Lords Sitting of 26 June 1940

Preamble
The House met at four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
The Lord Daresbury—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

BOURNEMOUTH GAS AND WATER BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments agreed to.
FARNHAM GAS AND ELECTRICITY BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments: the said Amendments considered and agreed to.
TAUNTON CORPORATION BILL.
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (LITTLESTONE- ON-SEA AND DISTRICT WATER) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Bill reported without amendment.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (NORWICH) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Bill reported without amendment.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (THIRSK DISTRICT WATER) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Bill reported without amendment.

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENTS ACT, 1932:
URBAN DISTRICT OF BALDOCK
ORDER.
BOROUGH OF TAUNTON ORDER.
BOROUGH OF COLCHESTER ORDER.
COUNTY BOROUGH OF WALSALL ORDER.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (LORD CROFT): My Lords, I beg to move that the Orders made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department under the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, and laid before the House yesterday, be approved.
Moved, That the Orders made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department under the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, and laid before the House yesterday, be approved.—(Lord Croft)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CONFIRMATION OF EXECUTORS (WAR SERVICE) (SCOTLAND) BILL, [H.L.]
Read 3a (according to Order).
Clause 1:
Procedure in petitions or applications for appointment or confirmation as executor of persons engaged on war service and presumed dead
1.—(1) Where there is produced with any petition or application for appointment or confirmation as executor of any person who, at any time during the war period, has been or shall be engaged in war service, a certificate or intimation issued by or on behalf of the competent authority that a report of the death of any such person has been accepted for official purposes, or that such person was missing on a specified date and that it has been presumed or concluded for official purposes that such person is dead, an oath or affirmation that to the best of the deponent's knowledge and belief such person is dead shall, for the purposes of such petition or application, be equivalent in all respects to an oath or affirmation that such person died on the date appearing in the certificate or intimation as the date on which he was missing or reported to have died:
Provided that the provisions of this subsection shall not apply unless between the last-mentioned date and the date of presenting the petition or application a period of not less than twelve months shall have elapsed, or unless between the date when such certificate or intimation has been issued and the date of presenting the petition or application a period of not less than six months shall have elapsed.
(2) On any such petition or application being presented the sheriff, without prejudice to any other powers and duties, may order intimation thereof to the competent authority, and may direct such advertisement (if any) as he may think fit.
4.5 p.m.
LORD ALNESS LORD ALNESS had given Notice of three Amendments—namely, to omit the proviso in subsection (1), to insert, after "authority" in subsection (2), "and to any other person who may appear to him to be interested" and to add to subsection (2) the words "and may, if the circumstances seem to him so to require, delay the granting of the petition or application to any date not later than six months after the date when the certificate or intimation was issued." The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, in putting down these Amendments to this Bill I have endeavoured to meet the wishes expressed by my noble friend Lord Strabolgi on the occasion when we last discussed the measure. The effect of the Amendments is broadly this. The waiting period of six or twelve months, which was mandatory under the Bill as drawn, disappears and in its place I am proposing to confer the right on the Sheriff, in the exercise of his discretion, to postpone the application for confirmation for a period not exceeding six months, if he thinks proper in the circumstances to do so. I have no doubt that the Sheriff, who is a public and responsible official in Scotland and is generally a member of the Scottish Bar, in exercising that discretion, will bear in mind any hardship to the applicant which might occur from any undue delay which might be involved.
I hope that my noble friend will appreciate not only the propriety but also the expediency of this provision. I feel sure that the last thing that he would desire to do would be to have confirmation prematurely issued, with the result that the true owner of the estate might reappear and complications might ensue. My noble friend will bear in mind also that this Bill, differing from the Presumption of Life Acts, contains no provision for the reappearance of the true owner of the estate. Accordingly it behoves one to proceed with care and with circumspection, and I venture to think that the provision which I have suggested satisfies
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that requirement. I have done my best to meet my noble friend's wishes, and I hope I have succeeded. I hope, too, that he will regard these provisions which are now proposed to be substituted as both just and reasonable. The Bill is no longer an intractable measure but an elastic measure, and in that particular I venture to think that it is considerably improved. I am obliged to my noble friend for enabling me to make that improvement. I beg to move the first Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 22, leave out from the beginning of the line to the end of line 6 on page 2. (Lord Alness.)
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am very much obliged to my noble and learned friend for going into this matter and for the Amendment he has just moved. He was courteous enough to send me a copy of the proposed Amendments and I sent it to those for whom I was speaking—namely, the Scottish section of the Officers (Mercantile Marine) Navy Federation—and they have written as follows:
"This Federation, having consulted its solicitors, is of the opinion that the proposed Amendments would meet the case completely."
I think that is a very satisfactory result. I am much obliged and on their behalf thank my noble and learned friend.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ALNESS: My Lords, I beg to move the next Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 10, after ("authority") insert ("and to any other person who may appear to him to be interested").—(Lord Alness.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD ALNESS: My Lords, I have explained the third Amendment, which I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 11 at end insert ("and may, if the circumstances seem to him so to require, delay the granting of the petition or application to any date not later than six months after the date when the certificate or intimation was issued").—(Lord Alness.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

