§ 3.30 p.m.
§ LORD GREVILLE asked His Majesty's Government who was responsible for commandeering hotels in various British spas for various Civil Departments. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in putting the Question which stands in my name I propose to be extremely brief, but I hope your Lordships will not think on that account that the matter about which I am going to speak is not important. Your Lordships probably have all read in the newspapers various letters from hotel proprietors and managers about the methods by which their hotels have been commandeered. There is no doubt that this commandeering at very short notice has caused considerable hardship, not only to the hotel keepers but to their guests and their staffs. It probably has caused also a great deal of unnecessary expense and in every way it has put people to great discomfort.
§ I shall probably be told that all this was necessary under the heading of secrecy. Well, I think it has been pretty well public knowledge for probably the last year that in case of emergency there would be a wholesale evacuation of various Ministries from London. I have here a letter written last May by a hotel manager who wanted to get information from the Ministry of Health about what was going to be done with his hotel. It was taken over, I think, in the last war and he wanted to take precautions in the case of the coming war, as it was then. 1344 So he wrote a letter explaining that he would like to look after the comfort of his guests and the welfare of his staff and make arrangements to move his furniture. That was last May. The first intimation he received was when a gentleman walked into the hotel, gave him twenty-four hours to clear everybody out, and proceeded to put labels on various bits of furniture which he thought might be useful. It does not need much imagination to know that it would cause the proprietor of that hotel enormous expense to get the furniture out at very short notice and dispose of his guests and staff.
§ The particular subject about which I want information has reference to spas and curative centres in this country. I think every one of your Lordships is aware that rheumatism and its kindred ailments are very prevalent in England and that every year some thousands of people seek treatment at these spas. Amongst those who seek curative treatment are a great many of our workers who are most useful in war time. You will find at these places always an enormous number of miners suffering from rheumatism, and you will also find a large number of men who work in the open air either on sea or land. That is the position in peace time Naturally when there is a war the number of these people is very likely to be increased. You take a large number of young men of more or less sedentary occupation from the banks and the Stock Exchange, from offices and shops, and put them into camps that may or may not be extremely dry, or you send them abroad to take their places in the trenches.
§ I think from the experience gained in the last war that it is well known that you will have in consequence a great many cases of rheumatism or its kindred ailments—neuritis, arthritis and other ailments connected with rheumatism. Rheumatism does not spare anyone, children, young people, middle-aged or old people. You will find in the case of children that there is usually some form of affection of the heart. I regret that my noble friends Lord Dawson and Lord Horder are not present to-day, because I know exactly their feelings on the subject. What I would ask the noble Earl who is going to reply to this Question is whether when this wholesale commandeering of hotels at spas took place any medical authority was consulted as to the 1345 problematic needs that would arise in case of war. I know the Minister of Health was consulted, but he was consulted because he had to commandeer lodgings. Most of these hotels were taken for use as offices and were commandeered by the Office of Works, but I understand that the Minister of Health occupied himself with commandeering accommodation for lodgings.
§ What I want to know is whether the military authorities—the medical military authorities—were consulted. I have no doubt the military authorities were consulted about whether the spots were safe for the various Ministries which were to be sent there, but were the medical authorities in the Army consulted? And were the medical men who live in these spas consulted about the likely number of people from various trades that are most essential in war time, like miners and fishermen and outdoor labourers, who would want treatment at these spas in war time? If they were consulted, can the noble Earl give me any idea of the accommodation reserved for men of the Fighting Services and for civilians suffering from rheumatism and the various ailments connected with it? I am credibly informed that in some cases there is practically no accommodation left. That is a very short-sighted policy, and I should like some assurance from the noble Earl that this matter has been considered from the medical side and not purely from the point of view of commandeering office accommodation for Government staffs.
§ 3.38 p.m.
§ LORD MANCROFTMy Lords, I should like to support the point of view that has been put before your Lordships by my noble friend Lord Greville. I wish to offer a suggestion for the consideration of the noble Earl, Lord Stanhope, when he makes his reply. We are not dealing here with a matter in which there has been dishonesty or idleness. Those two things are quite beside our discussion. What we are faced with to-day is common puerile stupidity. You can deal with dishonesty, and you can deal with idleness, but you are almost helpless in the face of stupidity. The country is becoming exasperated on realising that here is a case of stupidity. Instances which come forward from time to time, to which I will draw your Lordships' attention if I can obtain your patience for a moment or two, have set going in the minds of the people a feeling 1346 that there is something wrong in the intelligence of some of those to whom Parliament has entrusted the carrying out of national policy. I would like to put forward evidence which it will be seen at once supports the view which my noble friend Lord Greville has set before us to-day.
