Lords Sitting of 30 July 1936

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The EARL OF ONSLOW on the Woolsack.
AIR NAVIGATION BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments agreed to.
PRIVATE LEGISLATION PROCEDURE (SCOTLAND) BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to.
CATTLE INDUSTRY (EMERGENCY PROVISIONS) BILL.
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.
ISLE OF MAN (CUSTOMS) BILL.
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.

ROYAL AIR FORCE.
LORD GORELL LORD GORELL had given Notice that he would ask His Majesty's Government whether it is now possible to amplify the statements which have been made to the effect that not only will the reserve of pilots for the Royal Air Force be largely increased, but that the conditions of training will be modified in such a way as to obviate the necessity for long periods of continuous attendance; and move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have placed upon the Order Paper a Question as to an increase in the Royal Air Force Reserve and also as to any modifications that it may have been possible to introduce to mitigate the conditions of continuous training. I think that your Lordships will agree that in a time when there is so much unrest abroad, when we are daily confronted with rumours and facts of trouble throughout the world, this question is one that assumes very great national importance. In the event, if it should ever come, of another war between so-called civilised nations, I think it can hardly be questioned that in its first
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phase we should see in very intense form warfare in the air, which differentiates what may be from anything that has been in that there would obviously be no time allowed to a nation that was attacked to get ready afterwards. I would submit that the strength of the Royal Air Force Reserve is almost as important to the defence of the country as the Royal Air Force itself.
I have asked in my Question whether His Majesty's Government are able to amplify any of the statements which have hitherto been made upon this topic, but as far as I am able to gather, though from time to time we have understood that this matter has been very practically under the consideration of His Majesty's Government, there have not been very many statements. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Air in another place on March 17 of this year stated that it was the aim of His Majesty's Government to enrol 800 pilots a year for the next three years. I do not know whether the noble Viscount the Secretary of State for Air will this afternoon be able to tell us how far that aim has been realised. I think it is common knowledge that there were four civil training flying schools, and there are now thirteen, organised by the aircraft industry, but I think the noble Viscount would agree with me that though they have undoubtedly functioned well, their work is subject to two main difficulties.
One is that it necessitates a period of attendance for roughly, I gather, eight weeks or so as an initial training, followed thereafter by necessary refresher courses; and one can understand that for just the type of young man whom it is necessary to attract, who is entering upon his life's work of earning his living in other directions, it may sometimes be extremely difficult for him, however willing he may be, to give up eight continuous weeks. A second difficulty which seems to me to be inseparable from a system of civil training schools, is that necessarily the training must take place upon civil machines, and that in consequence it would seem evident that before those so trained were actually able to engage in the defence of their country, they would have to go for some period of further training upon military machines. The civil machine has already diverged in type considerably from the

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military, and one may hope that as time goes on it will emerge more and more as a distinct and separate type. Though, as I have said, so far as I have been able to gather, the work of the civil schools has been efficient and good, I would hope that in future the distinction between civil and military should in no possible way be confused. I imagine that His Majesty's Government must have been devoting their attention primarily to the difficulty of overcoming this continuous period, and I would ask the noble Viscount whether he can give us any information this afternoon about that.
There is one other section of the problem which does not perhaps specially arise out of the words I have placed upon the Paper and which yet seems to me to be very germane to the problem. I do not know whether the noble Viscount this afternoon can give us any information as to the position of the Auxiliary Air Force or University squadrons, and I would like to ask him, if he is able to give this information—one realises that the noble Viscount may not be able to give publicly much information that he himself possesses—whether he or his advisers have been devoting any of their consideration to the question of interesting boys of sixteen to eighteen in the matter of the defence of their country by air; whether there is anything under consideration or growing up which might be held to take the place, as far as the Royal Air Force is concerned, that the Officers' Training Corps and the Cadet Corps occupy in relation to military defence. One knows that every young boy old enough to be able to take out a motor licence drives or is able to drive, or at any rate desires to drive, a motor car, and still more keen is his interest in all matters connnected with the air. One does not in any way desire that the boys and young men of this country should be made in any degree war-minded, but I would like to know how far their definite air-mindedness is being considered by the Air Ministry in relation to this all-important problem of the defence of their country. I do not desire to detain your Lordships with any further observations, and I hope the noble Viscount will be able to give us a good deal of information upon what is a very pressing and a very important national problem. I beg to move for Papers.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOE AIR (VISCOUNT SWINTON): My Lords, I think the House is under a debt of gratitude to my noble friend for raising this question before your Lordships' House adjourns. It is one of great importance and I am very glad indeed to have this opportunity of stating in some detail what our plans are with regard to the Reserve. When we had the general debate in this House on all the problems of defence, I said that I thought none of the three Services could be really satisfied with their position in relation to defence unless we could say with confidence that we had met, or were in process of meeting, a three-fold requirement. We have got in the first place to have a Force in being adequate in size and quality and with a sufficient number of the right kind of men and machines. In the second place we have got to have behind that Force an adequate reserve. Behind that again, we have got to have what on that occasion I ventured to call a war potential. The reserve of this country, whether in men or material, is always great, but you must have, at any rate as far as material is concerned, your potential sufficiently planned and organised that it can come into play without any unnecessary delay.
My noble friend this afternoon has raised the second of these problems—the problem of the Reserve. He spoke in passing, and he asked a question, about the recruiting for the first line, for the Force in being. That, I am glad to be able to say, is eminently satisfactory. We have taken in since April, 1935—entered into training or selected for training—1,350 short-service officers (I leave out regular officers whose scale is being enlarged); some 360 airmen pilots by direct entry, and something like 470 airmen pilots from the Service itself. In regard to all the personnel, skilled and less skilled, required for all the ground services of a widely extended Force, we have put forward what we thought were large claims in the first instance; we have increased our demands more than once, and the programme has been completely filled. Therefore, as regards the Force in being the recruiting, whether it is for pilots or for the ground force, is eminently satisfactory. But it has got to go on. The Force gathers momentum all the time, and it is necessary that that

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entry into the first line of the Air Force, which has been so satisfactory hitherto, should be maintained.
My noble friend asked about the auxiliary squadrons. They are being extended. I think I made a statement on this to your Lordships in the general defence debate. We are putting up the number of these to twenty, and whatever may have been thought in the past about the efficiency of the auxiliary squadrons, I have no doubt at all now, from experience, that they can be regarded as a very efficient adjunct to the Force. Last year, when some of these squadrons were doing their regular fortnight's training, the experiment was made of taking away from them not only their regular officers but the whole of their regular personnel, and everybody who knows the work and life of the squadrons knows how much depends not only on the pilots but on the skilled personnel who are responsible for the maintenance of the machines. In your auxiliary squadrons you have your voluntary and, if I may so call them, your amateur pilots—amateur in no sense except that they are in auxiliary squadrons. The whole of your ground force is also in that sense amateur. When these squadrons had finished active exercises as extensive as those in which any service squadrons would engage in such a time, the machines went back to the regular personnel of the Air Force to be overhauled, to have the regular overhaul that comes after intense active manoeuvres, and the report which was given upon those machines was that they had been just as well maintained during those active operations by their auxiliary staff as they would have been if they had been maintained by the best equipped and the most efficient squadron in the Regular Air Force. I want to pay that tribute to the officers and men of the auxiliary squadrons, because I think that convinced every single person in the Air Ministry that the auxiliary squadrons were worth while, and that they might be acknowledged as, not worth 50 per cent., but as worth not very far short of 100 per cent. Those go forward. Those will be increased to the numbers I have given. I am perfectly certain we shall get the numbers, for the Lords Lieutenant, helped by their territorial organisations, are giving us great assistance in that regard.
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My noble friend raised a point that was not in his Question, but I am rather glad he did raise it, about interesting boys. He did not do it, he said, in the least with any idea that you want to get boys war-minded. In this matter I do not think it is a question of being war-minded; rather I feel it is a question of being peace-minded, because I am profoundly convinced that a state of preparedness is going to be the greatest insurance of peace. A man who serves in the Air Force to-day is doing as great a service for peace as any one in the world can be doing. You cannot take a boy of sixteen into an Air Force O.T.C., but you can take him into an ordinary O.T.C. in a public school, and I do want the public schools in this country to be profoundly interested in the Air Force, and to be ready to send boys into the regular service. The competition for Cranwell is at least as great as that for the other great colleges. There is competition for short-service Commissions, and these afford a great opportunity in future life, too.
I am very glad the noble Lord raised the question of interesting the great public schools in the Air Force. I am extremely anxious to do that. I owe a debt—we all do I think—to the Undersecretary of State who has gone round a great many of the public schools of England explaining to them exactly what the Air Force is, talking not only to the boys but also to the masters about it, and we have tried to make connection so that boys can come from the public schools, get their contact, watch, and see an air squadron at work. I have seen one great public school coming out, I am glad to say, in large numbers to one of the squadrons not far from it. I would welcome an arrangement by which they came out on Empire Air Day. I should like them to come not only on Empire Air Day; I should like the contact to be closer and more constant so that the boys from the great public schools can come and have their contact with the Air Force in being and see what it is. When they have seen what it is I do not think it will be only a very small proportion of them that will wish to come into it.
I return to the main purpose of this Motion, the Reserve. In the past the Reserve of the Air Force has been created mainly by the short-service officers who

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pass out of the regular Force at the age of twenty-five or twenty-six. They have a, long flying life, therefore, before them, and they pass into the Reserve highly efficient and ready when called upon. So long as the size of your Air Force is constant that is an adequate, and indeed an admirable system. If an equal number of men is taken as short-service officers into the Force in a year, and an equal number pass out at the end of that year, your Reserve is adequate and that system works very well. But—and this must be apparent—the moment you increase enormously the size of your first-line Air Force obviously you have got to increase concurrently with it the size of your Reserve. The officers now passing out came three, four or five years ago into a Force a third the size, say, of what it is now, and they would be a quite inadequate Reserve, because the Force next year is going to be three times at least its original size. In the fullness of time that will right itself. You extend your Air Force, say, 200 or 300 per cent., and at the end of five or six years there will be passing out approximately the same number of officers as you are passing into it; in five or six years time your ratio has come to balance again. For the next few years, however, your ratio is quite inadequate. We have got to have a system in which we can in these next few years create a Reserve Force which is proportionate to our real first-line strength.
Some ten years ago, in addition to what I call the normal process of the short-service officers passing through the Regular Force; to the Reserve, we instituted a system of direct entry into the Reserve. A man could enter rather as he entered the old Militia or the third line: he could enter direct into the Reserve. That on the whole has worked very well. The Universities and the University squadrons have played a great part. Many men from the Universities, and men who have served in the University squadrons, when they have gone into civil life and civil jobs, have joined that Reserve. To show how well it has worked, I will give a few figures, but I do not propose to trouble your Lordships with many figures. There were sixty direct entrants into the Reserve in 1933. Last year there were 290. In this year—and I use the period from April to
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December—we shall be taking no fewer than 400 direct into the Reserve.
As the noble Lord, Lord Gorell, pointed out, the method we have hitherto adopted—and it is the ideal system as long as you can get enough people for it—has been that these young men who come into the Reserve have had to do an initial eight weeks' training, approximately, straight off. After that they naturally are fairly efficient, and then they come up for their fortnight's training every year. If you can do that and get an unlimited number of men who can give that eight weeks straight on end, that is no doubt the best form of training and the easiest; but, as my noble friend said, in the next three years we want direct entrants into the Reserve at the rate of something like 800 a year. When you are making a demand of that kind the initial training of eight weeks is really a practical difficulty. What is it we want to get? We want to get as many as possible public school boys and secondary school boys who have gone into business, who have their regular civil employment. These, I am sure if you can give them the opportunity, will be very keen to come into the Air Service. I have made many appeals to manufacturers and to employers, and they have responded very well, to give a man eight weeks off. Well, it is a very difficult thing to do. The young man who is in some profession on his own, the young barrister, the young solicitor, the young accountant, can do his training at weekends and take a fortnight off, but if he has to be away eight weeks he finds it very difficult. It is difficult for the young man on his own to make that cut in time. It is difficult also in many businesses and the better the man the more difficult it is to let him off. And I want the best men.
That is my problem. In what other way, which will give me adequate results and bring me the men, can I get what I hitherto got in eight weeks' training? If I may put it in this way, I have tried to find a scheme which will bring the training to the pilot rather than the pilot to the training. I have been enormously helped in this by what my noble friend Lord Gorell has already referred to; that is, the great increase we have made and the great efficiency we have attained in the civil flying training schools. Without their great expansion and efficiency we

