Lords Sitting of 18 March 1943

Preamble
The House met, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
The Earl of Midleton—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

SETTLED LAND AND TRUSTEE ACTS (COURT'S GENERAL POWERS) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT SIMON): My Lords, I beg to move the Second Reading of this Bill which, as your Lordships will see, is a war-time measure and is for the purpose of extending temporarily the powers of the Court under a section of the Settled Land Act, 1925, and a section of the Trustee Act, 1925. I had better explain in non-technical language the reason why this Bill has become necessary. In ordinary times, as your Lordships appreciate, when property is settled, it is the duty of the tenant for life, out of the income of the property, to meet expenses which are income expenses. Generally speaking, the capital of the fund or of the settlement is not available for that purpose.
To take a very simple illustration, the repair and maintenance of a mansion house would fall to the tenant for life to meet out of income. The tenant for life could not ordinarily be made to repair such a house, though he would do so if he could in most cases because he is occupying it. But under the conditions that now exist, what with the great height of taxation, the limitation of income, and other circumstances, it is pointed out to me that there are many cases in which it is not really possible for the tenant for life, out of what remains of his income, always to meet these burdens. Already in the law there are cases in which he could apply to the Court for special authority to vary his normal obligations, but there is no adequate provision to meet that sort of case. The proposal of this Bill is that, for the period of the war, the Court, when applied to, can authorize the use of a portion of the capital of the estate for meeting expenses which
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in normal times would be income expenses. But the power is carefully hedged round. Our object is not merely to relieve the tenant for life. It is for the purpose of maintaining the estate for the general advantage of all interested in it, so that it should not go to rack and ruin, else those who succeed will suffer quite as much as the immediate tenant for life.
If your Lordships are interested in the actual provisions of the Bill, you will see that before the Court can make an order it must be satisfied that the action taken or proposed was, or would be, for the benefit of the persons entitled under the settlement or under the trust for sale generally. That of course would include those who come after the tenant for life. It must also be satisfied that the available income from all sources of the person entitled to possession or receipt of rents, who ought otherwise to have borne the expense, has been so reduced by circumstances arising out of the war that he is unable to bear it without undue hardship; and, thirdly, that no such person as aforesaid has sufficient income available for meeting that expense. There is a further provision, which is rather a novelty in our Statute Law, in which not only must the Court review all the circumstances of the general financial position of the applicant, but give consideration to the fact whether he has taken artificial means to avoid the normal incidence of taxation.
I believe that the object of this Bill is approved generally. I have been at pains to ascertain the views taken by some of the principal authorities and, at any rate in regard to the principle, they are all at one. I see my noble friend Lord Maugham here. Doubtless he will say what he feels about it. I have ascertained that the Master of the Rolls and my Chancery colleagues who are Law Lords feel that these are necessary and suitable provisions. By this means we shall, notwithstanding the circumstances of the war, be able to see properties maintained in the general interest of all who are concerned, although under the very harsh and difficult conditions of to-day the tenant for life may not himself have sufficient income to discharge his normal obligations. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT MAUGHAM: My Lords, it is with great regret I have to rise on

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this occasion and explain why I feel this Bill is quite insufficient to meet the difficulties with which tenants for life all over the country are confronted. While admitting to the full the excellent intentions which lie at the bottom of this Bill, I must explain to the House my own reasons for coming to the conclusion that it is insufficient to meet the difficulties which now arise. There is no law in the least of a complicated nature that I have to call to your Lordships' attention, so I hope nobody will think I am going to embark on anything of a technical character. The position is this. There are in this country a very large number of tenants for life of land and buildings, not as many I think as there used to be at the time when, so long ago as the year 1882, the Settled Land Act was passed. The position in 1882 was that if a tenant for life, who of course, only had the income of the property, was to improve the property in any way, he had to do it at his own expense. He was not bound to improve the property, and I should like to make it perfectly clear that in the normal case he was not bound to repair the property either. In many cases that was impossible. Houses grow old. Those who have been in possession of a Tudor residence or one that is perhaps older, as I have been, know the very great expense that may occasionally confront them if they are liable to repair, or if they feel bound to repair, and attempt themselves to repair.