I will not mention, because I do not know them, the names of hotels which have been unreasonably commandeered or requisitioned, whichever word is applicable. But your Lordships have perhaps read, I think on October 10 in The Times, of the case of a south-coast hotel which was requisitioned on September 23 and the owner's business smashed. He was told to empty the hotel by October 2—that is to say, in nine days—without having had convenient warning; and when he goes to complain and to protest and to ask for some consideration, he is told on October 4 that he need not proceed any further. That cannot be right. A case like that, I suppose, is indicative of what is going on. It is infuriating to the public, because that is a case of injustice, and nothing infuriates the people of this country more than to know that something unfair has been done. I presume the statement is true; if it be true, let us have more details.
For that reason I now ask formally that there should be printed in the OFFICIAL REPORT certain information; and that would render it unnecessary for me to do what I had thought I would do: to put down a Motion for Papers. The cost of printing the list would be trivial, and the information is officially already in existence. I do not attach much importance to any plea for secrecy; everyone in various parts of the country knows the names of the local hotels that have been commandeered. I do not put any value upon a plea or a request for secrecy; I want to know the methods adopted and the names of the places, which are already known. I ask for a list of the 200 hotels and boarding-houses that have been requisitioned, to be printed in the OFFICIAL REPORT, with the date of the requisition in each case. I should like that list to include the number of persons which the Government Departments have placed in these hotels within seven days of the date of the requisition. I should then like to know the number of persons put by the Government into each of these hotels by October 4. Your 1347 Lordships' House can then judge whether or not there is a genuine case for complaint against the Minister responsible.
Of course Ministers are responsible; that is the proper practice of Parliament. We do not blame the officials; but that reservation could be taken a little too far. With a list available, the Minister now in charge of the Department can know for himself where the methods have been wrong. He cannot have known the names of the hotels to be requisitioned; there have been too many of them. He cannot have known where the hotels were and what was going to be done with each one of them. But when he sees the list, whether the Government print it or not, he will see whether there was justification for the acts of his officials, and whether it was essential to take each particular hotel. If he is able to approve, all well and good; if he is not able to approve of what has been done, he can come down, if he thinks proper, with a heavy hand on those of his staff who are guilty of stupidity, by transferring them to other Departments where lack of intelligence is not regarded as being of much importance. My noble friend in front of me, the Marquess of Zetland, asks me the names of those Departments. I have two in mind, but I do not wish to create jealousies, so I will not mention them!
There has been public reference from time to time—and I am glad to say it has been proposed in the other House—of the desire of certain members to set up a Committee of Expenditure Inspection. During the years I was in the other House, various Committees were set up. I will mention four: the Committee on National Expenditure—I was on that; the Committee on Estimates—I was on that; and for the most part of my time in the other House I was a member and sometimes Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee; and I was also Chairman of the Committee which reported with the result that the Disposals Board of the Ministry of Munitions was closed. From those experiences I know this: that, valuable as such Committees are, they are of little use unless they begin to function before expenditure has been embarked upon or folly has been committed. My experience of those Committees is that, if we are going to set up a Committee to watch expenditure and to prevent follies—and I 1348 support that idea and should like to see a Committee set up composed of members of the two Houses—it should be set up without a moment's delay, so that, by action in advance, it can prevent stupid things being done. Such a Committee would have wanted to know why and wherefore before each hotel or school was requisitioned.
To come to the particular matter to which the noble Lord, Lord Greville, has referred—namely, hotels: the Government Departments responsible must have known a year or two years ago that it was very probable that we should want accommodation. Where is the foresight, where is the imagination, where is the initiative? Why did they not plan to provide a useful number of hutments, or a few camps, instead of taking over in a hurry hotels and, worse than that, taking over schools, for Government Departments? The probable need for accommodation in case of war was known to those responsible. The Cabinet cannot be thinking of everything; there is a Department which should foresee and must deal with a matter of that kind when occasion arises. They knew at any time within these last twelve months that accommodation would most likely be required; and yet they do the very thing which we in business always try to avoid: doing anything in a hurry and at the last moment. They ought to have foreseen that it was necessary to lay down in advance a plan for the hotels in the particular places that would be required and, elsewhere, hutments could have been quietly made and kept quietly in reserve. If they did not foresee it, someone ought to be taught a lesson. This hotel muddle, and the muddle about spas which we shall want for the lives of our men who may be injured, if it is proved when we see the list, will show that the public are justified in describing some of the methods of some of the Departments as nothing else but incompetent Bumbledom.
