Lords Sitting of 28 July 1942

Preamble
The House met, the LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
PENSIONS (MERCANTILE MARINE) BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments agreed to.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (VISITING FORCES) BILL. [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT SIMON): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to give effect to an agreement recorded in Notes exchanged between His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and the Government of the United States of America relating to jurisdiction over members of the, military and naval Forces of the United States of America; and to move that it be read a first time. Departing from the usual custom when such a Motion is made, by which it is at once put to the House, I think that it would be only right and for your Lordships' convenience if I stated in two or three sentences what is the purpose of this Bill and, still more, what is its urgency.
Some of your Lordships may recall that in the last war, as I understand it, when our Forces were in France, there was an arrangement by which, if any member of our Forces in France was charged with
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criminal action of any kind—any breach of the criminal law—the matter was dealt with by our own Military Courts administering discipline to our own Forces, and was not regarded as amenable to the French Criminal Courts. That was the practice then followed. The Forces of the United States of America are now reaching the United Kingdom, as we are all glad to realize, in increasing numbers, and it is not unaturally desired that a similar arrangement should be made between the United States and ourselves. Notes have been exchanged between the Foreign Secretary here and the American Ambassador on behalf of the United States Government, which record the agreement, which is very simple. The result is that the Government are at once introducing this Bill, which, as I have said, will give effect to that agreement, and will in substance provide that criminal jurisdiction over American troops in this country (including Northern Ireland) will be exercised by the American Military Courts sitting here, and not by our own Criminal Courts. There may be exceptions in cases where the American authorities ask our own Courts to deal with a case, and that is provided for in the Bill. That is the nature of the subject-matter of the Bill.
The reason why I explain this now, on First Reading, is that, the matter having been arranged, it is exceedingly urgent to carry it through. Nothing would be more unfortunate than that there should be some dispute on this matter because the arrangement had not yet been made statutorily effective. In the view of His Majesty's Government, and I hope in the view of your Lordships, it is really of the first

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importance that we should get this Bill on the Statute Book, by securing its passage through both Houses, without any loss of time at all. Having regard to the season of the year, that means that we must give time to the House of Commons to deal with it before there is any break in our sittings. What the Government desire—and, in the very exceptional circumstances, I hope your Lordships will not feel that you should oppose it—is that the Second Reading of the Bill, and in fact all the other stages, should be taken tomorrow. The Bill itself will become available in a few hours' time. It is an extremely simple Bill, which schedules the agreement made between the two Governments and gives it statutory effect. At the same time, I recognize that your Lordships will wish to examine the text of the Bill before we proceed further with it. I therefore move that this Bill be now read a first time, and I give notice to your Lordships that it is the intention of the Government to ask that this Bill be taken first to-morrow, with a view to its being carried through all its remaining stages.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I should like to say, on behalf of my noble friends on this side of the House, that we welcome the introduction of the Bill and shall do all in our power to secure its speedy passage through this Chamber.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches, I should like to express concurrence in the views expressed by the noble Earl who has just spoken. The noble and learned Lord Chancellor has explained to us the special urgency of this measure and I am sure that the House will be ready to give effect to the desires of the Government.
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

GREENWICH HOSPITAL BILL. [H.L.]
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment.

ALLIED POWERS (WAR SERVICE) BILL.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Snell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly:
[The LORD STANMORE in the Chair.]
Clause 1:
Liability to service of nationals of allied Powers.
(2) Where any person to whom this section applies is not, at the expiration of two months from the material date, a member of the naval, military or air forces of the Power of which he is a national, the National Service Acts, 1939 to 1941, shall thereafter apply to him as if he were a British subject and any proclamation previously issued under the said Acts, which would have applied to him if he had been a British subject in Great Britain at the date of the proclamation, shall thereafter be deemed to apply to him:
Provided that—
LORD WEDGWOOD LORD WEDGWOOD moved, in subsection (2), after "him," immediately preceding the proviso, to insert "and shall be entitled to the same rights of choice of service as are enjoyed by the British subject." The noble Lord said: This Amendment is based on the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Snell, on the occasion of the Second Reading. He stated then that the War Office intended to put these people joining the British Army into the Pioneer Corps. I thought at the time that it was impossible to devise any form of words which would amend that suggestion, which does not actually appear in the Bill; but the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Maugham, was kind enough to go through the Bill with me, and discovered a place where a suitable Amendment could be put in. I think the one that I have drafted is in order. Its object is that those subjects of a foreign country who desire to be in the British Army rather than their own Army should be exactly on all fours with British subjects themselves, and should have the same rights as British subjects.
The British subject does not enjoy absolute right of preference for the Service in which he shall go, though he used to in the early days. But it is well known to your Lordships that people taken into the Pioneer Corps now are taken in from two sets of people. They are those who are excellent workers but not intelligent enough to become soldiers; for the soldier's job nowadays is a very skilled

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job and requires really skilled men. Those who are not so skilled at present generally go into the Pioneer Corps. I want the same principle to be applied to the new comers, to the people who are English from every point of view except that they have never been naturalized: I want to get the intelligent fellows into the Army and the fellows who have no aptitude for the art a fighting into the Pioneer Corps. According to Lord Snell's speech on the last occasion all these people will go automatically into the Pioneer Corps. That, in the case of men who are desperately anxious to fight Hitler, is a grave disadvantage. Of course the Pioneer companies are now all armed, that is to say, they have got rifles, but the training in the Pioneer Corps is not comparable with the training given even in the Home Guard. I get a good many letters from people in the Pioneer Corps, alien refugees, all complaining of the same thing—that they are not being trained to fight, that when Hitler comes they will not be trained soldiers. One man says he has been twice on the shooting range. Of course all training is riot now merely with rifles alone. These people are working hard all day, they have no time for training. Consequently they are not getting the advantage of being taught soldiering, and they are not going to have the chance of fighting Hitler's troops on an equal footing if they come to this country.
Then there is another thing. We have seen recently a British Army circular advising officers on their relations with their men—a most admirable circular, in Which the officer is instructed to remember at all times that his men are the salt of the earth, that in replying to their salutes he should smile, give a nod of recognition and, if a man should happen to be walking out with a girl, the officer should stop and ask to be introduced, thus raising the self-esteem both of the man and of the girl and, at the same time, turning that man into one who will follow him into any tight place—in fact, teaching the art of comradeship. It is perfectly true that they got it all out of Shirer's Berlin Diary: we were following Germany. I wish We did not always follow them, we might sometimes get ahead. But I myself tried out that method my men, first in the Boer War and then in the last war, and I know it is a most admirable method of securing great confidence, great trust,
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great affection in times of danger. It is a great change and a move in the right direction. The relationship between the British officer and the man in the Army now is infinitely better than it was in the last war, or even at the beginning of this war; and if these new instructions are followed out there will indeed be a revolution in the happiness and confidence of the British Army.
Though that is largely true of the ordinary fighting branches of the Service, it is by no means true of the Pioneer Corps. There relations are entirely different; they are more the relations of the gaoler to the gaoled. It is partly due to a different type of man and a different type of officer. I think there is a great deal to be said for Colonel Bingham's statement that the officer had better be a gentleman—I wish they all were. I told your Lordships on the last occasion that I get probably a larger selection of abusive and offensive letters than anybody else in this House. Of course the most offensive ones are not signed. Even where they have been signed, I found in several cases when I sent them on to the police that the names were false and the addresses sham. But I do occasionally get some that are signed. One which I got some six months or more ago was actually signed by a Major with a command in this Pioneer Corps. It was not quite so obscene as most of them, but merely referred to the fact that after a prodigal youth I had wasted my substance and I was now in the hands of the Jews, therefore a subject of pity. I thought this was funny coming from an officer of the British Army—a Major in the Pioneer Corps—so I sent the letter to my friend, the Adjutant-General, suggesting that he might wrap him over the knuckles. I knew, of course, he could not. He replied he was very sorry, but would I dress him down myself, because anybody is entitled to write to a Member of Parliament, and it was not a criminal offence, even if the man was a bounder.
I quote this to show the unfortunate type we have. Naturally all the "dugouts" who were any good got into the fighting Army, and the Pioneer Corps did not get the best. There was, for example, Major Scott, commanding the Pioneer Company on the "Dunera"—a shocking case—and there have been many others which have got into the papers. Really, from my many letters on the subject from