I would add that I am afraid now and then I shall have to say something about my own personal knowledge of the matter. When I was a Judge of the Chancery Division I had, on a number of occasions, applications by tenants for life to be allowed to pull down the mansion house upon the property in order to sell the materials for what they would fetch. There were no means of selling the house itself as a residence, but there were perhaps panelling, perhaps mantels and other materials which were worth selling, and the tenant for life could no longer go on residing in the house or on the property. That is very much more common now when, as I know, quite a number of your Lordships have come to the conclusion that after this war they will probably not be able again to live in their own principal mansion house. In 1882 the Legislature o thought fit to give power to tenants for life to make a number of improvements
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on the settled land for the benefit of all persons entitled under the settlement, and when one says "all persons entitled under the settlement" one generally means the tenant for life whose interest is for his life and his own children when he dies, his eldest son, it may be, or it may be other members of his family. Those are the people who are the persons interested.
I should like now to say that any comments I make on this Bill and any suggestions which I am earnestly going to press the noble Viscount on the Woolsack to consider, are not in the least designed to affect any money considerations of the Government or the country as a whole. They are put forward simply because I think, for the benefit of the families who are interested in such a property as we are dealing with, the settled estate, something much more than this Bill provides ought really to be done. Let me remind your Lordships, because many of you are riot as old as I am, that in 1882 the Income Tax was 5d. in the pound, and there was no Surtax at all. The result was that the tenant for life of a substantial estate, which was bringing in, we will say, £1,000 or £2,000 a year, was paying on that sum 5d. in the pound for Income Tax. Out of that income he was generally well able to maintain the property, look after the agricultural interests of the estate, and keep up his roof, see after the gutters, and do the drains and all the other little things of that kind that required to be done. But there were a number of improvements which required substantial sums to be paid out in respect of them, and those were provided for in the Act of 1882.
A long list of things, with which I will not weary your Lordships because I have something to say which will take some few minutes, appears in that Act. These improvements of various sorts were authorized to be done out of capital money standing in the names of trustees and held upon the trust of the land, with the sanction of the Court. It is very easy for people who have never had anything to do with it to think the sanction of the Court is an easy thing to obtain, but I know very well, from having been concerned with this for a long time both as counsel and Judge,, that is not so, and that what with the advice of a solicitor, the obtaining of the necessary evidence, the affidavits that have to be put before

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the Court, the cost of the summons, of the counsel whom there must be in the normal case and sometimes also to appear when the summons comes before the Judge, the drawing-up of the order, the reference back to the solicitor and the surveyors to see that what is done complies with what is being allowed—all this is a very expensive business, and unless there is a substantial thing to be done it is not really worth while to go to the Court. It is much better either not to do it at all or to do it out of your own money if you can manage it.
That went on fairly reasonably with a long list of improvements that could be authorized by the Court till the Settled Land Act, 1925, was passed. In the days of the first Lord Birkenhead a number of important Acts were passed, and the Settled Land Act, 1925, was an Act which showed that the Legislature had appreciated the circumstance that tenants for life were not as well off as they used to be, and that a certain number of improvements ought to be done by the tenant for life, with a safeguard which did not require an application to the Court at all. Now between 1882 and 1925 the expenses of Government had gone up and Income Tax was then 4s. 6d. in the pound instead of 5d. Other expenses that fell upon tenants for life were also much more than they had been. The measure which was passed in 1925, which was called the Settled Land Act, 1925, contained a Part IV with reference to improvements. Sections 83 and 84 enabled a number of improvements to be effected without going to the Court at all. The safeguard was this: that where capital money was to be expended, say, in the hands of the trustees of the settlement, which is the normal case, they might apply the money towards payment of the whole or any part of any work comprised in the improvement. Reading it shortly, a certificate was to be furnished by the competent engineer or a practical surveyor employed independently of the tenant for life—that means in practice nominated by trustees of the settlement—certifying that the work or the portion comprised in the improvement, had been properly executed, and what amount was proper to be paid in respect of it. That would justify the improvement being effected without going to Court at all.
