HL Deb 15 December 1937 vol 107 cc518-26

THE DUKE of MONTROSE had the following Notice on the Paper:—To ask His Majesty's Government—

(1) Whether in the event of war, they are now satisfied there will be sufficient supplies of (a) petrol, (b) fuel and Diesel oil in this country, not only to furnish the requirements of the Navy, Army and Air Force and their ancillary services, but to provide for food production, public transport and other essential services.

(2) Whether they have any definite plans for alternative supplies of power derived from fuel produced from home sources. If so, what fuels, and where can supplies be obtained; and will any alterations be necessary to enable oil-propelled vehicles to use these fuels. And to move for Papers.

The noble Duke said: My Lords, in asking the Question which stands in my name I feel some apology is due to your Lordships for once again troubling you with a subject such as that of the oil supplies which will be available in this country in case of war, but the fact is that quite a large number of people are very anxious to know where we stand in this matter. Up to now, I am afraid, we have generally been put off with what one may call vague generalities or deferring generalities, such as statements that the matter is still under consideration, and so on. Surely the time has come when we ought to be told something more definite so that we should know how matters stand. Only a few days ago your Lordships were discussing the question of possible gas attacks, and we were envisaging the possibility that we might be bombed and gassed. Then we were told that a great scheme was in existence by which the country would be divided into areas, and that officers were going to be appointed to show us how to seal our doors and windows and so forth. Has anything of the sort been done with regard to oil supplies? Has any such organisation been prepared to look after the oil supplies available in time of war?

After all, the oil supplies are the be-all and end-all of our national defence. Without adequate oil supplies we could never stave off gas attacks, we could never stave off the starvation of our people, and our national defence would be bound to collapse. I think I am right in saying, as showing the importance to be attached to oil supplies, that last year we imported two billion five hundred million gallons of oil for our Services. One thing is certain, and that is that, prodigious though these figures may be, we should use far more oil in the event of war than in time of peace. It would be only right and proper to envisage that we shall require in this country at least three billion gallons of oil. I ask the Government whether they can assure us that there will be three billion gallons of oil in this country on the outbreak of war and that they can maintain that supply even if the war goes on. The other day I saw in The Times an article written by a special correspondent. I do not know whether the article was inspired, nor whether it represented the views of the Government, but the writer assured us that Great Britain controlled the great bulk of the oil supplies in the world. He said that the experience of the Great War went to show that by adopting the convoy system we only lost 1 per cent. of our shipping, and so our oil supplies were safe and assured.

On the face of it, that would seem a very confident assurance. But there are just one or two points that require examination. The first is, where do the bulk of those oil supplies lie: in what country? I say that they lie, for the large part, in countries which you can by no means call free of internal trouble. They lie in countries like Iraq, Mexico, Venezuela and Trinidad (which has the largest supply in the British Empire). In each one of those countries there have quite recently been serious internal troubles—strikes, riots and sabotage. Is there anybody who can guarantee that if this country became embroiled in a first-class war, the discontented elements of those countries would not rise and try to get back a little of their own? They might even go so far as to seize the supplies of oil. And there is another danger. At the time of the Great War we had behind us the resources of the United States of America, and we were able to borrow from them an innumerable number of tankers to bring in the oil. Are we certain that we shall be able in another war to count on the resources of the United States of America, so long as our debt to America remains unpaid? I think that I have said enough to show that, so far as our oil supplies are concerned, there are many dangers much more grave than anything to be met with on the high seas.

Then, as regards the naval defence of our oil supplies, the writer of the article never mentioned that we had not been able to use the convoy system until the War had been going for two years. Before we could use a convoy system we had to drive off the sea every raider; we had to bottle up the enemy's fleet in its harbours; we had to be in a position to say that we had the indisputable command of the sea. It would have been suicide to use a convoy system before we had command of the sea. Is anybody prepared to say that we shall have command of the sea within the first few months of the beginning of another great war? Yet it is in the first few months that we shall require oil supplies, any amount of oil. Look at it whichever way you will, there is only one sure safeguard against all these troubles, and that is to make provision for a supply of fuel, on which to drive our motors, from sources within our own country. That is the only sure safeguard we have.