I would draw your Lordships' attention to other cases which would substantiate my noble friend's complaint and indicate that there is a likelihood of stupidity being the reason for this muddle about the hotels and spas. There were certain things which, if there were to be the war which we feared, would have to be tackled; these things were known twelve months ago. Yet, vital and important as they were, they were apparently 1349 never foreseen and provided for, or if they were foreseen, they were foreseen with no imagination and no skill and scarcely provided for. The officials knew that the public must have food; yet the provision for fish distribution was a complete failure and a muddle. Why? It was not thought out in advance. That is one instance. The second is war risks insurance on stocks of goods; that was never thought out in advance. I was present at the discussion of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce a fortnight ago; we then found that the official scheme had apparently overlooked the factor of frequency of turnover in relation to the premium for insurance, that there might be a turnover of the goods more than once a year, that you had thus cumulative costs being put on to the goods at each stage of production and sale, sometimes honestly, sometimes, I am sorry to say, dishonestly. The price of everything that the Government used for munitions was put up, and that turnover factor also put up the cost of living. Yet it was known twelve months ago that if there were a war the goods of merchants and manufacturers must be protected by insurance, and the scale on which they should be protected by premium on turnover ought to have been thought out. It was merely an arithmetical sum.
Then we saw the chaos of the Ministry of Information, a muddle of the worst kind. We did not mind how many people they paid. Let them have 999 people so long as they operated properly and did what was required. The whole Ministry was a mess. It was not a question of cost. It did not function. Yet with foresight, everyone concerned must have known that in the event of war such a Ministry would be required with a working machine, just as the Government must have known in advance that accommodation would be required for their distributed staffs. There is also the muddle over the hold-up of export licences. Thousands of letters and requests for permits have been held up unanswered, through faulty organisation and lack of foresight and method again. Then there has been another case of stupidity similar to this hotel and school requisitioning muddle. It was known two, three or four years ago that if we should unfortunately be forced into war, 1350 it would be necessary to take a decision about the possibility of some scheme of insurance of buildings, even if a scheme could not be made. Anyway, the minds of those responsible would have to be made up as to whether there was any method at all for insuring property against the risk of aerial bombardment. That was absolutely essential. Yet up till to-day, notwithstanding the pressure put on the authorities, we have had no pronouncement by the Government upon that one way or the other. I mention that to show how unimaginative and how lacking in initiative has been the treatment of these vital matters, and what muddles have been made by Government Departments on possible requirements that were known months and years ago. The Weir Committee on the insurance of buildings was set up in a hurry and at the last moment. Even yet it has not reported to the public.
It is quite true that the Minister will be responsible for whatever are the shortcomings of his Department. But the nation will call to account those who are personally responsible for childish stupidities, and will not tolerate more of them without taking very stiff measures. I think, if I may be allowed to say so, that I could use even stronger language about the methods of requisitioning hotels than my noble friend Lord Greville has used; and that notwithstanding the plea for secrecy we should insist upon having it treated as a test case of the methods of Government Departments in this crisis. We should press to have the policy upon which Lord Greville's Motion is based probed to the bottom. I therefore ask for the hotel list with dates and occupants put in the hotels so that we can see what has been going on and why and how the muddle was made.
§ 3.52 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIRMy Lords, I notice that in the noble Lord's question he has used the word "British," which includes Scottish, and I should like to approach this subject from the Scottish point of view, which is very similar to that in England. We have had the same sort of treatment in Scotland as has been detailed to your Lordships by my noble friend Lord Mancroft. There are not only hotels concerned; there are spas—they do not call them spas in Scotland, but they are hotels to which people who want to get better go on 1351 account of the goodness of the air—there are hydros, there are even railway hotels on the coast as well as inland, which have been requisitioned with no notice at all to speak of, and no consideration whatever either for the proprietors or their employees. When the last unemployment returns were published, we were told that the increase in unemployment was only a temporary one, but these commandeerings are still going on without any forewarning to the managers or owners of the hotels, and at the same time various Ministers representing different Departments of the Government, not excluding the Chancellor of the Exchequer, implore employers not to dismiss their staffs but to keep them in work. Yet Government Departments are themselves the worst offenders in causing through their commandeering policy the dismissal very often of 700 people in a single case in which a hotel is commandeered.