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In the alternative an order of the Court might be obtained, if the work was very expensive and if the various trustees of the settlement thought it better to get the consent of the Court. In the case of work costing £2,000 or £3,000 the cost of the application would be comparatively trifling. If they were spending a few hundreds that could be done without going to Court by getting the certificate I have mentioned which would be necessary in any case for repair of a substantial character in respect of buildings. Your Lordships may think that the improvements mentioned were only of a very special character and were comparatively trifling. That is not true at all. I will just tell your Lordships some of the improvements which that Act of 1925 authorized without going to Court at all in proper cases. They included drainage, bridges, irrigation, warping, drains, pipes and machinery for supply and distribution of sewage as manure, embanking or weiring from a river or lake or from the sea, inclosing, straightening of fences, redivision of fields, farm roads, cottages for labourers, farm servants and artisans, whether employed on the settled lands or not, the building and erection of farmhouses, offices and outbuildings and other buildings, sawmills and other mills, reservoirs, tanks, etc., for distribution of water, tramways, railways, canals and docks, jetties and piers, markets and market places, streets—I will not go on. There is a long list of things that can be done without an application to the Court.
As I say, I think it is quite true you could apply to the Court, and trustees could insist on an application for the more important of these things if a large sum was involved, but all the smaller jobs could be done without going to Court. What is the position under the present Bill, which as far as it goes is quite good and has my support? I need not tell your Lordships what Income Tax is at present; we know it is 10s. in the pound, and we know that Surtax begins at £2,000. If you are lucky enough to have what the Income Tax officials regard as an income of £20,000, though perhaps in practice it is only a fraction of that, you have to pay in Surtax a sum which I have forgotten because I have not got that income. The amount is, I think, on £20,000 and over 9s. 6d. in the pound. It goes up from 2s. to 9s. 6d. You have to add that to the 10s. I dare say some

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of your Lordships will have very little sympathy with those so rich as to have to pay the larger sums, but think of the ordinary squire who is a person of some importance in a particular district, who has got a house, settled land, farms and so forth, who has to pay 10s. in the pound on his income and perhaps 4s. or 5s. for Surtax. That means that three-quarters of his income goes direct to the State either as Income Tax or Surtax.
If he started by not being very rich and if the settled estate was not a very big one, he would not have much left when three-quarters of his income had been taken away, if he had perhaps a couple of children to educate. It is not unlawful even in these days to educate your children at a public school. If he does that a good deal of his income is gone. Then he has, we must suppose, to keep up a house of some kind. It is true that his wife is probably doing the cooking or assisting in the cleaning of the house, but food has to be bought and it is not very cheap even with the assistance of the noble Lord, Lord Woolton. Such a man as I am speaking of has got nothing left with which to repair the premises at all if his house is old and requires substantial repairs. Probably he has already let the garden go to rack and ruin. The man who used to employ three gardeners has now none at all. He has not got a car; so to that extent his expenses are reduced. But there it is. He has not enough left to repair the property.
What is it this Bill offers him? The Bill offers him the possibility of going to the Court and going into the whole of his income, which the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack very fairly said is rather a new thing in legislation. He has to go into his whole available income front all sources and the assumption of Clause 1 (2) (b) is that his available income front all sources ought to have borne the expense of the action taken or proposed, which means, so far as the individual is concerned, the repair of the property. He has got to show that that income has been so reduced by reason of circumstances arising out of war conditions as to render him unable to bear the expense. In the case of a man who has got an income from a profession, say, as a member of the Bar or as a member of any other profession, or who happens to have saved a few thousand pounds or has any sub-
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stantial number of pounds invested belonging to himself absolutely, why it should be said that he ought to have borne the expense of action taken, in which is included the repair of the roof it may be, I cannot understand. That is an idea which is entirely new to me as a lawyer. He is entitled to repair or not to repair. If the house is falling to bits it may be better to let it fall to bits. What moral or legal obligation there is to repair that house I do not know. On the footing that he has not got the money to repair it the thing appears to me perfectly monstrous.
