HL Deb 25 October 1939 vol 114 cc1491-540

THE EARL OF MIDLETON rose to call attention to the official figures of the headquarters staff of the Ministry of Information published on the 9th October showing that, after 410 transfers to other Departments, a controlling staff remains of 61, of whom 56 have salaries of £800 a year and upwards and five are still unfixed—with 200 subordinates, apart from clerical staff and messengers; and to move to resolve, That a drastic reduction of the staff and headquarters expenditure of the Ministry of Information should be at once carried out.

The noble Earl said: My Lords, I have no doubt whatever with regard to the Motion that I propose to submit to your Lordships to-night, but I have never put down a Motion with less desire to address your Lordships upon it. It is abhorrent to many of us to strike a discordant note at this moment of great national emergency; but the circumstances are extremely difficult. Confidence is the main object which, I believe, all your Lordships are desirous of promoting, and with regard to this particular subject it is because of the lack of confidence that it is engendering in the nation that I venture to bring it forward. I would not by any word of mine, if I could avoid it, say anything in disparagement of the manner in which His Majesty's Government have steered this country during the last two years through very great perils, and I should regret it intensely if it was believed that any words I used this afternoon with regard to this unfortunate Ministry in any way reflected on the men who have come forward to help us in the last fortnight or three weeks—Lord Macmillan, my noble friend Lord Camrose, Lord Perth, and the representative of the Government in the House of Commons. At the same time I do not think anyone in this House, whatever view he takes, would say that confidence in the Ministry of Information has been engendered by the discussions in Parliament and elsewhere in the last three weeks. Those are the preliminary remarks I should like to make to justify my own interference in this matter.

During the last Great War your Lordships, at a most critical time, undertook the task of stimulating the Government with regard to economy in Government Departments in view of the great expenditure entailed by the war. I see present here this afternoon some of your Lordships who attended on that occasion. So great was the tension that Lord Curzon, then Leader of the House, had to get up from this Front Bench and say that if the Government were defeated with regard to the immediate abolition of a particular new Ministry which they had had to establish, they would reverse the decision of both Parties and appeal to the country at a General Election in the middle of the war. By that means a certain number of Peers, whom my noble friend Lord Salisbury and some others of us had induced to come here to vote, gave a vote in the Government's favour. The result suggested that if we had left the matter alone we should have carried our point against the Government, because the reason we did not prevail was to be found in our own exertions to get a larger majority.

I have been in Parliament so many years that I do not like to look back, but never in the whole course of my life have I received in regard to any Motion that I have brought forward such an extraordinary volume of letters as has reached me during the last week or fortnight. These show that the feeling in the country is intensely strong. I do not wish to take up your Lordships' time, but I must make it clear that I am not to be regarded as representing myself alone in this matter. What is the case? Up to October 8 many persons of eminence were brought into the Ministry of Information, as it seems to all of us, in a haphazard way. More than 1,100 appointments had been made. By midnight on October 8 this turgid stream of 1,100 incongruities overflowed its banks, and 350 were transferred to a special department under Sir Walter Monckton. Now there must be some mistakes made when you have 1,100 persons rapidly brought together, many of them on salaries of over £1,000 a year. On the following day, October 9, 300 to 400 were not accounted for when a representative of the Government in the House of Commons gave his account of the then condition of the Department, but several Ministers got a share of the plunder when the transfers were made, and on October 9 the country learnt for the first time, from the statements on behalf of the Government in the House of Commons, that this reduced Department had a controlling staff of sixty-one, a subordinate staff of 200, and a small army of clerical staff and messengers.

I have had supplied to me some figures in order to make a comparison with a similar staff during the last Great War. I think it is not unreasonable that we should look upon what this staff was then. In the Great War our Information Department was begun by two directors with one assistant, with fifty centres under Sir George Cockerill. By the end of the war the staff had risen to 526, at a cost of £77,000 a year. They were all over the world and no salary, according to the figures supplied to me, exceeded £800 a year. At this moment we have one enemy, Germany, yet we have 999 men, apart from clerks and messengers, about whom we have no details, except those who are kept under my noble friend Lord Macmillan. In 1918 the establishment was scattered all over Europe and over a good deal of Asia. In 1918 The Times gave a statement that the cost of all Departments all over the world, consisting of 526 men, including clerks, was £77,000. In the directorate no salary exceeded £800 a year. We do not know what those who are serving under Sir Walter Monckton are paid—the whole of that department has been withdrawn from us, 400 persons—but of those remaining sixty-one have salaries of £800 a year or upwards, as compared with no salary above £800 in 1918. One has a salary of £1,500, five have salaries of £1,100, two have £900, and so on.

When I look at the list of these officers given seriatim by the Government and look at the credentials of the men who have been given these salaries, I agree that it is natural that all three political Parties should be represented in such an assembly, but some of the names are very difficult to account for. Besides representatives of the three political Parties there are several representing missionary societies, there are two headmasters, there is the technical member of the Tea Marketing Board, there are four artists, there are two professors of music, there is one dramatic agent. In a scramble of this kind one can hardly wonder that film stars have set up a demand, and have very truly observed that they think they influence and are able to interpret public opinion a great deal better than a professor of Christian world relations, a director of the research survey or a director of travel and industrial development, who all have appreciable salaries, and are assisting Lord Macmillan with technical advice.

LORD STRABOLGI

Will the noble Earl forgive me for interrupting? He spoke of the three political Parties being represented. I do not think the Labour Party are represented.

SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Yes they are.

THE EARL OF MIDLETON

I should be very much surprised to find they are not. I understood all three political Parties are represented. I am very sorry if I have made a mistake. I hope your Lordships will allow me to tell you what the Germans thought about our Information Department with its meagre staff in the last war. There were only two directors and one assistant with fifty censors, against Sir Walter Monckton's 350. Herr Hitler will not be described as prejudiced and these are his words about this Department, miserable as was the size of its staff compared to the magnificent one of the present day. Herr Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: British propaganda showed itself as a real work of genius. In 1915 the enemy started his propaganda among our soldiers. From 1916 onwards it steadily became more intensive and at the beginning of 1918 it had swollen into a storm flood. That is not a worthless tribute from a work which, at all events, whether we agree with it or not, had much thought and labour evidently expended upon it.

In February, 1918, Lord Northcliffe became Director of Propaganda and Lord Beaverbrook, who I think is present among your Lordships to-day, took a share in the work. They brought their immense personal knowledge to bear upon the work. It was after they had taken it up that General Ludendorff and General von Stein made this statement: The army was drenched with enemy propaganda poisoning the hearts of our soldiers. I can only say that twelve officers, twenty journalists and artists and the other members of the Department that I have mentioned to your Lordships, have reason to be proud of the result they were able to achieve with their limited staff, operating all over the world and not merely, as at present, in one part of it alone. There was no question then of the hundreds that are now employed.

I want to ask some definite questions which I hope the Government will kindly answer with regard to this matter. I do not believe that any member of your Lordships' House will grudge any legitimate expenditure which will further our efforts to win the war, but expenditure which is not necessary for that purpose has the effect of antagonising everybody who wants economy in all Departments in the struggle in which we are engaged. The post has brought me during the last fortnight letters not merely of remonstrance but of furious remonstrance against the apathy of the Government with regard to economy. Really I think they would almost repay publication in extenso.

Now I want to ask these definite questions. Is it a fact that one civil servant, retired with a pension, who is over sixty years of age, has been recalled at £1,650 a year to do work which any journalist of experience could do at £600 a year? One member of your Lordships' House wrote to tell me that he could not attend here to-day because he had to attend a meeting of his county council. He lives in one of the biggest counties in England, and he says that one of the greatest of our public offices is urging the county council not to economise by discharging persons at this critical moment, but to continue their work even though it involves increased rates. I received a letter this morning from a gentleman who, on an important question, but still a very simple one, had to go to a great public Department with regard to his business and ask a simple question which one man could answer. He was not there a quarter of an hour, but six civil servants were called in and discussed it before he could get his answer. They did not act without an audience: there were three ladies—I presume typists—in the room: one of them was making tea, the second was knitting and the third was endeavouring to find the answer to a cross-word puzzle. What do your Lordships think when a man like that writes and tells me that he is getting no return from his business this year and he has to pay in January next 7s. 6d. in the pound on an income which he made in 1938, but which is absolutely lost to his business in 1939, and who has no reserve with which to meet the additional Income Tax? I say that those small things do infinite harm.

But I have to ask a more definite question, and I hope my noble and learned friend will reply. I am sure he is as anxious on this subject as any of us. These civil servants who have been put into a Department the demand for which in its nature must be temporary, even if this war should last three or four years—and most of us believe that it may terminate long before—if they have been replaced in their own offices, will be a charge on this country for thirty or forty years, because you cannot get rid of them again. Have those who have been temporarily taken on been warned of the terms of their engagement? Are we pledged for two years, or four years, or for what period? You cannot expect to take the last farthing which is available in Income Tax if you spend it, or if the taxpayers think you are spending it, recklessly. I ask for a definite pledge from the Leader of the House that the engagements of outside persons, not in the Civil Service, should be for a strictly limited period. They should be limited by the duration of the war. The Government have no right to take on hundreds of persons for a temporary purpose and saddle them on the country at a time when it will be most difficult to make economies.

I must go a little beyond that: I want to ask definitely what reductions are being made in other Departments in order to save the general Estimates from being inflated during this period. I am not without precedent in the matter. This Bench was differently manned in the last war. My noble friend on the Cross-Benches and some others of us present sat opposite, and I remember we got a heavy fall, because we insisted that one of the new Ministries ought to be abrogated. Lord Curzon, who was leading the House, with that sense of fitness which he always showed, immediately said that in that case the Government would take a General Election and go to the country. That intimidated a number of those whom we had called up, and we found that if we had called nobody up we could have defeated the Government. That had one effect: the Government appointed a Select Committee, of which I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer actually took the chair, and of which my noble friend Lord Rockley was a member—I do not know whether he is here to-day—and I was a member myself. We examined the whole of the public offices and made a considerable number of reductions, which were carried much further by Lord Inchape's Committee shortly afterwards.