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certainly could not have carried out this enormous increase of entry into the Regular Service. These civil flying training schools are manned by officers of great experience and skill who have passed through the Air Force. We can rely on them just as much as upon the skilled instructors in our own flying training schools. We are relying on them to-day to do the whole of the preparatory training for the short-service officers who go into the Regular Air Force. They are doing the whole of the training for the ab initio reservist.
Basing ourselves on that experience and on these facilities—and we could not do without them—we are proposing to introduce next year a new Reserve Force. His Majesty the King has approved the title of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve for this new Force. The way we intend to work is this. We propose to establish centres in London and in other great cities which will enable young men in civil life to join the Reserve, to train in the evenings and at week-ends, and to have a fortnight's continuous training in each year. In that way we shall spread over the year that initial training which now requires eight weeks continuous attendance. We intend that that training, while it will naturally begin on the training machine and the civil machine, shall be a training not only on civil machines but on military machines as well. As time goes forward we shall no doubt be able to arrange that part of the great war reserve in machines shall be made available in these training schools, so that a man training on his training machine to start with will pass on and serve when he is fit to do so upon the most efficient machines—exactly the machines on which he would serve should ever the need arise. I may say in passing that one of the most interesting developments of some of these new machines is that, whereas many of those responsible for their design thought in the first instance that when you designed a machine of enormously increased performance in speed you would get a sort of Schneider Cup machine which would be difficult to fly, that has not proved to be the case. Many pilots who had entertained that view—they have flown me in two of them—have said to me: "This thing is as easy to handle as any machine I have ever flown." That is a very satisfactory feature in design.
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Therefore the training will be exactly of the kind at which my noble friend thinks we ought to aim. We shall establish these schools either at aerodromes or in the cities that are close to aerodromes. Let me explain what I mean. If you have an aerodrome conveniently situated near a large town that you can get to easily by bicycle or motorcar, then we shall have a training centre and do flying training in the same place. I think that would probably be the case in London. That is the ideal. But where the aerodrome is further away we shall have to establish a training centre in the town. I think "a headquarters" is technically the correct expression, but it will be probably something more like a club. All the evening training, training in mechanics and all the ground training that must be given, will be done there and then these young men will be taken out for flying training upon the aerodrome. These centres will be run much in the same way as the University squadrons are run now. Everybody who is familiar with the University squadrons will agree with me when I say that the training in them is extraordinarily good.
Not only is there very efficient training but there is a rather agreeable social centre as well. I do not want to dissociate the two in the least. I want to make these centres places which will give efficient training from the air point of view. The air staff will have charge of them, and that will be their responsibility. We shall select very carefully the officers to be put in charge of these centres. But I want to see not only something which is really efficient, but something which at the same time is not unattractive to the boy in civil life. I hope we shall get in these great cities local committees to be associated with us. It is quite possible, if you have the right men in charge, to get discipline and training all right and at the same time make the thing extraordinarily attractive from the human point of view as well. That is what we are going to aim at and that is what, with everybody's assistance, we are going to get.
These young pilots will enter on what I may call a common-entry basis. They will come in, all of them, on the same level as airman pilots, which is a term well known to my noble friend. Nominally they have the rank of sergeant,

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in very much the way in which you would. enter the senior ranks of an O.T.C. Later, those who show most proficiency and suitability will be advanced to commissioned rank. The age of initial entry will be from eighteen to twenty-five. They will join for five years and accept universal service if they are called up, and will be invited to renew for further periods of five years up till the age of thirty-eight. That is the regular practice in the Reserve to-day.
They will not be out of pocket by this: they will get their yearly retaining fee and they will receive pay and allowances during training. All the young men to whom I have talked who are in the Reserve to-day tell me that they can do quite comfortably upon it. Moreover, as was pointed out to me upon a Scottish aerodrome the other day where there was Reserve training going on, quite a number of them are not only drawing the pay and the retaining fee provided by the Air Force but are also enjoying full pay from their employers. This, therefore, was quite a proper arrangement, and they were by no means out of pocket on the transaction even if they entertained some of their friends. Selection Boards will have to sit in London at first, and where a Selection Board sits in London we shall of course follow our regular practice of giving full travelling expenses to anybody who comes up to London for the Selection Board. Later on I hope we shall be able to decentralise and have Selection Boards sitting in the localities.
The Reserve is an essential part of the Royal Air Force, and the training and the control of it must be a Service responsibility which you cannot share with anybody else. But I want to pay a tribute to the light aeroplane clubs of this country. We have subsidised them. We have sometimes been criticised for doing that. I do not think we had any particular military idea in our minds in doing so. We shall continue to subsidise those clubs, and we shall subsidise equally these new business clubs which are in contemplation, if they come into being, in exactly the same way as we are subsidising the light aeroplane clubs to-day. I think their activities in the past will probably help the creation of this Reserve. It is also very likely that, as flying increases through this Reserve and in many other ways, the membership of the flying clubs, so far from diminishing, may increase.
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I hope it will, because I look on these civil flying clubs, and these business clubs which are contemplated and will come into being, as something in the nature of a third line. They may assume no responsibility for service to the State, but I have not much doubt that if ever the time came and the need arose, anybody who was able to fly and was a member of a club—and a few people of whom I can think and of whom some of your Lordships can think, people of a considerably greater age, attempted it and succeeded in it during the last War—would be found among the earliest volunteers to come forward.
I have given but an outline of this scheme, I hope not of undue length. I wanted to tell your Lordships and the country what is in our mind, what we are planning about this. Organising is easy to talk about, but organising a great scheme of this kind to function throughout the country takes a tremendous lot of doing. It cannot be done in a moment, particularly on the top of everything else, but I think we shall get it working early next year, and in the meantime the direct entry into the Reserve, as I said, is going very well. We have these 400 who have already come and are ear-marked for training. We shall publish particulars in due course, and men wanting to join will know exactly the conditions and how and when they are to apply.
I am only going to add two things. I made some time ago an appeal to employers to give that extra bit of leave to their men. I know the response which has already come. I have been to one of these training schools where the Reserve was in training, and I found man after man there, pilot after pilot, in all sorts of different careers in life and in different kinds of businesses, who had been given leave on full pay by his employer to come forward and train. I am encouraged by that to renew this appeal. I am trying in this to create a scheme for the Reserve which will fit in as practically as possible with all the exigencies of civil life, to make it as easy as possible for the pilot and as easy as possible for his work, the job in which he is engaged. I renew my appeal to employers, and I do so with confidence based on results, to make it easy for young men to come and join this Reserve. When it comes to the fortnight's training—and

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there must be a fortnight's continuous training for the man in the Reserve, just as in the Territorial Force—I appeal to his employer to give him that extra fortnight of leave in order that he may be able to come without cutting into the other fortnight that he gets away from his job. I make that appeal, and I am sure that it will be responded to.
We have tried to devise a scheme as practical as possible, one that fits in with the ordinary civil life of this country and the life in our great cities. The appeal is open to a wide field. The boy at the public school, the boy at the secondary school who has passed into civil life. We have tried to make it practical, and I hope and I believe that it will be possible. I say only this in conclusion, echoing something which the noble Lord, Lord Gorell, said in opening. Speak of armaments and inevitably in one sense you speak in terms of war. But nobody supposes that any force of this country—first line, second line or third line—is ever going to be used for any purpose but that of defence and the preservation of peace, and I am absolutely certain that anybody who joins this Reserve is doing as great a service as he can to preserve the peace of this country and the peace of the world.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, may I ask the noble Viscount one question arising out of his very interesting discourse? He mentioned that 470 pilots have been obtained from the Service men; would that mean promotion from the ranks?
VISCOUNT SWINTON: That was direct entry into the Service? Yes, I can answer that. Of the entry into the Regular Service—I treated the Reserve separately—between April, 1935, and now 1,350 short-service officers have been taken direct out of civil life; there have been 360 direct-entry airman pilots; and 470 airmen pilots promoted from the Service itself.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, may I ask the noble Viscount a question on a different point from that which was put by the noble and gallant Earl, and may I apologise for not having heard the whole of the speeches of the noble Viscount and Lord Gorell? I asked a noble friend, who informs me that this particular point was touched upon by neither speaker. In
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the scheme of the Government I do not find any place for women, and I am going to ask the noble Viscount very seriously indeed—I am not making a joke of this at all—if he has considered this point. I know a great many of the purely civil flying clubs, which have nothing to do with this scheme at all, and a very great part is played there by women, who are very keen pilots indeed and we must not, I suggest, close our minds to the times we live in.
If I were responsible for building up an Air Force rapidly, and I could get a number of suitable, skilful and active modern young women as flyers, I should be very glad to have them. It is ridiculous to suggest that they are not efficient. I do not want to go into particulars, but I can recall one who is connected with the constituency which I once represented, Miss Amy Johnson, and others, who have played a great part in flying, and other nations are recruiting women. I think it is worth consideration, and serious consideration, and we should not simply wave it aside and say that women should have no part in the Fighting Services. In the last War they did play a great part in the various auxiliary services. I do not want a detailed answer from the noble Viscount, but I think the matter is worth consideration, if there is need to build up an Air Reserve as rapidly as possible.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, I should be the last to underrate the capacity of women for this or anything else, but what I am concerned with here is the building up of a Reserve, and the noble Lord, if he had heard both speeches in their entirety, would have appreciated that this is a Reserve which is to be called up in an emergency directly to play its part and fill the ranks of the Fighting Force. It is the second line behind the first line strength. But when I hear it suggested that into a military formation of that kind, which is the immediate reserve for the fighting line, we should recruit women pilots—
LORD MARLEY: Why not?
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I take note of the suggestion which is made by the two leaders of the Party opposite, that we should directly recruit the women of this country into the fighting line. I hesitate a long time before I subscribe to a proposition

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of that kind. I very much admire—anybody who served in the last War must do so—the part which women played and would play again, but I do not, frankly, think that their place is in the fighting line. War is beastly enough, and we do not want to add that to it. Women, alter all they did in nursing, in transport driving and in munitions in the last War, might very well in the next war have a part to play in the piloting of machines. May be you will see ambulance machines. When I was Colonial Secretary and toured the Colonies, I saw them bringing in sick people great distances by aeroplane. It may well be that air ambulances will, in a future war, play their part, and that just as women drove lorries and motor cars in the last war, aeroplanes will be used, not only in the front lines and in fighting, but in ambulance and other work. Most certainly I think there may well be a place which women would fill not only readily but very efficiently in work of that kind. The fact, however, that they certainly may be called upon for work of that kind is not a reason, I respectfully suggest to your Lordships, for asking women to serve in the fighting line or the first line.
LORD STRABOLGI: May I explain on behalf of myself and my noble friend? We take great interest in matters of defence, but in this thing we are not expressing the opinion of the Labour Party. I personally would be very glad of women pilots if I were in a hole and needed flyers; but this point has not been discussed by the Labour Party, and I cannot commit the Labour Party, nor can my noble friend.
LORD GORELL: My Lords, I am sure no one would have expected the noble Viscount to say more than he has done about the last surprising development of the debate. I think everyone would agree that women might play an auxiliary part, but I should hesitate very gravely before wishing to embroil them in anything further. There is only one thing which I wish to say in answer to the very lucid statement which has been made by the noble Viscount. It is very difficult to pick up all the details of an elaborate scheme from a single speech, and I was not clear as to the part which light aeroplane clubs were going to play. I do not press the noble Viscount to
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answer anything further, but I hope that they will not be left at all on one side, since their members are definitely people who have been the keenest in flying, and would naturally be potential members of any Reserve. There is just one other point. I was not quite clear from the noble Viscount's speech whether there were any Papers which he was prepared to lay. It seems to me that the statement he has made, covering a wide field, is one of great importance, and, as he knows, a single statement in this House does not always get the consideration and study which it deserves. Therefore I hope that it will be possible for something embodied in the form of a Paper for the public to ensue.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, may I be permitted to answer the noble Lord at once? Most certainly, with regard to the last point, it is our intention, when the scheme is complete, to publish an absolutely full statement of the whole of the scheme, the terms of service, the method by which people could volunteer, and so on. That will be done as soon as in can be made ready, and certainly before the scheme can start. With regard to light aeroplane clubs, I thought I had made that plain. This is an integral part of the Air Force, just as much of it as a first-line squadron, and the control and training must be under the Air Force—the Superintendent of Reserve and their officers. Nothing else, I am sure my noble friend will agree, would be possible, but that the flying clubs will contribute I have no doubt at all, and I hope the fact that a very large number of people will be learning to fly, so far from being detrimental to flying clubs will, in the long run, add to their numbers.
THE LORD SPEAKER: Does the noble Lord withdraw his Motion?
LORD GORELL: I am quite willing to withdraw, but I understand the Motion is accepted.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I had not noticed that my noble friend had moved for Papers. I would ask him to withdraw his Motion, because I am not going to lay Papers in this House but to publish to the world the conditions as soon as those conditions are ready.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