Assume the case of a man who has not got a professional income, and who has not got income from other sources from investments belonging to him, a man who is tenant for life of a property which used to bring in £2,000 a year but now brings in only £500. Out of that he has to keep up a position in the neighbourhood, so far as it is capable of being kept up, and has to support his wife and children and, may be, educate the latter. How it can be said of him that he ought to have borne the expense of repairs I am completely at a loss to understand. The matter does not stop there. When he goes to the Court he is not to be able to get any advantage out of an application to the Court. The Court in fact cannot make an order if available income has been reduced by action taken by him for avoidance of Income Tax. This seems to me to be a penal clause. Why, if you have no other income, should you not be able to repair property at the expense of capital if there is some capital available for this purpose, because at some date or other you endeavoured to save a liability for Income Tax? And what does it mean? Most of your Lordships, I expect, or at any rate a large number of you, have handed over sums in these days to your children. Is that action taken by you for avoidance of liability to Income Tax? Of course it has avoided your liability to some extent, because you have not got as much income. Then you have been asked to invest in certain Government securities on which you do not pay Income Tax. Is that an endeavour to avoid liability to Income Tax? Again, most of us have entered into covenants to pay certain charities for a period of years, and you know perfectly well that that results in avoidance of liability to

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Income Tax pro tanto. But this subsection does not say anything about the amount by which you have avoided liability to Income Tax. If you have done anything to avoid liability to Income Tax you are not entitled to go to the Court for leave to pay, we will say, three hundred pounds or four hundred pounds, or larger sums, out of the capital of capital moneys because you have committed this heinous offence.
I protest as firmly as I can, consistently with complete courtesy, against any such clause being inserted in this Bill. I submit that it is not right. I consider that this is an illogical clause and as such it will have a hopelessly illogical effect. I am taking again the case of a man who has not got the necessary income to enable him to pay for repairs. If he cannot do the repairs, who is going to suffer? Possibly his own son, if he has a son, or some relative or relatives of his. It is the family of this man who are going to suffer, not the Government. It is said that he shall not do repairs which are really necessary and proper for the upkeep of the property because he once avoided liability to Income Tax by doing something which was perfectly legal at the time it was done. It really does not seem to me to be fair or just or logical or sensible to insert in regard to this power of application to the Court, if it is insisted on, a provision to say that if a man's available income has been reduced by his action in some way or other in the past, he is not to be entitled to ask the Court to permit the payment of some sums for repair of the property, however necessary it may be. I do not understand that, and I ask the Lord Chancellor, or rather the Government, to reconsider it and to see what can be done to make this measure a little hit fairer.
What I am suggesting, or rather what I am giving notice of, at the present time, is this. There are two things which I think the Lord Chancellor might fairly consider in the interests of the people of whom I am thinking—and here I would say parenthetically that I am not one of them because I am not a tenant for life of any income. The first is that expenditure on repairs, at any rate up to a certain amount—say a few hundred pounds, because I quite agree that if the amount is very large you might properly ask the
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tenant for life to go to the Court—that during this period of emergency, whilst Income Tax and Surtax are such as to take away so great a proportion of a man's income, up to that amount the expenditure should be brought within Section 84 of the Settled Land Act, 1925, and therefore be treated as a matter in respect of which capital money can be expended, subject to the production of a certificate by a competent engineer or practical surveyor that the work is necessary and has been properly done. That is one thing which I think would be of enormous advantage to quite a number of poor tenants for life in this country while the present state of things subsists. The other matter which I would urge the Lord Chancellor to consider is the question of omitting from Clause of subsection (3) these words which make the application to the Court one which cannot be complied with by the Judge if the income of the person making the application has been reduced by reason of action taken by him for avoidance of liability to Income Tax.