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Pioneers, I have come to the conclusion that the Pioneer Companies to-day want looking into. One officer is reported to have said, "You are here for digging and nothing else." According to one the men never complained, never got drunk, never used foul language, and were altogether too refined. The hardship is in consigning these people to these particular officers who are in some cases—of course it is not universal—Fascist, Anti-Semitic, and definitely hostile to the people they are commanding, regarding these unfortunate people not as comrades, but as fit for internment. One of them, indeed, said, "In my opinion you ought all to be interned, and nine-tenths of the population think so too." That is an entirely wrong atmosphere. It is not merely a question of whether the men are more useful in making roads or whether they would be more useful in the Army. It is whether they are going into a happy family life in a decent British regiment, or whether they are to be put into an atmosphere of antagonism between the officers and men and put into the position which these people occupy who have given every evidence of their hatred and hostility towards Hitler and of their determination to fight him.
Here is a man who writes:
"I am one who spent many years in dangerous underground activities in Germany. By our example we saved Madrid in 1937, and held it for two years against the murderous assaults of Spanish, Italian, and German Fascists. The authorities are doing Hitler's work by having his enemies confined to the Pioneer Corps where they are of less use to the war effort. How Hitler must laugh at this wasteful stupidity. Shame upon these semi-Fascists in this country who hold back Hitler's most determined enemies from even the smallest effort to destroy him! This would never happen in Russia where German anti-Fascists are in the forefront of the battle and, by their example, rally the others to fight like lions."
That is all perfectly true. The Russians are using them in the Army. The Americans are using these refugees—precisely similar people to those we are discussing to-day—in their active Army. We cannot be the only people to consign them to a semi-pacifist, semi-penal service. Therefore, I move this Amendment in the hope that the Government, or at least the War Office, will listen to me and to others who are a little anxious about the Pioneer Corps, and will see whether we cannot get the matter improved so that there shall
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be in the Pioneer Corps the same good spirit between officers and men which exists at present in the British Army. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 17, at end insert ("and shall be entitled to the same rights of choice of service as are enjoyed by the British subject").—(Lord Wedgwood.)
LORD SNELL: The noble Lord proposes to insert the following words, "and shall be entitled to the same rights of choice of service as are enjoyed by the British subject." As the noble Lord has explained, this amendment was designed to ensure that Allied Nationals called up for the British Forces should have the same right as British subjects to express a preference for a particular branch of the Services. The National Service Acts do not allow even British subjects the right of choice. They allow a right to express a preference, and it is frequently not found possible to give effect to this preference. Under the Bill, an Allied National will likewise be able to express his preference, but this preference will usually be ineffective as it is intended that Allied Nationals shall normally be posted to the Pioneer Corps. As was pointed out in another pace, the Pioneer Corps is the only branch of the Army which already has foreign companies, and it has special facilities for dealing with foreign nationals, including men who cannot speak English. I am advised that it is not right to suggest that the Pioneer Corps is the "Cinderella" of the British Army. It is a combatant corps, and its units are armed.
I cannot out of my own experience assess either praise or blame to the officers of either the Pioneer Corps or any other regiment, nor can I guarantee their manners to the men under their control, but I feel that it is quite possible there may be officers in the Armed Forces to which Lord Wedgwood desires men to have the privilege of going whose language is not always a model of grace or of consideration. The answer to Lord Wedgwood's plea that these men should be given a chance to kill Germans, as I think he said on the last occasion, is that they may very well have an opportunity to do so, just as certain Pioneer Corps did in France in 1940. I am sorry I cannot wholly meet the noble Lord, and I am advised that I cannot accept the Amendment he proposes.
LORD WEDGWOOD: May I point out to the noble Lord and to your Lordships that these are not people who are unable to speak English? They are mostly people who have lived here for perhaps thirty years or more. They are not generally refugees, they are people who, but for the accident of being poor and not able to take out naturalization papers, remain nominally subjects of another Power. That objection therefore does not hear upon the matter at all. As for the rest of them being able to fight in case of invasion, if they were expected to fight they would be trained to fight. One of my chief complaints is that they are not being trained to fight, and they know they are not being trained to fight. You are going to ask them to fight the most skilled troops in the world without training.
The other thing is this. The noble Lord does not meet the suggestion that there is antagonism between the officers and the men in certain cases. I will illustrate that by this point. I got a complaint the other day from a man who had been an officer of the International Brigade in Spain to the effect that in one of these companies the men were being charged with talking German together, not on duty but after duty hours. They were merely conversing together in German after duty hours. I sent a complaint about this to Mr. Arthur Henderson, Under-Secretary to the War Office. He felt as I did. He made inquiries and found there had been an order that these people in the Pioneer Corps must not talk in their own language amongst each other. That sounds uncommonly like prison, and there is no reason for it. In fact, within a week the order was rescinded and they were allowed to talk in their own language when they were off duty, if they wanted to do so, though very few of them did. That is an advance, but this incident does illustrate the difference between the administration of these alien Pioneer Companies and the British Army as a whole. I am sorry the Government cannot accept the Amendment, and I hope some noble Lords will join with me in making representations to the War Office on the question. I beg to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clauses 2, 3 and 4 agreed to.
Clause 5:
Definition of member of force for purposes of Allied Forces Act and removal of doubts arising therefrom.
5.—(1) For the purposes of the Allied Forces Act, 1940, a person shall be deemed to be a member of the naval, military or air forces of any such allied Power or foreign authority as is mentioned in Section one of that Act, if he has served in those forces on or after the date of the passing of that Act and has not been duly discharged therefrom, but a person who has not so served shall not be deemed to be a member of any such forces by reason of his having been called upon to serve therein.
LORD WEDGWOOD LORD WEDGWOOD had given Notice of two Amendments to subsection (1)—namely, to omit the word "duly" ["duly discharged therefrom"] and, after "forces," where that word last occurs, to insert "if having been irregularly summoned he has left that service before the first day of May, nineteen hundred and forty-two or." The noble Lord said: I should very much like to know what difference in an Act the word "duly" does make. The clause runs:
".… if he has served in those Forces"—
that is in the Forces of an Allied Power—
"on or after the date of the passing of that Act and has not been duly discharged therefrom …."
We will take the two Amendments to this clause together if we may do so. Their object is to give the right of joining the British Army to those people who were enlisted in a foreign Army on the assumption that the Allied Government responsible for that Army had the power and the right to insist on their services. Many joined under the misapprehension that their services would be demanded of them. They found out directly they were in those Forces that there was no legal power to retain them there, and they left the Service. Possibly they had been in that Service for a day or a week when they left, and they have not been worried about their leaving ever since.
I am afraid if you take the words as they appear in the Bill at the present time, every one of those people who have been freed for perhaps a year or a year and a half, but who in some time past may have served for a day or longer in the Polish Army, will now be claimed by the Polish Government and forced to join their Service. It may be said that an unwilling recruit of that sort is not of much use to any Service, and that desertions would be

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frequent. That is where the difficulty comes in. In some of these foreign Services—I think it is so in the Polish Service—the penalty for desertion is to be shot. We cannot have that sort of thing going on in this country, particularly in regard to people who have lived here possibly as good citizens for the last thirty years. I think we are bound to look after the interests of those people who, after all, are as much Britishers as ourselves, except that they were not able to pay ten pounds, or seven pounds, or whatever the sum is, in order to become naturalized British subjects.
If we are to have these people who cannot speak a word of Polish taken forcibly into the Polish Army, we shall have an undesirable situation. And we are giving power under this Bill to do that. We give the men no alternative of joining the British Army. Surely they should have a chance to join the British Army, if they wish to do so. I hope the Government can accept these two Amendments in order to make it possible that people who have been enrolled in a foreign Army under a misapprehension and under the assumption that the Government of that Army had powers which it did not possess, and have since left that Army, shall not be penalized by being deprived of their right of serving in the British Army. They should not be compelled to serve in some other Army with which they have no connexion, except the purely accidental one that many years ago they were born in the country of that Army. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 46, leave out ("duly").—(Lord Wedgwood.)
LORD SNELL: The Amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Wedgwood, are apparently designed to safeguard the position of certain Allied Nationals referred to during the Second Reading debate by the noble Lord. These men are alleged to have joined Allied Forces in the belief that the Allied Governments could enforce their calling-up notices. They served in those Forces for a time and apparently left them, or rather deserted from them, and returned to civilian life. In such cases the British authorities persuaded the Allied Governments to take no steps to recall them. The noble Lord, Lord Wedgwood, considers that Clause 5, subsection
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(1), will make them liable to be forcibly recalled, and twat this may withhold from them the alternative open to other Allied Nationals. The object of Clause 5 (1) is to make it clear that a man is not deemed to be a member of an Allied Force merely because he has received calling-up papers and has failed to respond, but only if he has actually served since the passing of the Allied Forces Act in August, 1940, in that Force. It is necessary to make this clear in order to prevent the Allies compelling their nationals to join their Forces and also to prevent members of the Allied Forces who fall within the new definition from arguing in our Courts that they are not members of those Forces within the meaning of the Allied Forces Act. Careful consideration was given to the possibility of using a less precise form of words than the words "duly discharged" in line 46 on page 3, but it is considered essential that an expression should be used which will enable the Courts to apply the test to a formal document in any proceedings which may arise under the clause. The omission of the word "duly" as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Wedgwood, would not apparently help, as they cannot be regarded as discharged at all.
The second Amendment the Government regard as unacceptable because the men were not irregularly summoned. His Majesty's Government have recognized that the Allied Governments have a perfect right to send calling-up notices to their nationals in this country. Nearly all continental States call up their nationals resident abroad for military training even in peace-time. This is a rule well recognized between friendly States. Moreover, it would be a fatal blow to discipline in the Allied Forces if desertion therefrom were to be legalized in the Bill. It is difficult to imagine that an Allied Government would wish to take action in such a case against the wishes of the British Government, but even if this did happen ultimate sanction would be in the hands of the British Government. A man could only be arrested by the British police and any sentence of imprisonment served on him would be served in a British prison. I am sorry that I am not able to accept the Amendments which the noble Lord has put on the Paper.
LORD WEDGWOOD: I am not quite clear even now what is the exact position

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of these people. Under this Bill the British Government will normally make a list of the people who are, say, Polish subjects not yet serving in the Polish Army; I presume not serving according to this proposal. Then the Polish Government will appeal against that list and say that So-and-so for a time served in their Army and therefore the British Government have no right to put him on their list. Take the case I have suggested of the man who has got cut of the Polish Army thinking he was included in it irregularly. He is at present free. Which Government the British Government or the Polish Government, will approach that man and summon him now to serve? I gather from the noble Lord that it will be the British Government. The British Government will bring an action against him and he will be arrested by the British police for not joining the British Forces. If that is the position by all means let the British Government summon him and get him, but do not leave him in the position of being summoned by a foreign Government when he prefers to serve with the British Army.
LORD SNELL: It is obvious that I cannot give a decision on a technical matter affecting the wording of an Act of Parliament, but what I will do is to convey the noble Lord's feelings and doubts to the proper quarter to see if his points are really valid, and, if they are, whether they can be met.
LORD WEDGWOOD: Perhaps if I put my Amendments down again upon the Report stage the matter could be made quite clear. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendments now.
LORD SNELL: If there are no Amendments there will be no Report stage.
LORD ADDISON: There is really an important point in what my noble friend has brought forward. Will the noble Lord opposite undertake to give an answer on Third Reading? The matter could be put right on Third Reading.
LORD SNELL: I believe the Third Reading will be taken at the next sitting but I think that will allow sufficient time.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 5 agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
Bill reported without amendment.

HOUSING (RURAL WORKERS) BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD SNELL: My Lords, this Bill merely extends existing powers for a further three years. Those powers are summarized in paragraphs (3) and (4) of the Explanatory Memorandum printed with the Bill. The number of cottages approved under the Rural Housing Acts in the last five years are as follows: In 1936–7 the number in England and Wales was 1,821 and in Scotland 2,496. In 1938–9 in England and Wales there were 4,058 cottages improved and in Scotland 2,634. In 1940–41 the respective numbers were 1,066 in England and Wales and 1,096 in Scotland. Reconditioning under the Acts has always been a valuable supplement of the provisions of new houses, and it would be unwise to allow these powers to lapse in war-time when little can be done in the way of new building and therefore reconditioning might be the only solution of urgent cases. The Bill in no way prejudices the future and I beg to move that it be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Snell).
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I should like to ask my noble friend whether the Government are satisfied with the progress which has been made under the principal Act. He has stated very clearly the figures of what has been done both in England and Wales and in Scotland and has explained why it is necessary to have an extension of time. It will be interesting, however, if he can tell your Lordships how far the principal Act may be said to have been successful. Of course it has been successful to the extent of the figures mentioned, but I wonder why it has not had even fuller effect than he has stated. I, like many of your Lordships, have been very much interested for many years in this question of the reconditioning of cottage property, and I feel that the noble Lord is fully justified in saying that we have always regarded this reconditioning as very important. It is more important than ever at the present time. But I think it is a little disappointing perhaps that the Act has not worked with greater vitality and vigour. If the noble Lord could state—perhaps not to-day but when the next