The Government must have some sort of responsibility. They ask private employers of labour not to dismiss their staffs; they do not say anything about the extra Income Tax which prevents the employers being able to pay those employees; and they actually say also that if any employee has a grievance against an employer because he is not paid properly he can go to the trade board. Where the money is to come from with which to pay the employees, they do not say. The employers are asked not to dismiss their employees and yet every week during the past five weeks the Government have been taking action which causes the dismissal of employees who are without any prospect of being re-employed, at any rate for the time being.
It has already been suggested that hotels and their managers or owners, including railway shareholders, who as usual have received no sympathy, are not the only ones to suffer. I can quote the case of a very well-known school where the bureaucratic representatives of the Department concerned came down and cleared out the school, without any notice to speak of, and told them to go to two houses fifteen miles away and they then put a Civil Service Department into the school. Why could not the Civil Service Department go into the two houses fifteen miles away? There can be no reasonable answer to that question. Then those of 1352 us who read our Times will have noticed that it applies not only to buildings but even to that noble four-footed animal the horse. Horses are being bought at prices a long way below their value, not because there were not other horses of not such great value which could have done the work for which they were required just as well, but because there would be a few miles further to go to see them. It is not fair on the various horse breeders that the horses of only one man in a district should be taken; the burden should be distributed amongst the various horse breeders.
The thing which we in Scotland feel so strongly about, as well as those in England, is the method by which these commandeerings are carried out. No sympathy is shown; no plan of campaign is arranged beforehand in order that it may be done gradually. As my noble friend Lord Mancroft, who has just spoken, said, these things have been, or at any rate ought to have been, foreseen for more than a couple of years, and yet no plan has been worked out in order that as little hardship as possible should be inflicted. In short, although praising, as the Allies do, our democratic methods, yet one would almost think that we are under a veiled dictatorial régime, having regard to the way in which these representatives of the Government carry out their—I am not going to call them duties because I do not think that they have any duty to do what they do. They have no idea of decency to the public, and if they themselves were treated in the same way as they treat their fellow-citizens, they would be the first to cry out.
The same applies to the way in which people have been treated due to the transfer of children and their mothers into country districts. The people who have had to take them in have found that the promises made to them have not been carried out. Those people have had to supply their own mattresses, their own pillows and their own blankets, and in a great many cases those articles have had to be destroyed. What compensation are they going to get? They were all told that they were going to get these goods from the Government, but not a single one has arrived in my county at any rate, and I do not suppose that any have arrived in any other county either. Then you have hospitals commandeered with 1353 perhaps 3,000 beds for patients of one sort and another, and I remember one case in which there was only one bed occupied. That is not the way in which to show our sympathy with those with whom we have to deal. I suggest that representatives of the various Departments should be told that they have got to act at least in a gentlemanly way, and not in an autocratic, bureaucratic or dictatorial way. The feeling throughout the Kingdom is very bitter on this subject, and if the noble Earl the Leader of the House can offer some prospect that this sort of thing is going to end, and that those who have exercised their stupidity instead of their wisdom in this matter will be told that they must behave in a different way in future, and that they may perhaps be asked to apologise to those whom they have considerably inconvenienced, then I think some of us would feel a bit happier than we do. But most certainly something ought to be done to prevent a continuance of this sort of thing, and to compensate these hotel keepers—not from public funds because that would only add to the taxpayers' burden—for the loss and inconvenience to which, through no fault of theirs, they have been put.
§ 4.1 p.m.
LORD GIFFORDMy Lords, I should like to say a few words in support of the Motion of my noble friend Lord Greville. I will not detain your Lordships long because I feel that the ground has been very ably covered by the noble Lord and the speakers who followed him. I think that the main complaint which any right-thinking person would make about this commandeering of hotels is that methods have been adopted which, to use a common expression, have unnecessarily put people's backs up. Possibly one reason for that is that the commandeering has been left in the hands of officials who are too junior in position, instead of being entrusted to people of higher standing, who would have done this work with tact and consideration. In some cases a great deal of inconvenience could have been avoided if some of these hotels had been taken over as messes and barracks for the officials who are being evacuated, because in many cases these hotels have remained empty and provide no suitable accommodation for the staffs that have to use them. Hutments could easily have been put up for the offices, and the hotels could have been used for the accommodation 1354 of the staffs. This would have avoided the necessity of discharging large staffs, and the hotels could have kept going through the war as messes, and could easily have returned later on to their peace-time occupation. If circumstances permitted certain rooms could also have been released for members of the public.