I wonder if it has occurred to any of your Lordships to go and consult the Librarian. I have not done so. There are returns of great thickness which are rendered to Parliament annually. They may have been needed by somebody ten, twenty or thirty years ago, and they are still dished up by a number of people and sent round to any of your Lordships who choose to ask for them. I say that all these returns ought to be examined to see whether they could be abrogated at this period. I say that unnecessary work should be stopped in every direction.

Since I tabled this Motion I have had heart-rending letters. I happen to be on the governing body of two large public schools, and men have written to me to say that by no possibility can they muster the fees for their boys to remain at school after Income Tax is levied in December. I have had letters from farmers who say that they have been told that they must plough up—and of course it must be done—pasture which has been worked, say thirty or forty acres, but which at one time was divided in the middle, and they must fence that land. They have not the wherewithal to do it. I saw only the other day an ex-officer who lives in the country. He has a few paddock fields and he has been ordered to plough some of them up, but he has neither the money nor the staff, nor can he get them at this moment; nor has he any machinery or any of the necessary equipment. All these are hard cases, and your Lordships will, I trust, agree with me that they are made unutterably harder by the feeling that the Government, who have had to take an unheard of and untold proportion of people's incomes, are at the same time not exercising some moderation over the expenditure which is under their hand.

I have already detained your Lordships too long, but this I will ask. Will my noble and learned friend below me undertake on behalf of the Government that something like the Committee I mentioned, which sat under the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will be established to cut down all available expenditure in what I may call the peace Ministries? Will he give us a pledge that the Government will not be behind-hand but before the country in saying: "We embarked on this war against our will; we shall be betraying the interests of the country if we do not pursue it with every means in our power, but in doing so we know that we cannot bring in the whole nation on the same side unless we show those who are put to great difficulties to meet the expenditure involved that we are leading them and are willing to face the unpleasantest task in public life: the bringing down, even at the cost of individuals, of expenditure which has grown too inflated?" My Lords, I beg to move.

Moved to resolve, That a drastic reduction of the staff and headquarters expenditure of the Ministry of Information should be at once carried out.—(The Earl of Midleton.)

4 p.m.

VISCOUNT FITZALAN OF DERWENT

My Lords, I should like to be allowed to say a word in support of this Motion of my noble friend. I think the House is greatly indebted to him for bringing this question forward. It appears to me to be a matter of very great importance. The figures which he has disclosed seem to show an amazing want of foresight on the part of the authorities, whoever they were, who first set up this new Government Department. It is almost inconceivable, I think, how on earth it came about in the way it did. I cannot help thinking that the idea was thrown at the heads of a few officials, without any controlling head over them, and without any co-ordination among themselves, and they were told to produce a scheme. I suppose the Treasury had a look in somewhere, but I am hound to say they do not seem on this occasion to have shown their usual alertness.

Of course, no blame whatever attaches to my noble and learned friend below me (Lord Macmillan) nor indeed, so far as I know, to his very able Under-Secretary in another place. They inherited a colossal chaos, and they had to do the best they could at the moment. I have no doubt whatever that in a few minutes we shall hear from the noble and learned Lord what he has achieved in the short time he has had to put things right. I have no doubt that he will tell us that he has produced a scheme which can function efficiently and with due economy. My noble and learned friend has the reputation of being one of the Bar's best advocates, but I very much doubt whether even he, with all his great ability and experience, will be able to explain satisfactorily to the House the state of affairs he inherited when he was pitchforked into the office he now holds. It so happens that he has very adroitly arranged that this debate, which was to have taken place last week, should be postponed till to-day. That has given him time to rearrange matters, and has relieved him, I expect, of the otherwise unpleasant duty of having to attempt to explain the chaos which he came into when he first took office.

I suggest that we are here to-day not so much to learn what the noble and learned Lord has been able to do, but to pass judgment on those responsible for the initial error. I do not for a moment ask for names. I am sure the House does not want to be in any sense vindictive. We all know the difficulties which have to be encountered by any new Department that is set up, especially in time of war; but that is no reason for glossing over errors of administration. It appears to me that it is our duty to call attention—not only the attention of this House but the attention of the country—to the very slack way in which the administration of this office has been inaugurated in its early stages. The Government seem to have been guilty of gross administrative neglect. If a vote is taken on this question I shall think it my duty most certainly to vote in favour of the Motion. I shall not do so in any sense as a reflection on my noble and learned friend, nor on the Department under him, but I shall give my vote as a protest against the carelessness of those who embarked in this way on this very important task.

4.6 p.m.

LORD CAMROSE

My Lords, the Minister of Information will reply in due course to the remarks that have been made by the mover of this Motion and by the noble Viscount who followed him. I shall have a few things to say myself which I had not intended to say. I really was going to rise in regard to a personal matter. The House may remember that when the Ministry of Information was being criticised very severely, and very wrongly, for the errors that had been made in the Censorship Department, and in the alleged suppression of news, I was appointed the Chief Assistant to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Macmillan, with particular relation to Press affairs. Shortly afterwards, the muddle which had been allowed to grow up in regard to this Ministry by the people who were responsible for creating it was cleared up by the transfer of the Press and Censorship Divisions to another Department, now known as the Press Bureau. It is important apparently still to state that this Press Bureau has no connection at the present or any time with the Ministry of Information, because some of the innumerable critics of this Ministry still persist in ascribing to the Ministry the work and the errors, if there are errors to-day, made by the Press Bureau.

Well, it took a little time to clear up this muddle and, this done, we settled down at the Ministry to investigate this question of staff. On that I would like to say that, although the noble Earl, Lord Midleton, put down his Motion for last Wednesday, and although to-day he has made a very definite attack upon this list of names of the staff, he apparently is not aware, and neither is the noble Viscount who followed him, of the fact that this investigation was started, and was announced in another place, something like a week before Lord Midleton's Motion was thought of. I say that because I think it is about time that this Ministry was given a chance to function. I am getting rather tired of the gibes which are being uttered in regard to it, and it is an extraordinary thing that the people who criticise it are always either afraid to criticise the people who constructed it or are ignorant of the Department which did so. It is notorious, I think, that this Ministry, this list of names, was got together by the Home Office. It is, I believe, true to say that this Ministry was constructed at the instance and under the control of Sir Samuel Hoare. I do not see why Lord Midleton in his speech should not have mentioned this fact.

The investigation of this (shall I say?) ridiculous staff has taken some time, and has now been completed in its main aspects. I have had the duty, at the instigation of my noble and learned friend Lord Macmillan, of undertaking the job. It has not been a very pleasant one, but the results, I think, will go a long way to satisfy the critics. It is not for me to anticipate the official statement of detail which will be given to you later by Lord Macmillan, but I am permitted to say this, that it will amount to a reduction of over 30 per cent. of the responsible officials, which will mean a very large saving in money, and, of course, will also result in further concomitant savings in regard to the minor officials.

There are two other things I would like to say with regard to this investigation. The personnel has been heavily criticised, and rightly so; but there is another aspect to it. In my investigation and in my dealing with the matter I have received the greatest assistance from a number of these men regarding whom it was my duty to deal and to terminate the false position in which they had been placed. Many of them are civil servants of high standing and marked ability. It is not their fault they were placed there. They have given me every assistance in clearing up the matter, and if there is any blame at all it should be known that the blame attaches to the higher officials who sent them into these false positions. The other thing I should like to say, in order perhaps to protect Lord Macmillan against further assaults in future, is that although the staff has now been cut down—although it will be reduced by over 30 per cent.—it would be idle to assume that it is then a perfect staff for the job in which it has to function. Naturally, owing to the way it has been called together, even the balance of it cannot be all that could be desired. It will still need more assistance. It will need more in the way of publicity experts and journalists who understand propaganda methods. But the Minister has obviously got to have a certain amount of calm and time to give to the consideration of his Ministry before he can possibly effect that.

As I said at the beginning of these remarks, I really rose to make a personal statement. So far as I am concerned, as the result of this organisation, I have managed to organise myself out of a job. I joined Lord Macmillan to help him with Press matters which have now been removed. I went on to help him to put the staff right. Its construction now has gone as far as it can go. Rather, I should say, the extent to which it has to go further can only be done properly by the man who is personally and absolutely responsible for the Ministry and that is the Minister himself. Consequently, I have arranged with Lord Macmillan that I should no longer occupy an official position in the Ministry itself. The machinery has been put in running order now, and if he is given a fair chance I have no doubt he will make it function properly. I would only add that up to the present time I have given to the Ministry the whole of my time. For the future I will only too gladly give him all the assistance I can from outside whenever he feels my help may be of value. I would conclude by saying that the work which Lord Macmillan is undertaking is capable of producing very wonderful results, and I think he deserves, and should receive, the help and assistance not only of this House but of the country generally in the task he has entered upon.

4.13 p.m.

LORD STRABOLGI

My Lords, I have been one of those who, since the war began, have made certain suggestions of a mildly critical character about the Ministry of Information. I want immediately to say on behalf of my noble friends that we have heard of the resignation of Lord Camrose with very great regret indeed. At any rate, he is a practical man who knows the needs of the newspaper world, and, if he will allow me to say so, knows a great deal about propaganda. I also want to make it clear, on behalf of my noble friend, as I have said on a previous occasion, that we appreciate the fact that Lord Macmillan has not been responsible for this muddle which he and Lord Camrose, in Lord Camrose's phrase, inherited. It is the creation of the Lord Privy Seal, Sir Samuel Hoare, as Home Secretary. That is where the blame lies for the muddle which we are glad to hear has been removed. I thought it right to say that. I am sure I am speaking for all your Lordships when I say how much we appreciate the great public spirit of Lord Camrose and the valuable unpaid services he has given. With regard to one other matter—the removal of the Censorship—we are not quite clear who is responsible for that now.

THE MINISTER OF INFORMATION (LORD MACMILLAN)

The Home Secretary.