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stage of the Bill is reached—how the Government regard the fortune which has attended efforts made under the Act in past years, I am sure it would be very interesting.
LORD SNELL: My Lords, the number of houses reconditioned has to be considered in relation to the total number that needed reconditioning, and I have not the figures. I doubt if they exist with regard to the full number of cottages that ought to be improved or reconditioned. But if the noble Marquess asks me to say whether the Government are satisfied, I can only answer that I think that probably they are not. We are none of us wholly satisfied with progress in any particular enterprise. But we have to bear in mind that the difficulty of securing labour for improvement and so on, at the present time, is very exceptional. I will, however, take the opportunity at a later stage of the Bill of expressing the Government's opinion on the point raised by the noble Marquess.
LORD ADDISON: My Lords, in support of what the noble Marquess has said, I may say that I think that if the noble Lord will refer to the results of the surveys which were instituted by the Government quite recently as to the condition of rural houses, he will find abundant support for the misgiving which, I am afraid, was behind the noble Marquess's question. I am sure it will be within the mark to say that there are more hundreds of thousands of houses requiring improvements than there were units of thousands improved.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

TUBERCULOSIS: INSTITUTIONAL TREATMENT.
LORD DAVIES LORD DAVIES rose to draw attention to the failure of the Ministry of Health to deal with the staffing requirements of institutions for the treatment of tuberculosis; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I desire to draw the attention of the House to a matter which is, I believe, an important one—namely, the present position in regard to the treatment of persons suffering from tuberculosis.
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I need not remind your Lordships that in the past this scourge has taken an enormous toll of the youth of this country, especially between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, and some of us entertain certain misgivings that the steps which are being taken to deal with the problem now, in war-time, are inadequate. I would point out that this is really a very urgent matter because it does not mean merely dealing, as in peace-time, with the provision of treatment for persons who have become victims of this disease; it also, in these days, in this time of war, bears upon the conservation of our man-power and woman-power. I am sure we shall all agree that that is a very important matter in the conduct of the war, and that the provision of treatment for persons suffering from tuberculosis is a factor which affects our war effort.
I do not think I need labour that point because it is quite obvious that if there is an increase in the number of persons throughout the country suffering from tuberculosis, there must also be an increase in the sources of infection. It is cumulative, and we all realize, also, that this danger is increased under war conditions, because the powers of resistance possessed by people throughout the country have become lowered. My noble friend the Earl of Cork reminded us the other day of the deterioration which had occurred in the health of some of the personnel of the Mercantile Marine owing to conditions under which our sailors have to serve during the war. I think we shall be agreed that not only is it ameliorative treatment that is needed. The other day the House decided to insert in a Bill an Amendment, which the noble Earl submitted, to provide pensions far sailors discharged from the Mercantile Marine in consequence of their having contracted tuberculosis. I venture to suggest that not only are they entitled to pensions, but they are also entitled to treatment in appropriate institutions in order that they may have the opportunity of recovering their health and strength once more.
It was anticipated that, owing to war conditions, there would be a considerable increase in the number of new cases which would require treatment, and in the number of deaths from tuberculosis. But, fortunately, up to now at any rate, there

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has not been a tremendous increase in the number of cases. In 1938 there were 26,176 deaths. In 1941 the figure went up to 28,669. That is to say, that in the 3, years there was an increase of 2,493 deaths from this disease. But if we compare these figures with the figures relating to the last 25 years we find that, whereas in 1916 54,000 persons died from tuberculosis, in the year 1941 this figure had been reduced to less than 29,000. That is to say there was a decrease during the 25 years of 26,000, or, roughly, there was a consistent decrease in the number of deaths at an average rate of a thousand a year during those 25 years. Unfortunately, as I have already said, during the last 3 years there has been a setback, and the figures are beginning to rise again. This does not necessarily mean that we should be alarmed, but it does mean, I think, that we should be concerned about the position. That is, apparently, the view of the Ministry of Health, because I understand that the Minister, in co-operation with the Medical Research Council, has arranged for an expert investigation to be made "of the extent and causes of the war-time increase in the incidence of tuberculosis, particularly among young women, and also to advise the Medical Research Council regarding possible preventive measures." It is very satisfactory to know that the Ministry are taking measures in advance to deal with what may become a very serious matter, in view of the war conditions which now prevail.
I venture to think, however, that the real problem is that of how further facilities and accommodation are to be provided for the treatment of these cases. There are, unfortunately, considerable numbers of persons who are now awaiting treatment in our tuberculosis hospitals and institutions. A few days ago I asked a question on this subject, and the Government's reply was to the effect that in England there were 1,507, in Wales 400, and in Scotland 652, or a total of 2,559, civilian persons who were waiting for admission into hospitals and sanitoria. This figure does not, I understand, include ex-Service patients—men who have been discharged from the Services because they were suffering from tuberculosis. In Wales we have 130 ex-Service men waiting for treatment, in addition to 400 civilians.
I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I make special allusion to the position in Wales, because it is one with
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which I happen to be more familiar than I am with the position in England and Scotland. In Wales, thirty years ago the local authorities, realizing that this disease paid no attention to county or borough boundaries, decided that the attack upon it should take the form of a national campaign, and therefore the King Edward VII Memorial Association, in memory of King Edward VII, was established, to provide treatment and diagnosis for all the counties and county boroughs in the country. King Edward once said, "If preventable, why not prevented?" Consequently, as I have said, the county councils and borough councils constituted this Memorial Association, the Council of which is a sort of joint authority to deal with this scourge from a national standpoint and attempt to eradicate it. The number of beds which the Association has up to the present is 1,952, and in 1938 the number of people who were waiting to receive treatment, and who in many cases had been waiting for a considerable time, was 360. That figure rose to 530 in 1942, an increase of 170.
I need not emphasize the necessity for early treatment. Obviously a patient has much more chance of making a recovery if he is able to secure early admission into one of these institutions; and there is also the obvious benefit that, when patients go into these institutions, they do not spread infection amongst their families, their friends and their colleagues. Although it is very important, as the Minister of Health pointed out the other day, to have early diagnosis, it is perhaps even more important that the patient should receive early treatment. In the debate on this subject in another place, the Minister said: "We need to give greater practical effect to early diagnosis." I am sure we shall all agree that that is a very important part of the campaign, and recently, as your Lordships are probably aware, great strides have been made in the technique of early diagnosis. Instruments and apparatus have been designed for what is described as "mass radiology." Up to a short time ago, the plant for this purpose was manufactured in the United States of America, which was the only country where it could be obtained. Unfortunately there has been considerable delay in securing some of these plants, but we are told by the Minister that they are now being manufactured in this country, and that steps are being taken to supply

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local authorities and other bodies concerned with this new apparatus, which will enable mass radiology to be carried out on an extensive scale.
I venture to suggest to your Lordships, however, that early diagnosis really does not solve the problem at all. What it means is that the waiting lists of those certified as suffering from the disease, and who are awaiting admission to sanatoria, will be increased, without any practical measures being taken to deal with them. It seems to me, therefore, to resolve itself into a question of treatment, and particularly of an increase in the existing facilities for the treatment of tuberculosis cases in sanatoria and hospitals, enabling the institutions which exist already to keep their beds fully occupied, and preventing the closing down of wards, which, unfortunately, is taking place at the present time. We felt the need for an increase in the number of beds even before the war, and, if the war had not intervened, by this time in Wales we should have opened a new hospital with between 250 and 300 beds. Unfortunately the war put an end to that project. In the meantime, emergency hospitals have been established by the Ministry to deal with casualties and ordinary cases. They were not specially erected for dealing with tuberculosis cases, but we hoped that, until the necessity arose for utilizing them in the manner for which they were intended, they would become available for the treatment of tubercular cases. In one instance in North Wales six pavilions with 200 beds have been built, and unfortunately we have only been able to use about half that accommodation for tubercular patients, the remaining half still remaining empty. In the existing institutions there are at present about 150 beds with no patients, in spite of the fact that we have this long waiting list, and, unfortunately this number tends to increase rather than to diminish.
I understand that the bottle-neck has been caused through a shortage of nurses and of domestic staff. Before the war—I suppose as a reminiscence of the days of Florence Nightingale—the nursing profession was regarded as the noblest profession any woman could enter, but even before the war we experienced difficulties in finding an adequate number of nurses
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to take charge of the patients in our hospitals and sanatoria. During the war the situation has been aggravated very much owing to the competition of the fighting Services, and especially of munition factories, where the remuneration is so much more attractive. We have been blamed—I think all hospitals have been blamed—for not having improved the conditions of service, and especially the remuneration, of nurses, and I think that criticism is very well founded; but at any rate in the case of the Association during the last three years, 1939, 1940 and 1941, increases of salary have been made, and attempts have been made to improve the conditions under which our nurses work. As your Lordships know, this matter is now being considered by the Rushcliffe Committee. They have been charged with investigating the whole problem. I venture to hope that the report of the Rushcliffe Committee will be expedited, and that they will be able to recommend improvements in the conditions of service for nurses throughout the country, and also the establishment of a uniform standard, so that there may be an end of the competition which has hitherto gone on among various institutions for the services of nurses.
But, when all is said and done, I think we shall all agree that the real responsibility for this state of affairs rests with the Ministry of Health. The Minister rather contradicts himself, because he said in a speech on June 30:
"Indeed, it is really a difficult problem for propaganda because it is true to say that there is no national shortage of nurses, but that there are particular shortages of nurses in particular places, and especially a particular shortage for particular services."
He was asked "Is there, or is there not, a total shortage of nurses?" To which the Minister replied:
"Over the whole field of the nation I estimate that I could do with another 12,000 nurses. … For tuberculosis we need an immediate enrolment of about 1,200 nurses. That is our national problem."
In Wales our normal establishment is down by 15 per cent. and although we have taken all sorts of measures to enlist the number required we have miserably failed, and we attribute that failure—not altogether perhaps, but more or less—to a circular, Circular 2340, issued in April, 1941, by the Ministry of Health.
We have two criticisms to make in regard to that circular. In the first place, it