We have shadow schemes for munition supplies, and for factories for making munitions. So has France; so has Germany. But they have shadow schemes for transport as well, to be propelled by fuel from within their own borders. France has a shadow scheme envisaging the conversion of 40,000 lorries to run on charcoal from the French forests on the declaration of war. Have we anything of the same sort? Nothing at all; nothing has been done to provide a shadow scheme of the same sort. Why not? I do not know why not, but I know that in March of this year the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, in reply to a Question in another place, said that a special Committee was to be appointed— To consider and examine the various processes for the production of oil from coal and certain other materials indigenous to this country, and to report on their economic possibilities and on the advantages to be obtained by way of security of oil supplies in an emergency. What does that mean? What do the terms of reference to that Committee mean? They mean, if they mean anything at all, that the Committee were to investigate a source of power alternative to imported oil.

Following that, and trying to help forward that aim, I organised in Palace Yard a demonstration of transport propelled by coal, or by gas from coal. Many of your Lordships and a number of members from another place attended that demonstration and expressed interest in it. After that, being encouraged by them, I wrote and asked if I might give before that Committee evidence which I had collected from my own experience and from abroad. This is the answer I got: The members of the Committee do not consider that they would be justified in giving consideration to the use of solid fuels which might be used as a substitute for imported oil fuels. Whatever were the Committee appointed for if not to consider alternative fuels? If they were to study alternative fuels, why did they refuse to look at other fuels which have been found successful in other countries? I cannot understand that at all, and it seems to require some explanation.

I am told that the Government contemplate putting down a plant—a foreign plant—called the Fischer-Tropsch, capable of turning out 20,000 tons of petrol from coal. That is an efficient plant but an exceedingly costly one. They will not put down a Fischer-Tropsch plant to turn out 20,000 tons of petrol under £3,000,000. Quite a number of British low-temperature carbonisation plants costing £250,000 are capable of turning out smokeless coal which will give a propelling power equal to 57,000 tons of petrol. That is to say that for one-tenth of the cost you can produce by British plant double the amount of propelling power. Why should we be burdened with a burden of £3,000,000 to put down a foreign plant when all you have to do is to draw on the coal from British mines, the wood from British forests and the peat from British moors? Why not study these things? Why have the Government neglected these things? That is what we want to have an explanation of, and I hope that the noble Earl who replies to this Question will let himself go and give us a detailed reply. I beg to ask the Question and to move the Motion which stand on the Paper in my name.

THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL DE LA WARR)

My Lords, I think the House would wish me to thank the noble Duke for raising this question, which is one of very real importance. We all appreciate, quite apart from the fact that the noble Duke has put down this Motion to-day, what he has clone for the advancement of certainly one side of this subject. He has asked me to be definite and not to try to content him and your Lordships with vague generalities. I am afraid that it is not very easy, on a matter of this kind, which affects so vitally some of the most intimate details of our defence arrangements, for me to attempt to be as definite as I think the noble Duke would wish me to be. I can, however, tell him certain steps that His Majesty's Government have been taking. But first of all I would like to impress upon the noble Duke a point of which I am not sure he is quite certain—namely, that the Government do attach the greatest importance to this subject. We realise that oil, and oil products, are the raw materials not merely of war but of our peace activities, and it is therefore absolutely vital that in our preparations the very closest consideration should be given to this subject.

There is actually sitting now, and it has been sitting for some time, a Sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence, and a Cabinet Minister is in charge of the work of that Sub-Committee. It has before it the consideration of such questions as the quantity of reserves of oil, both in relation to peace requirements and war requirements, taking into account, that is, all civil and industrial needs as well as the needs of the Forces. It has before it the duty of considering the question of the security of the reserves which we are rapidly building up—security from the point of view of location and security from the point of view of the lay-out of the storage. Then it has before it such questions as that affected by the amount of tanker tonnage at our disposal, and there I might mention a particular point that the noble Duke has mentioned, the question of the protection of that tanker tonnage in time of war. That matter is naturally under the special consideration of the Admiralty which, incidentally, is strongly represented also on this Committee. There are also the Question of rationing, and various schemes of control, both in this country and in other countries over which we have any control. All these and every other matter concerning the supplies and reserves of oil are under our constant and very active consideration, and every one of those questions that I have mentioned has been tackled. The Committee has gone a very long way, with regard to many of the questions, towards the solution of the problems presented by these points, and where it has not actually completed its survey it is at least somewhere towards completion.

