. In the course of this brief discussion the only noble Lord who has advanced any criticism of the Bill is the noble Earl who first spoke from the opposite Benches, Lord Listowel. I do not intend to follow him into his possibly somewhat academic essay upon the rival merits of Socialism and Capitalism, but I would like to say just one word on his general criticism, which I take to be that this is a very small measure. I think the striking metaphor of the pill and the earthquake came from the Paymaster-General, but that was, I think, the general attitude adopted by Lord Listowel.
It is possible that it may prove to be a very small measure—I do not think we can tell yet—but I think that it contains within it very great possibilities. If the Commissioners use their powers as we all hope they will use their powers, and if their relations with the Government Departments prove to be what we all hope they will be, then I think that we shall have a road opened to us towards supplying something of the lack of which some of us who support the Government have been very sensible during the last few months. In the third subsection of Clause I the Commissioners are instructed to make suggestions to, and to co-operate with, the Government Departments—in the plural. This, my Lords, is an age of plans, and plans may be classified by their relative remoteness from reality. At the extreme end of the scale you have the professional theorist with his almost annual paper Utopias, of which one constant feature is their invariable divorce from reality. A little nearer reality you get the various apostles of the New Deal. I do not think that any actual new deal has produced any very striking material results for its people, but there is no doubt it has produced in more than one case astonishing psychological results and consequently immense political dividends. Mr. Lloyd George has recently announced that he is prepared to give us a new deal, and the gusto with which he announced it makes one suspect that the dealer is well aware of the position of the aces in the pack. That announcement is the kind of announcement, in the

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present state of public feeling, to win a ready response.
At the other extreme we have had our own Government proceeding along the line of steady advance, producing very solid results, but up to very lately leaving the public unhappily conscious of the lack of a new sense of direction. It does seem to rue that in this subsection, with its instruction to the Commissioners to make suggestions to Government Departments, if they really make suggestions and if the Government Departments are really going to co-operate with one another, we have the thin end of what may be a very valuable wedge. Personally I regard what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said with regard to the struggle between Socialism and Capitalism as almost as much out of date as the struggles between Tories and Whigs. What is wanted is not an "ism" but an empirical plan growing out of the novel age in which we are living. I think that if the Government will make the use of this Bill of which it is susceptible, we have there a valuable possible avenue towards that empirical plan which some of us are anxious to see.
LORD ROCHESTER: My Lords, may I first of all pay my need of thanks to all the noble Lords who have spoken, for their response to this Bill? It seems to me that there has been very little actual criticism, but a good many statements have been made as to the insufficiency of the Bill, and the wish has been expressed in more than one quarter that the Government could see their way to go further. Speaking generally, I think the Government cannot be displeased with the reception which the Bill has received in this House. Having said that, may I deal seriatim with the points which have been raised? First as to my noble friend Lord Listowel. I should like to thank him for his contribution to the debate and to say, as to the constructive suggestions that he made, that I will see that they are brought to the attention of my right honourable friend the Minister of Labour. If they cannot be usefully employed in this connection I am quite sure that they will not be pigeon-holed, and I feel there is little doubt they may even yet be the germs which may be utilised on some future occasion. After all this is only an experimental Bill.
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Now, as regards my noble friend Lord Gainford, I confess quite frankly that he placed me in a little difficulty. He raised two points definitely, in addition to his general approbation of the Bill. As I understood him his two questions were, firstly, as regard the Title, and secondly, as to the extension of the area. Perhaps he will allow me to deal with the second point first. In reply to the point as to the extension of the area, I would say this, that Middlesbrough was not covered by the investigation, and in fact its unemployment figure, though high, is substantially lower than that of Jarrow. The line for experiment, I am sure he will appreciate, must be necessarily drawn with a certain arbitrariness, bat in this respect I do feel that it is defensible, and with the best will in the world the Government have come to the deliberate conclusion that, as regards this experiment, they are not able to extend the area covered by the Bill. I would in that connection reiterate what I tried to say in moving the Second Reading. I said that they have chosen those parts which by common consent are the worst in respect of unemployment, the worst in average, in particular localities, and in duration. The Government feel that it is essential for successful experiment that it should be concentrated as narrowly as possible on the areas most urgently in need of assistance, and while they do not for one moment suggest that there are not other areas which should be considered, they do not feel able to extend the areas as regards this experiment.