SHIPPING.
LORD LLOYD LORD LLOYD rose to call attention to the shipping situation, and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, before referring specifically to the subject matter of my Motion I should like to say how sorry I am that neither of my two noble friends who replied to the recent debates on shipping and on food supplies is able to reply to-day, and especially for the reason which prevents my noble friend the Lord Chancellor from being here. I notice that my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal, who defended the Government on this matter last time, though he is here to-day, has apparently handed over the task to another colleague. Might I also observe that I have tabled a list of statistical and other questions, the answers to which I hope my noble friend will supply me with afterwards, as I shall not be able to refer to all of them in my speech without being unduly long.
It is only five weeks since I raised the question of British shipping in the Pacific and called His Majesty's Government's attention to its critical and serious situation. Then, after hearing the Lord Privy Seal's reply, I was constrained to express my disappointment at that reply, and indeed my sense of increased anxiety at what seemed—I scarcely like to use the word—almost the complacency with which my noble friend seemed to view the threatened extinction of two lines, our only two lines, the last links between three great British Dominions—namely, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. I felt then, as I feel now, that it was impossible to leave matters where they were without making one more attempt to urge His Majesty's Government to more rapid action, and to ascertain exactly what action they were going to take. Parliament is just about to rise, and will not meet again, we hope, until the autumn. By that time, unless prior action is taken, there is grave risk that these lines—one line at any rate—will be on the eve of suspension. It is obvious that great steamship lines, once suspended, are not easy to start again. I have taken great pains since we had our last discussion on this question in your Lordships' House to consult with others better qualified than I am to express a technical opinion on this question, and I find that all
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those I have consulted share my sense of disappointment and unhappiness in regard to the Government's reply.
Considering that this question of our shipping in the Pacific has been under review ever since the Ottawa Conference, it seems to me, with every allowance made for the difficulty which must necessarily face a Government in getting three parties into an agreement, very hard to understand how His Majesty's Government could inform us, as they did in the last debate, that they have not got enough data in their possession to come to a settlement. It is the view of people well qualified to know that data could have been easily procured in the four years, probably in four months; and to have referred so tardily this question to the Shipping Committee after so long a delay has meant that the visit of the Deputy-Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Earle Page, and a distinguished representative of the Canadian Pacific Company, who are over here, has ended fruitlessly. Indeed, it is difficult to see how a settlement is easily to be arrived at now. I should like to ask my noble friend when he replies if he can tell us when he hopes to receive the Shipping Committee's Report, and what hopes he has of achieving an early settlement after the Report is received.
I now turn to the more general question of shipping, especially in its relation to food supplies in time of war. I make no apology, even at this late moment in the Session, for raising this question once again. The late Prime Minister's statement—the gravest statement that ever has been made in this country, made two years ago in the White Paper—still stands, unless Government are prepared to deny accuracy, that in the case of an aggression we could no longer feed our people with the resources at our disposal. Unless we are told that that statement is now untrue it remains almost the most urgent question in the whole Empire. Our solicitude as to the sufficiency of ships is, as I have said, mainly in relation to food, and also to those essential supplies of war and agriculture which are concomitant with the very existence of a beleaguered country. But in no part of the Lord Chancellor's speech—I hope

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when he reads this he will forgive my saying so—did there appear to be any realisation of the gravity of the danger of the existing situation; indeed his remarks in many passages seemed designed to assure the public that our anxieties were superfluous and unnecessary. It is therefore with double pleasure that in the particularly interesting speech from my noble friend the Secretary of State for Air. I listened to him repeating with emphasis what is, in the mouths of His Majesty's Government, a new doctrine, that preparedness is the greatest insurance for peace. For the last ten years we have always been told that disarmament was the surest road to peace. I could wish that the Government had made their discovery earlier, for the sake of the country—our finances as well as our safety.
It is not my object to criticise Government or to hark back into the past. We are concerned to support the Government in every possible and conceivable way we can in the; urgent preparations they are now making to remedy the deficiencies which admittedly exist. But I must refer to some of the statements made by the Lord Chancellor in the last debate. He seemed to find assurance and comfort in the sample, but I am afraid superficial, doctrine that it was unnecessary to store food in this country because if we had command of the sea such storage was superfluous, and if we did not have command of the sea it was useless. Surely it should be unnecessary to reply to so superficial an argument. Of course it is for the very purpose of assisting a depleted Navy, faced with an increased task, to keep command of the sea that we desire to relieve it of some of the convoy burden which will be so heavy in the next war. And therefore food storage, for retaining the command of the sea if for nothing else, is a vital consideration.
Then the Lord Chancellor took comfort, and asked us to take comfort, in the reflection that there had been a 15 per cent. increase in our home-grown food supplies. That is not the whole of the story. We are very glad that the Government have been able to increase during the last four or five years our food supplies in some degree, particularly in sugar; but the fact remains that there are 10 per cent. more mouths to feed than there were in 1914, and that
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is a serious set-off to that slight increase in food production. Furthermore, according to one of the greatest authorities on the question of food supplies, Sir John Orr, corroborated by another great authority, Dr. Cloudesley Brereton, the increases in home-grown food supplies have in the main been in fruit and vegetables, whereas a definite decrease in wheat and meat has to be registered. Therefore, there is not room for much comfort, and Sir John Orr tells us even that there is now a definite and greater dependance on foreign food supplies than there was in 1914. As I shall remind your Lordships in a few moments, not only has there been a terrible depletion in our tonnage, but an enormous increase in the duties that that tonnage has to carry out. Your Lordships will therefore see that the fact that there is a still further dependence on foreign food supply is a grave matter.
Although the Lord Chancellor admitted that the findings of the Food Commission of 1905 were not relevant to to-day, as is obvious, he quoted with satisfaction—and I suppose he must have thought that it had some reievance to to-day otherwise he would not have introduced it into his speech at all—that the Food Commission in 1905, by a majority, decided that there was no need to do anything with regard to food storage. But there was a very powerful minority who took exactly the contrary view, and no less an authority than Sir Herbert Matthews, in a paper which ho read before the Society of Arts quite recently, remarked upon it. I need not tell your Lordships who Sir Herbert Matthews is or cite the value of his authority to you: it is well known. Sir Herbert Matthews described the Majority Report of the Commission in 1905—I shall use his words—as a Report which had been
" drawn up more with a view to calming a growing public apprehension which was inconvenient to the then existing Government than to present a true statement of the case. There is but one justification for the adoption of such a course—namely, that the truth was so alarming that they feared to put it in black and white."
That is a damaging statement. It is not mine, but Sir Herbert Matthews'. There is, I am afraid, no doubt to-day that there is nothing in the Food Commission's Report of 1905 which can give us the smallest reason for complacency, or anything to relieve our

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anxiety. But I do not want to labour this particular aspect of the question too much.
We must remember too our enormous dependence on oil fuel. It is perhaps trite to remind your Lordships of it, but we have changed from coal to oil in the case of the Fleet and in the case of an increasing number of merchant ships, our Air Force, our mechanised Army, industry, and transport. All these are practically entirely dependent on a foreign supply of fuel, all of which is an initial burden on transport from overseas, and all of which has to be convoyed in time of war with a depleted Fleet, with a gravely depleted mercantile tonnage, and in face of surface dangers, sub-surface dangers, and super-surface dangers as well. I have just obtained, before I came into the House, one set of figures with which I shall venture to trouble your Lordships. Of crude petroleum we imported 15,000,000 gallons in 1914. In 1935 we imported roughly 500,000,000. Of refined petroleum, as against 630,000,000 gallons in 1914, in 1935 we had to import 2,309,000,000 gallons. It would be convenient if my noble friend can tell us, in relation to that increase, to what extent does our British tanker fleet suffice to supply our requirements of crude oil, fuel oil, petrol, and lubricating oil. Then we shall get some idea, not only of the increased tonnage of this particular commodity that has to be imported, but how much neutral tanker tonnage we may require.
Again, the Lord Chancellor claimed that as world tonnage had gone up since 1914, there would be a far greater neutral tonnage available than in the last War. I tried last time to ask whether the Government were not mistaken in their reliance on neutral tonnage. I know it is the view—I must not say of all shipping authorities, but certainly of very important shipping interests, that they would be very unwise to rely in any degree on neutral tonnage in the next war. Why, is obvious. If you take Scandinavia, if we were at war with a Central European Power, Scandinavia would almost certainly be subjected to the risk of air reprisals which would be a great deterrent to her giving us any of the help she gave us in the last War. The same might be true of Greece or of any other neutral country that might be willing to give us a petrol supply.
We have also to remember another important factor in the case of neutral countries—that neutral countries had much less choice in the last War as to whether they acceded or did not accede to our request for tonnage, because in many cases they were almost entirely dependent on us for bunker coal, and if they did not lend their ships to us their business was ruined. This time there will be much less reliance on our bunker coal. Many of them have changed over to oil fuel, and it may well be that in certain possibilities they might find it more convenient to rely upon those Powers, and give their tonnage to those Powers, that have a continuous and uninterrupted flow of Continental oil which could reach them without fear of any interruption at sea. Therefore I hope my noble friend will tell us to-day what are the real reasons why His Majesty's Government feel they can so safely rely upon a large amount of neutral tonnage. You must remember that in the last War, even when we had a far greater tonnage of our own, we could not possibly have got through without relying on a very large amount of neutral tonnage.
I have only one more remark to make in reference to the Lord Chancellor's speech. The Lord Chancellor asked us to take comfort in the reflection that, though the total British tonnage had declined by about 1,000,000 tons, cargo carrying tonnage as a whole had increased. Might I suggest—and these are the views of experts, not mine—it is not tonnage in the main that counts, it is the number of ships that counts? A torpedo or a bomb does not sink a percentage of tonnage; it sinks a ship. Therefore, we have got to look mainly, for war purposes, to the number of ships we have rather than to the gross tonnage. In 1914 we had got roughly 2,000 tramp steamers; to be precise 1,906. We have not got 1,906 to-day. We have not even got 1,000. We have only got 924 tramp steamers, and many of these are very old. The depletion of our tramp tonnage, of the number of our ships, is rapidly proceeding every day. Whereas there was an increase in our tramp tonnage during the boom period after the War, in the last five years we have actually lost three million gross tons of United Kingdom tonnage. That seems to me an alarming figure when you come to consider that, even with all the

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neutral tonnage available to us in the last War, and all the enormous fleet of tramp steamers we had at that time, we were brought within a fortnight of starvation, with only two weeks' supply in the whole country at one bitter period in the Great War!
These facts alone, I think, would justify any one in pressing these points home to His Majesty's Government at so urgent, and dangerous a time as this. I say that the rate of decrease of this tonnage is likely to be enhanced in the near future because, since ship owners, particularly tramp ship owners, have been left for so long to struggle unaided against the subsidised attacks of foreign countries, their resources are now practically exhausted, and it is only a question of time before they may have to sell more ships to obtain ready cash. In that connection the scrap-and-build policy, with which the Government had hoped to do a great deal of good, has been of questionable value. It has meant a large depletion in the actual number of our ships because, of course, for every ton built two have got to be scrapped. It also has one other grave disadvantage—I do not know whether the Government reflected on it before, but in the event it has certainly proved a very serious disadvantage—and that has been the scattering and the diminution of the already exiguous personnel of the Merchant Navy. Throughout the shipping industry I have heard nothing but unhappiness about and criticism of the scrap and-build policy.
There is one other matter to which my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor did not refer in his speech but about which I should like to say a word to your Lordships, and that is the question I have just touched on indirectly—personnel. My information to-day is that the question of personnel in the Merchant Navy is perhaps the most grave because it is the most difficult to remedy. Young men are refraining from joining the Merchant Service because they feel it is a dying industry. I have already ventured, some weeks ago, to put before your Lordships the condition also of the fishing industry. Brixham, Lowestoft, Yarmouth are in a state of complete collapse, and a large number of the old sea-faring families are no longer contributing to the personnel at all, with the further result that the head of a great line told me only yesterday
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that not only is it difficult to get personnel at all but such personnel as comes forward is worse than it has ever been before. My information is that whereas in 1914 no fewer than 16,000 men were furnished by the Merchant Navy for the use of His Majesty's Royal Navy, it is doubtful now whether 1,000 could be found in case of need, and even that 1,000 could not be found without impairing to some considerable degree the cadres of helmsmen and quartermasters in the Merchant Navy. These are grave matters, and I would be grateful if my noble friend could give us some comfort in the matter and tell us what the Government feel they can do to remedy this unhappy situation.
My noble friend Lord Phillimore, in a debate which took place just after the debate to which I have referred on Pacific shipping, went into the question of the storage of food at some considerable length. I would like to ask His Majesty's Government to-day why is it that they say that food storage is impracticable and undesirable? That is what I gathered from what the Lord Chancellor said to us, and I believe that is their attitude. It is not the view of other experts. Only in the last few days we have had statements, which were reported in the Daily Telegraph of July 22, from Mr. Ian Mackenzie, the Canadian Minister of Defence, who took an opposite view to that pronounced on behalf of His Majesty's Government by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. He did not think food storage was either unnecessary or impracticable.
May I read a very brief extract from what he is reported by the Daily Telegraph to have said in his speech:
" I believe the time will come when England will have to adopt the practice of grain storage, and use the elevator system of storing wheat as part of her preparation of war defence. The usual objection, that wheat deteriorates if stored for a long time, is not borne out by our experience in Canada, where wheat has been stored for two years at a time. Another objection, that England's damp climate would affect wheat stored in elevators, does not take into account my own personal observations in Vancouver. There, in spite of a few months brilliant sunshine "—
that is rather a big exception—