LORD STRABOLGI

Sir John Anderson, the Minister for Home Security—he is responsible for it. We may, later on, have to make very serious complaints about that. If I may address myself for a moment to the Leader of the House, the unnecessary delays in the censorship are hampering business in this country, especially in the import and export trade, to a very grave degree. Last week I myself sent over a gentleman on a very important matter of business to Paris. The week before he telegraphed and wrote to the people in France—very well-known people of complete respectability—yet when he arrived he found his letters and telegrams had never reached them owing to the censorship, and he could not do his business. That sort of thing is happening all the time. There is the famous case, which doubtless Lord Macmillan knows about, of the correspondent of a leading Danish paper in London who, at the beginning of the war, wrote to his newspaper to ask if he should continue sending his despatches. He did not get a reply. He was then dismissed for not doing his work. After he had been dismissed a telegram came containing the one word "Yes" in answer to his inquiry, which had been held up by the censorship. That matter has been put right now, but if, as we are assured, export business is vital to this country, this holding up of cables and letters is most serious for business men. I have had a letter from Belgium on an ordinary business matter which has taken eleven days to reach me owing to the censorship. You cannot do business in that way. If the Government say it is necessary that our export trade should be kept up, you must relax the censorship restrictions, which have passed all bounds of reason.

4.18 p.m.

LORD MANCROFT

My Lords, this Motion deals with the question of staffing, and therefore I will not address myself to anything that has been said by Lord Camrose, as it was a personal statement. I will confine myself to supporting the views expressed by my noble friend Lord Midleton, supported by Lord FitzAlan. This question of staffing, as set forth in the Motion, is a matter that goes beyond the Ministry of Information. It brings into question the staffing methods of other Departments organised since the war began. It is all of a piece with them. This examination offered to your Lordships' House so vividly by Lord Midleton will serve, in my opinion, as a test case. If I may be allowed I will carry the discussion beyond the point reached by Lord Midleton. We have seen in what the staffing methods of other Departments set up since the war started have resulted.

A fortnight ago strong opinions were expressed in this House about the methods connected with the commandeering of hotels and schools. Since then, though I said that I had not paid much attention to the plea of secrecy with regard to the schools and hotels that have been requisitioned, we have read a letter in the Press from a member of of your Lordships' House, Lord Lee of Fareham, in which he told us astonishing things about secrecy. The Ministry concerned has said, or has let us assume, that it is necessary to have secrecy. Cheltenham School, of which Lord Lee of Fareham is president, had been commandeered, he informed us, without any warning from the authorities—secrecy was essential. It was evidently a secret of polichinelle. The first thing the school heard about it was from a German source on the German radio. What was the official secrecy for? Was it seriously intended that secrecy was to be maintained about the commandeering of this school? Yet the persons who should not know about it were the persons who informed the Cheltenham authorities that the place was to be commandeered! What is the sense of this? Is this competent staff work?

Then again another staff or committee was set up for the distribution of fish. It was expected that the country would be bombed within a few weeks. The expectation was not realised. But, notwithstanding the fact that everything was convenient for the Committee or its staff without air raids, the arrangements for the distribution of fish failed and fell through. The Fish Distribution Board had apparently thought nothing out; they expected perhaps that the fish would distribute themselves with or without air raids and when the time came for no raids the whole scheme had to be scrapped as a failure. Bad staff work. Then we have the mess made by another Department, in dealing with export licensing for the export trade. Thousands of permits were held back and thousands of letters were left unanswered. What sort of staff competency or skill was this? Then there was the lack of knowledge by those concerned as to the fixing of the war risk insurance premium on turnover, forgetting that turnover might take place three or four times in a year on goods which were exposed to war risks. What are these departmental staffs who organise these unsatisfactory activities?

What is the method by which not only the staff to which Lord Midleton has, drawn attention but the staffs of these other Ministries have been brought into being? This is a test case of the method of getting together a staff. Of course, although we know that my noble friend Lord Macmillan is now responsible for the Ministry of Information we cannot very well blame him. That would be unfair; he has only been at the Ministry for five minutes and can know nothing of what has gone on before. And we cannot attack civil servants. But we must express our opinion somehow. It must have been foreseen that this staff for the Ministry of Information would be wanted. This staff of which we are complaining seems to have been set up in a hurry and at the last moment, and to have been set up with more concern for the size of the staff than for the suitability of it for the purpose for which it was intended. A tested staff ought to have been selected long ago. How or when was it selected? Did not any Ministry which was responsible for the selection suspect six months ago or a year ago—that is, I think, the kernel of the whole complaint before your Lordships' House —that there would be a war, or foresee that a Ministry of Information would be set up if there should be a war? And if so, did those responsible then go about to select a proper staff and in some way arrange that those appointed to the staff were suitable for the work which would be offered to them?

This Ministry is now in its third stage and after only six weeks. The original number of one thousand people, as a result of criticism and, I will say, public ridicule, was combed out; we had it down to over 400; now it has been combed out again and a further 30 per cent. taken off. What an admission of bad organisation. It does not do for the public to regard a Government Department as ridiculous and, so far as I can understand from the newspapers, this Department has been even held up to public scorn. It is against the interest of the nation that the public should look upon a Department in that spirit. I also think that this discussion shows to those on the opposite Benches, who are in favour of State Socialism or of the State running the commercial businesses of the country as they would do if on Socialistic principles, what a mess Whitehall does make of anything that is handed over to it connected with business.

My noble friend Lord Midleton has dealt exhaustively with the number of people on the staff of the Ministry of Information and their salaries. I agree that the numbers were excessive and the cost was too great. I would not object so very much to that, however, if the Ministry of Information had functioned; but it did not. It would not matter what you paid or how many you had in numbers, as long as the Ministry had done its work competently. But we heard the outcry of incompetence. Therefore I propose, by supporting Lord Midleton, to approach this matter from another angle. Lord Midleton drew attention to the names published on October 9 in the Government statement. He was contradicted by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, as to a Labour person being on that list. There is one labour person on that list. The name is M. W. Phillips, Labour Party Organisation. I think that answers the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, in his contradiction of Lord Midleton. Have the noble Lords looked through that October 9 list themselves and seen the names, and thought over the names? When they saw some of the names on that list, have not they said to themselves, as I have said to myself in one or two cases—though I am not going to mention names because it would be spiteful to do so—"How in the world did those names get on this list? What are their qualifications?" As regards two names that I have seen, I think they are the names of persons who are quite unsuitable for this highly technical job; moreover, I do not see that I could employ them in anything with which I am connected.

I read this morning something in The Times which I regretted very much to see. To-day's most important letter in The Times is signed by F. W. Hirst, a man who is known to many of us as an economist, and one held in high respect. I do not share his belief; I think he must be mistaken. He wrote about redundancy of staffs: Good natured Controllers have naturally found places for their friends, some of whom were beggared by the outbreak of war. Is that the way staffs are set up? I hope and trust not. The whole trouble we are now experiencing and the reason why criticism is being aimed at Lord Macmillan, is due to the fact that we are dissatisfied at the stupid way in which some of the staffs organized for war have acted. Let us get to the bottom of how these staffs are set up. That is my point. Let us be like medical men. If they can discover the cause of a disease they can provide a remedy. Let us see how the new staffs are set up. If we can find out how the staffs we have in mind were got together, we can probably find a better way of setting up such staffs and then the work will be done in these wartime Ministries in a manner to satisfy ourselves and the public.

I therefore suggest to the Minister that he should take a course of this kind in order to protect himself against further blame or criticism, if not also to protect his staff. He shall now ask each person whose name appears on the list of October 9—and I am surprised to hear that Lord Camrose has told us that from that list of October 9, 30 per cent. further are to go; it shows that there must have been something wrong with the recent combing-out if there are still 30 per cent. to go: there were the 999, then 410, and another one-third of the remaining 410 are to go.

LORD CAMROSE

The first was not a combing-out.

LORD MANCROFT

Removal from one Department to another: perhaps putting the pea under a different thimble! I suggest Lord Macmillan should take the line, I would take if I were back as a factory manager. I would verbally ask these 410: "Sir or Madam, on what day were you appointed? What duty were you expected to perform in this Ministry? What proofs did you or can you produce as to your competence to perform those duties? Will you please tell me the name of the person who ordered or recommended that your name should be put on the list and on what grounds of specific ability?" When we have found out by these inquiries how these persons—many of them probably perfectly competent—had come to be appointed not only on this staff but similarly on the other new staffs, then we could find the remedy to prevent incompetence and stupidity being put to work in the new Government Departments. It is no exaggeration to say that the public is not in a mood to be trifled with; the public is angry about the Ministry of Information. It will want these tests applied to other new Government staffs whose activities are likely to be called in question. The public will certainly blame Ministers if in future their Departments do not function properly. Rut to begin with it will insist upon the abolition of that phalanx of stupidity with which it has lately been confronted and to which public attention has been drawn owing to the incompetence of some of the new staffs as till recently organised. I have pleasure in supporting the Motion.

4.31 p.m.

VISCOUNT ASTOR

My Lords, we must all have heard with regret Lord Camrose's statement that he proposes to resign from the Ministry. Everybody is grateful to him for having given the weight of his experience and his talents to the noble and learned Lord and his Department. I personally am grateful to Lord Camrose for two other things in the statement he made to-day, one being a defence of many of the members of the Ministry of Information who have been misrepresented, attacked and criticised. It has been suggested—I do not say in your Lordships' House to-day but over and over again—that they ran there of their own volition. They were all of them invited by the Government or on behalf of the Government. I think many of them, people of distinguished careers and of great ability, people who are not looking for jobs, certainly do not deserve the obloquy which has been hurled upon them.

There was another remark made by the noble Lord which I hope we shall all take to heart, and that was his suggestion that we should now give the Ministry a chance to function. Of course there have been mistakes. When a Department is brought together suddenly in an emergency there are bound to be mistakes and misfits. I do not know exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, had in mind, but if he suggests that a nucleus of the Department ought to have been set up months ago, I agree with him entirely. I think if six months or a year ago, when it was quite obvious, whether we were to come to war between armies, that at all events there was a war in the air and in the Press, we ought then certainly to have set up a nucleus Department, and if that had been done it could have been added to gradually, and then, at the fatal day, the beginning of September, we could have had a proper Department functioning and not having to be improvised in a hurry with all the attendant mistakes.