This commandeering of hotels in certain places has been so overdone that it is even impossible for officials who have to visit these towns on Government business to find accommodation for themselves for even one or two nights. To give an instance of the really unnecessary hardships to which people have been put, in a certain hotel I know of a family had lived for fifteen years, and had had a suite in a certain isolated part of the hotel, which they had furnished themselves with most beautiful furniture. If there had been an official of higher standing there, who could have been appealed to, he could have said, "Oh well, this particular suite will not be urgently needed for two or three weeks. We will give this family a chance to evacuate quietly and to store their valuable furniture and pictures." But no extra consideration at all was shown to them, and they were treated just like a commercial traveller who is there for one night. I do see, of course, that if things had turned out differently and we had been subjected to aerial bombardment immediately when the war started, this evacuation from London would have had to take place very quickly, but at the same time I feel I must support what my noble friend Lord Greville has said, because the method has been wrong, has caused unnecessary hardship, and has given very justifiable annoyance to a great number of people.
§ 4.5 p.m.
§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (EARL STANHOPE)My Lords, debates in your Lordships' House often wander over a considerable field, but the Notice on the Paper refers to the commandeering of hotels in various British spas for various Civil Departments. We have had a broadside attack on the Government from several noble Lords, including one who appears here in uniform, which I am bound to say is unique in my experience. But I am certainly not going to follow some of the noble Lords who have spoken in attacking the Government 1355 over what is described as the "fish muddle," the Ministry of Information, export licences, war risk insurance, the compensation payable on evacuation, and other matters of that kind.
LORD STRABOLGII am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl, but I understood him to criticise a member of your Lordships' House for addressing your Lordships while wearing uniform. I do not know if he meant that seriously, but I suggest it raises rather an important question of Privilege. We may all of us appear in uniform at any time. The noble Earl himself is fit for military service, and has great talent in that respect, and I should hate to think that we might be deprived of his services on that account. Will he give a ruling?
§ EARL STANHOPEI am certainly not prepared to give a ruling, but, as the noble Lord will remember very well, there was a Motion passed in another place as regards the members of that House, and it was then asked whether a similar rule applied here, and the Government of that day—by no means this Government; I think it was ten years ago—said that undoubtedly applied to all members of Parliament, and that they should not take part in debates on political matters while they were serving in His Majesty's Forces.
LORD STRABOLGIThis is a rather important matter. Is the noble Earl aware that last week we had a very interesting speech from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Birdwood, who appeared in the full uniform of a Field-Marshal, and no objection was taken to it? Is not a Lieutenant-Commander equally allowed to address your Lordships?
§ VISCOUNT SAMUELDoes the noble Earl draw a distinction between speeches made in criticism—very mild criticism in this case—and speeches made in support of the Government?
§ VISCOUNT SWINTONIs it not a fact that during the last war on many occasions, and particularly when important debates were going to take place in Parliament, members of both Houses who were serving with the Forces were given special leave to enable them to attend Parliament? It seems to me a most astonishing proposition.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEI should like to confirm what has fallen from the noble Viscount on the Cross Benches (Lord Swinton). I was certainly under the impression that no objection could possibly be taken, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has said, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Birdwood, in the full Service dress of a Field-Marshal, made a valuable contribution to a debate last week. I hope that the noble Earl will agree that there could hardly be an objection to one of your Lordships appearing in His Majesty's uniform.
LORD GIFFORDI am only a very junior member of your Lordships' House, but I would like to say that I am now serving in a Department of which the noble Earl, Lord Stanhope, was recently the Minister, and I am also trying to run a business of my own and do my duty in this House. As a serving officer I am quite aware of the rules concerned with the wearing of uniform during war time. I have been to the Admiralty this evening, and hurried up with my job there and asked permission of the Director of my Department to come down for three quarters of an hour to take part in this debate, which I felt was important. I feel therefore I am justified in appearing in this uniform.