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" the climate, on the whole, is very much damper than that of London."
He went on to say:
" There is no reason why elevators should not be constructed underground. The principal thing to bear in mind is the interior temperature."
He does not think food storage either unnecessary or impracticable, and his view was immediately supported, according to the same newspaper, by the Canadian Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Gardiner, who said that he saw no reason why Canadian methods should not be applied to this country in the event of emergency.
Wheat, he said, is stored all over Central Canada. This has particular reference to the difficulty mentioned by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, that it was difficult to deal with grain in scattered elevators or granaries; he argued that you could not concentrate them for fear of air attack, and that you could not scatter them because of the difficulty of transport. Though he did not precisely say what the difficulties were, he said the whole scheme was impracticable. Therefore the views of Mr. Gardiner, the Canadian Minister of Agriculture, are interesting on this point. He sees no difficulty in scattering the granaries all over the country. He said:
" Wheat is stored all over Central Canada in small elevators fifty feet high, each containing 30,000 bushels and made of timber encased in tin."
He describes them in further detail, but I will not weary your Lordships by giving further particulars. If that is the case it is obviously impossible for us to believe that the Government have not some good reason which prevents them from adopting so important an expedient as this which might well mean the life of the country. I hope my noble friend will tell us, if he possibly can, what are the reasons why the Government do not adopt a system which experienced people have shown is extremely practicable, and which I think is common sense from a strategical point of view and might be of infinite and vital value in time of war.
I have not time, without wearying your Lordships unduly—I hope I have not already done so—to refer to the general question of British shipping, but I do not think it an exaggeration to say
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that British shipping in the Far East is in a state of something like collapse. The whole question of Japanese shipping at this moment is extremely complex. I have been reading a great deal about it lately, but I must confess, honestly, that I have not yet mastered it sufficiently to venture to speak to your Lordships about it. Experts have been interesting me in this question. It is extremely complex but I think there is no doubt the real situation is that that part of the British shipping is verging on something like collapse unless something is done.
The Japanese, moreover, are not only increasing their competition and their power to compete by enormous subsidies, direct and indirect—in the case of Japan chiefly indirect—but are preparing to build a great addition to the number of their cargo boats. The total Japanese steam and motor tonnage has increased by 181 per cent. since 1913 and a new law proposes a 50 per cent. increase in Japanese tonnage from 4,000,000 tons to 6,000,000 tons. A Japanese Minister has declared his Government's intention to see it increased to 8,000,000 tons. If this is done the ratio of Japanese shipping to trade will be three to one or, as the case may be, four to one—in other words, she will have three or four times as much shipping as trade, whereas the British Empire will only have just as much shipping as trade. With all that enormous spare margin of shipping it is unnecessary for me to suggest even to your Lordships how gravely and intensely will be the increased weight of competition against what remains of our shipping. I apologise if I have spoken at too great length on this matter, but I believe it to be one of the gravest aspects of Imperial defence to-day. I think that the attempt to relieve a depleted cruiser fleet of some of its onerous convoy duties and to give an assurance to the people of some few weeks' food supply a matter well worthy of being put repeatedly before your Lordships' House. I beg to move.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, my noble friends have asked me to say a few words to state the attitude of the Labour Party on the very important matter broached by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd. I hope the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for India, who I understand will reply, was not quite so depressed as I was by the gloomy picture

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drawn by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd. I say that for personal reasons, but for political reasons I hope he will be still more depressed. Yesterday we had a debate in your Lordships' House after which the noble Viscount the Lord Privy Seal balanced very delicately the advantages of strengthening the League of Nations or weakening and abandoning it. Presently the noble Marquess and his colleague the Secretary of State for Air will, I suppose, take a very dire responsibility in deciding what the Government policy is going to be, and I hope they will have regard to what has just been said by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd.
The picture drawn by him no doubt has good foundations, for I understand he went with a deputation which waited on the Prime Minister to tell him a few secret things about our awful situation. The picture drawn by the noble Lord, of what splendid isolation would mean—or, what is the same thing, what would be the result of weakening and practically abandoning the League of Nations—is, I think, not at all exaggerated. For that reason I hope that the noble Marquess, if I may most respectfully suggest it to him, should consider the matter very seriously indeed before he gives his vote in the Cabinet. May I be allowed before I go further to say that I share with the noble Lord regret at the absence of the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor, who took part in the last debate when some of the subjects dealt with this afternoon were raised. We all hope—here I speak for my noble friends—that he will soon be restored to his important office in full health.
I should like to be allowed to comment on one remark made by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, in reference to the reluctance of young men to join the Mercantile Marine and make it their career. He said it is because they look upon it as a dying industry. My information is a little different. They are reluctant to join the Mercantile Marine because conditions in it are still not such as to attract boys from good homes. That is one of the reasons why my colleagues in this House and in another place have always regarded it as a national necessity to improve the conditions in the Mercantile Marine. The noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, knew all about our activities in this respect when he filled the great
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office of President of the Board of Trade. The men in the Mercantile Marine are the reserves of the Fleet.
I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, also referred to the situation of the fishing industry, and I am sorry that the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, was not able to be here to-day to hear what he said. I consider that the way in which we are treating the fishing industry at the present time is abominable. We are doing our best to cut down the fishing fleet and the activities of the fishing fleet in the interests only of the merchants. In other words, we are keeping the market short and keeping prices up and do not care how many men leave the arduous and dangerous calling of the fisherman. I am very glad that the noble Lord dwelt on that point. I hope that next time the position of the fishing industry is debated he will support our point of view. I am very glad that he also drew attention to the failure of the scrap-and-build policy. I have been charging my memory and I do not remember that he supported us when we offered the same criticism when the Subsidy Bill was being debated. I ventured then to insist that the scrapping of two tons for every new ton built actually meant the depletion of the Mercantile Marine. To-day I have confirmation of that from this unexpected source on the Cross Benches.
Now I want very briefly to state our policy with regard to shipping. We are in favour of shipping, like every other form of transport, being made a Government and national service—indeed, an Imperial service in conjunction with the Dominions. That is not practicable in the present political state of the country, and therefore we recognise that in certain circumstances it may be necessary to help the industry by subsidy, as I said in the previous debate. What we object to is a subsidy being given practically without conditions. As purists in economic matters we object to subsidies being given to private enterprise, but when, as in the case of shipping, it may be necessary to give subsidies, we demand that there should be certain conditions. We consider that the first condition is that the State should have some share of the equity created. There is an example of that in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, now the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. For high State reasons that company was

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given financial assistance, but there were conditions. The State has a large block of shares in that company and it has been a remarkably good investment for the British public. The Government have two directors on the Board who have some say in high questions of policy, although I know that they do not interfere in the commercial management of the company.
That example should be followed when the shipping industry is given a subsidy. The Cunard-White Star Company, I see, is going to build another great liner. When a subsidy is arranged some conditions should be imposed. I might allude also to the Suez Canal of which the noble Marquess has great knowledge from his Indian experience. In that company the State holds a very large block of shares and we have Government directors on the Board. We have some say in the workings of the Board. I think we are a little indolent sometimes in not putting down rates in favour of British shipping, but that is another matter. There are two precedents which ought to be followed. There is another condition that should be laid down. When we are subsidising private enterprise we should insist on a minimum rate of wages and minimum conditions in the shipping industry. In the shipping industry we have got on without serious trouble for many years because of the existence of the Maritime Board. Owners and different sections of the men get round a table and work out what should be the minimum conditions under which men live and work at sea. The difficulty is, however, that the Maritime Board's findings are not compulsory. As a decision on the matter may be taken by the Government before your Lordships meet again, I want to put the consideration to the noble Marquess that where a subsidy is given to private shipping for high national reasons there should be an insistence that at any rate the Maritime Board rate of wages and conditions are observed. We also think that there should be a minimum of British crews in the ships.
That, briefly, is the policy which my Party would wish expressed on this important subject. I have only one other thing to say—and here I must again refer to the noble Lord who introduced this Motion. It is very remarkable to
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me how noble Lords in this House and politicians in another place who have played a great part in breaking down our old fiscal system are now, if I may use the expression without offence, "squealing" when the results which we prophesied have come about. We always said, we Free Traders, that if you cut off trade by tariffs, quotas, and all the rest of it you would kill British shipping. Now, sure enough, we are getting complaints from the very people who were the loudest in advocating economic nationalism. Surely we can learn a lesson from this. Economic nationalism, I venture to say, is one of the curses of the world to-day. The efforts of nations to make themselves self-supporting, very often for war reasons or for purely selfish reasons, are bound to hit shipping and to affect all other nations as well.
I suggest that one of the ways in which we could restore tranquil conditions in the world and remove this horrible irritation between nations is by giving a lead and helping in every way we can to reopen the channels of trade to-day, to get over the currency difficulties which are blocking trade. That is why we are poor, that is why we have depression, that is why in the Fascist countries the dictators are able to say to their people: "Yes, you are poor and miserable, but that is because of wealthy France and England, who have taken all the best parts of the world and hold on to them." Your Lordships may remember one statement which was made in the controversy about Abyssinia by the Italian leader, Signor Mussolini. It was one of the few statements of his with which I have felt myself in any sympathy. He said: "This is a war of the Italian proletariat, the poor, for a place in the sun; we are being opposed by the wealthy and rich." There is some truth in that, and the way to get over that trouble is to open the markets of the world to the trade of all nations. You will help shipping in that way and you will also, I believe, do a great deal to remove the economic causes of war. I have attempted to explain the position of my Party in this matter. We want to help shipping any way we can. We think it a fine manly calling for British youths, and essential for the prosperity of the country. But we are opposed to the granting of indiscriminate subsidies without proper conditions.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, I hope not to take up much of your Lordships' time, as much of the ammunition that I had hoped to fire has already been fired with greater effect by my noble friend Lord Lloyd. I, too, wish to associate myself with his expression of regret at not seeing the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, in his usual place on the Woolsack. I also wish to refer to the speech which the noble Viscount made on behalf of the Government in replying to the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Phillimore, in the debate on July 9. Of course, as Lord Lloyd has pointed out, that reduction of 1,000 ships in our carrying fleet is a very great loss, and it is not nearly compensated for by the extra size or the extra speed of the ships that we have now. It is compensated, of course, to some extent, but we are not nearly in the same position.
I think that the noble Viscount was on even less firm ground when he got on to the subject of the alternative to British shipping and wished to rely upon neutral shipping. Who can say what countries are going to be neutral? If our isolationists got their way, we should find ourselves up against the whole world. And will the countries that are neutral be either able or willing to let us use their ships? Of the increase in world tonnage a considerable percentage is supplied by the United States, and the United States have lately rather stiffened in their attitude towards countries that either wish to go to war or are at war. In the last War, as the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, pointed out, we had a tremendous pull over neutral tonnage: we could force it into our service by the operation of the Black List, and if a foreign owner got on to that list he was practically ruined. The United States bitterly resented this at the time but was powerless to alter the conditions that prevailed. In those days we had not heard of the word "parity." Nowadays, that power is rapidly decreasing. Your Lordships will have noticed from the latest returns that for the first time the number of coal-burning ships has sunk below 50 per cent. of the total ships of the world. It is not now a question of our denying foreigners bunker coal, but of foreigners denying us oil. I am an isolationist when it comes to employing foreign ships to carry
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British food, and I believe that for supplying food we must rely on ourselves. That means that we must have plenty of ships and well-found yards to replenish and replace them, to scrap and build the ships.
The attention of the public has lately been called to certain cases in which British ships have gone to sea ill-manned, ill-found and evading regulations. I am not going to attack the people who sent them there, but incidents of this sort are symptomatic of the straits into which British shipping has fallen. There is something to be said for the owners who are putting up a desperate struggle to keep their business going and keep their men employed, and for the sailors who would rather take risks at sea than starve on shore. That is what happens now in our Mercantile Marine. It is worse for the officers than for anybody else, for there is no provision for them, and lots of them are hanging about with nothing to do and getting no money for doing it. These are men who have served a long apprenticeship as truly in the service of their country as if they had been naval officers, and who have at times had to take more responsibility in a week than other people have had to take in the whole of their sheltered lives. We are losing, or have lost, many of these men. Only a fortnight ago I said good-bye to a man who was just leaving this country to go to Canada. He had been a Merchant officer for many years and had served in the Royal Naval Reserve during the War. He said he was going to the middle of Canada and was never going to see this country or a ship again.
We are losing not only these men of the Mercantile Marine but also at the other end the skilled men who ought to be working in the shipyards. There is a temporary revival at the moment, largely due to Government orders, but we are reminded that at any time that may come to an end. It was pointed out in one of the shipping papers only a few weeks ago that we have yards in this country capable of building 2,000,000 tons of shipping. There is nothing of that sort being built in this country at the present time. Lloyd's Register shows that in this country there are only 64,000 tons of ships being built to foreign orders, whereas foreign yards are building 390,000 tons to foreign orders. Yet if our yards are to be kept going, and if that industry is to be able to keep its