As regards the point that my noble friend raised as to the Title of the Bill, there I confess that he has a good deal of support in this House. My noble friend Lord Danesfort and my noble friend Lord Strabolgi, speaking as he said with the full authority of the Leader of the Opposition, supported that contention. I want to say, speaking as a member of the. Government, with a full sense of responsibility, that while I cannot concede the point at this moment I can say that the Government have given the matter most sympathetic consideration. The only suggestion I can make, in view of the extreme paucity of time, because we are going to ask your Lordships to give us all the remaining stages of the Bill to-morrow—and I make the suggestion with great

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diffidence and reservation—would be this, that if one of the noble Lords who have spoken to-night would put down an Amendment to delete the word "depressed" in order to insert the word "special" I would see that it was brought to the immediate attention of the Minister of Labour, and if any persuasive powers of mine are of value, I would do all I can to see that it has every possible consideration to-night. I would like to add, because we are so short of time, that scarcely think the word "distressed" instead of "depressed" would be suitable.
LORD GAINFORD: I do not like the word "distressed" myself, but it was the word used by the right reverend Prelate and referred to by the noble Lord. I think the word which he now suggests is a better one, and if the suggestion which he makes is carried out I believe it would be adopted.
LORD ROCHESTER: I think the noble Lord will agree that I was only quoting the right reverend Prelate. I want to make it abundantly clear that as I am speaking for another Department than my own I cannot commit the Government; but I can say that it has already received very sympathetic consideration, and if an Amendment is put down in this sense I will do all that in me lies to try and see whether I can persuade the Government to accept it. But I am sure noble Lords will appreciate that if am giving no pledge, and I feel that that is as far as I can go in answer to all those who have raised the question of Title.
My noble friend Lord Hutchison, if he will forgive my saying so, need make no apology for his contribution to the debate. It was most helpful and constructive, and it was especially valuable on the point as to how the Commissioners should encompass their task. He laid stress upon the importance of the provision of markets for small holders. I thank him for that suggestion, and assure him that it shall not be overlooked. In the absence of the Leader of the House perhaps I should be divulging no confidence if I told him that he has a very sympathetic hearer in the noble Viscount, because to my knowledge the War Office have actually lent their representative, to whom he referred, to the Commissioners who are being appointed under this Bill, so that
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the noble Lord can rest assured that his suggestions will receive the fullest possible consideration.
The next speaker was the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. He asked us for consideration for the aged. I can assure him that the Government need no conversion on that point. But it scarcely comes within the purview of this Bill. If he will allow me to take note of that contention, without suggesting for a moment that it can be dealt with in this connection, that is as much as I can do for him. As regards his suggestion about afforestation, I will see that that matter also is brought to the notice of my right honourable friend.
Then he came to another subject which is one which I feel I must deal with in rather more detail. He referred to the Red Star Line. Now, I should like to point out that the originator of that scheme proposed that the two ships should be built at Belfast. That was his original suggestion, and therefore it would scarcely help the difficulties that we are dealing with in this Bill. The originator's second proposal does not include the building of any ships, and I suggest therefore that the proposal as regards the Red Star Line would scarcely be of material assistance to the distressed areas. I noticed his remark about stewards and those who would be indirectly affected. But they would scarcely be so numerous as to make an appreciable impression upon the problem with which we are concerned. Nevertheless I will see that his request is not only noted, but is brought to the attention of the Treasury.
LORD STEABOLGI: One of the ships is coal-burning, so that has a greater effect, but I am really only linking it up with the distressed areas. Has the Paymaster General any further information as regards the Government's action, because the time is slipping away, and these ships may be bought by another nation?
LORD ROCHESTER: I will bring to the attention, of the Treasury the noble Lord's remarks, but I scarcely think that they come within the purview of this Bill.
LORD STRABOLGI: Will you communicate with the Treasury?
LORD ROCHESTER: I certainly will. As regards the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, he asked me to bring a fresh mind to the problem. I would remind him that I too am getting into "the sear, the yellow leaf," because I was in the House of Commons with the noble Lord, nearly thirty years ago and I remember the assiduity with which he has always stressed this point. A great deal is to be said for the survey to which he referred. He and Lord Hutchison dealt with the question of the small harbours round our coasts that are almost derelict. I can only say in that connection that as we are dealing with specific areas under this Bill it would not have that omnibus effect to which he referred, but it may be that his suggestion may possibly bear fruit in another connection, and I can assure him that no suggestion coining from him or from Lord Hutchison falls upon deaf ears as far as the Government are concerned. Perhaps in this connection he would allow me with great respect to pay my meed of praise to him for the invaluable and indefatigable work with which his name is always associated in our minds connected with the lifeboat service in this country.