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gave all the nurses an option, and there was an undertaking that they would not be directed to go to any particular form of nursing or any particular institution: there was to be complete freedom of choice. Most people in these days are being ordered about, told where to go and in what sphere their services can be most usefully employed. When our men are being sent to fight, I fail to see why, in the case of the womanhood of the country, similar directions should not be given as to where their services can best be utilized. I suggest, therefore, to the Ministry that they should withdraw this undertaking, which was made more than a year ago, and exercise their powers of direction, so that these persons may be employed where their services are most needed. The second objection we have to the circular is that it has done a tremendous amount of harm in influencing nurses to go to hospitals other than tuberculosis institutions. It is suggested in Paragraph (c) (3) that there is far greater risk of infection from this disease in tuberculosis hospitals and sanatoria than there is in general hospitals. Actually young women under the age of twenty-one, even with their parents' consent, are unable to volunteer their services in tuberculosis institutions.
We thought at the time that this was a most extraordinary statement to make, and we are glad now to find that the Minister in his speech the other day said:
"I want to say advisedly that there is no ground for the belief that nursing in a sanatorium need involve any greater risk of contracting tuberculosis than nursing in other hospitals. I want to underline that."
Then there is a very interesting report, in which Dr. Trayer, Medical Superintendent of Baguley Sanatorium, Manchester, recently produced figures showing that whereas 6o probationers out of 1,807 passing through fourteen general hospitals over a period of seven years, developed tuberculosis, only 36 developed the disease out of 1,776 passing through twenty sanatoria over a period of ten years. The comparative risk of infection in general hospitals was thus 3.32 per cent. and in sanatoria only 2.03 per cent. I think that proves—in fact the Minister has admitted it—that the risk of infection in tuberculosis institutions is really less than in other hospitals. One wonders how this statement crept into the circular, and one is inclined to ask whether the Minister is really master in his own house.
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I sincerely hope the Minister will be willing to circulate widely the statement he made in the House of Commons, and that a direction will be given not only to the Civil Nursing Reserve but to all nurses as to where their services can be most usefully employed.
I come lastly to the question of domestic staff, which is indispensable to the effective functioning of an institution, otherwise it is like a ship without any stokers. This, I understand, is a matter primarily for the Ministry of Labour. Again, I must apologize for referring to the debate in another place, but there the Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Health stated that she would be grateful to any member who urged upon the Ministry of Labour the need to direct women into service in the hospitals. Such work should be regarded as vital war work. The extraordinary thing is that in his speech in the same debate the Minister said that "on the domestic side my right honourable friend the Minister of Labour and National Service is willing to direct women to service of all kinds in hospitals." If that is so, how is it that the Parliamentary Secretary should get up afterwards and express gratitude to anyone who would bring pressure to bear upon the Ministry of Labour to direct women to assist in the running of tuberculosis institutions? In Wales, we have a shortage of 31 per cent. in our domestic staff. That increases the train of work on the other members of the staff who remain loyal to their service, and it also increases the work of the nurses in these institutions, compelling them to undertake all sorts of jobs, like scrubbing floors, when they should be exclusively employed in looking after their patients.
I must apologize for detaining the House at such length, but may I sum up? First of all, I appeal to the Ministry of Health to take every step they can to increase the facilities for tuberculosis patients, and to lose no opportunity of utilizing the accommodation in the emergency hospitals until these beds are required owing to the war. The beds should not remain idle, but should in the meantime be used for this purpose. Secondly, I appeal to the Ministry to see that the existing institutions maintain their beds and prevent their wards from being closed. Thirdly, the Government should withdraw Circular 2340, to which I have alluded, and should exercise the

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powers of direction which I assume they can do, in co-operation with the Ministry of Labour, and include nurses and domestic staffs in the categories which are described as doing essential or vital war work. There seems to be some doubt as to whether they are included at the moment in these categories. Fourthly, I suggest the speeding-up of the proceedings of the Rushcliffe Committee, and, lastly, expedition in the manufacture of instruments for mass radiology. Your Lordships will agree that these are not unreasonable requests and appeals to make to the Ministry of Health. They are precautionary and preventive, and surely we ought to take these measures in time and not wait until, perhaps, some terrible epidemic comes along, as the result of conditions which are deteriorating all the time as regards nutrition and the maintenance of powers of resistance on the part of the population. I beg to move for Papers.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, I should like to say a few words on the Motion introduced by my noble friend Lord Davies. I spent Saturday afternoon at a sanatorium in which I am interested, and talked over with the staff the very points which have been raised to-day. That particular sanatorium is now 50 per cent. short of its nurses, and has hardly any domestic staff at all. It is being debated whether we should not close up a wing of the sanatorium. A similar condition of affairs exists in another sanatorium not twenty miles distant. With regard to the difficulties of getting nurses, I suggest that the Civil Nursing Reserve might very well, for the period of the war, ease up the restriction which prevents girls from volunteering to nurse in a sanatorium until they are twenty-one. That restriction means that, by the time they are twenty-one, they are probably settled in another job, and no longer wish to go into a sanatorium. As a war measure they might be detailed to go to those places where they are short of nurses. If the General Nursing Council would introduce into the training of nurses the necessity of doing three months in a sanatorium, it would not be bad from the educational point of view, and it would also ease the situation.
The whole thing at bedrock is really financial. If the sanatorium cannot
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afford to give the wages they will not get any of the few nurses who are available. With regard to the domestic staff, if theirs cannot be scheduled as war work which they are not allowed to leave, they cannot he prevented from going. At this particular sanatorium, which is for men patients—seamen and merchant seamen—men orderlies would do very well, but you cannot get them because if you give what you think is a good wage, they will not stay. Only last week a man who was apparently happy and well-paid left, and it was discovered that he had gone to one of Woolworth's branches for £4 10s. or £5 10s. a week as a fire-watcher. Against that sort of thing the hospitals cannot compete. It is part and parcel of the rise in wages all round which the Government apparently are unable to control.
THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON: My Lords, although I was very glad to hear Lord Davies introduce his Motion, I cannot entirely agree with the noble Lord when he expresses merely "concern" about the situation and not alarm. To me the situation calls for more than concern, it calls for really deep alarm. We cannot, I think, consider this question of domestic staff and of nurses in tuberculosis sanatoria without linking it to the rise in the death-rate among tuberculous patients. What are the facts? In the last war tuberculosis was killing off people in this country at the rate of 1,000 a week. I should like to mention to your Lordships that not only in this country but even in neutral countries there was a heavy death-rate due to the strain and the shortages of those war years. The death-rate was almost as high as here. Since then, due probably more to the rise in the scale of living than to any advance in medicine, there has been a tremendous improvement, but as the noble Lord who introduced this Motion pointed out to us, since the beginning of this war the situation has deteriorated, and one is really appalled to learn, as was said I think in another place, that in 1941 the number of deaths from tuberculosis had gone up to 28,600. I think I am right in saying that in the current year for six months the figures have already reached 29,000.
If we go on upon this scale the death-rate is going to make a very serious inroad among the workers in munition factories and have a serious affect upon the organism of war-scale production that we so

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vitally need. The reasons for this increase are fairly obvious. Poverty in peacetime, I suppose I am right in saying, is the greatest single cause of tuberculosis, and conditions of poverty, through war, have spread out into other classes who normally would not feel them. I mean that we are getting the intensive strain of war work in factories, and we are also getting less of protective foods and fats. Then there are the black-out conditions, the exclusion of fresh air, which is so absolutely and vitally necessary to us. There is also a history of weeks and months of nights spent by people in air-raid shelters, where those infected with tuberculosis meet the healthy in almost ideal conditions for spreading the disease.
One other cause to which I should like to call the attention of His Majesty's Government very strongly, is the stripping, if I may so put it, of the civilian population of their doctors. There has been a tremendous depletion of the number of doctors available for civilians. I think I am right in saying that up to January, 1941, 20 per cent. of the country's general practitioners were taken for the Forces, and since then more than 1,400 have been taken. I think this is a very dangerous situation. You have a big and almost immobolized reserve of medical knowledge in the Forces which cannot be used for the benefit of the civilian population. Surely some way could be found by which the War Department could arrange, through the barricade of red tape, for these doctors to go out and take evening surgeries, and so help the immensely overworked general practitioner in the work he now has to do among the civil population. At the moment obviously our war effort depends as much on the morale of the civilian population as it does upon the Armed Forces. I would suggest that among the Armed Forces alarm and concern would be felt if they felt that their wives and sisters and mothers lacked any necessary medical treatment, if such a lack could possibly be avoided.
The last straw to break the back of public health, if one may put it in that way, is the shortage of nurses. We are told that 1,200 nurses are urgently needed for nursing tubercular cases. That means that hundreds of beds are empty. I believe that the figure of 1,200 nurses short means that there are nearly 4,000
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beds in the whole country free for cases and not used at a time when the death-rate is going up and, as we learnt from the speeches made earlier to-day, there are large waiting lists of undiagnosed cases. This menace goes on still more threateningly. I think one of the greatest factors augmenting the position is the ignorance of the public. In my experience—and I should imagine that of your Lordships has been similar—the general public is extremely ignorant about this disease, both about its symptoms and its cure, as well as about the possible risks of infection and the precautions to be taken to avoid it. The leading authorities upon tuberculosis have laid it down that this disease can be cured, and that it can be prevented if reasonable precautions are taken. Children, I understand, are immensely liable to get the infection, while grown-ups are very much less so; in fact, the average of infection among the wives of tubercular husbands and the husbands of tubercular wives is not much higher than the general average. In other words, a grown-up is not so liable to catch the disease as a child. When the disease does appear in an adult it is nearly always the revival of an old affection which started in childhood.
Therefore I suggest that the first step His Majesty's Government should take is to inaugurate a big campaign for educating the public. There should be a national campaign. There is no need to alarm people, but we should have a series of talks on the B.B.C. about the symtoms of this disease, about its preventability and about its cure, and urging the public to take what steps they can immediately to eradicate it. The Press has always given magnificent support to any campaign of this sort, and I am sure it would do its utmost to join in spreading knowledge. We ought to abolish the reticence about this disease which makes people think it is a shameful thing, and we ought to stop completely people staying in their homes and spreading the infection among their children month after month.
Ignorance, too, I am convinced, is one of the causes of the shortage of nurses. It has been pointed out, and I should like to support this very much, that the loss of younger girls coming into tuberculosis nursing is due to the impression that it is more dangerous to nurse in a