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men working, we have to look in the future to foreign orders to supply the work which they will do.
Are these orders going to be obtained unaided by shipbuilders themselves? I submit to your Lordships that shipping and shipbuilding have struggled manfully against very great difficulties, and I submit further that we cannot expect them to hold their part of the line for ever against repeated attack. The time has come now to give them powerful reinforcements, so that they can counter-attack and get back some of the ground that they have lost to our maritime rivals—Japan, Italy, the United States and Germany, all with a national shipbuilding policy which they carry out by subsidising heavily their ships and yards. Are we going to depend upon our people to fight them singlehanded—we who depend upon our shipping more than any other nation, and in quite a different way?
I do not wish to appear to speak against the extra cultivation here, but you are giving £2,000,000 as a subsidy, and consider it a generous subsidy, to shipping, and spend far more on growing sugar in this country, which does our ships out of all the sugar which they used to carry from the West Indies and does our Colonies out of their work. I think that shipping might be treated a little more generously. There is one branch of our shipping industry which is slowly forging ahead. I refer to the coastal shipping. That is not asking for anything, either a subsidy or anything else. What it does ask is that it should receive the support of its countrymen. These shipowners ask to be provided with cargoes by their fellow countrymen, and that such cargoes should not be given to foreign ships which come in and trade on our coast. They ask that if foreign ships come in they should be required to compete with British ships on equal terms. It seems incredible, but it appears that there are still firms in this kingdom who will give their work on the coast to foreign vessels. I am sure that many people who do so consider themselves very patriotic, and will sing "Rule, Britannia" on the slightest occasion.
Coastal shipping, by which I mean the shallow draft ships and the small ports, may have to play a very important part in the supply and distribution of food if we are ever again at war with a near neighbour. We shall have to depend on
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large numbers of small vessels and their crews for a great many naval duties round the coast. These must come, at least in part, from coastal shipping, and we cannot have too many of these ships. Both the coastal shipping owners and the harbour authorities have shown tremendous spirit and foresight, and all they ask is that they should be supported by their own countrymen. Many of your Lordships have interests and connections with local authorities or businesses that use coastal sea transport, and it is your support for which the industry asks.
LORD PHILLIMORE: My Lords, I had the temerity two or three weeks ago to initiate a debate on food supplies in time of war, and it is therefore unfortunate for me, and regrettable from the point of view of the House, that the Lord Chancellor is not present to-day. I cannot but feel that able as his reply was, I must have very much failed, during that debate, to make clear the line which I was trying to press on the Government. I was trying to press on the Government that as a mere matter of defence some form of storage was essential, and some increase in the production of our agriculture. I supported that partly on the ground of the great danger of starvation, and partly on the ground of the relief of our depleted Navy which would be necessary during the first few months of the war. I ventured to point out during my speech that the figures of mercantile tonnage were most disheartening when one made comparison with the figures available during the last War.
To clear up this question of the easing of the Navy by lightening its task during the first few months of the War, reference has been made to the Commission of 1905, but there is a far more important Commission which sat, although it was only dignified by the name of a Sub-Committee of the Reconstruction Committee after the War. That was a far more important Committee which, in the light of the experience of the War, reported on this very subject. That Committee, whose Chairman was Lord Selborne, took the precaution of consulting the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty and got them to give a considered opinion. I will quote the last few words:
" Therefore, the experience of the present War leads to the conclusion that any measures which resulted in rendering the United Kingdom less dependent on the importation of foodstuffs during the period

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of a future war, and so in reducing the volume of sea-borne traffic, would greatly relieve the strain upon the Navy and add immensely to the national security."
That was the very carefully considered opinion of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty in the light of existing events. I know it is argued that the next war will be different from the last War, and I fully believe that, but there will be certain essential parts of the problem which will remain unchanged so long as this country is an island and an over-populated island.
I was all the more astonished at the noble and learned Viscount's reply because, having three lines which could be taken to grapple with the problem, he came down in favour of the free importation of the necessary food supplies from abroad. In other words, he gave it as the considered opinion of the Government, no doubt, that we should in the first instance rely upon keeping the seas open from the very beginning of the war. He did not, of course, miss the point that that involved the free use of mercantile tonnage and, indeed, the use of the mercantile tonnage available to a far greater degree than during past times; but yet he himself furnished us with figures. He told us that we had 17,000,000 tons of shipping available, and he told us, at the same time, that we required 45,000,000 tons; in other words we, in his opinion, could rest dependent upon neutral tonnage to a very large extent for our necessary supplies. I thought he seemed rather to scoff at the idea that the possibility of starvation was a difficulty, and yet two days later the First Lord of the Admiralty made a speech in which he said that we had six weeks' supplies in this country—
LORD STRABOLGI: He said we would starve in six weeks.
LORD PHILLIMORE: I am not sure of his exact words, but he said we had six weeks' supplies, or would starve in six weeks, and that no measures which we could take if those six weeks' supplies came to an end would be of the least avail. I think that is the effect of it. If that is the case, then the condition and quantity of our merchant shipping is a vital point in our defence. Have we neglected it? Is it prospering? We know that during the last four or five years there has been a steady decline
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in the tonnage under the British flag. We know that that tonnage is in increasingly large units, and therefore not quite so useful in time of war. We know, as Lord Lloyd has pointed out, that our population has gone up and that our dependence upon oil supplies is greatly different from what it was in the last War. We know that in a mechanised war we should be more than ever dependent upon imports of minerals and raw materials. Can we rest easy with the present position of merchant shipping? I did think, I must own, that there was some small justification for the line taken by the noble Lord who leads the Opposition, when he suggested that in the great turnover of our policy which is founded, you might say, on Ottawa, and import duties, we had left behind shipping as a child, perhaps a sturdy child, which could be left to look after itself for a few years. But I cannot help thinking that that child has been left too long without its proper nurse.
The facts of the matter are that whereas this country used to import £600,000,000 worth a year from foreign countries we now import £400,000,000 worth a year. I am comparing 1930 with 1935 in round figures. That huge decrease in cargoes to this country is bound to have affected our shipping. And yet we find that foreign entries of cargo into this country have increased largely in quantity and value, whereas our own entries have remained practically stationary. World trade is now only 73 per cent. of what it was in 1929. During that process of contraction world shipping has naturally suffered, competition for world shipping has naturally increased, and other Governments have been beforehand with us, to say the least of it, in assisting their own shipping.
As my noble friend Lord Lloyd has pointed out, Japan has, I think, doubled her mercantile fleet within the last few years. Even our friends, such as France, are making very strenuous efforts to maintain, if not to increase, their Mercantile Navy and, at the same time, in order to do that, are placing restrictions upon the use of our ships. I am told that even the Government of M. Blum, which has not been very long in office, is enlarging upon the previous decision of the French Government as to the percentage of coal from

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this country which must be brought in French ships and as to the orders placed by municipalities abroad. I turn to the United States and I find that that country has increased its Mercantile Marine more than any other, and at the same time, as was pointed out in that Pacific debate, has increased its subsidy to an enormous extent and has choked out our Mercantile Marine.
I find that we made in 1934 a new trade agreement with Russia in which, as your Lordships will all remember, the value of the freights chartered by Russia in this country (if that is the right phrase) was to count as an item in the balance of payments, and the noble Earl whom I see sitting below me (Earl Stanhope) drew a very rosy picture at that time of the advantages which would accure to this country and to British shipping owing to that agreement. That agreement was entered into in February, 1934. During 1935 I find that our exports to Russia declined rather than increased, and I find that, whereas they mainly consisted during 1934 of our own produce and manufactures, during 1935 two-thirds of them consisted of re-exports. Surely if there ever is a place where our shipping ought to come in, it is in re-exports from this country; that ought to be their own particular field. And yet I find that the amount of shipping chartered from this country during 1935 was almost identically the same as it was during 1934. On the other hand I am told on very good authority that during 1935 the Russians put various additional charges on our shipping, such as increased pilotage dues, increased insistence on buying their bunker coal and other small charges, all of which diminished the profits which we should have had from this not very large volume of shipping.
I find that, whereas we were buying enormous quantities of timber from Russia, in June of this year there was not one single British vessel loading timber from Soviet Russia. I believe that, thanks no doubt to representations made by the Government, some effort is going to be made shortly by which during the remainder of this shipping season the Russians will make a greater effort to employ British shipping. But the timber shipping season is practically over. If anybody lives on the river Thames as I do and sees the imported timber coming up the river—especially if they have been
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interested, as I have been, in barge traffic—they will see that the shipping of imported timber is completely finished by September, and they will not fail to remember that the White Sea is closed to most shipping very shortly after that—or at any rate most of the ports, not all of them. So this concession which I believe is going to be forthcoming, though I welcome it as a sign that our own Government are taking an interest, is not a very valuable one.
And yet when it came to a question of poor little Portugal trying to score (if I may use the word) by certain restrictions on our shipping, the Government were firm and the results were good, at any rate for us. Our shipping interests have no complaint to make in that quarter at all. I cannot help thinking that, as I say, this child has been left behind too long, and in general terms I would appeal that greater consideration be given to it in future. If the noble Lord opposite is right, if the conditions in our Mercantile Marine are not yet all that they should be, how much less are they all that they should be in some foreign Mercantile Marines? And what advantage does not that give in the competition for first place? If we are going to insist on better conditions—and it may be that we ought, and undoubtedly certain remarks made on those founderings in the Atlantic do tend to show that—then surely the protection which we give to our own national shipping must be increased. I very much hope, without any wish to embarrass the Government, that they will pay great attention to what my noble friend Lord Lloyd has put forward.
LORD GLENRAVEL: My Lords, I am not going to make a speech, but there are two points upon which I want to find out where the Government stand. In the first place we all recognise that our life depends upon our Navy. That has for centuries been recognised. We have the best sailors the world has ever produced. I heard two Frenchmen once, when they saw something done by some of our sailors, say: "Well, we can build as good ships as they can build, but that sea-dog life is found in England and Scotland more than anywhere else." I want to put this point. It is recognised that our Merchant Navy has to be supported. It is recognised that we are only supporting it because of unfair treatment by other countries. This started

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when Germany went into the cement business in South Africa, absorbed all the railway fares, and put it into the fleet. It has gone on in all countries without exception, and to-day unless we are going to support our Navy and see that it receives fair treatment, our ships are not going to have a chance.
Although I very much believe what the noble Lord opposite said apropos who should reap the benefit of big subsidies, I put this to the Government: Will they consider that no vessel should be entitled to draw any subsidy whatever unless it has been built in British yards, by British workmen, and unless it has submitted to an inspection by someone on behalf of the Navy and necessary steps have been taken so that between-decks and other portions of the ship can be altered to carry aeroplanes or other war material in time of emergency? I think I am safe in saying that if an arrangement of that kind were made while the vessel was being built, it would be easier to make the change when a change became necessary in time of war. The other point I wish to suggest is that all our young sailors should be sailors of the British Navy. These men should be enrolled as men who can be called upon at any time to serve in any ship belonging to His Majesty. If we did that it would bring about, I believe, a new spirit, for these men in our merchant ships would have the distinction of being among the men reserved for fighting in case of need.
I hope the Government will consider doing something like that, because I believe it would be useful. There is only one remark I wish to add and that is in regard to our sailors. Reference has been made to the condition of our sailors. As one who has had to deal with foreign ships as well as British ships, I have no hesitation in saying that there are no better sailors than British sailors, and none who are better treated.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (THE MARQUESS OF ZETLAND): My Lords, I feel I ought to start my observations with an apology to the noble Lord who moved this Motion for rising in reply to it. But I can assure him that I regret quite as much as—perhaps a good deal more than—he does that I find myself in place not only of the Lord Chancellor but of my noble friend the Leader of the House on this occasion.
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Nevertheless, I make no complaint against the noble Lord for returning to this subject so soon after our recent debates upon it, because I recognise that it is a subject of the most vital importance and because also the noble Lord's speeches, particularly on matters concerning Imperial questions, are always very well worthy of attention. Indeed, if I were to venture to comment on the character of the noble Lord's speeches at all, my comment would be in the first place that they are apt to be permeated with a spirit of almost undue pessimism. My other comment would be that they are almost invariably based on the assumption that while the dangers of any particular situation are glaringly apparent to the noble Lord himself, and indeed to anyone of ordinary intelligence, the Government are quite incapable of appreciating the dangers or, if they are not incapable of doing so, they are wilfully and perversely blind to them. I do not complain of that either.
After all, to accuse the Government of ineptitude, poltroonery, and other vices is the universal stock-in-trade both of organised Oppositions—the organised Opposition I see opposite me!—and of political knight errants, from whatever quarter they come. I remember only a few days ago the noble Lord who is leading the Opposition in your Lordships' House at this moment, Lord Strabolgi, with pleasing alliteration and with that bluff breeziness which characterises the vocal emissions of seafaring persons, blared across the Table at my noble friend the Leader of the House that the Government were dithering and doddering and dawdling when they ought to be up and doing.
LORD STRABOLGI: I hope I did not blare.
THE MARQUESS OF ZETLAND: And I had occasion myself only a short time ago to recall to your Lordships the torrid language in which, 150 years ago, Edmund Burke characterised the misdeeds and the omissions of Governments and Government Departments. I dare say it has been within the experience of some at least of your Lordships that even highly-placed officials at times give vent to their feelings by poking fun at one or other of the Departments of the Government which they serve. There is, for example, on record a Minute by the

