§ Debate resumed (according to Order) on the Amendment, moved by Lord Balfour of Burleigh, to the Motion that the Bill be now read 2a—namely, to insert, after the word "That," "this House whilst regretting that the Bill does not contain a provision for increased research into the cause and treatment of cancer, resolves that".
THE EARL OF DONOUGHMOREMy Lords, I desire to support the Second Reading of this Bill and to congratulate His Majesty's Government most warmly on having introduced it. I do that not only because of what is in the Bill, but I desire to congratulate them on the fact that they have introduced it at the present moment. I believe this is exactly the moment when the Bill was necessary. I shall not go very deeply into the dispute between His Majesty's Government and the Chairman of the Medical Research Council. It is a quarrel between father 220 and son and, having been the Chairman of the National Radium Commission for the last six years, and therefore in the position of being another son, I am not going to get myself wounded in the course of a family quarrel. I am only really interested that the quarrel between them shall not cause myself to receive any stripes in the course of its solution. I note with pleasure that my noble friend Lord Balfour of Burleigh is not moving the rejection of the Bill on the Second Reading, but I think it is pretty obvious from his speech that if he were offered £700,000 to spend in the cancer world, treatment would get very little of it. I am not certain that all, but certainly a large proportion, would go into the research in which he is so particularly interested. That, after all, is the logical conclusion that I draw from his speech.
The noble Lord made an eloquent plea on behalf of the 100,000 cases which he assumed to exist. I would accept that figure for the purpose of argument, but I remind him of the other figure quoted by the noble Duke, that at this moment of four cases that might benefit by treatment only one is receiving treatment. That, after all, and the fact that this Bill, I hope, will greatly improve that situation, are the justification of this Bill. Do not let us forget that every case that is treated is, in a way, a research case, that is to say, the experience obtained by the surgeons, physicians and radiologists is available in future cases. I only desire to emphasize the fact that of course the money provided under this Bill is not yet spent. I hope, as the result of this debate, that the £700,000 mentioned is not going to be reduced and switched over to research. If my noble friend is successful in persuading the Government to give more money for research, I hope it will be additional to this Bill, and not taken out of this Bill.
My noble friend took the life of a cancer patient as eighteen months, and he described some of the present methods, certainly the radium treatment, and I think also even the X-ray treatment, as tentative. That was a very pessimistic view to take of the situation. I always read with great interest the publications of my noble friend as Chairman of the Medical Research Council. I do not think he returns the compliment by reading the papers which my colleagues of the National Radium Commission lay before 221 Parliament. But let me very shortly quote three sets of figures to show that my noble friend's eighteen months' estimate is much too pessimistic. Of course cancer, we all know, attacks many sites of the body, but I ant going to quote three figures from a Statistical Report of the National Radium Commission, issued in 1937. Your Lordships are aware of course that national radium is placed at the disposal of certain hospitals on condition that they keep records of all their cases, and these are the results of some of the records.
I am going to take the first stage of three sites. In all these radium was employed. The first was carcinoma of the breast. We had statistics lasting over a period of five years, covering nearly 1,700 cases. Of those in the first stage which were examined by my friends of the Statistical Department 50 per cent. were alive five years after they had received their treatment. That is very different from the eighteen months which my noble friend rather assumed. Take another case, carcinoma of the cervix. There were 2,000 cases examined, and of those in the first stage of the disease 49.4 per cent. were alive five years after the giving of the treatment. And, lastly, carcinoma of the lip. There were 434 cases, of which 279 were in the first stage, and of these 77.8 per cent. were alive five years after the giving of the treatment. Surely it is too pessimistic to describe the position of treatment of that kind as tentative. Surely it is much more accurately described by Lord Dawson of Penn when he says that there has been a definite improvement and increase of knowledge in the treatment of the disease. Treatments as now known are far beyond the tentative stage, and that of course is the justification of the expansion for which His Majesty's Government are working through this Bill. It cannot be too much emphasized that with the best knowledge and skill available to him many a patient now attacked by malignant disease is in a much less helpless position than he was twenty years ago. Many of your Lordships remember the time when cancer was a sentence of death. It has ceased to be so, and by methods now known and cures brought about in certain stages and sites, we can take great courage in continuing the attack on this problem.