LAW REFORM (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) (SCOTLAND) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
4.10 p.m.
LORD ALNESS: My Lords, I regret that my noble friend Lord Strabolgi disapproved of the course which I followed last Thursday, when. I formally moved the Second Reading of this Bill. I think I owe it not only to him but to your Lordships' House to explain, as I can do in a few sentences, the reasons why I adopted that course. In the first place, I thought it unfitting that one should, so to speak, spatchcock a discussion of a highly technical character on a Scottish legal measure between formal business and the Secret Session which was just about to open. Moreover, I was aware that the chief pressure, the driving force behind this Bill comes from the Party of which my noble friend is an ornament in this House. Most important of all, I bore in mind that, on the Second Reading of a Bill, what is the subject of legitimate and relevant discussion is the principle underlying the measure. Now there is no principle underlying this measure. It contains a number of quite useful but entirely unrelated clauses. Accordingly it seemed to me more fitting that a measure of that kind, an omnibus measure, so to speak, should be discussed in Committee rather than on Second Reading when no question of principle at all arose. Therefore, I proposed to defer, and I hope my noble friend on reflection agreed that it was right to defer, the discussion on these unrelated provisions until we came to the Committee stage.
All that I think I need say—and I am more free to say it because I have no responsibility for the construction of the Bill—is that it is a wholly admirable Bill, well conceived and well considered, and I venture to think well expressed, and that many of its provisions will prove specially useful in war-time. Those provisions, broadly speaking, cither give effect to the recommendations of a legal Committee in Scotland whose authority is quite impeccable or seek to bring the law of Scotland into line with the law of England as it exists to-day. I think the provisions of the Bill which, though important, are highly technical are not suitable
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for detailed discussion in your Lordships' House, and I therefore propose simply to add that I shall endeavour to explain any one of them if any of your Lordships desire an explanation. To do more, I think, would be merely otiose and make an inroad on the time of your Lordships' House which I should not be justified in making. Accordingly, at this stage I content myself with moving that the House do resolve itself into Committee on the Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Alness.)
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, of course my noble friends on this side of the House accept the explanation of my noble and learned friend Lord Alness, but the episode of last Thursday was a very serious one. This is a Bill originating in your Lordships' House, and I congratulate His Majesty's Government on initiating more Bills in this House in recent months. It is a very sensible arrangement. The Second Reading of a Bill is a very important stage. I quite agree that in view of the Secret Session, and the extremely valuable debate which followed, every moment was precious last Thursday, but if it was not intended to take the Bill at that time there are the usual channels in this House which are always open and can be used, and my noble friends are always ready to facilitate business. Parliament is to-day in a very important position. Any whittling away of the procedure and powers of Parliament to-day, any attempt to treat it as a mere registering machine for the Executive, will be resisted—must be resisted—and my noble friends will be the first to support that resistance. However, we have had the explanation and I know there is a great strain on all Ministers in these days. No doubt there was an inadvertence on Thursday, but I know that I speak for all your Lordships when I say that we recognise that my noble and learned friend would be the last to tread down our privileges here. I am sure your Lordships will support us on this side of the House in defending those privileges, as we always will.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
Bill reported without amendment.