§ EARL STANHOPEI apologise to your Lordships. Undoubtedly I was wrong in this matter, and I say so quite frankly. I had forgotten what had taken place in the last war, of which I am now reminded, and the noble Marquess opposite, of course, is perfectly right. I need hardly say that whether noble Lords are in uniform or otherwise, I am always glad to welcome criticism when it is helpful, whether it is against the Government or against any other Party. After all, we are all united in our object of winning this war at the earliest possible moment, and if noble Lords come in uniform to help us towards that object, that is, of course, something to which no exception can be taken. I apologise to the noble Lord for having said what I did, because undoubtedly I was wrong.
Before replying to the specific Question raised by Lord Greville, I should like to give your Lordships a general background as to the measures the Government had to take in requisitioning hotels and also, I am sorry to say, a certain number of 1357 schools. I need hardly say that not only I but every member of the Government is extremely sorry that this became necessary at all. We realise that it imposes a great deal of hardship on individuals, sometimes on hotel proprietors, but even more on their staffs who are turned off and left on the unemployment register, very often finding it difficult to get a job. I need hardly say also, as a past President of the Board of Education, that I did not welcome having to commandeer schools for these purposes. Let me just remind your Lordships of the situation. Someone quoted that last May a hotel manager was warned that his hotel might have to be taken and he could not get any further information.
§ EARL STANHOPEThat strengthens my point. He wrote and asked for information. We are told the Government are unimaginative and stupid because that information could not be given. How many of your Lordships knew last May there was going to be war? I for one did not, and certainly every member of the Government, so far as I am aware, hoped, to the very last moment, that there would not be war. The matter, of course, did not lie in our hands but elsewhere, with an individual over whom we had no control. But so far from this thing having not been foreseen, I can say it was recognised that if war came it might become necessary to evacuate Government Departments out of London—at any rate part of them—and to evacuate them perhaps in a great hurry. That was realised no less than three years ago. The matter was considered by an Inter-Departmental Committee formed under the Committee of Imperial Defence. It was reviewed from that time onwards, and reconsidered by these senior officials—not junior officials—and also considered subsequently and often by Ministers.
Your Lordships would agree that it was only an elementary measure of prudence that the Government should take such steps as they felt might be necessary in order to enable the Government to function. Government Departments do not consist only of the three Fighting Services and the A.R.P., but include all those great Departments which are dealing 1358 with the Social Services—such matters as old age pensions, health insurance, national savings, housing, to mention but a few. Nobody knows what the effect of air raids would be. The Government may be lacking in imagination, and no doubt Lord Mancroft feels fully justified in his criticism when he tells us, as he did, that war risks insurance is merely a question of arithmetical calculation. I wonder how far he is prepared to say what damage is going to be done in London by air raids?
§ LORD MANCROFTForgive me. That was not my arithmetical point. What I said was that there was no decision made one way or the other and there was this hurry at the last moment by the Weir Committee. I take it my noble friend is talking about damage to buildings, not the turnover factor omitted from the war risk insurance on stocks of goods. The insurance of buildings against air raids had to be decided one way or the other in order that building societies might know where they were and in order that manufacturers and traders and householders might know where they were. We have got this flop in and flop out in the delay in considering what should be done, and even now, the Weir Committee has not published a decision. We manufacturers were able to come at least to some conclusion. We might have been wrong, but we gave a scheme to the Government for insuring buildings. We made up what we are pleased to call our minds, but the Government have not.
§ EARL STANHOPEThere I disagree. The Government have already stated that, apart from what Lord Weir's Committee may say, they feel this is a matter that cannot be dealt with on an arithmetical basis. What damage may be done is a question of supposition. Nobody can foresee when an air raid may come or what the effect may be, whether of one air raid or of a series of air raids over a long period. Your Lordships will realise, with problems of that kind, that the Government were bound to take steps to see that the work of Government Departments should go on. It was not only a question of the destruction of Government buildings or of records and so on, which might have meant holding up the whole work of old age pensions, say, which affects the lives of many thousands of old people throughout the country; but 1359 the mere taking cover during air raid warnings might so interfere with the work of the Government that very little work might get done at all. Therefore the Government had to take steps, in the same way as almost all the large business houses have done in London, to see that alternative accommodation was available.