222 The looker-on sees certain salient points in the situation, and one of the saddest things that strikes me as a layman watching the cancer work throughout England and Scotland and Wales is that there is too much working in watertight compartments. The research people are not sufficiently in touch with the clinicians, and vice versa. Even among those treating the disease there is not always that co-operation which ought to exist. Cancer treatment is now being given in about twelve hospitals in London and about twenty-two centres outside, counting England and Scotland together. I have visited a number of them myself. My colleagues and myself visit every one of them outside London at least once in every two years, and of course London is managed by King Edward's Hospital Fund and a similar system goes on there. May I try to portray to your Lordships very shortly what I consider to be the ideal organisation of a cancer centre? I am thinking of two or three places which I have been to where I have seen this going on. Every single case suspected of malignant disease is at once seen by a committee—I use the word committee though it is not the proper medical word—consisting of a surgeon, a physician, a radiologist, an X-ray man, and probably a physicist. The treatment which is suggested in that case is the result of consultation between five equals all equally concerned. That is the ideal, but, unfortunately, it is not the rule all over the Kingdom.
I was horrified a couple of years ago, in the course of a discussion that was taking place—I shall not give your Lordships the smallest suspicion where it was—with a view to getting a centre organised in a county. There was no large hospital that could be used as the centre, and therefore it was desirable that the county should organise a staff available in various hospitals to travel about and deal with cancer cases. A leading man—I must call him a distinguished surgeon, because he was once a leading member of the staff of an important hospital in London—said quite frankly, "A county radiologist? I do not see how a radiologist can be any use to me in my work." He was working in a watertight compartment, and the result must have been fatal—at any rate, very detrimental—to his patients. Yet he was 223 by no means a unique person, and it is greatly to be hoped that the activities we look for as the result of this Bill passing will break down some of the prejudices which undoubtedly exist and handicap the progress of cancer work.
This leads me to draw attention to a point that has not yet been referred to, but which I regard as one of the most important points in the Bill. That is the power that the Bill gives the local authorities to pay the expenses of patients, and even of a companion, in order that they may come to centres where treatment is organised. That is really one of the most important provisions in the Bill, and a great reform—for which we ought to be very grateful to His Majesty's Government. Diagnosis of course can be local. After-treatment, watching the patient, can be local, but it is quite impossible to expect efficient cancer treatment except in large hospitals. You cannot bring that treatment to the door of the patient, you must bring the patient to the door of the hospital. There is one part of the country in which that has already been successfully done—Edinburgh—entirely by voluntary effort. The Edinburgh Royal Infirmary has arranged a system of vouchers from money provided by voluntary subscription, by means of which patients are brought to them, and the result has been a very great success and a very great benefit to all concerned. I feel quite sure that this provision is a very valuable one, and I hope local authorities will take full advantage of it.
May I in passing refer to one unfortunate omission from the Bill? My noble friend Lord Dawson spoke yesterday of the deficiency of radio-therapists, and was hopeful that the Bill would help to remedy that deficiency. I confess that in reading the Bill I am rather anxious upon that point. I wish we could envisage under the Bill a more organised system for the training of radio-therapists. The noble Duke, in introducing the Bill, said quite rightly that it is a dangerous thing for X-ray apparatus to get into ignorant hands. I entirely agree with him. When I am told that a cottage hospital has just got an X-ray apparatus I am much more frightened than pleased. It is the same with radium. Radium is a terrible power. I do not know if your Lordships know the elementary facts that the gamma rays which come from radium will penetrate 224 4½ inches of lead and think nothing whatever of going through a brick wall. I am not going to suggest the commission of crime to your Lordships, but if you have an enemy and you like to fire, which undoubtedly you can do, a small quantity of radium at him, put it in a lead box in order to protect yourself, point it through a wall at your neighbour, and you can make him very uncomfortable in a short time and kill him in a reasonable number of days. I am not suggesting that as proper behaviour for any of your Lordships, but it does illustrate the tremendous power of gamma rays.
Radium does sometimes get into the hands of the wrong people. It is a splendid emotion on the part, let us say, of the rich old lady who says to herself, "My dear doctor must have his bit of radium," but she is really a public danger. Again your Lordships will forgive me if I mention something in my own experience. I was up in the North of England the year before last, and found myself sitting at a public dinner next to a doctor. Some fool of a patient had given him a bit of radium, a few milligrammes, and he had been carrying this about in his waistcoat pocket. The result was that he has got a sore on the other side of his waistcoat which he will carry to his dying day. Perhaps we cannot commiserate with him because he injured himself, but I am horrified to think that he might have injured his patients. This all leads back to the fact that it is very urgent that wider facilities should be given for the training of radium officers. I cannot believe that that is not in the minds of His Majesty's Government, and I hope they will do all they can to encourage it. I shall not detain your Lordships on the other point as regards radium officers. It is not only important to improve their training, we ought to improve their status, and I hope His Majesty's Government will help with that when the time comes. I shall not deal with that point now because it does not really arise on this Bill.