EVACUATION.
4.17 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI LORD STRABOLGI had the following Notice on the Paper: To ask His Majesty's Government why it is considered necessary to allow announcements to be made in the Press and by the B.B.C. of the districts to which evacuated children are taken; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this may seem a small matter, but it has an importance. There is great reluctance on the part of mothers, especially in working-class families, to part with their children. That is the reason why so many of them have clung to their children rather than allow them to be evacuated. In working-class families, where nurses and governesses are not employed, where the habit of sending children to boarding schools is not followed, families are much closer together and the mothers especially want to keep their children with them in time of danger. I do not agree with that attitude, but it is a human attitude and we have to recognise it. There is a widespread feeling about this matter. I have myself met six different cases amongst working-class mothers who complain bitterly that when their children were recently evacuated it was promptly announced on the wireless and through the Press, and information was given of the districts to which they had gone. These mothers say, "Our enemies will endeavour to bear us down by terror and by frightening us. If they know where our children have gone, they will endeavour to break our spirit by bombing those areas." My noble friend Lord Croft may say that that is absurd, but the feeling exists; and it is not necessary, I submit, to broadcast the places to which the children have gone.
I know that mention is made only of counties—Devon for example, an immense area—and it may be said that the enemy will know that that would be an evacuation area in any case. That is not the point. The mothers themselves object very strongly and there may be some justice in their objection. It may be that our enemy, who will stick at nothing, may concentrate on evacuation areas in order to break the spirit of the mothers who let their children go. It is not for me nor for any other noble Lord to say that the mothers are entirely wrong in this ob-
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jection. If it is said that people must know where their children are, then the reply to that is that they receive a postcard the next morning. A sort of field postcard is issued and the parents know the next morning where their children have arrived. There has been lack of imagination and a Departmental blunder here, and I raise this question so that it shall not be repeated. I beg to move.
4.20 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My Lords, may I add one word as to what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, on this question, because I am not quite sure on what principle these announcements are made. When an air raid has taken place we are carefully not told where it took place. We are told that there has been a raid on a southwestern town or in the eastern districts, that certain lives have been lost, and a certain amount of damage done, but for reasons which may possibly be sound, no information is given about the precise locality. If it is agreed that the past should not be known, I am inclined to agree with the noble Lord who has just spoken that it is just as well to be equally reticent about the future. As he was saying, in the minds of some people who are sending their children away there may be a fear lest their evacuation may be regarded by our unscrupulous enemies as affording an additional reason for throwing bombs on that particular spot. It therefore does not seem to be quite on all fours with the reticence which is kept about past raids, when, after all, whatever damage has been done is concluded and regretted and there is no more to be said. I have no doubt that the representative of His Majesty's Government will be able to offer some explanation of what appears to me to be an anomaly.
4.22 p.m.
LORD CROFT: My Lords, I appreciate the views of the noble Lord who asked this question, because it has been uppermost in all our minds, I am sure, that it is a tragic necessity even to suggest to mothers that it may be for the welfare of their children that they should be parted from them in this manner. I think that is very present in everybody's mind when we are considering this matter. The view of the Ministry of Health from the very start has, however, been that there is no real advantage in concealing the actual