Those of us who take an interest in this matter must have asked ourselves what exactly is the purpose and object of this Ministry. As I understand it, it is twofold. First of all to give information, to give news, to tell of our efforts, to state our case to our own people and to our Allies and to neutrals, and to the enemy country. It is a good case we have got, and the effort which we are making is a fine effort. But there is another function, which I think is sometimes lost sight of, and that is a function of the Ministry in replying to the lies and insinuations of the enemy. Dr. Goebbels has had several years start of us. He has set up his department, he has selected his men, he has his trained propagandists. Obviously they make psychological mistakes, but a great deal of their propaganda is very clever, subtle, misleading; it is continuous and it is unscrupulous. This has been going on, it is going on now, and it will continue. As I see it, that is one of the main functions which the Ministry has ahead of it.

Propaganda operates in the Press in the written word. I have here a very clever and attractive pamphlet, very well got up and well illustrated, which a friend of mine who was over in Holland got there and which was being distributed broadcast by the Germans. That sort of thing is going on everywhere. On the air the Germans are broadcasting in every language all over the world, and have been doing so for months and years. They are conducting their propaganda by personal contact, by word of mouth. What kind of Ministry have we got to have in order to deal with that? A very small department consisting not only or mainly of journalists—I have the highest regard for journalists—would not be able to deal with that. They have to enlighten and they have to correct mistakes. As I see it, you have to have a trained and a very highly trained staff of journalists obviously but also men with other qualifications. You have got to have a Minister with status. I mention this not in any personal way. There are people who would say disembowel the Ministry, and say that the Minister should only have the standing of an Under-Secretary. As I see it, the post which the noble and learned Lord occupies is one of the most important posts at this time. He ought to have a status, to have authority, to be able to take his colleagues, when they are recalcitrant and not supplying him with information, and either knock their heads together or go to the Cabinet.

He has to be strong enough also to stand up to the Treasury and ask for enough money. It is all very well to talk about cutting down expenditure. I am all in favour of cutting down unnecessary expenditure. There ought to be no waste, but we are not going to cope with Dr. Goebbels all over the world unless we spend more money than we are doing now. This structure of the Ministry did not suddenly grow like a mushroom on September 1. I do not believe it was even thought of for the first time by whoever was responsible for creating it in the spring. As I understand it, when the last war ended a certain number of public men, including, may be, civil servants, got together and put on paper the mistakes which had been made during the last war and the lessons which had been learned. Noble Lords will remember that a great deal of magnificent work was done by a Department under Lord Beaverbrook and another Department under Lord Northcliffe.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

And lots of others.

VISCOUNT ASTOR

Lots of others. As I understand it, at the end of the last war a certain number of experienced public servants got together and collected all the material and made notes and suggestions which should be available in the eventuality of another war, and when the Government decided to have a Ministry of Information some months ago they took that experience which had been collected at the end of the last war. They did not suddenly sit down and say: "Let us try and get some bright ideas." They said: "Let us see what the suggestions were which were collected at the end of the last war." The noble Earl in his opening remarks said that the Department was too big. I do not know how this Department compares with the Ministry of Information during the last war, with the combined staffs of the different Departments of Propaganda and Information and Censorship. To have an accurate comparison you must compare like with like. Merely taking two or three hundred members of the Ministry of Information and transferring them to the Home Office is not going to effect that economy which the noble Lord desires. The noble Earl said it was costly. Anything which has to be improvised suddenly, particularly in an emergency, must inevitably cost more money than if it has to be done in normal times. That is the penalty you pay for democracy—that in some matters you cannot act in peace-time and that you have to act quickly after war begins.

THE EARL OF MIDLETON

If my noble friend will forgive me for interrupting, may I ask what is the difference between what had to be attempted in the last war and was successfully carried out, and what has to be attempted now?

VISCOUNT ASTOR

Before I sit down I will try to amplify that, and no doubt the noble and learned Lord who is going to wind up the debate will be able to say a great deal more than I can. As I understand it, this Department was set up as the result of suggestions at the end of the last war, but there have been two new developments which were not then anticipated. One is the enormous growth of the wireless, of the use of the air. At the end of the last war we had a number of experienced men who indicated the sort of Ministry that ought to be set up, but they had not the faintest conception of the enormous development associated with the wireless, with the radio, with the air. Anything they might have envisaged has had to be very much expanded. The other development which they did not anticipate was Dr. Goebbels. I am not going to say a great deal about what Dr. Goebbels is doing, or how he is doing it, but anybody who takes the trouble to notice what is happening all over the world will realise that there is a very acute organiser of propaganda with an enormously powerful, trained organisation.

I was glad the noble Lord, Lord Camrose, said that he hoped we should be able to get on with the job, because I believe there are two spheres of activity which are going to be most important in the next few months. As I see it we shall very likely have a sort of stalemate between the Maginot line and the Siegfried line. There may be a certain amount of air fighting and a certain amount of fighting on the sea, but there are two spheres in particular in which during the next few months there should be real activity. One is economic warfare, which is enormously important, and I hope that one day the critics will direct their attention to what is being done there. I believe a great deal more could be done in the way of the energetic conduct of economic war. The next sphere in which a great deal ought to be done is publicity. We have got ahead of us a war of words, a war of ideas. It is a case where the pen is certainly going to be mightier than the sword in the next few months. The noble Earl indicated the hardships and the tragedies from which many are suffering at the present moment. Yes, but I believe good publicity will shorten the length of the war by weeks, even perhaps by months, with a great saving of life and of expenditure of money.

There is a great deal that one could say which is perhaps better left to the noble and learned Lord who is going to wind up the debate, but I do hope that we shall not be stampeded by criticism from the general public, who cannot possibly know the facts, into any panic action which would impede the successful prosecution of the war through the Ministry of Information and Publicity. I want to say something about the sort of work which has to be done in neutral countries and I will take an imaginary neutral country called Ruritania. The inhabitants of Ruritania are irritated at the moment by our blockade. They are being impoverished and they are losing money. Because they are a democracy there are different Parties and different newspapers, different interests and different points of view. There is plenty of opportunity there for Dr. Goebbels to make mischief. Ruritania has a minority question, which is fruitful soil for Dr. Goebbels. In Ruritania consequently there is propaganda by air, by Press and by personal contact. That is the situation in this imaginary country, and you will find it in almost every neutral country. In order to be able to deal with public opinion in that country you must have people who know Ruritania, who can speak Ruritanian, who can read Ruritanian newspapers, some of them belonging to the Right and some to the Left, who can assess the value and meaning of what is written in those different newspapers. You cannot get such people for £300 a year. They have got to know the country. Then, you must have another lot of experts who, when the Ministry has been informed of what is being said or thought in Ruritania, will set out to deal with it. They cannot be the same persons because they would not have the time to do it.

That applies to only one country. You must do exactly the same with groups of countries, the Balkans, the Scandinavian countries, the countries in the Near East, North Africa, Spain, Italy. All that requires trained men, educated men, men who can command large salaries in private life. I understand that at the present moment the people in the Balkans are receiving their reports of British Parliamentary debates from Germany long before our reports reach them. Surely it is worth our while to spend money in order that our version of what happens in this place and in another place should get ahead of what the Germans send. The other day I ventured to make a few observations about India and South Africa, about the way in which in the past we have neglected India and South Africa. I received to-day a letter written to me from Southern Rhodesia, in which the writer referred to the anaemic appreciation of propaganda indicated by some of the speeches and by the attitude of some people in this country. The Germans have had a run in India. I would again remind your Lordships that for months the Germans were sending propaganda in Hindustani and four or five other languages. I mention those two countries because both are slightly unsettled. There is conflict of opinion and there is considerable disturbance in India, where we are accused of waging an imperialistic war. I have no doubt that that is largely due to the fact that for months before the war Dr. Goebbels had a free run of which he availed himself fully.

I would like to ask the noble and learned Lord if he could give us some indication of what is happening in the Dominions and the Colonies section. As I understand it, the Ministry helps each Government to deal with its own national propaganda, that information is sent out by telegram, by Press articles, by broadcast scripts and broadcast records, and films, and that in addition to that the Ministry gives general help to the Empire as a whole, which includes facilities for news and pictures for distribution to the Press, short-wave transmissions by the British Broadcasting Corporation's Imperial Service, and such like. I venture to suggest to those—and there are some—who say that the Secretary of State for India and his Department, and the Dominions Office and the Colonial Office, ought to deal with the countries which they represent, that if that is done there will be overlapping. It is going to be much more difficult for each Ministry to get time from the B.B.C. or to conduct its own propaganda. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to assure us that he does not mean to divest himself, as some people have suggested, of this most important function of assisting the Dominions and the Colonies of the British Empire as a whole.

Before sitting down, I should like to repeat one thing which I said the other day. We are now at October 25, and we have been at war for seven weeks. We have had three debates here on Information, and there have been two or three in another place. Seven weeks we have been debating and discussing this, seven weeks while we have been at war, and as far as I know the matter is not settled yet. It seems to me that the real scandal is not that there are officials drawing £400 or £800; the real scandal is that the Government have allowed this matter to drag on for seven weeks without settling it. I have no doubt that other matters will disturb the public mind. I will mention the sort of questions which are likely to come for consideration: equipment, food, and economic warfare. I venture to suggest once more that the Cabinet should not merely reorganise the Ministry of Information, but that the Cabinet should reorganise itself. Seven weeks, my Lords, and we are still discussing what should be done with the Ministry of Information! If you had a small War Cabinet of Ministers without Portfolio, we should not spend seven weeks discussing how the Ministry of Information should be organised. I know enough of how things were done in 1917 to remember how the small Cabinet sat on one side of the Cabinet table and the Ministers came and sat opposite, and when the jury had heard the discussion they gave their decision and then got on with the job. They would not spend seven weeks discussing whether they were to carry out the recommendations which were put on paper at the end of the last war.