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late Sir George Murray, when a high official at the Treasury, upon a proposal which was being submitted to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the construction of an underground passage, with dugouts, between the War Office and the Horse Guards in order that this Department might continue adequately and efficiently to discharge its functions in the event of an air raid. Sir George Murray's Minute upon the proposal was in the following terms:
" This proposal may safely be turned down. No sane enemy with any acquaintance with our institutions would ever dream of destroying the War Office."
The noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, has asked me a number of questions, some of which I hope to answer, but others of which, either because the information is not available or because it would be contrary to the public interest to give the information, I shall refrain from answering. In the latter category comes the noble Lord's question with regard to our naval requirements of oil fuel, petrol, lubricating oils, and so on. I am sure the noble Lord will realise himself on reflection that to give detailed figures on that subject would be contrary to the public interest, but I can in general terms, I hope, to some extent reassure the noble Lord, for this matter is under the constant survey of a Sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence which is charged with the responsibility of seeing that all necessary preparations are made, and, in any emergency which the Government are able to contemplate, we are satisfied that the supply of British-owned tanker tonnage will be, sufficient to meet the service requirements and to go a considerable way towards meeting civil requirements also.
The noble Lord also asked me a question with regard to British personnel, and he made some comment on the subject of the British personnel of the Mercantile Marine. I cannot give him figures comparable between the two years which he actually mentioned in his question, for no census happened to be taken in the years to which he referred, but the number of British seamen other than Lascars employed on sea-trading vessels registered in the United Kingdom on the censal dates of 1911 and 1934 was as follows: April 3, 1911, 136,000 odd; June 15,1935 (which was the censal date) 103,000 odd. The actual number of coloured seamen
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included in those figures is not known, and I cannot, therefore, give them to the noble Lord, though, as I pointed out, those figures were exclusive of the Lascars who, I suppose, form the bulk of the coloured employees of the Mercantile Marine.
It is quite true that those figures show a considerable reduction in number between 1911 and 1935, but the noble Lord will, of course, take into account certain reasons other than those which he has himself given for such a reduction. One of the reasons is the increase in the size of ships which has been already mentioned. Naturally a specified number of large ships require a smaller number of personnel than the equivalent number of smaller ships to make up the same amount of tonnage. There is also a considerable saving in the engineer and engine-room personnel, which is due to the substitution of a great number of oil fuel ships for coal-burning ships. Then you have to take into account the amount of tonnage which is laid up. But, having said that, I readily admit that the figures do show a substantial reduction.
Then the noble Lord asked a question as to net earnings. I do not know if he referred to that in his speech, but he told me it was a question that he would like to have answered. I will give the net earnings of the British merchant fleet in 1913 and 1935—that is to say, the net income for this country from the shipping services after foreign disbursements have been paid. According to the estimates made in connection with the balance of payments to the United Kingdom, the net national shipping income in 1913 was £94,000,000 and in 1935, £75,000,000, again an appreciable reduction.
The noble Lord returned to the question of the shipping lines in the Pacific. As your Lordships will remember, the noble Lord asked that question in this House a short time ago, and my noble friend the leader of the House (Viscount Halifax) gave a very full reply upon it; therefore the noble Lord will hardly expect that I shall have much to add to what my noble friend then said. My noble friend told your Lordships that the matter had been referred to the Imperial Shipping Committee, and all that I am able to add to that information is that the Imperial Shipping Committee have now taken all the evidence they require

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and are, I understand, at this moment deliberating upon their Report. When their Report is received it will then be for His Majesty's Government to consult with the Dominion Governments who are primarily concerned in this matter as to the action that should be taken. Though the terms of the noble Lord's Motion suggest that it was going to be confined to shipping, I have observed that a considerable part of this debate has been devoted to the question of storage of foodstuffs in this country, and a great many references have been made to the speech of the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor who replied to the Motion of my noble friend Lord Phillimore on this subject.
LORD LLOYD: I should like to say that I did warn my noble friend that I was going to raise this question of the storage of food in connection with shipping several days ago.
THE MARQUESS OF ZETLAND: The noble Lord is quite right. I received a message from him rather late this morning, I admit, to say that he proposed to make some reference to it.
LORD LLOYD: Some days ago I did so and again this morning.
THE MARQUESS OF ZETLAND: The noble Lord's message some days ago must have miscarried. I am making no complaint whatsoever. The matter is certainly connected with the whole question of shipping, but there again an answer was given on behalf of the Government by the Lord Chancellor so very recently that I really have very little to add to what the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said on that occasion. But let me make clear what the position of the Government is. The noble Lord seemed to me to be rather suggesting that the Lord Chancellor had wiped out the possibility of the storage of foodstuffs or other important materials altogether. That is not so. The Lord Chancellor gave the arguments for and against, and in the course of his speech he made it clear that there were very considerable arguments against the large storage of wheat in this country, and that, therefore, it was a matter which required most careful consideration. I can assure the noble Lord that that consideration has been for some time past and is now being given to the matter.
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It may interest the noble Lord to know that the Government have arranged for the services of Sir Ernest Gowers the Chairman of the Coal Mines Reorganisation Commission, in an investigation of the whole question of food storage.
LORD PHILLIMORE: Could the noble Marquess tell us whether that Commission has yet begun to take outside evidence?
THE MARQUESS OF ZETLAND: I am afraid I cannot tell the noble Lord whether it has taken outside evidence or not.
LORD PHILLIMORE: Or whether it will?
THE MARQUESS OF ZETLAND: There again I cannot pledge myself. I have not sufficiently detailed knowledge of the arrangements which have been made, otherwise I should have been very pleased to give the noble Lord any further information I could. The answers which I have given to these various questions clearly show that the Mercantile Marine has been, and is, going through a very difficult period and nobody who has any knowledge of the question would suggest otherwise. I hope the noble Lord is not going to accuse me of undue complacency as I thought he did in the case of my noble friend the Leader of the House. We are by no means complacent, but we do think it is fair when discussing a question of this importance that both sides of the picture should be presented. You get two different pictures of a question of this kind, each of which by itself may give a very false impression, and I am going to venture to make a few observations to your Lordships which will, to some extent I hope, correct the very pessimistic impression which the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, admitted the speech of my noble friend Lord Lloyd had created upon his mind.
What is the root cause of the difficulties through which the Mercantile Marine has been passing? The root cause is an economic one which is very well known to everyone who has studied the question. It is the fact that whereas world trade at the present day is little more than it was in 1913, the world's tonnage has increased by something like 50 per cent., so that you have a vast excess supply of tonnage to carry the trade which is available. The question we have to consider

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is how best can we aid the British Mercantile Marine in circumstances of that kind. There have always been two schools of thought on a question like that. There is the school of thought represented by the noble Lords opposite. If noble Lords opposite had their way the whole of the British Mercantile Marine would become State owned, and I suppose managed by some sort of a Soviet, probably with the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, as its chairman.
LORD STRABOLGI: No, I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Essendon, to manage it, and I would make it a semi-public corporation like the Port of London Authority or the British Broadcasting Corporation.
THE MARQUESS OF ZETLAND: I think the noble Lord, Lord Essendon, would be very surprised if he received that invitation, because if there is an individualist among shipowners it is my noble friend Lord Essendon. To my noble friend Lord Essendon the idea of the nationalisation of shipping is anathema, so I do not think that my noble friend opposite would have much success if he extended that invitation.
LORD STRABOLGI: Well, the next best one.
THE MARQUESS OF ZETLAND: That is one school of thought. Then there is the school of thought at the opposite pole, the school of thought represented by those who reject altogether State aid of any kind and regard private enterprise unaided as far the most successful form of enterprise. In normal circumstances I confess I think there is a very great deal to be said for that sort of view. It is the philosophy which originated in France two hundred years ago and which found the zenith of its expression in the person of Adam Smith, and under that system great things have been done. I said that in normal circumstances there is a great deal to be said for that point of view, but as I have pointed out circumstances are not normal. I have always held that in abnormal circumstances a certain amount of State aid to private enterprise is desirable and probably essential. That, after all, is the view which has not only been taken but acted upon by my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade in the matter of British shipping.
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Let me remind your Lordships of what my right honourable friend has done. There is first and foremost the tramp shipping subsidy, not a very great subsidy but a useful one, a subsidy of £2,000,000 granted in 1935 and a similar amount for 1936. The conditions under which the subsidy is given provide, if I may say so, an admirable example of the combination of private enterprise with State aid. The subsidy is administered by the shipowners themselves. Arrangements are made by a statutory committee of the shipowners. I should have thought that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, when he was putting his claims with regard to the conditions on which subsidies should be granted, would have realised that what he was asking has been acted upon already. It was a condition that agreements reached by the National Maritime Board as to rates of wages and the number of deck officers should be observed.
LORD STRABOLGI: I am sorry to interrupt, but may I ask the noble Marquess if he can make that clearer? I hope I am wrong, but I understood that that condition was refused by the Government. I moved an Amendment to that effect, but it was not accepted. There may be a gentlemen's agreement, but it is not statutory.
THE MARQUESS OF ZETLAND: It may not be statutory but it is an agreement, and it is being acted upon.
LORD STRABOLGI: Not always.
THE MARQUESS OF ZETLAND: Oh, yes, the noble Lord will find that is so. I do not say that these are not conditions which have been drawn up by the committee of administration. That does not matter. The point is that the conditions are being observed. Another condition is that so far as British personnel is available it shall be employed. That meets the noble Lord's views on this point, surely. One of the criticisms which perhaps not unnaturally was made against the scheme when it was first proposed was that if you give a subsidy like this to tramp shipping the only result will be that freights will be still further cut. But that is not so, for it is a further condition that the freight agreements which have been reached in connection with the more important trades should be observed. As

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a matter of fact, quite recently freights have actually risen, and the result of this scheme, which has now been in operation for about a year and a half, is already appreciable. At the end of last year the volume of British foreign-going tramp tonnage in commission was greater by 200,000 tons than on April 1 of the same year. So the tramp shipping subsidy is at any rate working tolerably well.
Then there is the scrap-and-build scheme, and I am bound to say that I was very astonished to hear that the noble Lord opposite was so opposed to the scrap-and-build scheme. I should have thought that if he had studied the result of the scheme he would have regarded it as an admirable scheme. Let me tell your Lordships what the result of the scheme has so far been. The effective results of the scheme up-to-date cover the building of fifty vessels aggregating approximately 190,000 tons gross, involving loans to shipowners of just over £3,500,000 sterling. The total tonnage—and I know that this is where the noble Lord criticises this scheme—to be demolished in connection with the scheme is approximately 380,000 tons gross. Up to the present time 86 vessels, totalling just over 326,000 tons gross, have been definitely nominated for demolition and the majority of these have either been broken up or are in the ship-breaker's hands. Of these vessels 39, totalling nearly 177,000 tons gross, were British vessels, and 47, totalling just over 149,000 tons gross, were foreign. Your Lordships will therefore see that the tonnage for demolition is roughly half British and half foreign, which means that for every new ton of building added to the British Register as the result of the scrap-and-build scheme one ton of old British shipping has been scrapped and also one ton of foreign shipping. Surely that must be a satisfactory state of affairs. Foreign shipping has been reduced and British shipping has had old tonnage replaced by new tonnage. Why, therefore, the noble Lord regards that as a bad scheme I am wholly at a loss to know.
I need only mention, as another measure taken by the Government, the facilities which were given for the construction of the "Queen Mary" and now, only a few days ago, for a sister ship. Let me also mention the matter referred to by my noble friend Lord Phillimore: the attempts which we make
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when we negotiate trade agreements to secure as part of those agreements better conditions for British shipping. The noble Lord admitted that in the case of Portugal we had been successful, but said that in the case of Russia we had not. Let me try to explain as briefly as I can to the noble Lord the position so far as Russia is concerned. The shipping situation between ourselves and Russia is a very complicated one. It is quite true that during 1935 the amount of British shipping chartered to the United Kingdom for timber and restricted to timber was something like half the amount which had been chartered by Russia for the same purpose a year before. During the opening months of this year the amount chartered by Russia for the same purpose was very small indeed. So far as the timber trade is concerned, therefore, British shipping suffers. Since, however, the total amount of British shipping chartered by Russia in 1934 and 1935 was practically identical in each year, it is quite obvious that what was lost in the timber trade was made up in other trade.
As, I think, the noble Lord himself appreciated, there were special reasons for the failure of those in Russia who chartered shipping to charter British shipping for timber. The reasons were in the main that they had a large supply of ships suitable for carrying timber themselves and were unwilling to agree to the rates of freight which had been agreed to by the White Sea and Baltic International Conference. That was the real reason, so far as I have been able to ascertain it. Nevertheless, conversations have since then been proceeding, and as a result of the discussions which have taken place I understand that the Shipping Chamber here have been assured that there is no desire on the part of Soviet charterers to boycott British shipping; that the Soviet charterers have chartered a large quantity of British tonnage throughout the world in the first five months of this year; that a number of British ships have recently been chartered for the Russian timber trade; and finally that the Soviet charterers have offered to give British ships the conveyance of considerable quantities of timber to this country at rates which are substantially in accordance with what is known as the Baltwhite scheme—the agreement as to freights to

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which I referred. So, though it may be poor comfort to the owners of ships which are specially designed to carry timber to know that what they have lost has been gained by other shippers, yet I hope it will be realised that as a result of the recent conversations the prospects for the owners of tramp shipping suitable for the transport of timber are once more brighter than they were.
LORD PHILLIMORE: Could the noble Marquess give us the duration of that agreement?
THE MARQUESS OF ZETLAND: No, I am afraid I cannot give the noble Lord information as to the duration of the agreement. The conversations have only just taken place, and I do not even know if these provisions have actually been made part of a formal agreement. I will not go farther than to say that I understand that this is the kind of agreement to which they are willing to come. I hope that, without laying myself open to a charge of undue complacency, I have shown that there is another side and that the situation, though still profoundly difficult, is not quite so bad as it is sometimes painted.
I have referred, and let me refer once more, to the governing factor in the whole situation—namely, the vast increase in ocean tonnage and the lack of increase in world trade. Nobody will deny that His Majesty's Government have throughout these difficult years taken such steps as have been open to them to endeavour to increase world trade, and we shall continue to endeavour to do so. After all, we held the World Economic Conference in this country a few years ago, and if that Conference proved to be a failure it was not the fault of His Majesty's Government. The result of this vast increase in world tonnage has, of course, been responsible for the large relative fall in the amount of British tonnage. Between the years 1914 and the present time the percentage of British tonnage has fallen from 44 per cent. to 28 per cent., but we cannot, of course, stop other countries from building ships if they are determined to do so, and build them uneconomically. Whether they are wise to do so or not is a different matter. After all, shipping which is built in excess of the economic demand is a very expensive luxury. It necessitates large subsidies, as noble Lords
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have already pointed out, and I am told that if this country were to think of granting subsidies to its shipping on anything like the sort of level that those subsidies are granted to their shipping by the chief other countries, the annual cost to the taxpayer in this country would be something like £21,000,000.
After all, these percentage figures are themselves apt to be a little misleading. The actual tonnage of coal and oil-burning ships of one hundred tons and over which we possess at the present time has an aggregate gross tonnage of 17,183,000 tons, as compared with a tonnage in 1914 of 18,892,000, a fall of about 1,700,000 tons; but against that it has to be borne in mind that a large addition of ships has been made to the Dominion and Colonial Registers, and the additional tonnage in the case of the Dominions and the Colonies amounts to something like 1,300,000 gross tons, so that the net actual fall in the tonnage of the Mercantile Marine of the British Empire is from 350,000 to 400,000 gross tons. Where Lord Lloyd gets his figure of 3,000,000 gross tons I have no idea. I have been able to find no figures which in any way correspond with his figure of a falling off in that period of 3,000,000 gross tons.
It is quite true—and I do not want to paint the picture brighter than it is—that for a number of years past British shipping has been run at a very small profit, or possibly no profit at all, and the result of that has necessarily been that reserves have become depleted, and that difficulty has arisen therefore in the construction of new tonnage. Here again the scrap-and-build policy of His Majesty's Government comes in, and, as I pointed out earlier in my observations, a sum of £3,500,000 has already been provided for the construction of modern mercantile tonnage. There has been a further advantage derived, certainly partly, from that scheme, and that is that we have, I suppose, a more modern fleet to-day than almost any of the competing nations. The percentage of our ships to-day which are more than twenty-five years of age is only 7.5, a smaller figure than in the case of any other country, I believe, with the exception of Holland. It may also be interesting to my noble friend to know that new construction has increased very consider-