There is one other point, and only one other point, I would like to urge, and that is the tremendous importance of keeping adequate records of cases. This is really in harmony with research. There are, of course, two sorts of records. There are administrative records enumerating the number of cases. We can rely on continuity in that respect; 225 and there are also clinical records. With clinical records a great deal of useful work has already been done. There are the reports of the Medical Research Council, whose annual reports have been most useful, and there are also statistical reports published by the National Radium Commission, four altogether, in the last five or six years. I have no doubt whatever that the keeping of adequate clinical records is in the mind of the Ministry of Health, but I only hope that in the new arrangements the flourishing young plant will not be dragged up. I hope care will be taken to build on the records of the past and that local authorities will not start de novo and go through all the preliminary stages already gone through.
My final remark is this. For the first time local authorities come into this matter as responsible for the organisation of cancer treatment. They have not hitherto been concerned with that organisation. Since the last Public Health Act there have been opportunities for voluntary hospitals and for municipal hospitals to come together, and I cannot help saying that on the whole the result so far has been rather disappointing. Actually in six of those centres with which I am acquainted, the voluntary hospital and the municipal hospital have come together and the municipality have placed beds at the disposal of the Centre; but the fact remains that, at any rate in the case of half the local authorities of this country, there has been no interest taken in cancer and no embracing of the opportunities that they have all had of helping it in these matters. The organisation of cancer hitherto has been left pretty well, with one or two small exceptions, to the voluntary hospitals, and, of course, to the medical faculties of the Universities.
I cannot help saying to the noble Duke, who spoke of the terrible lack of treatment in one long area extending from the Wash to Devonshire, I am afraid that that is due to this fact: that whilst several university medical faculties have been most helpful in this matter, we have utterly failed to get a move on either in Oxford or in Cambridge. I hope we shall be able to put that right, because obviously they are the places of all others to which we should look for that valuable help that is so much needed. The prospect of the co-operation of local authorities and of voluntary hospitals has hitherto 226 been distinctly disappointing, and it will be a very serious thing if that co-operation is not now extended. If the local authorities are wise they will welcome the knowledge and skill of the great voluntary hospitals. On the other hand, if the voluntary hospitals are wise, they will do their best to co-operate with the municipalities in the organisation of the schemes which are necessary under this Bill. Unless that co-operation comes, you will not have the success that I believe is deserved by the introducers of this Bill, and to which we all look forward with the utmost eagerness.
THE EARL OF SUFFOLK AND BERKSHIREMy Lords, I desire to speak in support of the Amendment, because I am engaged in the pursuit of research, though not possibly cancer research, and I know the financial problems that anyone engaged in research meets with in the course of his work. I am fortunate, possibly, because I am working under the benefaction of a member of your Lordships' House, Lord Nuffield, and therefore I am in the happy position of not needing any assistance from outside; but many laboratories are working at the present moment in straits which I can only describe as being exceedingly narrow. Much has been stated by my noble friend Lord Donoughmore, and by the noble Duke, of the treatment of cancer by radiotherapy; that is to say, the use of X-ray and radium; but I have not yet heard anything mentioned as to the research that has been done in what is known as chemotherapy.
It happens that knowledge has come to me from a friend of mine engaged in this problem, which leads me to say that the results that have been gained are such that, admittedly, the general public and possibly your Lordships may not have heard very much of them. Chemotherapeutic successes have been won slowly, and they have very nearly reached the stage where something of value may come from them. Chemo-therapy has been successful, I think, in ten diseases, which I will not enumerate to your Lordships, but I would mention that the greatest slayer of all, pneumonia, has recently been conquered, I am happy to say, I believe by British scientists—namely, the workers for a firm called May & Baker—with a thing called No. 639, which has reduced the worst type of pneumonia from an 85 per cent. 227 mortality down to a very small one indeed. Chemo-therapy has been successful in those ten diseases, and, I am assured, it is showing remarkable promise in a laboratory in London, the Fulham Cancer Hospital, under the direction of Professor Kenway and his co-workers. They have, for instance, discovered a compound which, when injected, will reduce the size of a tumour to a singularly small pin's head. Admittedly this has not been yet tried in clinical medicine, but I venture to prophesy that the time is singularly short when that will be so, and I verily believe that marked success will result.