If those two things are done I think it would be of great advantage. If I may say this with reference to myself, I have had a very large experience of this type of application, for I have been concerned with it as counsel and as Judge for certainly thirty years or more, and I say that if these suggestions were adopted this Bill would be far more useful to these tenants for life of this country who are not in the position to do the work which is pointed at in this Bill. It would be far more useful to them, and what I regard as the really unjust provision in subsection (3) of Clause I would be removed so as to make it possible for an application to be made, even by a man who has been guilty of the heinous offence, at some time in the past, of forming an estate company or of taking one of the measures which so many men of means have been forced to take lawfully, in accordance with the law of the time, with a possible view of escaping or reducing their liability to Income Tax. I hope that I have not spoken too strongly on this matter. I hope that the Lord Chancellor will not in any way resent my taking the view which I have taken with regard to this Bill. I am in favour of the principle of the Bill, but I am very clearly of opinion that if it passes in the form in which it now stands

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it will be of very little use at all to the tenants for life of settled land in this country.
THE EARL OF WARWICK: My Lords, I understood the Lord Chancellor to say that the period of the operation of this Bill would be the period of the war. I would like to draw your Lordships' attention to something which I and several other people do not altogether understand. We have not yet, I believe, had a definite explanation of what the period of the war is, but none the less at this moment most tenants for life with mansions or other properties that may need considerable sums of money spent on maintenance, are away. They are kept away by the war ieself, and are consequently able to devote but very little attention to these things. But even if they could, and if it were possible under this Bill for them to obtain relief by going to the Courts for leave to spend capital money on maintenance, they being unable to find the money out of their reduced incomes, the fact still remains that it would be impossible for them to obtain either materials or labour to do the work. In fact, we are not allowed to-day to spend more than £100 on any building without obtaining a licence, which I believe is only granted, and quite rightly so, if the work is to further the war effort. It seems to me that in order to help us the period of the war should be extended to include a short time after the war, when building materials and labour will be available, and when those tenants for life, who have little or no opportunity at the moment of discovering what damage there has been or of knowing what damage there may still be in the future, will be in a position to go to the Court and put forward their case, knowing what the costs will be and what labour and materials are available for what ought to be done. No doubt there is some misunderstanding on my part, but I should be glad if the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack would explain the position.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, with regard to the point just raised by the noble Earl, Lord Warwick, he may not yet have had an opportunity of studying the text of the Bill, but I agree with him that the question does arise of whether a measure of this sort should be limited so strictly in its time of operation. That is a matter which is already being
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considered with my advisers, and by one or two persons with special experience of this type of question who are available to help me. I will look into it, and perhaps in the meantime the noble Earl will be good enough to look at subsection (6) of Clause 1 of the Bill.
I must say a word—but it will only be a word—out of courtesy, in view of the elaborate speech made by my noble and learned friend Lord Maugham. I do not know whether your Lordships fully appreciated the fact during his speech that he is in favour of giving this Bill a Second Reading.
VISCOUNT MAUGHAM: I made that quite clear.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: You made it clear in your concluding sentence. The noble and learned Viscount is not against the Bill; he is in favour of it, but he thinks that in one or two respects, which I do not say are not important, the form of it should be altered. I shall be the first to recognize his great experience of this type of matter, for everyone who knows him will know that he has great experience of it; but I think that I should tell your Lordships that I have consulted almost all the eminent members of the Bench who have a very large experience of this type of application, and all the others whom I have consulted think that this Bill in its present form should be warmly approved. Possibly on the Committee stage some of them who are members of your Lordships' House may be able to attend. I am, however, very grateful to my noble and learned friend for his criticisms, and I shall certainly give fresh consideration to every point that he has raised.
There is, however, one large consideration which does not seem to have entered into his argument at all, and it is this. In. the case of any settlement, if you are going to allow the tenant for life to spend capital beyond what is permitted to-day, you are in the same degree going to reduce the amount of capital which is available for the remainder-man. The more there is for the tenant for life, the less there will be for the remainder-man. When a settlement is made, of course, the desire is to provide for the remainder-man and not simply to make things easy for the tenant for life. It is necessary, therefore, to be very careful about this. It is not a question of being

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large-minded or generous purely on one side.