May I give your Lordships some idea of the size and complexity of this problem? Government in these days is a very complicated business, due less to the failings of this and previous Governments in increasing staffs than to the pressure both inside and outside Parliament to see that the Social Services are administered to the very best possible advantage and that every kind of case is foreseen and dealt with. The result is that staffs, of course, have increased and increased over a period of years until now they run into very many thousands. I confess I was startled and surprised when I heard what the figure was. To find alternative accommodation for that vast number of people was of course a tremendous problem.
It was quite useless to think of moving these staffs from London to some other great city such as Birmingham or Manchester, because obviously they were just as liable to be bombed there as in London. Therefore you have to go to provincial centres, and when you go to provincial centres your difficulty is, where are you going to find large buildings? Your Lordships may say, "Why large buildings?" Anybody who has had to deal with administration knows, of course, that if you are going to scatter the staffs in a number of buildings separated by several hundred yards or more, then administration not only becomes very much more difficult and very much more expensive, but really almost impossible, in these days when decisions have to be taken quickly on a whole number of new problems such as a war must always throw up. The only buildings where you could find office accommodation which enabled staffs more or less to work together were very large buildings such as hotels or schools. If your Lordships had been faced with the situation that here you had to find accommodation for this vast number of members of Government Departments, and to do it at comparatively short notice, you would have realised that that was the only way in which the problem could be dealt with.
1360 I may be asked—I think Lord Mancroft did ask—why, if this was foreseen, were not camps built for that purpose? I wonder if the noble Lord would have welcomed the First Commissioner of Works coming down to another place at any time, we will say, this year and saying it was necessary to have alternative accommodation because a war might happen, and then asking that a vote of several million pounds should be made by another place in order to make those camps available. At once the Government would have been told in effect: "Very well, you think that peace is past praying for, and war inevitable, and therefore that this great expenditure must forthwith be undertaken." I do not think either another place or your Lordships would have welcomed a move of that character. The officials concerned did their best to warn hotel proprietors that it was possible their premises might be required if war should happen. That was as far as we could then go, and it was not until the 3rd of September that notices were given—the 3rd of September being the day of the outbreak of war—to these various people, saying that unfortunately the Government thought it necessary to requisition their hotels in order that they should accommodate the personnel of Government Departments. The requisitioning began on the 7th, four days later.
I am quite certain from what I know of the Civil Service—and I have served in, I think, six different Government Departments—that any idea of being autocratic and unfeeling in the way in which they did their work was absolutely unintentional. I can only imagine that the shock of receiving a notice of that kind necessarily made the action seem autocratic and caused the unfortunate individual on whom a notice was served to feel that the thing should have been done in some other and better way; but I am quite certain the civil servants themselves behaved as civil servants of this country always do behave, with the utmost consideration for those with whom they have to deal. A case was mentioned of a school being told to move out some fifteen miles into the country, and the accommodation then being taken over for use by some Government Department, and reference has been made in the Press to a case where some school has been moved into some great country house. The question has been asked: "Why didn't the Gov- 1361 ernment Department move into that big country house and leave the school where it was? "There are two reasons for that. In the first place, as your Lordships will recognise, a Government Department has to be in very close touch with other Government Departments because the work of government is very much interlocked. To mention only two, the Ministry of Health and the Board of Education, for instance. Therefore it was necessary to find accommodation where pretty close touch could be kept with other Departments. That meant there must be every sort of facility for both telephone and telegraphic communication, and that, of course, was only available in the rather larger towns. If you take a country house right out in the middle of nowhere, as most of them are, that method of communication was not, of course, available, and the period from the time when it was obvious that war was inevitable to the time when those places might have to be occupied was extremely short.
These hotels and these schools were not taken over for living accommodation but for the office accommodation of the people who work in Government Departments. These people had to go and live somewhere else. They had to sleep somewhere after and they had to be within reasonable reach of their offices. If you take a country house, with possibly only a small village near it, there is, of course, no available accommodation in which the officials can live. Therefore, those arranging this requisitioning had to take offices in a town so as to enable living accommodation to be available for billeting the officers concerned. I may say that in such cases as have already moved the billeting accommodation has often been by no means princely, as is sometimes stated, and in many cases there are two people sleeping in one bed. There was this difficulty, which I think is perhaps not entirely recognised: it was felt that secrecy was necessary in this matter as obviously it would have been thoroughly unsound from a strategic point of view that you should enable the enemy to know that the War Office, we shall say, was going to move to place x, or the Ministry of Health was going to move to place y, or the Admiralty was going to move to place z. Therefore it was thought necessary that this information should be kept entirely secret, and 1362 it was kept secret up to the outbreak of war. Of course it is known to a very large number of people now, but I would point out that the censorship is now in full operation, and therefore it is much more easy to prevent that information getting to Germany than it would have been before war began.