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ably, even during the last twelve months. The actual amount of new construction which was registered in the June quarter of last year was 107 ships of 560,000 gross tons. In the June quarter of this year those figures have increased to 229 ships of a gross tonnage of 848,000 tons odd, so that there is, at the present time, a very considerable increase in the production of new ships in this country.
The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, said that he was even willing, in certain circumstances, to agree to subsidies being granted to shipping lines in this country. We do not reject that possibility. It is a possibility, certainly in the case of shipping lines in the Pacific, but I do not put it higher than that. It has not been ruled out by the Government; but generally speaking I venture to suggest to your Lordships that the granting of subsidies, so long as you can avoid it, is an unsound economic policy. I think my view on that point is more than borne out by the fact that it is the very countries which have been most lavish in subsidies to their shipping that have the largest proportion of their shipping laid up at the present time. In the case of the United States of America, a country which, as your Lordships know, gives great subsidies, they have something like 25 per cent. of their shipping laid up. In the case of France, which also grants subsidies to the shipping industry, they have something like 12 per cent. of their shipping laid up. Those figures compare with 4 per cent. in the case of this country.
I hope, my Lords, as I have said, that I have been able to answer some of the questions that have been put to me. I hope, without being unduly complacent, that I have been able to put before your Lordships certain facts which show that, while the situation is still sufficiently difficult, the Government are fully alive to it and are co-operating with the shipping companies—and let it never be forgotten that you must co-operate with the shipping companies if you want to have a successful outcome to any action you take—they are co-operating with the shipping companies in granting Government aid where it is considered that it can advantageously be given.
LORD LLOYD: My Lords, I must first of all say a word of thanks to the noble Lord who spoke from the Opposition
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Benches for some remarks he made in support of the plea that I was putting forward, but I should not like him to think that I could follow him any distance at all in his desire to see State shipping. I should have thought that the experiences in Australia and elsewhere of experiments in that direction would have been enough to frighten himself and his Party away from any such policy. And indeed, whilst I do not entirely differ from him in his view that if and when some semi-State enterprise is undertaken, the State should have some share in the equity in the kind of instance that he gave us—I think that is probably right and proper—yet the experience in the world so far has been that there has been extremely little equity to show at all after a Government has run a commercial undertaking.
The noble Lord also a little suggested that those of us who have for many years past identified ourselves with the protectionist policy, which we now have in this country, were, as he put it, "squealing" at the results of Protection on shipping. Exactly the contrary is the case. If we are, as he tersely puts it, squealing at all it is because we are not protecting our shipping adequately. He perhaps has forgotten that the Mercantile Marine in this country was built up under Navigation Laws and under a much closer system of Protection than any we have advocated. And if we to-day desire to see the same measure of scientific Protection applied to our great and vital industry of shipping as has actually saved our other industries from the blizzard of world competition, it is not because we have too much but because we have too little Protection.
Now I would like to turn to my noble friend who replied for the Government. I would like to thank him for his comprehensive and interesting reply. I hope he will forgive me if I say in preface that I was a little sorry he suggested bad faith on my part in bringing this important question forward and talked about political knight errantry. These matters are too grave for any such suggestions. These are matters of vital importance. Nobody so far as I know has ever suggested that I was bringing these matters up in a captious spirit or to embarrass the Government, and I do enter a disclaimer. I hope my noble friend did not mean that.
THE MARQUESS OF ZETLAND: I assure my noble friend that I had no intention of that kind at all. I was merely explaining that it was the usual practice of politicians opposed to the Government, whether they were an organised Opposition or whoever they were, to accuse the Government of ineptitude or any other vices.
LORD LLOYD: I am grateful for what the noble Marquess says, but the impression certainly was given, I think, that I showed a captious spirit of opposition, whereas I look upon this as a matter of intense gravity. At the very outset of my speech I tried to make that clear. When the noble Marquess suggested that we are moved by undue pessimism in this matter, I should like to remind him that it was because of too much optimism and of our lack of preparation that thousands of the flower of our youth were killed unnecessarily in the War, and it is in order to avoid similar disaster that I am pleading to-day.
He also suggested that it was improper for me to hold that Government failed to appreciate these dangers, but with one exception there is not a single fact that I have put forward to-day that has been challenged by the Government. My pessimism does not go anywhere near as far as that expressed by the late Prime Minister in a White Paper only a year or so ago. As I said at the opening of my speech, he actually went so far as to say that if there were an aggression against this country we could no longer supply ourselves and feed our people! And indeed the Government in the last two years have over and over again confessed their miscalculations on vital matters respecting our defence. As regards our air armaments the Prime Minister has more than once stood up and confessed that he entirely miscalculated the danger that was upon us. And therefore I do not think I need apologise if, in this vital matter of food storage and shipping, I try to bring forward before your Lordships how very grave is indeed the danger.
I do not think that the Government have failed to realise the danger latterly, but what I am suggesting is that the time for consideration and the time for investigation has long gone by, and that in the emergency of to-day it is action that we are seeking, and immediate
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action. It is all very well for the Government to say that questions of food storage are now being examined and considered. We think these matters ought to have been considered and investigated three, four, or five years ago; that the Government should be in possession of a policy to-day, and not be still investigating and considering on the eve of a possible great danger. That is the gravamen of my criticism. I do not suggest, and I never have suggested, that in this shipping question the Government have done nothing. I made that clear the last time I addressed your Lordships' House. But what I have said—and I believe I have the support of the whole shipping community—is that the Government have not done enough to meet the gravity of the emergency.
I do not say there is no virtue in the tramp subsidy, but it remains a fact that, except for one or two very large tramp owners, the amount distributed does not pay even for the depreciation. That is, I think, a fact that will be agreed to by the whole of the shipping community. I have not said the scrap-and-build scheme has no virtue. What I said was that the balance of advantage was, I thought, very questionable. Of course the scrap-and-build scheme has some advantages—namely, those cited by my noble friend. I am very glad to hear—and I confess I had not fully realised—that so large a proportion of foreign ships had been scrapped, and I think that does constitute a merit for the scheme. None the less, the loss of so many units of shipping and their personnel is, I think—and I believe it is generally thought—a very questionable advantage.
The noble Marquess has questioned only one statement which I made and I should like to give a reply to that. He says he can nowhere find any authority for the statement I made as regards the diminution of 3,000,000 gross tons. Perhaps I had better repeat the statement. I said that during the last five years we have lost 3,000,000 gross tons of United Kingdom shipping. The figures have been furnished me by the Chamber of Shipping, and they are as follows: In 1931 we had 20,300,000 tons, and in 1936 we had 17,300,000 tons, which is, by deduction, a loss of 3,000,000 tons. I have assumed that the figures given to me were correct. That is my authority for them, and that

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of course can be investigated afterwards. But I only wished to say that I did not give those figures haphazard. I understand that my noble friend does not now challenge this figure. I was amazed when the noble Marquess put the estimate of the subsidy we should have to give fully to compete with foreign subsidies in our shipping at so low a figure as £21,000,000. I should have expected that he would have said £150,000,000, or some such colossal figure. Really, if by the expenditure of £21,000,000 per annum we could save our shipping—and that would not be the net loss, for we should get presumably a great deal of it back in increased employment and increased services—if by the expenditure of so small a sum we could make full headway against foreign competition, it would be dirt cheap at the price. I am very surprised that the Government does not consider the policy. I would like to say that I am grateful to your Lordships for the patience with which you have listened to me, and by permission I would like to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

MALTA CONSTITUTION.
LORD STRICKLAND LORD STRICKLAND had the following Notice on the Paper:—To ask whether His Majesty's Government will further elucidate the declarations of the Secretary of State for the Colonies—That the new Constitution for Malta will not be so restricted as that of Kenya, and will approximate to that of Ceylon and the Straits Settlements; whether His Majesty's Government will contemplate a round-table conference in London at which each of the three political Parties in Malta will be invited, to exchange views as to the details of the proposed Constitution, and the time when it may be promulgated; whether His Majesty's Government will publish the correspondence following the Malta Royal Commission when it was recommended that English Judges should be appointed in Malta; and whether it was then contemplated that all the Judges, or only the Chief Justice, should be English; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am happy that it has become my duty to ask leave of your Lordships' House to offer
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grateful congratulations to His Majesty's Government for the declarations which have been made in another place in the direction of assuring the people of Malta that they are within measurable distance of the re-establishment of representative Government in Malta as contrasted with responsible Government. I feel that every one in this country who holds to the sacredness of promises and pacts will join with me in these congratulations. Until that improvement in the attitude of His Majesty's Government was declared in another place, it was extremely difficult for those whose function and duty in life it is to uphold British prestige in Malta to go on counteracting anti-British propaganda in the Island, inasmuch as the attitude of the predecessors of the present Secretary of State for the Colonies was an attitude of being unable to remember or recognise the existence of any of those pledges and covenants which have been repeatedly acknowledged before your Lordships, not only one hundred years ago by the Secretary of State for the Colonies at that time but in more recent times by Mr. Secretary Chamberlain. That the task of those who uphold the Empire in Malta has been lessened is the principal reason why I beg leave to offer respectful and grateful congratulations to His Majesty's Government.
Nevertheless, what was said was said very guardedly and is perhaps subject to interpretation and elimination. There is anxiety in Malta as to exactly how much was meant by these declarations. The part thereof which is relevant and encouraging is not to be found in the speech by which the Second Reading was proposed in another place, but in a reply made to an interruption. That interruption made reference to Kenya, and was met by the Secretary of State for the Colonies with a contradiction showing he had in his mind an approximation to the form of Constitution obtaining in Ceylon or the Straits Settlement. This is an approximation to the Constitution which, fifty years ago, was known as the De La Warr Constitution. It was brought before your Lordships' House and carried by the work of the then Earl De La Warr, who made it his business in several speeches to argue for equality of opportunity to the Maltese nation among the other nations of the British Commonwealth. He was supported by the then Earl of Derby, the

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then Earl of Onslow, and other noble Lords.
The point now is that a Bill has been passed which has given power to His Majesty's Government to issue new Letters Patent to deal with the complicated position in Malta. But several days have passed since July 17, when that Act came into operation, and nothing has yet been done. It should be realised that that Act has done very little to get His Majesty's Government, or rather the Colonial Office—I will not say the present Secretary of State, because another Secretary of State was responsible—out of the wood. The present position is worse from a technical point of view. The validation of a few Ordinances validates certain acts of commission, but there is responsibility due in respect of omissions, and that remains just as it was before the Malta (Letters Patent) Bill was passed. In fact the responsibility for omissions has grown very much worse, because the proposal and the carrying of that Act involved the admission in legal circles not to be contradicted that the case was a bad one. There was a more cogent and weighty admission that the case was a bad one inasmuch as on no occasion was a Law Officer of the Crown seen on the Front Benches or on the Woolsack to agree with those unnamed lawyers on whose authority the tentative assertions of belief in a good case were occasionally propounded. In these circumstances the position of those in the Colonial Office responsible for the attitude of the two former Secretaries of State is very much worse.
It now remains to tackle the present position, and that requires the very early issue of Letters Patent, in the first place to give power not to hold the General Election. As the law now stands, the Governor of Malta is bound to issue writs for a General Election without any delay. The Constitution of 1921 has not yet been swept aside, and the Governor is bound inexorably not to allow more than twelve months to pass between the end of one Session of the Parliament of Malta and the beginning of another. No validating of Ordinances obliterates that, because none of the Ordinances has dealt with that matter, and since July 17 to this date that duty has remained unfulfilled. There is no Executive Council. To have an Executive Council is a duty unfulfilled, and the illegality of the position is just
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as clear as—in fact worse than—it was before the Malta (Letters Patent) Bill became an Act.
In these circumstances it is certainly a matter of great relief to welcome the present Secretary of State for the Colonies who, when Under-Secretary, with his knowledge and ability and determination, did not hesitate to correct blunders of permanent officials oversea. We have had other Secretaries of State, such as Mr. Churchill, who also did not follow the policy of supporting, rightly or wrongly, what was done by representatives of the Colonial Office overseas. It is very encouraging for the progress of the Empire that it is evident that policy has changed, and if that policy has changed in the direction of seeking cooperation with the forces that are working for the maintenance and strengthening of the British Empire, I think it is right to ask His Majesty's Government whether they will approach the question in a practical manner by having a round-table conference to discuss details of the Letters Patent that should be passed at once to put an end to the present illegality. Letters Patent should be drafted to find a future compromise that will work in a more satisfactory manner. I trust your Lordships will share the view that to draft Letters Patent in a hole-and-corner manner is a dangerous expedient when it is a question of those Letters Patent being the substitute for a great and generous grant of full responsible government and an acknowledgment of the full rights of the people of Malta. If there is to be a permanent going back from that situation, it ought to be done in an enlightened and generous manner.
It is clear that the permanent officials, the bureaucracy of Malta, responsible for these blunders will want to cover up their tracks. It is also in accordance with human nature that they will want to be omnipotent and not open to criticism in the future. There is the greatest reluctance, there is horror amongst the bureaucracy that they can be criticised in future by a Representative Assembly under the privilege of Parliament. The draft of past Letters Patent has, time after time, been made illusory and futile by little phrases and words put into the drafts that have defeated the object His Majesty's Government had in view in the direction of uplifting the