My noble and learned friend made a reference to arrangements for avoiding tax. Whether the words in the Bill are right or not—and I may say that they are words which commend themselves very warmly to some judicial persons of long experience, such as my noble and learned friend rightly claims for himself—if you take some of the varieties of tax avoidance which have come before the Courts in recent years, involving the creation of companies in Palestine and elsewhere, one company selling to another and the second company issuing debentures to a third, you have there perfectly deliberate efforts to avoid tax liability, and it would seem to me a pity if, in the face of an arrangement of that kind, you should allow the tenant for life, without making allowance for such an arrangement, to spend the capital at the expense of the remainder-man. That is the reason for suggesting some such provision. We can discuss that, however, and other matters on the Committee stage. The other suggestions which my noble and learned friend has made must be, coming from him, not only disinterested but most valuable. I have not the slightest complaint that he should make them, but I do want to make it clear to noble Lords who have listened to this rather lengthy discussion, that my noble friend is in favour of the Second Reading of this Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

FOOD SITUATION IN JERSEY AND GUERNSEY.
LORD PORTSEA LORD PORTSEA had the following Notice on the Paper: To ask His Majesty's Government, whether any progress has been made in the supply of food for children in Jersey and Guernsey, and whether any information has been received as to the position as regards food at present available for these children; whether His Majesty's Government accept the principle that kinship should entitle these children to preferential treatment and whether His Majesty's Government will again consider the offer made to take a ship and food to the islands and
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will take steps for negotiations to be opened with the German Government accordingly; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, thanks to the Red Cross I have received a reply to a message which I sent last summer to Jersey. Fully to understand these Red Cross messages, it must be remembered that there is a twenty-five-word maximum and it is necessary to know something about the mode of thought of the sender and also of the person who replies. This reply comes from my nearest relative, a lady of nearly my own age, and it tells its own story. The story is: "Planting in the garden for food." That means that she is forced to dig and to plant in order to get food to remain alive. She is doing that at the age of about eighty. I hope your Lordships will understand what must be the comforts of living in that country at this moment! I have also read a Red Cross summary written by prisoners of war in Stalag XVII, and it says this:
"We are dining at eight. Bacon and beans, meat rolls, vegetables, tinned pears, custard, tea, coffee, Ovaltine, biscuits and cheese and cigarettes. We are always eating heartily. Parcels of food arrive safely. They are not eaten by the Germans, and cigarettes are not stolen."
Your Lordships may remember that the Government have said in this House that food could not be sent to occupied territory such as the Channel Islands because the Germans would steal it.
Speaking in the House of Commons the other day, Mr. Foot said that his latest information was that relief foodstuffs imported into Greece through the blockade had been distributed without interference by the Germans. If this is the case, where does the Government's information come from, and, without wishing to be rude, I should like to ask what it is worth. We cannot send food to the islands which are occupied territory because, we are told, the Germans would steal it, and here we have a Government official telling us that "everything arrived safely and is distributed equally." The daily papers tell us that the Germans shoot food stealers. We might learn a lesson from them; some of the stories of criminal cases that we read in the papers are very distressing. There was a very informing letter in a newspaper quite recently from a noble Lord, and there were several from Dr. Gilbert Murray and Mr. Wickham Steed. These are persons of distinction, and they call in

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The Times for aid for Greece—occupied territory—and say there is no suggestion that supplies so sent would be seized by the enemy. It appears that it is much better from the material point of view, healthier also, to be a prisoner of war in Germany than to be a people left in their own land under the enemy's heel, left as helots by the grace of the Government.
These letters, none of them more than six weeks old, synchronized with letters from the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, whose loss we deplore, and from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and with a powerful appeal by the Archbishop of York in the Church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields on behalf of the Norman Islanders. It was given to a closely packed and appreciative audience. I shall not read these letters, but I may quote a sentence:
"Starvation is more widespread and even more terrible than has been stated. In no country under enemy occupation is food sufficient to maintain health. In many it is insufficient to keep the people alive."