Surely this Bill should provide help in the direction I have indicated. As my noble friend Lord Donoughmore said, money should not be taken from the Bill to provide research, but might it not be advisable to have additional money devoted to it? Radium costs so much money. A radium plant, I believe, costs something in the neighbourhood of £20,000 to instal, and, if this chemotherapy work should happen to be successful, instead of the cost being £20,000 it will not even cost £5,000; it will cost the very small sum of is. 6d. It seems to me that this is a line which might well have the support of a certain amount of money, especially as I believe I can assure your Lordships that it is showing such profitable and such promising results. Moreover, it has been my experience actually to see a brilliant experiment, an experiment which might well have changed the whole complexion of the problem of cancer, held up for the lack of £12 10s. I was working in the same laboratory with a man whose experimental work had arrived at a crucial stage. It was at a stage when some results might well have been expected at the very next step of the experiment. He wrote to the body who was directing his research and asked for the sum of £12 to be paid. Those who were directing his research were forced to tell him that, though they quite agreed with everything he said and they were sure his work was valuable, the money was simply not there. This, to me, seems almost tragic, when I remember that for so small a sum the work which admittedly had been done could have been accelerated, and the solution which this Bill aims to accom- 228 plish might have been materially hastened, possibly by a number of years.
My noble friend Lord Donoughmore mentioned that research people worked in watertight compartments. I have only recently been sent a scheme by a very brilliant research worker and physician by which a central clearing house for the direction of research and for the communication of published papers should be established. I know that this has been under consideration for some time and I verily believe that the system of each laboratory working in a watertight compartment regardless of anybody else may be overcome by some such central national or international clearance scheme. Then again, the noble Earl, Lord Donoughmore, mentioned that the keeping of records was most essential in research. I should like to associate myself very firmly with that statement. It is, of course, true that no research can possibly be carried to a successful conclusion without keeping most extensive, most carefully documented cross-indexed records. I for one would welcome the Bill if it made such a system available to all research workers in this particular field. I have the honour of knowing several eminent people who are conducting research into this matter, and I know the extraordinary difficulty they have in finding references to other people's treatment and to the dosage of this dangerous substance, radium. I have heard of difficulty in finding statistics and records regarding deep X-ray therapy. The keeping of records seems to me a most remarkably good step.
My noble friend Lord Balfour of Burleigh adopted the metaphor yesterday that it was not worth spoiling the ship for the sake of a ha'p'orth of tar. The noble Duke mentioned that 70,000 people died of cancer every year. I would like to wed those two points together. Is it worth buying tar for a ship whose seams leak to the extent that 70,000 people may be drowned in falling through those seams? Is it not better to buy something better than tar, something that will close those seams? There is no specific cure at present, but I am in possession of information that enables me to believe that we are within a short distance of getting some specific that will close up the leak and then, though tar may be necessary, it will not be asked to do more than tar should be asked to do.
§ VISCOUNT TRENCHARDMy Lords, as I have some slight knowledge of the want of research into this terrible disease, I would like to support the noble Lord who moved the Amendment. I would earnestly ask the noble Duke to reconsider the point and see if some clause cannot be inserted into the Bill to ensure that this important side of the question is developed to the fullest possible extent. I feel that research is the most vital factor in the struggle with this disease and therefore I would again ask the noble Duke if he cannot reconsider the point.
§ VISCOUNT SAMUELMy Lords, the opinion of your Lordships has been expressed by many speakers during this debate and two paints have been made very clear. In the first place there is unanimous welcome for this Bill, a feeling of appreciation of the initiative taken by the Minister of Health in presenting it to Parliament and a general desire that the Bill should speedily be passed into law. Secondly, all members of your Lordships' House who have spoken have pleaded for a greater development of research. Those who have already addressed your Lordships are entitled to great weight on the ground of the authority which they individually possess. The noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, speaks as Chairman of the Medical Research Council, the noble Viscount, Lord Dawson, on behalf of the medical profession, the noble Lord, Lord Addison, as a member of that profession and a former Minister of Health, and the noble Earl, Lord Donoughrnore, as Chairman of the National Radium Commission. Lord Rayleigh, I believe, the most illustrious man of science now in this House, shares the same view.