My noble friend Lord Greville asked why we selected spas at all. The answer really is that spas largely selected themselves, because if you go to a provincial town perhaps rather far away from big manufacturing centres, you will find that very few of such towns have much in the way of hotel accommodation and living accommodation, but that is not true in the case of spas and holiday resorts. There you do get a large number of hotels which afford a great amount of available office accommodation. You also get houses which are not completely filled by those who usually occupy them because they are kept available for guests during the holiday season. I think my noble friend will appreciate that, faced with the problem such as the Departments for which I am speaking had to deal, they really had very little alternative than to go to spas to get the necessary accommodation. A question was asked whether people suffering from rheumatism and so on had been considered, and whether, particularly, those in the Services had had facilities provided for their complaints being dealt with in view of the very big requisitioning the Government have done. The answer is "Yes." The matter was considered by a sub-committee on which the Ministry of Health and the Service Departments were both represented.
§ EARL STANHOPENot actually a doctor, I think, but since this matter has been referred to the War Office I can say that seven buildings in three different spas have been earmarked for the purpose of taking those who might be suffering from rheumatism as a result of their services in the forces. As regards there being sufficient accommodation available for the public to receive treatment, that is, of course, an extraordinarily difficult question, because none of us know quite how many as a result of war may require 1363 treatment, but I am advised that accommodation will still be available, though not as good accommodation, of course, because that is one of the disabilities of having a war and having to take the very drastic and unpleasant steps which none of us like having to do. Although big hotels have been commandeered for office accommodation there are none the less a large number of boarding houses and small hotels to which people can go if they wish to get treatment for rheumatism at these various places. The facilities at most of the hydros are still available for members of the general public.
None of us knew when the war began whether an air raid was likely at any moment and none of us can tell whether an air raid may come to-night or tomorrow or not until the end of the war, but I hope that your Lordships will realise that, faced with the problem with which the Government were faced, we had to take steps to render accommodation available for Government Departments. I can say on behalf of the Government that we regret having had to take these steps at all, but I hope your Lordships will recognise that we have done the best that was possible under the circumstances, and that we have not been unreasonable or altogether unwise or lacking in foresight in the steps we took.
§ 4.31 p.m.
§ LORD RANKEILLOURMy Lords, arising out of the debate may I ask the noble Earl the Leader of the House one question? If an owner or occupier of premises can show that he has a cause of grave and unavoidable hardship, is there anybody to whom he can have definite recourse? If I remember aright there were, comparatively early in the last war, similar complaints of property being commandeered unnecessarily and of undue hardship being caused. A tribunal was set up under Sir Henry Duke, whom your Lordships knew afterwards as Lord Merrivale, which immediately set to work to consider these complaints, and I think their findings on the whole were considered just and satisfactory. I do not press my noble friend for an answer now, but I do think that that precedent is well worth bearing in mind.
§ EARL STANHOPEMy Lords, I am much obliged to my noble friend. I cannot answer him offhand, because I have not the necessary information, but I do 1364 know that steps are being taken so that some advance will be made to meet compensation which may become payable. I do not know exactly what is the machinery, or how it will operate, but I will look into the matter and see that the point raised is brought to the attention of my right honourable friend.
§ 4.33 p.m.
LORD GREVILLEMy Lords, I should like to be allowed to thank the noble Earl for his reply. I quite agree that the debate has ranged over a good many questions, and so has the reply. The reply to the questions I put was short. I have no complaint to make about the Government taking over hotels, but what I wished to be satisfied about was whether they had left sufficient accommodation for men in the Services and for civilians who might want treatment. The noble Earl said that the military authorities had been consulted, but the medical military authorities only later. That was the question to which I wanted an answer. I gather that the military authorities are satisfied that there will be enough accommodation, but I should have preferred that the medical men at the spas had been consulted about the accommodation for people like miners and fishermen and open air workers generally, because these medical men have a good idea of the numbers that go to the spas every year and could give the Government very useful information. I am sure that the noble Earl will not mind, in the event of my finding that there are any difficulties arising at a later date, if I raise the subject again.