How many island children can live from among those who do escape disease and death, and worse? What kind of a generation can grow up to build the new world for which we are now fighting, a new heaven and a new earth and—do not forget it—a new hell, a hell of our own fashioning, of our own contriving? I met the other day a very interesting and capable man, Mr. Kerschner, the Director of the American Friends' Service. He writes:
"The German has never taken any of our foods. Neither has the fact that we brought all the food into France enabled him to take away the equivalent of French food."
Where is the Government's case? All this is surely evidence. Will it be accepted by the Rip van Winkles of the Government?
Your Lordships will recollect that I had the sad duty of giving most of these facts to your Lordships last year. Our Government have relaxed the blockade—that apparently is their cornerstone—and hence the principle of the blockade. Food is sent to Greece and to Belgium—occupied countries—to aliens and to foreigners, to all except our own people. Why not to our own people? Mr. Foot tells us in another place that the Government are sending a hundred tons of dried milk each month to Greece. Last week's paper told us that four Swedish vessels had arrived
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at the Piraeus with a cargo of 20,000 tons of grain, vegetables and medical supplies, and Tuesday's paper told us that small bags of coffee from the Belgian Congo have been dropped by the R.A.F. on the villages in occupied Belgium. Each bag bears a label with the inscription in French and in Flemish:
"The Belgian Congo does not forget you. This is distributed by your friends of the R.A.F. Long live Belgium!"
The Belgian Congo remembers: we do not—only the R.A.F.
We heard in this House on February 25 last that the Government do not like to be outdone in generosity—generosity to foreigners, to Greeks and to Belgians; and they are Shylocks to our own. Perhaps the Government argue that His Majesty's subjects must be lumped together, or indeed put after foreigners and aliens; no preferential treatment for own own. But do we not owe them more? We deserted them, including a number of young officers and men who, having fought at Dunkirk, were given Service leave to Jersey and Guernsey, and were forgotten in those islands and are now in Greek internment and concentration camps. Do we not owe more to those of our own blood who fought for us, and are fighting for us, who are part of us, who speak and who pray in the same language and use the same form of worship, than to aliens? The men of our own race are placed after and below foreigners. Have our kindred any rights or claims to preferential treatment? They have the right, thank God! to fight alongside our men, gloriously shoulder to shoulder for England, as our young men are doing and our old men would if they could, and have always done. There are some who love England and her honour yet. I do.
I am told that the Government are acting on a principle, the bedrock principle of blockade, and so refuse to modify the rules for our own. Yet we are sending to Greece and to Belgium food which ought to be sent to our islands. Mr. Foot said the other clay in another place:
"Except for the special exceptions made in the case of Greece, our blockade policy remains as stated by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in August, 1940."
That is to say, quite clearly, the Government break the blockade for foreigners and aliens, and refuse to do it for those people who are their own kin, their own

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blood, people of their own race whom they have—shall we say abandoned? It is not an English principle to leave our own in the lurch, to do nothing for them while we do the very best for aliens. It is not holding to our traditions, to our birthright and to our principles to do these things; and those principles have made our country respected, loved, feared, and great.
If the great Dominions had indulged in the same caution and casuistry, where should we be? They would be helping, I suppose, the Axis. Had the Norman islanders so acted—and they had royal sanction for not serving outside their own islands—we should be without many brave fighting men. We should not have read the wonderful story of that very gallant Guernsey man earning the Victoria Cross the other week in Libya. To prove that the Norman islanders are not backward in their service of His Majesty, there are two recipients of the Victoria Cross in this war alone. The Government say that the islands are of no strategic value or importance. If they repeat that statement to-day, and add what the poor deluded men in the islands believe in—loyalty, faith, honour, and all these words, but words only, vain phrases made to betray simple and honest men—what then? Then I trust that your Lordships will take a hand and induce the Government, in their own words, to "think again."