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sanatorium. As Lord Davies has pointed out, that is in fact far from being the case. Owing to the slightly lighter work, possibly better food, fresher air, and conditions generally, nursing in sanatoria for tubercular cases is actually much safer than in a general hospital where the tremendous strain and overwork are liable to react on the nurses and cause tuberculosis. In this matter a national campaign of education would help, because the strongest resistance to the idea of their children going to nurse in a sanatorium is probably offered by the mothers of girls of eighteen who are entering the nursing profession. One suggestion that has been made in another place is that the wages of nurses in sanatoria should be increased. I think that would be a great mistake, because it would at once give grounds for the suspicion that this was a very dangerous type of nursing. Instead I would strongly suggest that the Ministry of Health should find means to raise the wages of all nurses, and if possible to better their general living conditions.
Actually the situation in this country is that we look on nurses as being not quite such worthy people in regard to their earnings as the average domestic staff or domestic servant. About two weeks ago I took up The Times and read through the advertisements on the front page. I was surprised to find that a cook is offered as much as a departmental sister, a parlourmaid is offered £35 more a year than a trained nurse, a housemaid was offered £13 more than a staff nurse, and a girl of fourteen, presumably completely inexperienced, was offered as a scullery maid the same pay as a probationer nurse. Can it be matter of wonder that there is this shortage in the nursing profession? The day has gone when we could use the excuse of vocational inspiration for getting sweated labour. An increase in general pay, I submit, would help to eliminate the shortage. There is one point on which I am afraid I must disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I do not think compulsion is the best way out. It has been suggested that nurses from the Civil Nursing Reserve and other women might be directed into the nursing of tubercular cases. I personally would not care to be nursed by an unwilling conscript, and I think there are other ways than the method of direction of achieving the same object.
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One other reason which I think is causing the shortage of nurses is that in many sanatoria—not all—nurses are remote from general amenities and social life, and the old tradition of discipline remains which prevents young nurses or probationers from going out and finding a little more completely necessary recreation. Steps should be taken to try to bring nurses in sanatoria nearer to social amenities—I know it is difficult in wartime—by arranging 'bus services and giving relief so that the life of the nurses could be made more agreeable. What happens to-day is that a nurse prefers to go into a general hospital which is fully staffed and where there are social amenities.
More serious is the fact that a probationer nurse looks upon going into a sanatorium as a completely dead end. She has no way of continuing her medical training. The remedy for this is as simple as the mistake. If all sanatoria would copy the better and more enlightened ones, and employ a sister tutor who could instruct these young girls in hygiene, anatomy, physiology and so forth, so that they could continue their training and prepare perhaps to take the elementary examination, they would not feel that they were wasting their time. Coupled with this there should be the compilation of a tuberculosis register by the General Nursing Council similar to what has been done in fever and mental nursing. That would give tuberculosis nurses the feeling that they were on an equality with other nurses. The Tuberculosis Association has been trying for years to bring this about, but apparently the General Nursing Council is still wedded to the old-fashioned idea that tuberculosis nursing is merely a matter of carrying trays and doing unskilled work. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the last twenty years the treatment of tuberculosis has made enormous strides. I need only remind your Lordships of the modern technique of collapsing the lung either by artificial pneumothorax or by removing portions of the ribs. Tuberculosis nursing is nowadays a highly skilled branch of nursing.
I have dealt at some length with the reasons for the shortage of nurses and some of the methods which in my view can meet the problem, but we have to go deeper than that. There is something

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radically wrong when this important, insidious and dangerous disease is spreading on all sides and at the same time we are short of nurses, the public are woefully in ignorance and the general tendency on the part of infected persons is to conceal the disease rather than try to get it cured by early treatment. The answer to that is that prevention is the real solution. In this country we are apt to pay attention to cure rather than prevention. In advanced cases the interest of the medical profession and of the Government is aroused, but the real secret of good health is prevention. If more preventive measures could be taken we could go far to eradicate the disease.
I have seen some interesting figures from the Soviet Union which has reduced its tuberculosis figures by 83 per cent. since 1914. That reduction has gone on through the most grim and bitter years and it is entirely due to prevention. In Russia they use mass radiography on an enormous scale. Practically every working man going into a factory is examined and photographed, and anyone who has even a minor operation, such as the extraction of a tooth, is again photographed. The result is that there is continual examination of the population. Immediately anyone is found to be affected he is taken away and treated. Not only is tuberculosis a notifiable disease as it is in this country, but in Russia all contacts with the patients, children, parents and people with whom they have been living or working, are compulsorily examined. I think I am right in saying that in this country there is no such compulsion. Nobody need be examined for tuberculosis. That is a step that should be taken immediately. Mass radiography unfortunately has been terribly neglected here, and it is only now that the Services and certain firms with over ten thousand employees are adopting it with the object of saving them from having to pay pensions to persons who collapse under war strain. I hope the Government will take steps to give priority to any equipment that we can still get from America for this purpose.
In other countries there are preventoria in which children of tubercular parents are given an opportunity to go and live in camps or colonies, where they can lead free and happy lives under observation, to rejoin the family when their
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parents come out of the sanitoria cured. One thing which I am afraid will prevent any possible reform so long as it is allowed to continue, is the fact that a. worker or a poor tradesman or any man of insufficient means is punished for having this disease. If a man earning say £3 or £4 a week goes to a sanatorium he is looked after and treated, but his wife and family are reduced to living on a sick benefit under the national health insurance scheme of 18s. a week. His wife will have to go to the public assistance committee and be subject to a means test even to get the fare to visit her husband in the sanatorium. The result is that if a man gets the early symptoms of tuberculosis—it may be a slight cough or a little tiredness—he will go on working in the hope that he will get over it, and end up as a dying case and perhaps infect his children. There is one other point which I should like to mention. I do not know if it is fully realized to what extent research has been paralysed by the war. I have heard that in France, before the collapse, efforts were being made to immunize children. It had not been found successful in all cases, I admit, but a distinguished research pathologist had discovered valuable evidence of the possibility of the immunization of children as simple and complete, it is hoped, as that against diphtheria; but during the war this has been curtailed and almost completely stopped. It is important, however desperate we are for resources, that research of this kind should be carried on, and that we should, if possible, discover this immunization which might mean so much to us now.
Lastly, I would urge that there should be a change of attitude on the part of the Government towards this problem. It is an important one, as I say, and I think that if these steps were taken, if the education of the public and of the nurses were conducted on a wide scale, if economic penalties could be removed, if the status of the tuberculosis nurses could be increased and made reasonably high, and, above all, if research could be re-established, we should eliminate this disease bit by bit, and solve this nursing shortage problem more fundamentally than by just conscribing 1,200 nurses immediately for work in sanatoria, which is a. very shortsighted way of treating this very important problem.
VISCOUNT DAWSON OF PENN: My Lords, I take it that it will be common ground that there cannot be an increase of tuberculosis in any country without that increase raising a certain amount of concern. But, although we are concerned with the increase of tuberculosis in this war, I suggest that it is important for us to keep our sense of proportion. In the ten years preceeding 1938—the last year before the war—there was a steady improvement in regard to tuberculosis in this country, and as measured by mortality rates, there was the difference between 90 per 100,000 ten years before the war and 60 per 100,000 in 1938. That amounts to an improvement of one-third—no mean achievement. When the war came there was an increase of tuberculosis, as there is in the case of almost all germ diseases. It was found that the mortality from this cause went up considerably in the first year and continually in the second year, and the total increase in mortality amounted altogether to 13 per cent. in Great Britain. Now we do not regard that as perhaps the most anxious feature. A more anxious feature is the selective character of the infection amongst different classes. One thing which has been found in this war, as in the last, is a tendency for increase of infection among young women. In this war it is not only young people, adolescents and young adults, but there is this novelty that there has been an extension of the infection amongst young children. In fact, this extension amongst young children is a most notable characteristic of tuberculosis in this war so far. It is particularly noticeable in the increased incidence of tuberculous meningitis, from which there has been increased mortality amounting to 50 per cent.
The cause of tuberculosis in war is, I take it, broadly speaking, a combination of two things—increased opportunities of infection and decreased resistance. These conditions, a little reflection will show, are inseparable from the conditions of totalitarian war. You have big movements of young people all over the country, their aggregation into factories, the overcrowding of their homes, blackout conditions which impair ventilation and also increase the fatigue that is incidental to war-time life—the fatigue, for example, of getting home after a long day's work—and the harassment of women in the management of their homes.
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There is also increased opportunity for contact in consequence of overcrowding both in factories and in homes. Now, given such conditions, given a tuberculous person in a crowded factory—and that tuberculous person may be quite unaware of having the disease—or a tuberculous person in a crowded home, it is easy to see that there is almost certain to be an increased spread of the disease.
I would like to submit this. On the whole, up to now, I do not share the grave view taken by the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon. It is true, I think, to say that, on the whole, tuberculosis is under control. Thirteen per cent. is a considerable figure, but there is no sign so far of the disease running away with us. We have to remember that even in the year 1938, when we were at the peak so to speak, even in that good year there were nearly 250,000 people being looked after by the tuberculosis dispensaries of this country. So that we have to realize that tuberculosis is a germ disease that does not come in waves upon us. It is always with us; its root is in almost every country. It is among its curious features that it is at once a curable and at the same time a very destructive disease. While it can destroy life in a few weeks, the majority of cases of tubercle are so mild that their possessors are not even aware that they have ever been attacked by the disease. That is borne out by this interesting fact. If you take the post-mortems done on old people who have died, it may be as the result of old age, it is extraordinary how often you will find in the lungs of these people old, healed, deposits of tubercle, and yet there is nothing in the record of their lives to suggest that they ever knew that they had been affected by it at all. There is no doubt that large numbers of adult people have had tuberculosis so mildly that they have been only vaguely ill, and so mildly that it has been un-diagnosable. They have come through a time of vague ill health, not knowing what has been wrong with them, and have been restored to good health and have lived to a ripe old age. In other words, this is a highly curable disease, and I agree that that is a good reason for dealing with it as early as possible, when there is every hope of restoring a large proportion of its victims to good health.
If we are to grasp the problems of infection, let us consider in what way people contract tubercle. I take it that

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there are three ways. One is by contact with the expectoration of a case of established disease; another is by the reawakening of the disease in someone who has had tubercle and recovered from it, the disease being reawakened, perhaps, owing to lowered power of resistance due to unfavourable conditions or environment; and the third, which must not be forgotten, is because tubercle is conveyed by drinking the milk of a tuberculous dairy cow. I should like to deal with that last cause first because it has a bearing on the subject of prevention. In a country like this, where a large proportion of the cattle are tuberculous, it surely would be a wise precaution to pasteurize our milk. My profession has been pleading for years with successive Governments, like a voice crying in the wilderness, to take up the question of the pasteurization of milk, organize it and Make it compulsory. Pre-war Governments have in this respect been a stiff-necked people, and we are in this position now, that pasteurization in this Country is patchy. It is extremely good in London, good in some boroughs and bad in others, while in the country districts most of the milk drunk is raw.
In that connexion, there arises this interesting reflexion. Some children are getting a good deal of milk, and there has been a good deal of evacuation of children from town to country. Take the case of London. While the children were in London, they thank pasteurized milk, but since they have been sent into the country and billeted there they have drunk raw milk. Investigation is going on to confirm or otherwise what I am going to say, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that the increase of tuberculosis in children may be accounted for partly by the fact that they have passed from consuming pasteurized milk to drinking raw milk. Under the heading of prevention, I would urge upon His Majesty's Government—I do not think that it really requires urging, because I am sure that the present Minister of Health is quite alive to it—that it is an important matter that the pasteurization of milk should be organized and established throughout this country.
I pass now briefly to consider the class of tubercle to which my noble friend Lord Davies mainly applied himself—namely, lung tubercle. Here infection is invariably brought about by contact with the expectoration
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of an established case; and it is obvious that, under the overcrowded conditions which we have in war-time, with the lack of ventilation and the other difficulties to which I have referred, the opportunities of contracting tubercle must be greater than in the easier conditions of peace. The question is how we are to reduce the trouble to a minimum. The chief difficulty lies in the fact that it is quite common for an infected person in a factory or in a home to have symptoms so vague or so completely absent that it is not realized that he is an infected person. That is a difficulty which none of us can prevent, but we can be aware of it and be watchful about it.
The noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, touched on a good many technical questions and referred to the help which we are going to get from mass radiography. The means of establishing that mass radiography are making progress. We are not dependent solely on the United States of America; there are machines in this country which have been standardized according to an agreed pattern, and which will be turned out in increasing numbers from now onwards. The machine has this advantage, that in skilled hands—and I would emphasize those words—as many as 3,000 examinations a week are possible, and it is possible to organize the examination of a whole factory in a very short space of time. On the question of compulsion, to which the noble Earl referred, my own view is that we can do far better in this country by persuasion than by compulsion. There are good grounds for supposing that mass radiography, as it is called, will be received with increasing favour as the people concerned understand it. I believe that that will lead to the discovery of early cases, which are difficult of discovery by other means.
We have to be careful not to speak too optimistically, as we are apt to do about new inventions. Mass radiography is going to be a great aid, but it has to grow into our system of medicine discreetly. To dispatch large numbers of machines all over the country without proper teams to work them would make a very bad beginning, and lead to false conclusions. I have reason to think that the Ministry are well aware of this, and that the medical services of the Armed Forces are also aware of it. There is a combined effort at this moment by the medical services of