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Maltese nation and extending the influence of British culture in the Island. One sees one wish on the part of the Colonial Office and another wish on the part of Malta. Those who have studied psychology and have the legal knowledge by which they can make Letters Patent futile by a few words here and there, have time after time been successful and victorious. If that sort of result is to be avoided on this occasion, a round-table conference is a solution which I hope will have some sympathetic attention from His Majesty's Government.
The suggestion is that there should be an invitation: "Let those come who wish to come." I feel certain that the Constitutional Party and the Labour Party would respond. It is doubtful whether other groups, such as the group described by the late Governor as the "lip-loyalty brigade" would accept, but they might do so. Certainly those who have been notorious as being more in favour of Italian culture than of British culture would hesitate to come because the present condition of affairs tends to estrange the nation from sympathy with England, and the existence of a definite grievance and the feeling that former compacts and covenants have not been kept are cherished ammunition in the arsenal of the systematic propaganda of those who do not sympathise with England, which it is in the interests of His Majesty's Government to eliminate as soon as possible.
I will, with your Lordships' permission, read a short extract from the Report of the Royal Commission of 1931. It is at page 62 under the heading "Important Points of Constitutional Law" and is as follows:
" It is quite clear from the authorities that the Courts of Law can impugn the validity of laws which infringe the provisions of the Colonial Laws Validity Act, 1865, the powers of the Imperial Parliament and the Prerogative of the Crown, but we are unaware of any authoritative decision which authorise a Court of Law to go so far as to declare invalid laws passed by a Legislature months and even years after their promulgation, and to have such immense control over the proceedings of a Legislature, especially when, as is the case in Malta, the Legislature has passed an Act (No. XXIV of 1924) conferring on itself, in pursuance of permission expressly granted in Section 89 of the Constitution, all the privileges, immunities, or powers enjoyed by the House of Commons."
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That is a much stronger expression of opinion than I think can be found anywhere else in the Report of any Royal Commission criticising the action and the judgment of a Court of Law. This Report of the Royal Commission has been unanimously accepted by both Houses of the Imperial Parliament.
This Report also refers in another passage to the fact that the Roman Law is still operative in Malta. That reference adds great weight to this censure on the administration of justice in that particular instance, inasmuch as the Roman Law forbids distinctly the bringing forward of any action a year after the cause of action has eventuated when that action is brought forward in the name of the people to remedy a public grievance. I refer here to Book 47 of the Digest—namely, De Popularibus Actionibus. What is more, the Imperial Parliament, by sanctioning the Malta Constitution Act of 1932, gave legislative sanction to the provision that even the King himself cannot, after a year, disallow an Act of the Maltese Parliament: yet a Court of Law in Malta, notwithstanding the operation of that Imperial Act and notwithstanding that the Common Law of Malta is still the Roman Law, have taken cognizance more than a year after the cause of action had eventuated of an action to set aside the validity of certain laws passed by the Parliament of Malta. The condemnation of that action in this Report shows that it was the principal cause that brought the Constitution of Malta to the regrettable condition into which it drifted and required the intervention of an Act of Parliament.
After the publication of this Report, it was the opinion commonly held and expressed in legal circles in Malta, that it was futile to bring any action before the Maltese Courts that involved political issues, unless it were contemplated to carry it further by an appeal to His Majesty in Council. This Report of the Royal Commission goes so far as to suggest regret that, in the particular instance which it censures, an appeal to the Privy Council was not carried forward. In these circumstances it is not surprising that, although no recommendation is contained in this Report of the Royal Commission, His Majesty's Government inquired as to whether Maltese Ministers were favourable to the

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appointment of non-Maltese Judges. The reply was in the negative. It is an accepted principle in the Colonial Office that the chief judicial officer in all the Crown Colonies—not those having responsible government—should not belong to the particular Colony in which his functions have to be fulfilled. Under responsible government it is only natural that one Party is in power for a period and then the pendulum swings and another Party is in power for another period. Consequently, as in England, the Bench would be filled by members of the Bar who are either slightly inclined to one view in politics or to another, or who have no inclination to any particular political attitude.
That is one of the advantages of responsible government which becomes impossible under Crown Colony rule, and as we are to have a re-establishment of Crown Colony rule in Malta it is a point which should be elucidated before the Letters Patent are drafted. It is to be hoped that there will be no detriment to or diminution in the personnel of those who at present occupy or aspire to the Bench. If the policy is that of thoroughly reforming the Courts on the lines begun with such advantage by Mr. Secretary Cunliffe-Lister, now Viscount Swinton—to whom so much credit is due—the reform should not stop half way so as to be of less practical use in comparison with what can be achieved if a thorough-going reform is continued. It might have been considered as a temporary expedient, for a limited period, that the old office of President of the Court of Appeal would be re-established, and added to the present personnel in order that English procedure and much needed codification and co-ordination of the present legal position in the Courts of Malta should form a part of, and be facilitated in the drafting of, the new Letters Patent that are now under consideration.
I do not wish at this late hour to proceed further with arguments on this Motion, but before formally proposing it I would beg leave to call attention to a point of order. On a previous occasion when the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, occupied the Woolsack and I was with great indulgence allowed to ask a question on private notice, I made some remarks afterwards in a second speech which I certainly should
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not have done at length for the reason that no notice had been given and there was no Motion asking for Papers. I bow to the ruling enunciated on that occasion by the noble and learned Viscount when on the Woolsack. He said that when a question was on the Order Paper and there was also a Motion for Papers, two speeches were allowed. To-day we have had two very weighty and able speeches from the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd. Those speeches were not brief, but they were clearly confined to points that had been raised in the debate. I feel it a duty to safeguard the right to follow that precedent; and my reference to the point of order previously ruled has been made to protect for all the privileges of this House, and the freedom of speech which your Lordships enjoy here by pointing out that the length of speeches is not the matter at which the line of demarcation has to be drawn between order and want of order, but that a lapse depends on the relevancy of what is said. I beg to move.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH): My Lords, the noble Lord has asked me four specific Questions and I will endeavour to answer them. I think there must be some misconception about the position. The first part of the noble Lord's Question appears to arise from a complete misinterpretation of some remarks made by the Secretary of State during the Committee stage of the Malta Bill in another place. An Amendment was proposed with the object of excepting Section 2—which deals with the Judges—of the 1932 Act from repeal under Section 3 of the new Act. In resisting this Amendment the Secretary of State argued that it was objectionable as the whole object of the new Act was to enable the Crown to resume its full prerogative right to legislate for Malta. If Section 2 were not repealed with the other sections this object would not be achieved: and the provisions of the section would remain hanging, so to speak, in the air. The Secretary of State went on to indicate that the removal of Section 2 from the Statute Book would not derogate from the position of the Judiciary, and that when the Act was passed the Judges would be—and now I am quoting—

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" in the same position as the Judiciary of the Straits Settlements, Nigeria, Kenya and any other British Colony."
Later in the debate some confusion arose as this reference was misconstrued as meaning that the new Constitution as a whole was to be on the lines of those, in these Colonies. But the Secretary of State's intention was to refer simply to the position of the Judges in the above respect only. He was not attempting in any way to suggest that the new Constitution in Malta should be modelled on the lines of that already existing in any particular Colony. That deals with the first part of the noble Lord's Question.
With regard to the second part of the Question, in which the noble Lord asks whether His Majesty's Government will contemplate a round-table conference in London to exchange views, I think that here again there is some slight misconception. The position is that it was contemplated that there should be more than one step in the process which will follow the passage of the Bill which has just become law. I have explained, as the Secretary of State has explained in another place, that the first step would be to introduce a Constitution of an interim character. That would precede and be followed in due course, but at a time which was net specified, by a more advanced form of Constitution. The position which we have reached now is that we are just about to introduce the first Interim Constitution. Therefore, clearly, the time is not yet ripe, in the view of His Majesty's Government, to consider the possibility of instituting a round-table conference, as is suggested by the noble Lord. I am afraid that on that point I am unable to say anything more definite.
Then he goes on and asks whether His Majesty's Government will publish the correspondence following the Malta Royal Commission, when it was recommended that English Judges should be appointed in Malta. This correspondence only formed a very small part of the great mass of correspondence which very-naturally followed the Report of the Royal Commission. I am unable to find any apparent reason why this particular portion of the correspondence should be singled out for publication. In addition to that, the correspondence was of a secret character, and I think your Lordships will agree that, before correspondence
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of that kind is published, strong reasons of State have to be established. In those circumstances I am afraid that the Secretary of State is not prepared to agree to the noble Lord's suggestion that this correspondence should be published.
I now come to the last part of the noble Lord's statement, in which he asked whether it was contemplated—I imagine, he means by the Royal Commission—that all the Judges or only the Chief Justice should be English. The recommendation of the Royal Commission on this point was as follows—I am now quoting from the Report of the Commission:
" The provision of the Letters Patent of 1921 that the Judges are to be appointed by the Governor in Council should be amended, so that the appointment of Judges may be made a reserved matter and taken out of the province of the Maltese Ministry. The persons appointed to be Judges should have had at least twelve years experience either as Counsel or on the magisterial bench. These appointments should not necessarily be confined to men educated at the University of Malta or to Maltese by birth. Although a wider field of selection might not be drawn upon, it may be desirable that it should exist, in case it should become necessary to strengthen the prestige and efficiency of the law in Malta."
This recommendation, in so far as it related to widening the field of selection, was not accepted by His Majesty's Government at the time. As your Lordships will see, it related to Judges generally and not to the Chief Justice only.
LORD STRICKLAND: My Lords, it is my duty to assist your Lordships' House in clearing up what is suggested to be a misunderstanding. I will therefore read briefly the passage referred to by the noble Earl who has just sat down, from column 814 of the Commons OFFICIAL REPORT of July 13. Mr. Morgan Jones was speaking; he was not then talking about the Judges but referring generally to the Constitution as a whole.
THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH: My Lords, I think I can shorten this discussion, if the noble Lord will allow me.
LORD STRICKLAND: I should like to read the text first and then sit down. Mr. Morgan Jones said:
" The Maltese people can show that while they possessed the powers of self-government they were able to register a substantial advance in social legislation. Therefore, it seems to me unjust to withdraw

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so completely all the powers which they possessed in 1921. To-night we have been told by the right honourable gentleman in the most specific and emphatic terms the nature of the government which is to be offered to these people. He spoke of having the power to go back to a government comparable to what is possessed in Kenya, Nigeria and other places."
Mr. Ormsby-Gore, the Colonial Secretary interrupted. He said:
" I mentioned neither Kenya nor Nigeria. The two I mentioned were Straits Settlements and Ceylon."
Then Mr. Jones continued:
" We will not quarrel about that, but I could have sworn I heard the right honourable gentleman mention Kenya. Any way, they are going back, not to the government they possessed in 1921, but to something comparable to Crown Colony government."
My Lords, I am not about to argue whether one interpretation or the other should be put to your Lordships; I will restrict myself to proving that what I put on the Notice Paper of your Lordships' House for discussion to-day was justified by the words actually used.
THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH: My Lords, may I be allowed to explain that I never suggested that the noble Lord was not justified in putting down this Question
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on the Order Paper? I was merely trying to explain that there was some misunderstanding about this, and I have had the authority of the Secretary of State to make the statement that I have made to-day. What he meant to refer to was the position of the Judiciary, and not the whole Constitution. I was merely trying to explain to your Lordships that there has obviously been a misunderstanding with regard to the matter, and I am glad to have had an opportunity of clearing it up.
THE LORD SPEAKER: Does the noble Lord withdraw his Motion?
LORD STRICKLAND: Yes, I beg leave to withdraw.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (VISCOUNT HALIFAX): My Lords, before we adjourn I wish to inform your Lordships that the House meets to-morrow at a quarter before twelve o'clock.
House adjourned at thirteen minutes before seven o'clock.