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locations of the reception areas. That has been so for a long time. When the Ministry were made responsible for the preparation of the evacuation schemes, it was in fact a definite part of Government policy that the plan should have the widest publicity. The classification of districts for evacuation into neutral and receiving areas was a matter for open discussion, and that, I think, has been going on now for eighteen months. Maps have constantly appeared in the newspapers to show where these areas were. The reception areas, of course, cover a very large portion of the whole country where it is easier to disperse a great number of children. These areas have been in public knowledge for this long period of time. It is not thought probable that the enemy will direct an attack on reception areas as such, where serious material damage is, of course, less possible from the military point of view. I agree with the noble Lord that you have to be prepared for any devilish form of warfare from the enemy, but I think the military opinion is that the enemy suffer great casualties, great loss of fuel, and so on in air raids, and it would still seem to be military insanity to spread a vast bombing attack over very large areas where, to the greatest extent possible, these children are scattered in the rural districts. But I have noted what the noble Lord has said, and will see that his views are conveyed to the Department.
The Ministry do not usually mention the individual reception areas by name, but that is because each evacuation area is generally known to have a particular reception area attached to it. In the recent moves which have taken place, more especially from the coastline of the country, there are very special reasons for referring to the reception areas. First, certain coast towns, where there had been considerable menace, had become evacuation areas for the first time, and it was thought that an explanation would convince parents that their children were going to places well away from these disturbed districts. Secondly, parents of registered evacuees from London were assured that their children would not be taken to the East Coast localities where they had been previously sent. The Department thought it was very desirable that both those facts should be well understood. Despite all the effort at
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popularising evacuation in the past which has been made by all Parties in the State, it is still a fact that many parents, for those very human reasons which were referred to by the noble Lord, were strongly against it. The first concern of the Ministry of Health has therefore been to encourage parents to send their children away. In their view the best argument for this is to make it clear to all parents that children are going to safer areas. Whether as a result of this policy or not, I may mention that 84 per cent. of registered children were evacuated this time, a figure which I think must be regarded as satisfactory.
The question of publishing evacuation movements in advance has to be kept constantly in view. The noble Marquess mentioned just now the actual question of locality: whether it was desirable to mention an area in the west or the east of England which had been bombed. That is a subject which really requires attention. As a matter of fact I am assured that the Press have been very helpful in support of the whole evacuation scheme and have done a great deal to make the facts known. But it so happened that a recent bombing attack on a port in South Wales was greatly stressed in the newspapers, and this wide publicity had a most unfortunate effect, because it caused a large number, of mothers, whose geography was not perhaps very complete, to imagine that because the port happened to be in South Wales, therefore their children in the whole of the scattered parts of South Wales—where, it will be generally admitted, these children can be happily housed without any fear of concentrated attack—had in fact come under attack and ought to be brought home. I think, therefore, that the argument would rather be against emphasizing the names of places for fear that, just for that very reason, one might find that a large number of people became fearful for the fate of their children. As a matter of fact, I think that we can most definitely say that the military results of that particular raid must have been very discouraging to the enemy. It was on a military objective which, I think it can be said, was removed from the likely localities to which children would be evacuated.
There is another point to which I should like to refer. The Press have been so

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helpful on the whole that it is rather unfortunate to find that, although we want to encourage this movement, ordinary mishaps among evacuated children are very often emphasized. That again, of course, causes uneasiness in the minds of mothers, although it has nothing to do with the particular point raised by the noble Lord. The Ministry of Information are in favour of giving as much publicity to matters of evacuation as possible, and the ban which was imposed at the beginning of the war on the publication of the names of reception areas was later withdrawn for this reason. They recognise, however, that policy in these matters is the ultimate responsibility of the Ministry of Health. The Ministry of Information are strongly of opinion up to date that their policy has not been an unwise one.
4.32 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am very much obliged to my noble friend for his reply, which of course is Departmental, as I expected. I thank the noble Marquess, my noble friend Lord Crewe, for his support. I hope that this matter will be looked into further. These mothers may have forgotten their geography, but their apprehension is real, and I do beg my noble friend to look into this matter further. While I am talking about this, perhaps I may be allowed to put another suggestion to my noble friend. He is very interested in the production of guns and other equipment for His Majesty's
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Forces, and so am I. I do hope, therefore, that a careful watch will be kept on whoever it is who is responsible for giving air raid warnings, to see that they are not given unnecessarily. This is very important indeed. If the enemy, by sending one bomber thirty thousand feet over London, can get everybody up in the middle of the night in an area housing eight million people, disturbing them, sending them out into dug-outs, spoiling their night's rest and perhaps leading some of them to catch cold, it will be splendid for him; that is a real military objective, much more important than hitting a brewery in the West Country. If there is an air raid on London by hundreds of bombers, give us a warning; but for a single messenger of death do not disturb us all. Since this war began, many more people have been killed by being run over in the streets than in all the air raids on this country—many more—and many more will be killed, I venture to prophesy, by being run over in the streets; but we are used to that and do not pay any attention to it, whereas the air raid is a new menace. I take this opportunity of putting that point of view to my noble friend, who I know wants to see production proceeding as fast as possible. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes before five o'clock.