35
the Army, Navy and Air Force, working in co-operation with the civilian side of medicine under the Ministry of Health. I believe that we shall make a considerable advance in the direction of early diagnosis. It is easy to see that if we could remove one infected person from a part of a factory which may contain a hundred people, or take one infected person away from his home at an early stage, we might do much towards the reduction of the incidence of this disease.
The noble Lord referred to a certain matter of great importance, the depletion of doctors. I need hardly say that that arouses a sympathetic note in my mind, but I am bound to say in passing that there has been no more depletion than is really necessary. The Army does, where it can, give facilities for medical officers in military depots to give a hand, and they do give a hand. But I think we have to realize that the first claims must be the claims of the war, and we have to put up with the depletion of doctors. It is true that we are now getting help from a considerable number of Poles and Czechs, who work very happily with us and serve in many of the emergency service hospitals.
I pass to another point—namely, the education of the public by cinema. I am doubtful of that. A difficulty in all matters concerning health is to give information without producing alarm, and I think one of the things we have to be careful about in mass radiography is not to raise a sense of alarm amongst the workers. The danger is that they will swing from indifference to over-anxiety, and I think I would rather have indifference than over-anxiety in the case of illness. I think mass radiography, as far as we have watched it up to the present, has been well received, and if it is presented to the people as it should be presented, as a means of establishing how well people are, and not how ill they ale, it can be useful. Make it part of a health measure, which is one of the features of the Youth Movement to-day. They take a youth and say, "Look here, you've got to be fit. Let's examine you and measure your chest, and see how you're growing, and see whether you are straight and upright, and have got good muscles," and then incidentally find out how healthy they are. That is the right way to proceed, as contrasted with health propaganda,
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which makes a self-conscious people.
The noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, raised a very important matter with regard to the treatment of the tuberculous, and that is the question of rehabilitation, as it is called. In the past we have all been prone to think that when a patient leaves a sanatorium he is ready to go back to work. There has been a jump from sanatorium perhaps right back to employment, the worker being forced to it after having been a long time out of work. He is anxious to get back to his ordinary social state and his ordinary earning power. What we have to realize in tuberculosis is that there must always be a long period between the end of sanatorium treatment and full-time work. I think it will be found that the Ministry of Health are fully alive to this matter, and that they propose to consider seriously the maintenance and subsidizing of tubercular-infected subjects for a period from the time they leave the sanatorium to the time when they get back to work—if they are on a half-time basis, to make up their wages for so many weeks or months.
We have to remember that the care of the tuberculous is, I believe, primarily the duty of the local authority. The difficulty of local authorities is that so many of the people affected are long distances away from their peace-time homes, and there is difficulty sometimes in the local authorities fulfilling their duties. There is a case, I think, for the emergency medical service adding one more to its many duties, which it performs so well, in trying to provide on a larger scale for tuberculous people. As regards nurses, if it were made clear that there is no more risk of a nurse catching tuberculosis in a sanatorium than there is in the ordinary ward of a hospital, in fact rather less if anything, and if in some way the care of the tuberculous patient could be made part of a nurse's duties—she might, for example, be seconded from medical wards and surgical wards to tuberculosis wards—I believe the difficulty could to a large extent be got over. But of one thing I aim sure, that to start any process of compulsion, to make a nurse take up a particular phase of nursing, would end in failure. If an adequate appeal were made, and tuberculosis were made part of the general care of the sick, I cannot but think that the difficulty about nurses would disappear.
LORD SNELL: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, has drawn attention to a subject which for some time has been one of real concern to the Minister of Health, and this debate merits a very careful reply. I am authorized to say that the speeches which have been made, in support of and in criticism of the noble Lord's Motion, will receive the Minister's urgent and close attention. The main complaint made by the noble Lord in the Motion on the Paper is of the failure of the Ministry of Health to deal with the staffing requirements of institutions for the treatment of tuberculosis. The failure to solve a given problem may be due either to the nature of the problem itself or to the way in which it is being approached, and it is quite clearly in the latter sense that the noble Lord has approached this question to-day. He does not think the problem is insoluble, but he does think that in its handling of it the Government have been inefficient and blameworthy. Let us therefore try to get a true measure of the Government's alleged culpability into our minds.
The noble Viscount, Lord Dawson, has in his most interesting and helpful speech traversed very much of the ground which I should have covered. It is of considerable importance to have his judgment that, serious though the matter is, and universal as is its application, it is nevertheless not incurable, and it is not a matter either for a grave view or for despair in regard to the treatment of it. The difficulty in dealing with this matter is not one of accommodation ultimately, but one of staffing facilities. The lack of an adequate staff in the nursing service is well known and is far from being new. It is not confined to institutions that have to deal with the treatment of tuberculosis. Anxiety concerning the maintenance of an adequate nursing service led to the establishment of the Athlone Committee as long ago as 1937, and some of the recommendations which it made had to be deferred, as much else which the nation wish to undertake had to be deferred, owing to the extreme exigencies of the war. As one result there was a sudden additional burden thrown on the whole nursing service, and the difficulty of securing staff in regard to the treatment of tuberculosis was greatly increased. For example, a certain amount of the accommodation available had to be diverted to other urgent purposes. Present difficulties
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however, as I have said, are caused not so much by lack of accommodation as by the shortage of nursing and domestic staffs. These interact on each other. If you get an adequate domestic staff, such trained nurses as there are can devote all their time to their special business of nursing and have not to be diverted to domestic duties.
There arise two essential points to consider—first of all, the scale of the problem; and, secondly, what the Government are doing about it. The difficulty in regard to the nursing service is only one phase of the Government's problem in regard to the best use of woman-power in the nation. The question of Wales has been rightly touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Davies. The administrative system for the treatment of tuberculosis is, I should point out, different in England from what it is in Wales. In Wales provision is made for its treatment by the Welsh National Memorial Association, with which the name of Lord Davies and his family is so honourably and helpfully linked. In England it is dealt with by the local authorities—county councils, county borough councils, and so on. Not long ago the Minister of Health received a deputation from the Welsh Parliamentary Party, when all these things were discussed, and it is very much hoped as the result of that deputation that greater voluntary help will be offered by women throughout the country. Let us look for a minute or two at the question of staffing. The Ministry receives a periodical return of the available nursing and domestic staff, and also of the additional number required. It has separate figures for, roughly, one-half of sanatorium beds throughout the country. The total number of domestics employed, male and female, is 2,400, and 460 additional are required. The remaining sanatorium beds are attached to other hospitals, such as emergency hospitals, and for these there are no separate figures available, but inasmuch as the figures I have quoted deal with one-half of the beds, it is reasonable to assume that if that number is doubled you will get a total approximate figure of 4,800 domestics employed and 920 additional needed.
Let us take such comfort as we can as we go along in this matter. The position, unsatisfactory as it is, is not actually worse than it was a year ago, but is even slightly better. In 1941 the deficiency

39
amounted to 17 per cent.; in 1942, so far as we have the figures, it amounts to 16 per cent. That is not a great reduction, but still it does show we are holding our own, as it were, in the matter. The deficiency is one that sanatoria share with other institutions in the country. It is more difficult, for example, to get daily workers than it used to be, and then there is more glamour, as well as more remuneration, attached to other industries and perhaps to other phases of the nursing service. A good many of the sanatoria are in the country, removed from the attractions of town life, and that again makes it more difficult to obtain as many nurses as are desired. The need is recognized by the Government, and women domestics in these institutions are reserved—that is to say, they are not called up nor are they asked to transfer, and other women who are called up may be directed to this service. The Ministry of Labour and National Service has also instructed Regional Controllers to give high preference to these needs. This action has relieved some of the difficulties, and the position on the domestic side has been substantially improved.
If we deal with the question of the nursing staff exclusively the position is admittedly difficult, because the shortage of nursing staff at sanatoria is only one aspect of the general shortage of skilled nurses, and can only be effectively cured by an increase in the total number of nurses. An increase is being secured. There are now over 90,000 nurses—that is trained nurses, student nurses and nursing auxiliaries—working in civilian hospitals, 8,000 more than a year ago. It is estimated that another 12,000 nurses are required. Taking the question of tuberculosis separately,. there are 2,000 employed at sanatoria, and it is estimated that another 600 are required, and another 600 for beds in other hospitals for tuberculosis. Therefore we need an immediate enrolment of about 1,200 nurses. The percentage deficiency in sanatoria is higher than that in general hospitals, and it has been a matter of long-term experience that the nursing of tuberculosis is not so attractive as other services.
So far as the financial conditions of service are concerned, the Minister of Health, as your Lordships are aware, set up a Committee composed of representatives of nurses and their employers under
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the Chairmanship of Lord Rushcliffe to draw up agreed scales of salaries and emoluments for nurses, and their terms of reference authorized them to make recommendations so far as sanatoria are concerned in respect of State registered nurses, student nurses and nurses possessing or studying for the certificate of the Tuberculosis Association. As to other conditions of service, local authorities have been asked to review their previous provision for the care of nursing staff in sanatoria in the light of a memorandum of the Joint Tuberculosis Council.
The fear of contracting infection is no doubt one factor which has created a prejudice in the minds of girls and even of their parents, but the Minister has made it clear, and it has also been repeatedly stated in your Lordships' House to-day, that nursing in a sanatorium need involve no greater risk of contracting tuberculosis than nursing in other hospitals. Publicity both of the general type and in the nursing papers has been given to the need for nurses in sanatoria and the valuable experience which it provides as to the conditions of service in sanatoria generally. As I have already mentioned, the actual total number of nurses required will allow for some needed expansion in the number of beds, but the problem of filling individual gaps in particular institutions is admittedly difficult, and the Minister has made his own view clear that if the needs of the situation are properly understood he does not think we shall fail to get the response required.
I was gratified to hear the noble Viscount, Lord Dawson, speak against compulsion in this service. It is one of the services which, so long as that can be managed, we should all desire to remain upon a voluntary basis. The position at the moment is that members of the Civil Nursing Reserve over the age of twenty-one are expected to serve in sanatoria if called upon to do so, but in practice, if they are unwilling, and would prefer to resign from the reserve rather than serve in sanatoria, they are not compelled to do so. That is the position. The Department's present view about compelling nurses to serve was indicated by the Minister in the debate on the Estimates of the Ministry of Health on June 30, and in the same debate Miss Horsbrugh, the Under-Secretary, also dealt with the matter. The Minister stated that no one wanted to use compulsion in the case of such staffs, and though in the