As regards Lord Elton's speech I am sure he will not expect me to deal with it, because in essence it was rather a reply to the first speech to which we listened. I think I have now dealt with each one of the speeches made to-night. If there is any point I have missed I have not done it intentionally, but I do ask, in view of the close proximity of the Recess, that your Lordships will be good enough to give the Bill a Second Reading to-night, and I hope you will be equally good in allowing us to take all the remaining stages to-morrow. But if the Amendments to which I refer are put down they must be put down at once. As regards the Title, I will see that every consideration is given to that.
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for the very accommodating speech in which he has met all the criticisms, and on behalf of my noble friends I desire to say that we should appreciate very much the change from "depressed" to "special." That would meet our objections completely, and I understand that that Amendment is going to be put down in the name of a noble Lord from each Party, and we are depending on the
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noble Lord to use his influence with the Department in question in order to get that Amendment accepted. I think perhaps the noble Lord just a little overstressed our enthusiasm for this Bill. We really do not regard it as anything very remarkable, but we hope it is an experiment that will succeed. I return to the simile that I used in an earlier part of the Session. I regard this as dealing with sores and wounds on the body, without really going to the fundamental cause which has produced them. It is like poulticing a mortifying limb, instead of really getting to the cause of the disease. But we wish it well, naturally, and we hope that the experiment will prove successful. The very fact that there is a line drawn round the area which prevents the Government from dealing with anything outside that line is in itself something in the nature of an absurdity. But we hope that the efforts that no doubt will be put into this enterprise will be successful.
LORD ROCHESTER: My Lords, if I may speak again with permission of the House, may I thank the noble Lord for what he has said? I want to be equally frank as regards the Amendment. Though I used the singular there will he more than one, because apart from leaving out the word "depressed" in order to insert "special" it will be necessary to make a consequential Amendment in subsection (1) of Clause 1 and right through the Bill wherever the word appears.
LORD PONSONBY or SHULBREDE: We will have that done.
LORD ROCHESTER: In Clause 1 (1), line 11, it will be necessary to add words after the word "Act".
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE (AMENDMENT) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly:
[The EARL OF ONSLOW in the Chair.]
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2:
Vice-President of Court of Appeal.
2.—(1) Subsection (4) of Section six of the principal Act shall have effect as if at the end thereof there were inserted the words following, that is to say—
"and may appoint to be Vice-President of that Court one of the Lords Justices of Appeal who shall preside when sitting and acting in any Division of the Court of Appeal if no ex officio Judge of that Court is sitting in that Division."
(2) For the purposes of giving effect to the provisions of the last foregoing subsection the amendments specified in the second column of the Schedule to this Act shall be made in the provisions of the principal Act specified in the first column of that Schedule.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT SANKEY)THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT SANKEY) moved, to add to the clause:
"(3) The provisions of this section shall not affect the persons holding office as Lords Justices of Appeal at the date of the passing of this Act and accordingly those persons shall have rank and precedence in all respects us if this Act had not been passed."
The noble and learned Viscount said: Your Lordships will remember that a difficulty arose with regard to the seniority of the present Lords Justices of Appeal if Clause 2 of this Bill remained as drafted. We were greatly indebted for a satisfactory solution of this difficulty to a suggestion made by the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, and I promised to put down an Amendment to secure the desired result. This is the Amendment which I am now proposing for your Lordships' acceptance. May I be permitted to add that it is a very happy ending, and one which gives me certainly great personal pleasure, that the names of the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, a former Lord Chief Justice, to whom we are so much indebted, and of Lord Howart, the present Lord Chief Justice, are coupled with my name in support of and in putting down the Amendment?
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 39, at end insert the said new subsection.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, may I ask, in view of the urgent necessity of this Bill, whether it cannot be passed through its remaining stages to-morrow? The adjournment is on Friday, and if the Bill is passed through its remaining stages here to-morrow it can be sent to the other place in time.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am much obliged to the noble Lord. We propose to do as he suggests, and I hope the Bill will be sent to the House of Commons by Friday.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE: My Lords, may I ask the Leader of the House whether it will be possible for us to meet at three o'clock to-morrow? I understand there is no judicial business.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I had not anticipated the business would take so long, but my noble friend thinks there will be a great deal to be said which will make it necessary for us to meet earlier. He has ascertained that there is no judicial business. I have also got the same information and, of course, we shall meet his wishes. My doubt was whether it would be necessary to meet earlier.
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE: I do not want to press it. I thought it would be for the convenience of noble Lords who were going away.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: It is purely a matter of the convenience of the House. Perhaps I had better put it down for three o'clock.
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE: I appreciate the fact that the noble Viscount is quite ready to meet me, but perhaps it would be more convenient for us to meet at the usual time.
House adjourned at six minutes before seven o'clock.