The noble Duke has mentioned other points. He has mentioned particularly the question of alternative supplies—alternative supplies, that is, produced in this country as opposed to our dependence on imports. I think first of all we have got to face the fact that, whatever is done with regard to alternative supplies, we are never going to be able to produce all, or anything like all, our requirements in this country, and therefore the question of contacts with importing countries, control over foreign or Empire supplies, control over refining and refiners, and all these questions, have to enter into our general consideration. Nevertheless, the Government have felt that it was most important that we should do what was possible with regard to the consideration of the question, for instance, of oil from coal. The noble Duke will remember that the Government by methods of preference—very heavy preference—have taken considerable steps to encourage various processes in this country. I need only mention Billingham as one great plant which has been erected as a result of what the Government have already done. The noble Duke has mentioned the possibility of other plants being started. He has mentioned particularly the process known as the Fischer-Tropsch plant. I can only remind the noble Duke that I think his source of information is the Press, and it is a rumour in the Press, and one which, from Government sources, I am certainly not in a position to confirm; but there has been a suggestion of the provision of capital for the development of these processes, especially in the Special Areas.

As the noble Duke knows, it was really arising out of these suggestions that we appointed the Falmouth Committee, and I think your Lordships would desire me to express, not only on behalf of the Government, but of yourselves, our deep sense of gratitude to the noble Lord for the immense amount of work he has put into this Committee—work for which he was peculiarly suited. That Committee was, of course, appointed specifically to deal with the technical and scientific side of the production of oil from coal, and I think that explains why the Committee did not feel itself in a position to examine the other processes which the noble Duke has mentioned. I regret that I cannot give your Lordships any information about the contents of the Report of that Committee, because it has only very lately been remitted to the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, and we have had no time, as yet, to decide what steps to take with regard to it.

I would, however, ask your Lordships to believe that we are examining that Report, and examining it from the point of view of taking any possible action envisaged therein, and we are also examining many other questions with regard to alternative supplies of fuel. The noble Duke has mentioned a number. He mentioned one perhaps rather more suited to France, with her great forests, than to this country—charcoal. But there are also the other systems which, as he reminded us at the beginning of his speech, he himself has helped to demonstrate—various systems of running cars on gas and so on. There, again, I am afraid I am not in a position to tell your Lordships exactly what steps the Government are taking; but I must ask you to accept my assurance that we are considering every single one of these propositions that have been put before us. They are in nearly every instance being tried out. I would once again emphasise to the noble Duke that, whilst I feel to some extent that I must apologise to him for not being more definite in my reply, nevertheless the Government not merely have this question under their active consideration, but they are in fact taking action with regard to a very great number of the points that he has put before us.

THE DUKE OF MONTROSE

My Lords, I very much appreciate the reply of the noble Earl. I realise that I gave very short notice of the line that I was going to take, and he was speaking therefore under some difficulty. But of course the main point is that we are still being told that alternative supplies and resources for oil are under consideration, and if we are going to assume that we could be bombed, it must be remembered that the oil storage tanks could be bombed too, and that would greatly shorten supplies. At the present moment the oil storage tanks are easy targets. They are all above ground, they are visible from the sea, and they can be destroyed either from the air or from the water. As regards the increased numbers of tankers, you have to detail naval vessels for their protection, and no Admiral could possibly spare these until he had command of the sea. As regards alternative fuel, it may be true that we are not producing much at present, but the potential supply is unlimited, when you come to think of all the coal and wood that exist in this country. I think that the time has come when an organisation similar to that which we have for gas should be formed for oil. The country should be divided into areas for the production of alternative supplies. Inside each area there should be depots for supplies, and there should be information conveyed to all those interested in fuel propulsion—farmers who have to provide food, transport people who run the omnibuses, fishing people who run their fishing vessels. But not one of them at the present moment has heard anything whatever about the organisation for alternative oil supplies in this country, not one. However, I thank the noble Earl for his reply and I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

House adjourned at a quarter before five o'clock.