I return to what I said just now: the importance of publicity during the coming months. It is going to cost money, it will need a big staff; but I would urge upon noble Lords not to do anything to impede the successful and effective prosecution of war on the air, in the Press and by word of mouth. It would be false economy to cut down the Department to such an extent that it could not function adequately. I am perfectly convinced that if the work is well done it may shorten the war by months and save thousands of lives.

4.54 p.m.

LORD MORRIS

My Lords, in my very humble opinion one thing has emerged this afternoon which is of paramount importance. I am sure we can safely leave the Ministry of Information in the hands of the noble and learned Lord who sits below me, but I do think the time has come when Sir Samuel Hoare, the Lord Privy Seal, should say his Nunc Dimittis. I think it is quite clear from what fell from the noble Lord, Lord Camrose, that the sole responsibility and the sole blame for this extremely expensive excrescence must rest at his door. He has had an undistinguished and chequered political career, and now he occupies presumably a very important post in the inner counsels of the nation—a small band, a supposedly happy and contented few. But it is difficult to see how they can be that with a man whose blunders are such that they follow one another successively in administration after administration. He has been forgiven often enough, and I do very strongly suggest to His Majesty's Government that the time has come when he should leave the Cabinet and that someone of the calibre of the noble and learned Lord below me, or Lord Astor, or Lord Camrose, or whom you will, should take his place.

4.56 p.m.

LORD MACMILLAN

My Lords, I should like in the first place to thank my noble friend Lord Midleton for his courtesy in postponing this discussion. My noble friend Lord FitzAlan will pardon me: it was no adroit move on my part to ask this indulgence at his hands. It was because the process, which I understand this House welcomes at my hand, of retrenchment and reform had for some weeks been under way, and I thought it was better that I should be able to come to this desk to-day and give the results in a complete form, than that I should have to give them in an incomplete form. I think the results of that scrutiny, a process which, as my noble friend Lord Camrose has said, has not been agreeable to either of us, will on the other hand, as I disclose them, satisfy both this House and the public.

It is only fair to say that this Department, with which I found myself confronted the day after the outbreak of war, has been organised in the course of several months' work with a view to coming into immediate existence and full operation immediately upon the outbreak of war, so as to be in a position to meet every possible contingency. So far as I know its previous history, I understand that the selection of the, I agree, very ample staff with which it was equipped had been brought about after consultation with many interests involved, and with some interests which perhaps are now a little inclined to disclaim their participation in it. But be that as it may, it might well have been that this Ministry on the very day of the war should find itself requiring to deal with a perfect flood of material and with a series of immediate crises throughout the country. Had that been so, its activities and the calls upon it might have been very different. The course of events which have actually happened, a strange course of events in any war, which has to a large extent defeated the anticipations of almost all of us—that strangely different course of events has, however, in the period of comparative quiet which has ensued, enabled the Ministry to take stock of its position and to adapt itself to the different conditions under which it is now being called on to function.

The chief criticism to which the Motion of my noble friend Lord Midleton is addressed is that this Ministry is top-heavy, that it has been heavily overstaffed in the upper storeys, and that there has been an excess of expensive officials. That criticism, quite frankly, appealed to me. It appealed also to my noble friend Lord Camrose, and I should like here and now, before I go any further in what I have to say, to thank Lord Camrose for the public spirit with which he came forward to help me. I can assure your Lordships that it took all those powers of advocacy which have been so kindly and courteously referred to in this House to-day to persuade him to leave the pleasant seclusion of the offices of the Daily Telegraph and come to the Ministry of Information; but, with public spirit, he recognised that he could do some useful work, and he acceded to my blandishments and has helped me enormously in the very difficult and most distasteful task which was imposed upon me.

There was in truth originally a whole series of departments, each of them presided over by a director—a dignified title sometimes, however less favourably recognised in business quarters. What has happened now is that I have succeeded in reorganising the whole structure of the Ministry into eight divisions, and your Lordships will appreciate at once that that is really a case of stripping for action, because these divisions fall into three classes. There are first of all the divisions which deal with the actual work of propaganda. As my noble friend Lord Astor has pointed out, that is a worldwide task. Consequently we have to have a division which deals with the whole foreign field, and the foreign field embraces not only neutral countries but our Allies. Then we must have an important section or division dealing with the Empire, to which allusion has also been made as one of the most important parts of our work. Then we must have also a section dealing with the home propaganda. That is rather different from the foreign and the Dominion and Colonial aspect, but it is not an entirely negligible portion of the work. Lastly we have, in a section quite by itself, but a very small section indeed, with a very small staff, those who are concerned with the United States of America, to which the relationship of this Ministry is quite special and is not put in the same category as our relation to others.

Well, there are four divisions, dealing with the four divisions of the work of the Ministry. They are the people who use the material of propaganda. But you must also have, of course, persons who are concerned with the technical task of producing, distributing, and disseminating propaganda. For this you must have a general production division. These are people who place the orders for printing, who look to the make-up of pamphlets, who arrange documents, who compete with the attractions of Dr. Goebbels's publications. That is quite a large and a rather technical business. Then you have films. That is not a large department fortunately, because its staff is very limited, but it is a very, very important department, because the publicity value of films is enormous. It was to some extent developed, I remember, in the last war, but now, as one knows, in the cinema industry—I have almost astronomical figures as to the number of cinemas that exist in the world—it has grown enormously, and I personally believe that the appeal through the eye, or the pictorial representation of facts, is exceedingly valuable. Then you must also have another department dealing with radio relations and communications. Those are the main divisions of the reorganised Ministry. There is one other division which is essential in every Government Department, one other only, the administrative division, which looks after the accounts and the establishment and finance, and has in it a small section dealing with intelligence. People may say that the intelligence is rather limited, but it is put there because its real task is to collect material of general use to all the Departments. It makes the necessary Press cuttings, and keeps an eye on the Press, and so on, in order that it may be a reservoir of general information for all the Departments.

The effect of these arrangements is that we have been able to dispense at headquarters with sixty-seven officials, with the corresponding reductions in the ancillary staff, and that reduction represents a pay-roll of the order of £46,000 a year. The remaining staff—or should I say the surviving staff?—has been accepted by the Treasury as reasonable in number and grading for the present work of the Ministry. The task to which my noble friend Lord Camrose and I have addressed ourselves, and which has had these remarkable results, was not a pleasant one for a new Minister, who came entirely afresh to his task. I should gladly have come into command of a happy ship and have sailed over as calm seas as would have been possible in such a time of storm as we live in. But I felt, and felt from the outset, that in war one must in these matters be ruthless, and I am happy to say that those with whom we have had to deal have responded with admirable spirit—all the better and all the more worthy surely of admiration when one thinks, as we have been reminded by my noble friend Lord Camrose and my noble friend Lord Astor, that these people were invited to their posts and did not themselves seek them.

They were invited to undertake a public service, and the tasks, some of which have now been found to be unnecessary, as things have turned out, were tasks assigned to them, upon which they have spent, to my own knowledge, long hours every day, from ten o'clock in the morning to eight or nine at night, Saturdays and Sundays—no tasks of their own choosing. Many of them have now been told that their services are no longer wanted, and, while I endeavoured to part with them with every circumstance of courtesy and appreciation, still I am afraid there must be many sore hearts among those—and many of them people of sensibility, as well as of ability—who were good enough to give their services. Therefore I feel that I ought once more to pay a tribute as Minister to those who have had the misfortune to be the victims of this particular clearance scheme in the Ministry.

So far I have dealt with the specific points raised by Lord Midleton's Motion, which he directed to the numbers of the staff and the salaries of the staff. But a Minister is not concerned only with the numbers and the remuneration of his staff. He has surely to consider their suitability for the tasks which are allotted to them. It has been my endeavour in this process of elimination to retain officials, members of the Ministry, well qualified for their tasks. I shall undoubtedly, as time goes on, have to effect further changes here and there, as experience dictates and new needs arise, and I have particularly in mind the desirability of obtaining more assistance from the journalists' profession in the publicity side of the Ministry's work. Some progress has been made in this direction. Journalistic ability is chiefly required in the foreign department. Your Lordships will readily realise that the particular form of journalistic skill which is required in the foreign department—as indeed I think Lord Astor has already pointed out—is journalistic aptitude of quite a special type. The journalist must not only be skilled in his own profession, but he must also have a special knowledge, an expert knowledge, of the country with which he has to deal.

Something has been said about the personnel disclosed in the statement recently published as a White Paper, where there were so many civil servants. I do not think that that Paper really quite did justice to the Ministry, because a good many of those who are described as civil servants and gave to the office the appearance of being over-staffed with civil servants, were there not because they were civil servants, but because they were persons who had had large experience of certain foreign countries, often by periods of service abroad, or by being associated with these countries in the Foreign Office or elsewhere at home. The reason for their selection in many instances was that they had just those special aptitudes which were required, rather than the fact that they were civil servants. We have already, of course, had the benefit of much assistance from the journalists' profession in connection with the Press attachés at the different Legations.

In considering what organisation you are going to have, the number of persons to be employed, the salaries to be paid, and the aptitudes which they must possess, surely the predominant matter is the question of the work which that organisation is going to perform. There is a remarkable absence of appreciation of what the work of propaganda really means. It has two main tasks. It has the positive task of representing your case—the case of your country—in every other country. It has the negative task of counteracting the enemy's case equally widely and seeing that no lies about our country go unanswered. One is the positive side and the other is the negative side of the work of propaganda. As to the extent of the work, I should like to indicate what I confess I did not myself fully realise until I assumed this task. There are really three aspects of the work of propaganda. In the first place you must collect the necessary information to enable you to prepare propaganda material; but there is no use in producing propaganda material unless you can, to use a colloquialism, "get it over," and therefore the next thing is to ensure that the channels of communication between your country and all destinations are opened up and made available. Then, finally, you have to prepare the actual materials of propaganda—films, lectures, newspaper paragraphs, articles, and all the rest.