41
last resort we might have to consider a wider exercise of our powers of direction than hitherto he did not think that compulsion ought to be necessary.
Then there is the question of the nursing auxiliaries under the age of twenty-one. When in April, 1941, the scope of the Civil Nursing Reserve was extended to such institutions as sanatoria, it was laid down that nursing auxiliary members of the reserve under the age of twenty-one should not be allocated to sanatoria even if they volunteered. This decision was taken by the Minister on medical advice; therefore that should be remembered in considering this matter of compulsion. The Minister was advised that women under the age of twenty-one might be particularly liable to infection from tubercle, and in the circumstances the Ministry did not feel it right to call upon them to serve in sanatoria. This point was considered by the Standing Advisory Committee on Tuberculosis which contains representatives of the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis, the Joint Tuberculosis Council, the Tuberculosis Association, the Society of Medical Officers of Health, and the London County Council. A proposal was put before this Committee by one of its members that the Ministry should be asked to withdraw this embargo. The Committee felt unable to ask the Minister to withdraw the embargo, but they did ask that it should be modified so that these young members could serve in institutions dealing with non-pulmonary tuberculosis. This recommendation of the Standing Advisory Committee was given effect to in Circular 2,526. The fact that so authoritative a body accepted the Ministry's view with the minor modification which has since been given effect to, surely indicates that the Ministry's general action was justified.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: I submit that it stultifies it.
LORD SNELL: We have recently been giving the matter further thought, and we feel that perhaps in present circumstances it may be going too far to refuse to allow nursing auxiliaries under twenty-one to serve in sanatoria even if they volunteer. After all, a substantial number of student nurses under twenty-one are employed on the permanent staffs of sanatoria, and of course every care is taken to prevent
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them from becoming infected. The Ministry are now proposing to modify the embargo further by allowing nursing auxiliaries under twenty-one to serve in sanatoria if they volunteer, provided also, of course, that the fullest precautions are observed in looking after their health.
That, my Lords, is the position of the Ministry at the present time, and perhaps we might get such comfort as we can from an examination of the figures of fatal cases of tuberculosis in recent years. In 1916 the number of deaths from tuberculosis was 53,858. In 1938 the number had been reduced to 26,176. By 1940, however, the number had risen to 28,144 and in 1941 to 28,669. Therefore ground was lost between 1938 and 1941 to the extent of 2,493 cases. How that has been brought about your Lordships can imagine. The noble Viscount, Lord Dawson, has given an illustration of the possible effect of taking children away from urban districts, from the London area, say, where at school they would have the oversight of school doctors and clinical help if necessary and receive milk of a high grade, probably pasteurized, and sending them into the country where they drink raw milk and are without close medical attention. That would account possibly for some of the increase; but we have to remember also that the general health of the community has improved, and we should remember that particularly when we are asked to censure the Government. The fall in the number of deaths in this matter between 1916 and 1938 was due to the action of the Ministry of Health, to local authorities and to voluntary bodies, especially such as the Welsh National Memorial Association.
Complaints have been made by my noble friend the Earl of Huntingdon to-day that the population had been stripped of their ordinary doctors. That may or may not account for some of the increase, but in another place quite recently the impish suggestion was made that the general improvement in health was due to the fact that 10,000 doctors had been withdrawn from the population to the greater affliction of the Armed Forces of the Crown. I personally have never felt able to join in gibes at the medical profession. I have felt it right to defer criticism of their work until they have been provided with social conditions such as are required to make that work

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effective. Allow me to adapt some words of Kipling to this matter:
"It's doctor this and doctor that and abuse the brute,
But it's fetch the doctor quickly when the pains begin to shoot."
We can all criticize the doctors when we are well and they are none the worse for the criticism, but let us remember that they have to work under conditions that are unsuitable for their work; and we ought to remember also that if the national health has improved, as we are thankful to say it has improved, it is probably because we are all of us compelled to do now what the doctors always told us we ought to do.
I think the ground lost has been due to war conditions, which the Ministry of Health could not control and which doctors could not control. It is one of the afflictions of the experience through which we are going, due to overcrowding, to the cessation of the building of new housing accommodation, to congestion in air-raid shelters and to bad air which results partly from the black-out—especially the black-out, because, to use words from the Book of Common Prayer, this is a "pestilence that walketh in darkness" and the "sickness that destroyeth in the noon-day." The ways of recovery are known and they will be open to us to adopt as soon as the war ends. There will be the possibility of earlier diagnosis. We have perhaps concentrated in the past too much upon the treatment rather than upon the early diagnosis of the disease. It has been difficult to obtain the necessary equipment of late, but British-made instruments are becoming available and teams of trained workers are being developed ready to undertake this work by the end of the present year. The Minister shares in the anxiety which is felt concerning the renewed encroachment of this destructive disease, and he will continue every means open to him to get staff deficiencies remedied and the needs of an essential service fully met. The views expressed in this debate will, I repeat, be brought to the Minister's notice and I promise that they will receive his very careful attention.
LORD DAVIES: My Lords, I feel very greatly indebted to my noble friend for his reply, but I must confess that I am disappointed that he was not able to inform us of the measures which we hope may be
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taken to deal with this problem. It is one of the disadvantages of your Lordships' House that in many instances there is no one who is responsible for the matter which is under debate to speak on behalf of the Department here, and my noble friend has had to make the best of a rather weak case. I do not propose to take up your Lordships' time in going through all the arguments over again, but I would ask my noble friend whether it is really intended to repudiate the circular which has been discussed in the debate. How can it be said that all the learned and administrative bodies about which he told us had agreed to this differentiation between tuberculosis institutions and other hospitals as regards the risk of infection, when the Minister said in another place a few weeks ago that he is in entire disagreement with the views expressed in that circular? I am sure there are numbers of young women who, having heard of this circular, must have come to the decision that they would not voluntarily enter tuberculosis institutions for fear of the risk of infection. Why has the bias been definitely put against the nursing profession in the tuberculosis hospitals and sanatoria? I should be greatly indebted to my noble friend if he could give us an assurance on that point.
With regard to the other matter, the question of giving directions, my noble friend Lord Huntingdon said that he would prefer not to be nursed by someone who had gone to an institution compulsorily. No one of course wants compulsion, but I would point out that it is better to have some treatment rather than to have none at all, and I am sure my noble friend will agree. Voluntary appeals have been made already. I listened to one which was made two years ago by the then Minister of Health. He appealed to the women of the country to come forward and staff these institutions. Unfortunately, these appeals have fallen upon deaf ears, and one cannot help feeling that it is the duty of the Departments responsible for the health of the country to give directions which they think will help to meet a very critical situation. I felt that I should like to divide the House with respect to this important question, but having regard to the promise of my noble friend that he will report all these matters to the Department, we will hope that something will result from it, and I now beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

USE OF AIRCRAFT.
LORD BRABAZON OF TARA LORD BRABAZON OF TARA had given Notice that he would call attention to the present distribution and use of His Majesty's aircraft; and also move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have a grievance. The Motion in my name which you see on the Paper has been there for over a fortnight. It is framed in a wide and comprehensive way. I had discussed the question with the Minister who is going to reply on behalf of the Government—I even told him what I was going to say. Everything was in order to stage a debate of quite an innocent type. I arrive here as does the Under-Secretary—both of us pregnant with speeches—and as I come into your Lordships' House I am informed that this Motion may not proceed in public, but that the debate must be held, if it is held at all, in secret. Now I consider that not only a form of procedure which really cannot be allowed to continue, but a gross discourtesy. I would not, of course, for one moment accuse the noble Viscount the Leader of the House of being discourteous, because it is riot in his nature. But there is some malign influence behind him which has compelled him to impose this extraordinary procedure upon me.
It is, of course, quite evident that the Government are allergic to air, but they need not entirely lose their nerve. Up and down the country there are articles published dealing with the air. Some of them are very informative, and some are critical, but it seems to be laid down that your Lordships are not to express your opinions on air matters in this House in public debate. We are to be muzzled on this particular question, and, unless some steps are taken about it, I do not see the end of this type of procedure. I have been requested, indeed I have been practically ordered, not to proceed with this Motion. What I intend to do is to postpone it to a later date, and at that date, when chosen, I suppose the Government will move that it be debated in secret, and then we can thresh out the general principle in that debate. I ask your Lordships' leave to postpone my Motion.
VISCOUNT TRENCHARD: My Lords, I would ask your Lordships' leave to say a word in protest against this procedure. I know that the noble Viscount the Leader of the House would never have
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adopted it himself. We always get the very greatest courtesy from him. However, he is not a free agent. The same sort of thing happened to me two or three years ago, as the Lord Chancellor will remember. An endeavour was made to postpone and have taken in Secret Session a Motion which I had had down for a fortnight. I do protest vigorously against this attempt at laying down what subjects shall be taken in public, and what subjects shall not be taken, and when they shall be taken.
LORD ADDISON: My Lords, if I may, by leave of the House, intervene for a few moments, I would repeat almost some observations which I have previously made on this point, in support of my two noble friends who have just spoken. I know very well—we all do—that the noble Viscount the Leader of the House is most scrupulous in his considerateness to us all, and we all respect him. We know very well that so far as he is concerned we may always justly look forward to such treatment. But this raises a very much greater issue even than the fall of the Motion, against which the noble Lord has very naturally protested. It raises the matter of the decision of the Executive to prevent this House discussing in public a matter that it wishes to discuss. It was the case only the other day, in the matter of the very modest and very restricted subject of the building of merchant ships, that we were not allowed to discuss it in public, and now, suddenly, the same thing occurs with regard to the noble Lord's Motion—which, quite frankly, is the main reason for my being here to-day, for I wanted to do something else. This raises a matter of first-class importance which has been discussed, in a very able manner, in various ways, in all the leading newspapers and journals of the country, and is one which arouses the most intense interest. There is not one of us who wants to give any information which will be helpful to the enemy, or who wants the Government to be betrayed into doing so either. But I wish to say on behalf of my noble friends, and I am sure on behalf of many others, that I think we owe a duty to Parliamentary institutions to consider these Motions, and to take such steps as we can to justify these institutions and to maintain their rights upon which the proposed procedure is, in my view, a quite unwarrantable intrusion.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My Lords, by leave of the House I will add one word to what has fallen from the lips of other noble Lords, perhaps from a somewhat different point of view. I confess that when I saw this Motion, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, says, has been on the Paper for a fortnight, I thought it exceedingly likely that His Majesty's Government would not desire it to be discussed in Public Session. It is quite evident that on a subject of this kind there is at least some risk of things being said of which His Majesty's Government would disapprove, as conveying information to the enemy which ought not to be conveyed. That is even more likely to happen on this question than on the question of shipping, to which the noble Lord, Lord Addison, has alluded. However, that notion seems to have flashed on the minds of His Majesty's Government only to-day, and I confess, therefore, that I greatly sympathize with the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, who wishes to bring this Motion before the House, and with the other noble Lords who have spoken. It seems to me very remarkable that His Majesty's Government should not have been able, until an hour or two ago, to make up their minds whether this matter ought to be discussed in public at all, and I am bound to say that in my experience of this House, which is not short, I can remember very few cases where such neglect of the ordinary courteous procedure of this House has been shown.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (VISCOUNT CRANBORNE): My Lords, all of us who say anything on this subject this afternoon are, I suppose, technically out of order, because there is no Motion before the House; but, by leave of the House, I should like to intervene for a moment, in order first of all to say how very grateful I am to the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, for his decision to postpone the moving of his Motion. I fully recognise that he would like to discuss this matter in public, that he thought that it should be discussed in public, and that he intended himself to speak with that combination of discretion and knowledge of which he is a master. I also fully understand that he, and I think other noble Lords, feel that it would have been proper to give the House more notice of the Government's decision.
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To be absolutely frank, I too regret this very much. I am deeply distressed that the noble Lord should not have had more notice, and I should like to express my regret to the House as well as to the noble Lord himself. I fully appreciate the inconvenience which has been caused to him and to other noble Lords who were intending to take part in the debate.
It had been hoped that it would be possible to debate this subject in public; for, if noble Lords would only believe it, the Government dislike Secret Sessions just as much as they do. The Government have all the more reason to like Public Sessions, because they are under constant attack, and even in these times under a certain measure of criticism, and nothing is better from the Government's point of view than that they should have an opportunity of stating their case fully and frankly in public. But, after further urgent consideration, they did come to the conclusion—a conclusion which, I think, was shared by the noble Marquess, Lord Crewe, and which I think will be shared by other noble Lords—that this is a subject which, however innocent the intention of the debate, it is really impossible to discuss in public at the present time. After all, there is nothing that the enemy want to know more at the present time than (to quote the wording of the Motion) "the present distribution and use of His Majesty's aircraft." There is nothing in the world which the enemy want to know more than that, and, if we tell them anything, we make them a present of information which is exceedingly valuable to them. If the House expected any declaration of policy from the Government, I can only say that the situation would be worse still.
I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, can fairly argue, as I think that he did, that he could put his case in the Press if he wished to do so. What is really important to the enemy, however, is not the views which are held by the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, or by the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, important though those views are, coming from such experts as they are. What is really important to the enemy is the policy of the British Government on this question. That is what they want to know, and that is what it is essential that we should not tell them. Nor would a debate, in such circumstances as would be inevitable in