This campaign against cancer can in the long run be successfully pursued only if at the same time as facilities for treatment are extended, there is the most active energetic prosecution of research into the cause of cancer. I desire to express as a layman a view which I believe has extended more and more widely. That is, that the whole attitude of the State towards research is a wrong one. We view scientific research of all kinds from a wrong scale. Considering the vastness of the national income and the immensity in these days of the national revenue, the sums expended on research are utterly insignificant compared with the need. The noble Duke, who 230 introduced this Bill, urged that after all, research was largely a matter for voluntary effort. He mentioned the funds that have been raised for this purpose, and said that the State ought to take no action that would cut across in any way or compete with those efforts. I submit to your Lordships that that is quite a wrong attitude.
This question of research into cancer and research generally into disease, research into industrial or any other matters where science is to be linked for the service of society, is not a matter for spasmodic voluntary contributions, for appeals to emotion, for sending round the hat, for bazaars and all the various propaganda for voluntary efforts. When it is a question of national defence, the Government of the day spend vast sums, running into millions, in research. The Secretary of State for Air said recently that he enjoyed the co-operation of forty-four fellows of the Royal Society in helping to solve the various problems of aero dynamics and so forth which arose in connection with the development of the Air Force, and similarly the naval and the military experts make great efforts to pursue scientifically the problems with which they are faced. But this question of national health, though not indeed more urgent than questions of national defence, is at least as necessary, and the requirements of research for the prevention and cure of cancer should surely command at least as great attention and sympathy from the Government of to-day as any other of these matters.
We have witnessed great triumphs of both preventive and curative medicine during the last century. If medical science were to-day of the standard that it was a hundred years ago, half of us who are meeting here this afternoon would have been in our graves long ago—a fact which we should naturally, but perhaps quite wrongly, think regrettable. There are many diseases, as has already been mentioned, which have been struck out of the catalogue of human ills, and others, such as tuberculosis and diabetes, are on the way to becoming merely tragic memories of the past. Similarly, with regard to cancer there is no reason whatever why we should adopt a mood of fatalistic surrender and believe that the problem is insoluble. The report of the, Medical Research Council shows that there are very many hopeful develop- 231 ments. This question now occupies the frontier province where medicine and physics meet, and the discoveries of physicists in connection with radium and X-rays, and now with neutrons and the new apparatus called the cyclotron, all open up entirely fresh avenues of approach; but they involve very considerable expenditure, a far larger expenditure than medical research by itself in the past has needed.
The noble Duke said that this Bill was not the occasion on which to urge the claims of research. He told us that the Lord President of the Council, if he had the sanction of the Treasury, could provide more funds without fresh legislation. No doubt that is true. It is not a question of putting a clause in the Bill in order to carry out this purpose. What, however, I think the members of your Lordships' House who have spoken on these lines are anxious to impress upon the Government is that when the question arises of devoting larger sums to research for this purpose, there is a very general desire that such action should be taken, and there is a regret that, when a great new campaign is being launched for the assault upon cancer, an announcement is not made that, while the Bill will carry out the necessary measures for providing treatment and rendering it accessible to rich and poor, at the same time adequate funds should also be available for the development of research. For those reasons I beg to support the Motion of my noble friend Lord Balfour of Burleigh.
§ THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR DOMINION AFFAIRS (THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE)My Lords, the criticism which has been directed towards this Bill—and it has been weighty and informed criticism—has been directed to one point only: to the defect of the Bill in that it contains no provision for increased grants by the Government towards research. As I endeavoured to indicate yesterday, this is not a matter which could properly be dealt with in this Bill. Parliament in its wisdom decreed many years ago, before, I think, there even existed a Minister of Health, that the Minister responsible for the allocation of funds to medical research should be the Lord President of the Council. I am not very familiar with your Lordships' rules of order, but in another place it would be out of order for 232 a financial provision of the kind which is almost unanimously desired by your Lordships to be made in this Bill. Legislation is not necessary in order to enable the Government to allocate increased funds for this purpose.
The real position is that there is no attack on this Bill, but that many of your Lordships—and I am bound to say that your Lordships have entirely enlisted my sympathies—have felt it a convenient peg upon which to hang an attack upon the Government for not having seen fit to make an increased grant for cancer research to the Medical Research Council. I cannot help hoping that the immensely authoritative statements made in this House—the noble Viscount who spoke last gave a catalogue of the qualifications of the various noble Lords who have spoken—will have some effect upon the noble Lord who is primarily responsible in this matter. I am bound to say that I can feel no surprise that, if he has really been unable to meet this appeal, he has found it necessary to take refuge in the Antipodes. I can give your Lordships no assurance on this question, but I can promise that I will bring the very weighty representations which have been made to the notice of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and that, so far as I personally can, I will urge that he lend an ear to them.