Every one of these jobs is a skilled job and requires both knowledge and experience for its adequate performance. Just think of sitting down to frame an organisation to deal with the world. Remember that we are confronted with between fifty and sixty countries as diverse as you can imagine, with different histories, different politics, different Constitutions, different languages, and to each of these the propaganda of our country has to be, or ought to be, addressed. Fortunately, we have been able to group certain countries—for instance, we have created a group of Scandinavian countries—with a general outlook in common, and by that means we have been able to limit the actual number of specialists for our foreign work to twenty-six or twenty-seven. But these twenty-six or twenty-seven men have to be highly skilled specialists who have to deal with no fewer than fifty or sixty countries, and it is not easy to get people who have these qualifications. Personally I think the remuneration they get is far below their abilities and that to which they would be entitled.

The Foreign Publicity Department of our Ministry has correspondence regularly with seventy-five different countries and localities. Letters are constantly coming in, and these letters have to be considered and answered. The men who are doing this work vis-à-vis foreign countries have first of all to equip themselves for their task. They must be instructed propagandists. They must keep themselves in close touch with the Press of the countries with which they are concerned. Many of these countries have a most extensive Press, which they have to follow carefully in order to note the movement of thought in the countries to which they are, so to speak, accredited. They must know what is being broadcast in each of these countries. The movement of feeling in these countries is largely affected by local broadcasts which now take place in practically every country. Therefore we have, in association with the B.B.C., an arrangement by which we take down every day the broadcasts which have been issued in every country—their own native broadcasts, not the ones we are sending out. We collect that material, and that involves every day dealing with a quarter of a million words, which are digested subsequently into a digest of about eighty pages and provide material not only for the Ministry of Information but for the Foreign Office and other Government Departments to which it is essential to know what is happening and what is the opinion of other countries. To handle that vast amount of material itself is no small undertaking, in all sorts of languages and from all sorts of countries, yet it is one of the most valuable sidelights on opinion in other countries.

Then the man accredited to a certain country has to keep in touch with visitors and travellers who come from that country, and he has to see that distinguished representatives of that country are properly received here. He must keep in touch with the diplomatic representatives in this country of the country with which he is associated. He has to read all the official despatches that come in from our Ministers abroad, indicating that particular things are happening in another country. I see them myself every day—suggestions as to why we cannot send more copies of the Blue-book, or why that amazing and moving story of Sir Nevile Henderson is not more widely utilised throughout the world. These applications and suggestions are coming in from Embassies and Legations abroad and have to be attended to. They are of the utmost importance. All these things he has to do before he begins the task of creating his propaganda.

So far he has only been preparing and equipping himself for his task. The next thing that happens is this. In addressing himself to his task, he says: "I think I know the feeling in that country. I think I know what I should do. The next thing is, how can I reach that country?" Immediately on the outbreak of war almost all means of communication were clamped down in the most rigid way. Steamship lines ceased to run, the course of the posts was impeded, the air mail was stopped, radio-telephony had to be cut down, such cable facilities as existed were claimed by Governments for priority messages, and practically all the means of communication were almost immediately stopped. That produced, as your Lordships can imagine, a great part of the difficulty with the Press correspondents in this country with whom I have the utmost sympathy, but these things were done at the opening of the war because no one knew what was going to happen.

One of the main tasks of my Ministry has been to secure the steady relaxation of these rigid regulations where it was found by experience that things could be done without imperilling our cause or without aiding our enemies. We have been able to do any number of things, and I have had the most grateful recognition from the Press, foreign Press correspondents, and others of the work done by the Ministry in that way. But these involve difficult negotiations. When you have to deal with the reopening of things that have been closed, that means interviews with other Government Departments, and often many difficult letters to write. But that task has to be done, and it is a most important one. I have indicated that, first of all, you have to examine the sources of your work, then you must get the technical mechanism, and that side of the work involves the employment of people who know about the technicalities of communication, not only the wireless, cables, radio-telephony, and other means of reaching countries, but also about such technical matters as films and other things of that sort.

Lastly, you have to deal with the output itself. You now have your equipped propagandist. He has found out he can get his material to the destination, but he is still at the beginning of his task because he has to consider what is the best thing for that country. If films, he has to provide for them, and we know well the difficulties that beset the film industry at the beginning of the war. Or it may be a pamphlet has to be sent, or one of the local newspapers has to be assisted with articles. He has to produce all that material. Your Lordships would agree, after the indication I have given of the nature of the work required, that if this field is to be adequately covered it is ridiculous to talk about its being done by a manager and a couple of office boys. I do not wish to detain your Lordships too long, but I confess that I regret that so little recognition in the controversies that have arisen about this Ministry has been given to the actual work that they have done. I have made it my business to ascertain just a few things that have been done in this much-maligned Ministry for which they have got no credit. I ask this House to-day to give credit to the Ministry for these good pieces of work which have been done by the officials of the Ministry.

Just let me give you one instance. At the outbreak of the war, how many Press attaches had we? Germany had Press attaches in every country and hordes of agents. How many Press attaches had we? We had in all eighteen. When you think of the number of our Embassies and our Legations, reflect upon all that had to be done to see that those countries had people looking after what we might call our publicity in those countries, and remember that we had only eighteen Press attaches, you will realise how very exiguous had been our effort in that matter. By the pressure of the Ministry twenty-one new Press attachés have been appointed in different countries of the world, accredited to our Embassies and Legations there. In addition to that fifty-nine assistants have been added to cope with the vast increase of work which is required. The Press attaché is probably one of the most important persons in the work of propaganda. He represents us on the spot and he is a person skilled in publicity. He is able to tell us by his despatches what is the kind of material that is required in that country, and, when the material is sent out, he can arrange for its translation into the language of the country to which he is accredited. He knows the way to disseminate it, and he does the work of the Ministry on the spot. As regards that class of official, fortunately this country is singularly rich in people who have had that kind of experience and are willing to take up this difficult work. That class of experience is of immense value, and I am happy to think that one thing for which at least this Ministry may take credit is that we have more than doubled the number of Press attachés since the outbreak of war, and in that way doubled the efficiency of our propaganda.

Let me take another example. There have been constant complaints that British photographs are not reaching foreign countries and the United States in sufficient numbers. Well, since October 17, that is rather more than a week ago, we had issued 4,806 photographs representing no less than 600 different subjects, and in the fortnight to October 17, that is the two weeks preceding October 17, no less than 2,355 photographs were provided for the Press of this and other countries. Permits have been arranged at our instance for Press photographers to go and get interesting pictures in this country. We have obtained leave to take photographs of camps and activities there and of industrial work and other things that are going on here which show Britain's effort. Over 500 of these permits have been issued through our agency to Press phtographers. We have arranged for official photographers to go to France to follow the war there. We have been able to provide for the wirelessing of official photographs to the United States and elsewhere abroad, and we have also had a large number of official photographs released to the Ministry by the Fighting Services.

Now let me give you just one other figure which, I think, will displace the uninformed criticism that has been made on this matter. We made a survey of the Swedish Press for the week October 4 to 11. Sweden is one of the countries as to which it is said our propaganda lags lamentably behind the German. Swedish newspapers examined for that week showed that they had 190 column inches of British photographs and seventy-seven column inches of German—77 to 190. After that, can it be said that the British case is not at least getting a pictorial chance in the Press of Sweden? These are the photographs in large measure which we have been able to prepare and send out. Take various other activities of that sort, like the Bluebook on the origins of the war—one of the best sellers the Treasury has ever had and a great historic document. We have seen that copies of that should reach 182 destinations throughout the world in varying numbers according to what was required from each of those places. These are not easy tasks, my Lords. They cannot be done in one day. They have to be done by people who know where to send them, who know how many should be sent in order that public money may not be wasted by sending things to places where they are not required.

Take another matter which I am sure will be consoling to noble Lords. I felt that one of the worst features of the situation was that our newspapers were not getting abroad. After all, our newspapers are our best propaganda material and when I discovered that days were being occupied by our newspapers in transit abroad, with the result that most of the capitals of the world were not seeing our Press at all, or if they did do so, were obliged to see it belatedly and when it was completely out of date, the Ministry addressed itself vigorously to, this matter. With the assistance of the Admiralty and the Air Ministry, and the K.L.M. and Sabina Air Services, I am, happy to be able to tell the House that a daily air mail service has been instituted and that you can buy your Daily Telegraph (Lord Camrose), your Times (Lord Astor) or your Daily Herald (Lord Southwood)—

LORD STRABOLGI

Don't forget the Express.

LORD MACMILLAN

The Express also, which announced I think, this morning very kindly my resignation. The accuracy of the Press, of course, is beyond dispute, but I still happen to be here having the honour to address this House. These papers can be obtained to-day at The Hague, Brussels, Amsterdam and Rotterdam on the day of publication in large numbers, and they are bought up by the people of those countries. It is a commercial proposition. Happily it does not end there. British newspapers—and I hope a representative selection of British newspapers—go on to Copenhagen, to- Oslo and to Sweden, but we cannot get them there till the next day. They are, however, only one day late there. I remember myself getting The Times at Stockholm at five o'clock on the day of publication in peace time, but now they have to wait till the next morning. That, I must say, does not seem to be a very serious drawback. Is not that work that is worth doing? That means that you have a number of communications which have to pass before you can move the various other Departments to take the necessary action and before one can get these results.

Take broadcasting. At the outbreak of the war we had programmes in, I think, seven or eight foreign languages only. Well, we felt, and so also did the Broadcasting people feel, that this must be greatly extended. I am happy to say that we have now, since the outbreak of the war, initiated broadcasting in seven more languages, and, what is rather interesting I think is that we have in particular been able—or rather I should say, the Broadcasting Corporation, which has initiated it, has been able, but we have supported and urged it—to broadcast in the languages of the Balkan States where, at the moment, it is most important. We now have many languages added to our number, including the Magyar, Czech, Serbo-Croat, Rumanian and Greek, and that has all been done since the war began.