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public, be satisfactory. We should have an exceedingly powerful speech from Lord Brabazon, giving the views which he holds, and we should have a Government reply which would necessarily be quite incomplete, for it would be impossible for the Government to present their full case in public. A lopsided debate of that kind would be of no advantage to your Lordships' House or to the country as a whole, and I de not think that in such circumstances a useful debate at the present time would be possible. Those were the reasons which led the Cabinet after further consideration—and it is sometimes said that second thoughts are best—to come to the decision which they did. I intimated that decision immediately I could do so to the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, and, as your Lordships know, he has decided to postpone moving his Motion. I am very grateful to him for the decision which he has taken, and I believe that in war-time there is no other decision which he could have reached.

BROADCASTING HOURS.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I beg to ask the question standing on the Paper in my name.
[The question was as follows:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether, to effect an immediate saving of fuel, they will invite the British Broadcasting Corporation to terminate their Home Programme at 11.30, instead of at midnight.]
LORD TEMPLEMORE: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Selborne is unable to be in his place, and I understand he has communicated with the noble Earl on this subject. I have been asked to reply. His Majesty's Government are not in a position to make a statement in reply to the noble Earl's question to-day. The matter, however, has been under consideration, and my right honourable friend the Minister of Information hopes to be able to make an announcement in another place very shortly.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I should like to ask whether the Government already have the information which would provide an answer to my question?
LORD TEMPLEMORE: I am quite unable to say. I only know the answer
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which I have been given, that the matter is under consideration and that a statement will be made very shortly.
LORD ADDISON: My Lords, is not it possible that information already available to be made public is being withheld from this House for a few hours so that it can be given somewhere else, and is there any reason why this House should not be told as soon as the House of Commons?

LOANS (POSTPONEMENT OF REPAYMENT) MEASURE, 1942.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON moved to resolve, That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, this House do direct that the Loans (Postponement of Repayment) Measure, 1942, be presented to His Majesty for the Royal Assent. The right reverend Prelate said: My Lords, this is a very brief Measure dealing with a single point, that indicated in the title, "loans (postponement of repayment)." Queen Anne's Bounty has power, under various Acts of Parliament, to make loans to incumbents for the building, alteration or improvement of parsonage houses and glebe buildings. In present conditions, many incumbents to whom these loans are made find very great difficulty in repaying them by annual instalments, which may be spread over anything from seven to twenty-five years. There is a great desire on the part of Queen Anne's Bounty, in suitable cases, to allow a postponement of the repayment, but Queen Anne's Bounty has no power at present to grant such a postponement. This Measure gives it that power for a limited period—that is to say, for the duration of the war and for two years afterwards. Under the Measure Queen Anne's Bounty may postpone repayments for a period not exceeding five years in suitable cases, that is to say, taking into account the amount of the income, the burdens already resting on the benefice, and the condition of the improvements which the loan was given to make.
That, I think, really exhausts the contents of the Measure, except that there is a clause regularizing certain postponements which Queen Anne's Bounty have already made in a few cases of extreme hardship in anticipation of the Measure

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which is now before your Lordships. I do not think there is any other detail in it to which I need refer. I may add that the Measure applies also to loans made to Bishops, Deans, Canons and Cathedral Chapters. The object is a quite simple one—to give relief to incumbents who in certain cases are very hard pressed. If it can do any good it is needed now. The Church Assembly accordingly passed it through all its stages in the Summer Session. They did so with only one verbal Amendment, without a division, and with, I think, complete unanimity, and the Ecclesiastical Committee recommend that it be approved. I beg to move.
Moved to resolve, That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, this House do direct that the Loans (Postponement of Repayment) Measure, 1942, be presented to His Majesty for the Royal Assent—(The Lord Bishop of London.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

HOUSE OF LORDS OFFICES.
Order of the Day for the consideration of the Third Report from the Select Committee read.
The Committee reported as follows:
1.—Retirement of senior messenger.
The Committee sanctioned a pension and additional allowance under the Superannuation Act, 1935, to Mr. William West, senior messenger in the Parliament Office, on his retirement on 21st June, 1942, at the age of 65 after 21 years' service.
2.—Coal porters.
The Committee agreed to the scheme approved by the Lord Chairman of Committees, the Clerk of the Parliaments and the Yeoman Usher of the Black Rod with reference to the establishment and rates of pay of coal porters.
3.—Resident Superintendent.
The Committee authorized the Clerk of the Parliaments to approach the Office of Works with regard to the supply of light and fuel to occupants of official quarters in the Palace of Westminster.
4.—Clerk of the Parliaments, house allowance.
The Committee agreed to the inclusion of the existing house allowance in the salary of the Clerk of the Parliaments.
THE ACTING CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD STANMORE): I beg to move that the Third Report from the Select Committee be now considered.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
LORD STANMORE: My Lords, the Report deals only with routine matters, therefore, with the permission of the House, I move that the Report be now agreed to.
Moved, That the Report be now agreed to.—(Lord Stanmore.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

EMERGENCY POWERS (DEFENCE) ACTS.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA AND BURMA (THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE)THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA AND BURMA (THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE) moved, That an Humble Address be presented to His Majesty, in pursuance of subsection (1) of Section eleven of the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, 1939, praying that the said Act as amended by any subsequent enactment be continued in force for a further period of one year beginning with the twenty-fourth day of August, nineteen hundred and forty-two.
The noble Duke said: My Lords, Section eleven of the Emergency Powers Act, 1939, provided that the duration of the Act was limited to a period of one year, but the same section also provided for its extension by Order in Council for a further period of one year from the time at which it would otherwise expire. The Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, 1940, prolonged the life of the original Act for a period of two years and, by an Order in Council made on the 24th July, 1941, following an Address in both Houses of Parliament, the Act of 1939 was continued until the 23rd day of August this year. This Act is the basic authority for the code of Defence Regulations and their continuance. It is still vital to the success of our war effort and, although the task is not altogether grateful to one who has always endeavoured to resist all forms of tyranny and arbitrary power, I believe this Act is a necessity. I beg to move the Motion standing in my name.
Moved, That an Humble Address be presented to His Majesty, in pursuance of subsection (1) of Section eleven of the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, 1939, praying that the said Act as amended by any subsequent enactment be continued in force for a further period of one year beginning with the twenty-fourth day of August, nineteen hundred and forty-two.—(The Duke of Devonshire.)
On Question, Motion agreed to: the said Address to be presented to His Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.

MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (POOLE) BILL.
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House that the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificate from the Examiners that no Standing Orders are applicable to the Ministry of Health Provisional Order (Poole) Bill. The same was ordered to lie on the Table.

UNEMPLOYMENT ASSISTANCE (DETERMINATION OF NEED AND ASSESSMENT OF NEEDS) (AMENDMENT) REGULATIONS, 1942.
Report from the Special Orders Committee, That they have examined the Special Order as required by the Standing Orders of the House; that in their opinion the Order raises important questions of policy and principle; that the Order is founded on precedent; that in the opinion
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of the Committee the Order cannot be passed by the House without special attention, but that no further inquiry is necessary before the House proceeds to a decision on the Resolution to approve the said Order.
Read, and ordered to lie on the Table.

SUPPLEMENTARY PENSIONS (DETERMINATION OF NEED AND ASSESSMENT OF NEEDS) (AMENDMENT) REGULATIONS, 1942.
Report from the Special Orders Committee, That they have examined the Special Order as required by the Standing Orders of the House; that in their opinion the Order raises important questions of policy and principle; that the Order is founded on precedent; that in the opinion of the Committee the Order cannot be passed by the House without special attention, but that no further inquiry is necessary before the House proceeds to a decision on the Resolution to approve the said Order.
Read, and ordered to lie on the Table.
House adjourned.