The noble Earl, Lord Donoughmore, expressed the hope that, whatever the result of this debate, nothing would be subtracted from the £700,000 a year which is to be provided for treatment. I can reassure him on that point. I hope that further funds will be made available for research, but I can assure him definitely that they will not be subtracted from the funds available for treatment. The noble Lord also expressed a hope that the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge might play an increasing part. My Lords, I can make no promise. I happen to hold the great position of High Steward of the University of Cambridge. When I was appointed to that position I was told that it was a great post and that from time immemorial the duties had been "as heretofore," and that no one had ascertained what those duties were except the very rare one of attending the execution of undergraduates. I am delighted that the noble Lord has indicated to me a more useful line of activity.
233 I hope that this debate will bear fruit. I think that no one who heard it, and who in particular heard the most moving and eloquent appeal of my noble friend Lord Balfour of Burleigh, could be reluctant to make some further grant. But I would seek to emphasize the point that this Bill is not, and indeed could not be, the vehicle by which an increased grant could be made. Where legislation is not required, where the grant can be made, where a Minister already has power to make the grant, it would not be appropriate in this Bill to make that financial provision. I have, however, given your Lordships my undertaking that I will do my best to press this extremely authoritative claim, and I hope that in the circumstances my noble friend will not feel it necessary to press his Amendment to a Division.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGHMy Lords, I think the course of the debate which we have had yesterday and to-day may fairly be said to have justified the Motion which I put on the Paper of your Lordships' House. If I may, I will occupy just five minutes of your Lordships' time with comments on what has fallen from one or two of the speakers. To begin with, I should like to reassure my noble friend Lord Donoughmore. I know quite well that I cannot get any of the £700,000, and let me say at once that if I could I should not deprive the treatment aspect of a penny of that money. My noble friend quarrelled with my estimate—a layman's estimate—of eighteen months as an average duration of this disease. My noble friend gave some very satisfactory figures. He would be the last to deny that they were all cases cited of cancers treated in the early stages and in accessible positions. They are those very selected cases for which this treatment is proven and we all wecome the fact that treatement is to be extended. Let me point out that if I am wrong in estimating the average duration at eighteen months the great army of victims of cancer to which I referred could only be greater, because if the duration of the disease is longer and 70,000 die every year, then the size of the army is extended by the length of the duration of the disease. Therefore I submit that my picture is rather an under-statement than an exaggeration.
Let me turn to what fell from the noble Duke. I am very grateful for what he 234 said, but I cannot express myself as entirely satisfied. Money required for research is so infinitesimal compared with the amount which the Government are devoting to treatment. We know the Government are providing £600,000 or £700,000 a year for treatment, and an additional £500,000 for radium. To establish a research unit such as the Medical Research Council have in mind would cost something in the nature of £30,000 a year for ten or fifteen years. In view of the expression of opinion that has fallen from noble Lords in every quarter of the House, before I withdraw my Motion I would appeal to the Leader of the House for some expression of opinion to the effect that it will be possible to deal with this matter of research. I am grateful for what the noble Duke has said, but he did not, I think, go far enough. He said, yesterday, things which discouraged me very much. I have been encouraged by the debate this afternoon and I appeal to the Leader of the House to give an assurance that he will support an application for the necessary funds. That will make it easier for me to withdraw my Motion. Every speaker in the debate has supported the demand for research, and I feel that in the absence of a stronger expression of opinion from the Front Bench, the House should be asked to express an opinion in the form of a Division.
§ EARL STANHOPEMy Lords, I can only repeat very much what was said by the noble Duke. I will certainly represent to the right honourable gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the expression of opinion which has come from all quarters of the House, and of course from the Front Bench opposite. All of us naturally have a great deal of sympathy in this matter, and I am sure Lord Balfour of Burleigh will not expect me to go further than that. I cannot, of course, give a pledge on behalf of the Government that more money can be made available for this purpose, but it is receiving constant consideration on behalf of the Government, and I will certainly represent to my colleagues what has been said in this House yesterday and to-day.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGHI would like to express my gratitude to the noble Earl for what he has said, which has brought some comfort to my rather discouraged spirit. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.