What about another matter? Take films. This inactive Ministry of mine, which has done nothing whatever, has been engaged vigorously in dealing with the question of films. Not that it intends itself in any way to engage in the film industry. What it proposes to do is to utilise the existing facilities of the film industry for production, exhibition and distribution. We recognise that the news-reel is probably one of the most effective of all things; and happily the Ministry has arranged with the Service Departments for each news-reel company to have its own representative at the front, so that we shall be able to get news-reel pictures from the front. One recognises how important in the modern arsenal of weapons of the mind the cinema, with its vivid appeal to the eye, is, and we are most anxious to increase its efficacy. Only the other night I went to see a film which we have commissioned. It is called The Lion has Wings. It has been prepared with the approval of the Secretary of State for Air and has been produced by Mr. Alexander Korda in six weeks. The production of this film in that very short time has been a very remarkable achievement. It is an admirable film of our air activities both in defence and in attack. It will be released in a very short time and I hope that it will be shown next Monday in London. Arrangements are being made in response to cabled requests for it to be shipped immediately to South Africa, New Zealand, India, Singapore and Canada.

LORD STRABOLGI

May I ask a question on this matter of films?

LORD MACMILLAN

Certainly.

LORD STRABOLGI

It is very important, as Lord Macmillan says. In what way is the film industry assisted—by being given facilities or are they subsidised in any way?

LORD MACMILLAN

The idea that we have, my Lord Strabolgi, is that we should put up a proposition to the film industry and get anyone who is willing to take it up. So far as subsidising is concerned we would be willing to subsidise a film that had propaganda value, but some of them may be, and I think this one has been, so good that it is going to be a commercial success. The skilled persons who have seen it have said that it has real commercial value and it is a most striking film. I hope the noble Lord will go and see it and form his opinion of it.

LORD STRABOLGI

With pleasure.

LORD MACMILLAN

I should like at this moment to pay a tribute of thanks to the artistes who gave their services for nothing in this matter and who have made a most valuable contribution. To Mr. Korda we are indebted for this really fine show.

Apart from the headquarters work there is regional work throughout the country. That I confess I thought was organised on too extensive a scale. It is really not for discussion this afternoon, but I am proposing to simplify that on lines which I am sure will work well, will do all that is required, and will be much more economical. I have an Advisory Council associated with me which is representative of all parties and interests, who have taken an active and helpful interest in my work. They have emphatically represented that there should be a certain amount of regional representation; but they have left it to the Ministry to devise the best method, and I hope to be able to establish the necessary contact with the country with a simple and relatively inexpensive machinery, largely voluntary.

I have taken only some samples of the things which this Ministry has done, but I venture to think that many of them must be news to members of this House who have read nothing about this Ministry but its failures and omissions. But these are real tasks which have been going on under circumstances of peculiar difficulty, when the Minister's chief business was considering how he might best answer questions here and elsewhere and when he had domestic troubles to deal with. But in spite of that this work has been proceeding. Just contrast that position with the position of my opposite number, Dr. Goebbels. Germany has been carrying on its work of propaganda for five or six years. The cost has been estimated at anything from £6,000,000 to £20,000,000 a year. It is a pretty wide range, but it is not more wide than the range of most of the facts which we receive from Germany. But at any rate it is not less than £6,000,000 a year. They have hordes of agents in every centre. Some of the things I hear are very amazing indeed. They have agents going round and distributing papers free to people and they leave them in the lounges of hotels. Things of that kind are going on. Germany's geographical position is extremely advantageous, because they are in the centre of Europe and everybody is round them, so to speak. They have a great advantage over us in their geographical position. Our position is less favourable, but we have of course certain advantages, although we do not share one advantage which they have, because we unfortunately suffer from the handicap of veracity.

I apologise for having detained your Lordships so long, but there comes a time when even a Ministerial worm will turn, and I felt that the time had come when one could tell your Lordships something about this Ministry to which I have succeeded and to whose defects, quite frankly, I was early alive; because you may, I think, trust one who is both a lawyer and a Scotsman to be appreciative of difficulties when he sees them. I was quite alive to the fact that there were many difficulties and drawbacks; but surely the best thing, when one finds difficulties, is not to ridicule them and make it difficult for the man who is trying to remedy them, but to give him the best possible help you can in his task. When you employ a surgeon to do a difficult operation you do not jog his elbow all the time when he is in the middle of his job. And I venture to think that the criticism which we have had, so far as it has been useful and constructive, has been of great help to us; but so far as it has been derisory, on the other hand, it has tended to defeat the value of any work we have done, because it has enabled our enemies to say: "See what the English think of their own propaganda." What is the use of spending any money on propaganda which is derided in the country of its origin? Criticism of it is quite a different matter if it is administered helpfully, and no one is more ready to accept it than myself. I can understand the view that there should be no Ministry of Propaganda, but I cannot understand the view that there should be an inefficient Ministry of Propaganda.

5.38 p.m.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, I think we have every reason to be thankful to my noble and learned friend for the speech which he has just delivered to us. I think we have gained more information from the Ministry of Information in that speech than in all the several discussions which have taken place in your Lordships' House on the subject. Did my noble friend Lord Astor tell us just now that there have been three or four discussions in this House?

VISCOUNT ASTOR

This is the third.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

Yes. My noble and learned friend the Minister has said that he is himself rather grateful for these discussions, and no doubt they have been effective. We know how badly things began. My noble friend Lord Camrose told us in what a false position the whole subject had been left by that Minister who then had charge of the matter, and it was only as a result of various pressures applied in your Lordships' House and elsewhere that these improvements have taken place. The Censorship, for instance, has been removed from the Ministry. That was done under pressure. Then there, was the reduction in the staff. Lord Camrose, to whom we are very grateful indeed for his help, told us that the personnel has been diminished by 30 per cent. I am not quite sure whether the figures given by the Minister himself afterwards represented the same 30 per cent. as that to which Lord Camrose had referred.

LORD MACMILLAN

If I may answer, my Lords, they are the same figures. One is in terms of percentage; but it represents, not the total staff of the Ministry, but the higher officers.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

I thought that was so.

LORD MACMILLAN

Yes.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

The noble and learned Lord told us, I think, that sixty-seven had been reduced. That was a very substantial reduction amongst the higher branches of that service, and there had been a saving of £46,000 a year in consequence. I am sure my noble friend Viscount Astor would agree with me in saying that if pressure has produced a result like that it has not been in vain. It has admittedly reduced a redundancy of sixty-seven leading members of this office and has saved the country £46,000 a year. That is certainly a great advantage. The Minister has told us that he thought that further reductions could be made in what he called, I think, the regional staff. I am afraid I am not quite familiar with the particular arrangements of the office, but apparently there is a large staff spread over the country which also is capable of being reduced, and ought to be reduced, and which the Minister is reducing. These are the results of the pressure which has been applied in your Lordships' House and elsewhere.

I do not quite know how far this reduction of sixty-seven leading members of the staff covers the fifty-six gentlemen who have salaries of over £800 a year according to the noble Earl's Motion. That still remains a little doubtful. But at any rate we may congratulate ourselves to this extent, that very great results have followed from the pressure which has been made in your Lordships' House and elsewhere. Of course we are bound to accept, and we do accept from the noble and learned Lord, his account of the vast scope of the activities of the Ministry. As he sketched it, and as the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, sketched it, it stretches over every quarter of the globe, not only in Europe, but in Asia. If you have to have representatives in your office for managing propaganda not only in Europe but in America and in India and throughout the world, a large staff is necessary. We must, of course, accept that from the noble and learned Lord. I do not know how far we shall ever know what are the results of his efforts, for a great many of them are necessarily and essentially confidential, but we must accept it so far as he tells us it is so, and we may hope for the best results.

I would only like to say this. Nothing is so easy as spending money. I think your Lordships are aware that we have presumed upon that facility to an amazing and alarming extent at the present moment. That was the tendency in this country before the war. There is a feeling in this country that once you establish in the public mind that a certain service is good you cannot spend too much money upon it. We have seen it in education, we have seen it in regard to roads, and in any number of different directions. We have spent our money like water. I hope your Lordships will agree with me when I say that that must come to an end. We cannot afford to go on after this war on the same sort of scale as before the war. We have not got a bottomless purse. The thing is impossible. When you apply it to the armed forces of the country in times of great crisis, certainly I for one have nothing to say. Every penny must be found that is necessary, and cheerfully found. But we cannot go on the principle that it does not matter what we spend. It does matter. When you come to the subsidiary services, by which I mean something outside the provision for the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, then I think the Government ought to consider before they embark upon expenditure which is not absolutely essential.

I do not like to apply my moral to my noble and learned friend. It may be that his service is so essential that we ought to squander our money upon it. But I cannot help having my doubts. I am quite sure of this, that your Lordships and another place are responsible to this country for the expenditure that has taken place and that you must realise that even the richest country in the world cannot bear more than a certain burden. Therefore, if there are too many gentlemen getting £800 per year, and if there is too wide an extent of the machinery of the Ministry of Information, and if we do not get full value for our money, I hope the noble and learned Lord will use his great influence to restrict it. Let him remember that when he asks for our confidence, as he has done to-day, and asks for our confidence in language which precludes the possibility of checking what he says, we accept it because we believe that upon him rests a very grave responsibility, a responsibility which I have no doubt he is equal to bear.

5.48 p.m.

THE EARL OF CRAWFORD

My Lords, I should like, for a few moments, to deal with one or two technical questions. I understand that the Censorship Department is now a separate body and is under the Home Office. It would be very interesting to know what are the relations between this new Department and Lord Macmillan's Department. In many ways they overlap, and at the outset it was considered natural that they should be under one head. It is important that the censor shall not censor what the noble and learned Lord is sending out, or delay what is coming to the noble and learned Lord. The relations between these two Departments is therefore very close indeed. I do not know why the Home Office should have anything to do with censorship. It is not an office which has shone in this matter hitherto, and for my part I see no objection to leaving it in the same Department. The police do not look after the Press or Press correspondents. The police have different work. They do not do censorship. It is not their job. I should like to know a little more about the four hundred and something officials who have been removed from the Ministry of Information.

LORD MACMILLAN

Three hundred and fifty.

THE EARL OF CRAWFORD

The noble Lord, Lord Camrose, told us that there has been a reduction of 30 per cent. in the higher officials. Was that before the three hundred had been taken for the office of censorship or afterwards?

LORD CAMROSE

Afterwards.

THE EARL OF CRAWFORD

In that case the 450 would have been 530 or 540.

LORD CAMROSE

Might I explain to the noble Earl? The Censorship and News Department, I think, had 410 people, then and now, and they have simply been taken over into another Department altogether and have no concern whatever with the Ministry of Information.

THE EARL OF CRAWFORD

That I understand. I wanted to know whether they also have been reduced by 30 per cent., like the Ministry of Information.

LORD MACMILLAN

Might I explain? I think there is really a misconception. The censorship with which we have to be concerned is not the censorship as understood by the ordinary citizen at all; it is what is called the voluntary Press censorship. It was started under the same roof as the Ministry of Information as a convenience to people who wanted to get their Press articles passed there and then, so that they might be protected against possible prosecution by the Director of Public Prosecutions. It has nothing to do with the real Censorship, which is the War Office Censorship, and which looks at our incoming letters and outgoing newspapers. This was a convenient facility of a voluntary character instituted in association with news receipt and despatch.

THE EARL OF CRAWFORD

I thought it was connected with the other Censorship.

LORD MACMILLAN

No, it is quite distinct. It has this great advantage that, if an article is submitted to this voluntary censorship at the Ministry building, then the War Office Censor will let it go through the post without opening it. This is an indulgence given to pressmen so as to enable them to get their articles more quickly through the post because they know they will not be opened.

THE EARL OF CRAWFORD

I am very much obliged; that clears up a matter which was not clear to me at the outset. But there was a large paid staff in that censorship. I come back to my original question: Does the 30 per cent. reduction which has been made cover the whole of the Censorship and the Ministry of Information, or only the Ministry of Information proper?

LORD MACMILLAN

No one of the high officials I have mentioned was in the Censorship and News Department. I think this should be borne in mind, that the Censorship Department works 24 hours a day, and therefore you must divide it by three, because the staff cannot work more than eight hours each. Although there are 300 in the Censorship Department, they work in eight-hour shifts, and therefore there is a staff of 100 working day and night.

THE EARL OF CRAWFORD

You must decrease that by fifty or sixty, because some of the work is on the Press attaché side. Therefore let us hope that the net reduction is something like 15 or 20 per cent. I think that more changes, as Lord Macmillan indicated, will probably be necessary in organisation, and for that, if for no other, reason I regret that Lord Camrose, after a fortnight at the Ministry of Information, should already have resigned, because I am sure that his direct and official assistance would be extremely valuable.

I want to make one further general observation. I hope that Lord Macmillan will not over-organise his Department. What we are suffering from in so many other War Departments is over-organisation. Every single item, however insignificant, is placed under some Director-General. That is what is throttling business and enterprise to-day in this country; that is what is going to make it difficult, if not impossible, for so many people to pay their taxes. The Ministry of Information in the last war—I had many conflicts with it—pursued rather a different course. There was not an enormous Ministry of Information; it was relatively a very small thing, but it did an immense amount of work. It used the newspapers instead of doing the work itself, and I hope that that aspect is not going to be forgotten now. Let us make the newspapers be their own Ministry of Information, work their own censorship, and so on; they will do it much better that any Government Department can. In the last war the editors and all the chief officials of newspapers were at the beck and call and the disposal of the Government as freely as they wished. They could see the Minister and his small staff and from him get the attitude which they were to adopt, and which they adopted with the greatest frankness and loyalty, with admirable results. I hope that will not be overlooked. I am sure that point must be in the War Book, but I do fear rather, from the very interesting account that Lord Macmillan gave, that there is some danger that the Central Department may be over-organised; and I am sure that the Press ought to be encouraged to work for themselves and for us.

Just one final question. Would Lord Macmillan give us a White Paper, or something on paper, to tell us about the new organisation of the Department and of the sister Department of the Press Censorship, to supersede the columns of the OFFICIAL REPORT, which are already occupied with the organisation of the Ministry? I think that would be extremely useful and interesting for the public to know.

5.54 p.m.

VISCOUNT ELIBANK

My Lords, I think we are all very much indebted to the noble Earl, Lord Midleton, for bringing forward this Motion to-day, because we have received information of the greatest value in forming an opinion upon this new Department. I sympathise very greatly with Lord Macmillan in the task which he has undertaken. I do not think that the country realises sufficiently the enormous amount of propaganda by Germany which the Department has to face overseas in neutral countries and other places. I am aware that before the war we were spending only something like £60,000 upon propaganda in what are called neutral and other countries to-day, whereas Germany was credibly reported to be spending £6,000,000 to £8,000,000 per annum upon the same service. That was a handicap with which this Department of Information started when it began its work at the beginning of the war.

Notwithstanding that, I think we can congratulate ourselves, as the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, has just said, on the result of the pressure exerted in this House and other places upon the Department. The only point which I am extremely sorry about is that my noble friend Lord Camrose has, as he has stated, organised himself out of that Department. I sincerely hope that the time may come when he may be associated with it once more and give it the value of his great experience, his great knowledge and his great abilities to help this very important work of publicity. I agree entirely with what my noble friend Lord Astor has said about the importance of this publicity. I believe that publicity will have as much effect in winning this war as almost any other action that we can take. I also agree with my noble friend in his reference to a smaller War Cabinet. I am sorry that we cannot congratulate ourselves upon having made much effect by the pressure which some of us have attempted to exert upon the Government towards that end. I wish sincerely, having regard to this question of the Ministry of Information and various other matters like export trade and so on, that the Government would definitely take in hand the question of creating a small War Cabinet, as in the last war, of five or six members, in order that they might devote themselves to the duty of looking after the policies of the war, apart from all the departmental duties with which they have to deal to-day.

It is perfectly obvious that the Ministers who are engaged upon the details of departmental administration have not time to give thought to the bigger policies of the war. Here we are to-day engaged in a war with Germany, and we do not know what engagements we may have in the future towards or against Russia. All round the world there are problems of the greatest magnitude and difficulty, and growing in complexity every day, and it is perfectly obvious, to some of us at least, that the time must come when a smaller Cabinet will have to deal with these matters and keep them in view apart from departmental duties.

THE EARL OF CRAWFORD

It is not in this Motion.

VISCOUNT ELIBANK

The noble Earl says it is not in this Motion. I am adding a word in support of a recommendation which was made by my noble friend Lord Astor, and I believe, with the courtesy of the House, that I am perfectly entitled to do so.

6.1 p.m.

THE EARL OF MIDLETON

My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to say, before the Lord Chancellor puts the Motion, that I was most anxious to avoid having to ask your Lordships to divide, or indeed to bring this question forward at all. But after the statements made by my noble and learned friend Lord Macmillan and my noble friend Lord Camrose, in whom your Lordships have shown entire confidence that they will endeavour to deal with the exaggerated condition of the Department which they took over, and after the assurance we have had that sixty-seven persons, drawing £46,000 in salaries, have been dispensed with, I think your Lordships will agree that the Motion has been justified. I should like to make it perfectly clear that, so far as any of those of us who are connected with this Motion are concerned, any expenditure connected with the war will be voted without a murmur if we can only feel that there is a reasonable attempt to reduce expenditure which is not connected with the war. I do not ask my noble friend the Leader of the House to give any exact pledge on this subject, but I would ask—whether or not we may take it as a result of this debate—that His Majesty's Government should bear in mind what occurred in the last war, and should make every effort in their power to reduce expenditure on non-War Ministries, in order to clear the way for the actual events in which the country is engaged. I think we shall all be able to feel that this debate has had some actual effect, and that the Government have shown themselves in sympathy with our object, and have to a large extent carried out more than I and my friends desired in bringing the Motion forward.

6.3 p.m.

THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (EARL STANHOPE)

My Lords, I can only say, in reply to the noble Earl, that of course the Government have the same views in regard to these matters as he has. Quite apart from this debate, my noble and learned friend had started his reorganisation, and indeed had begun to reduce the numbers in his Ministry, long before my noble friend put his Motion on the Paper. But the Government have gone very much further than that already. When the war first began the Chancellor of the Exchequer sent round a notice to every single Government Department, not only the Service Departments, asking them to keep their expenditure down to the very lowest possible limit, and to cut rout anything that was not felt to be essential. Now I go even further than my noble friend. I do not personally feel that very high expenditure necessarily means efficiency, and, both in regard to the Service Departments themselves and others, I should feel that it was essential that we watch expenditure to the utmost possible extent, merely saying that in order to get the maximum efficiency we must not grudge expense if that is found to be essential and necessary, otherwise we should cut it out.

May I give two short examples? Already the Board of Education have sent out to all the local authorities notice to stop all work in the building of new schools, except where work is necessary in order to finish a job which is already under way—which I think all your Lordships will agree is a wise economy. Similarly in regard to roads: all new expenditure on new roads has been stopped. The general standard of road maintenance has been reduced, and therefore money is being saved in that way. I could give my noble friend a good many other instances, but it would not be entirely relevant to this debate. May I reassure him in one other particular? He asked that no civil servants should be taken on except for the period of the war. The Government have gone very much further than that already. They are not holding any further examinations for entry into the permanent Civil Service at all, and anybody who is taken on is taken on purely in a temporary capacity, to be under notice for, at the most, a month, and in other cases a week. Therefore my noble friend will see that we are not piling up the number of civil servants for whom we shall have to pay for the remainder of our lives, because indeed noble Lords on this Bench and Ministers on the Front Bench in another place are just as liable to taxation as the rest of your Lordships, as we know only too well.

THE EARL OF MIDLETON

My Lords, after the statement of the noble Earl the Leader of the House, for which I thank him, I hope your Lordships will give me permission to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

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