The Government, your Lordships are aware, have no constitutional right—of course they have the right of might—to give up the islands. The islands belong, in the fullest sense of the word, to the Crown. There was even a moment—it is now centuries ago—when our Crown was thought to be bargaining with the Crown of France for the sale of the islands. The French knew their value. But now our islands, which command the Channel, are lost. Oh, my Lords, I am treading a stony path, and I should faint by the way if I had not some of your Lordships' sympathy in the face of Government indecision, apathy, caution, and worse. "The path of caution," said the great Elchi, whom only people of my age, perhaps, remember at all, "leads but to disgrace." I cannot be silent. I seem to hear the cries of these little starving children, and I know they are starving. I seem
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to feel their hands touching mine. My Lords, you are powerful, you are doing your chosen and arduous work. You truly represent the people of this country. You are doing your work without fear and without pay—that cursed political payment which is, to my mind, politically degrading. You can think for the country, you can fight for the country, you can act for the Empire. I appeal to you in the name of innocence—innocence suffering untold misery. Let it be before it is too late for the children.
There is talk—perhaps more than talk—of bringing the most murderous of our enemies to justice. The atrocities of the Axis people are terrible, but the Axis destroys only the bodies of its enemies—thousands, may be even millions. In my view our Government are destroying not only the bodies but the spirit, the faith, the very soul of our own people. They are creating a precedent and a reproach, if not an ignominy, which will attach to us as long as our history lasts. I do not think the Government recognize or realize, or perhaps do not trouble about, the far-reaching effect and repercussions of this act of desertion, this act of surrender, of giving up part of the possessions of the Crown—and that in panic—and remaining (that is the worst part) unrepentant. We can sneer at Pétain. A few days ago a Minister of the Crown stated in another place, "If the House of Commons thinks otherwise, then the Government must think again." Those words made my heart beat with joy, for I grasped they were extracted by fear, political fear, fear of Parliament and of the people. You, my Lords, can induce the Government to think again and to redeem the honour of this country and of her Parliament. Some love England and her honour yet. We do, all of us here.
The noble Lord, Lord Snell—I will guarantee he is not influenced by fear; I trust him, I wish to call him friend—said last week, as to accepting a percentage of a particular Report and making definite findings and immediate promises thereon, on behalf of the Government:
"The decisions arrived at are not final. Parliament can at any time it pleases call upon the Government to report progress in the carrying out of the Report."
That was a question of panem et circenses, not a question of honour, the nation's honour. Is it possible that any Govern-

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merit can be prepared to yield to the voice of its noisier followers in a matter of immediate promise of social reform with money which is not yet their own, and stand up and refuse, time after time, to listen to the claims, the right of the people of any part of His Majesty's Dominions to insist an fair treatment, if it be only to save them from starvation, even at the cost of what they call in the East the Government's "face"? The Government, of course, act collectively, a private Member acts individually. "What scoundrels we should be," said Cavour, "if we did, in our own individual capacity, that which we are prepared to do as a Government." He was not an Englishman. Your Lordships can induce the Government to think again and to redeem our honour, conveyed to them collectively and individually by the people who elect them and who pay them. You can insist that the Government's first mistaken decisions shall not be final.
The people of the Norman Islands, as your Lordships are aware, are the subjects of an ancient monarchy and of a still more ancient dukedom, and this is of very great importance from their point of view. There was a Royal Proclamation bidding them remain in their own islands. They trusted, they doubted not at all, they obeyed the message sent them, and they are in hell. They are slaves for the first time in our history by the deliberate act of the Government of a free people. Who did this thing? Who betrayed the islands? I know who did not, who could not have done so; that is the man who said we entered into this war only for honour and to do our duty and to defend the right, and that we mean to hold our own. We prepared to conquer or to perish. We were united in that solemn majestic hour; we were all equally resolved at least to go down fighting. We cast calculation to the wind. No wavering voice was heard. We faced our duty, and by the mercy of God we were prepared to die. This man did not sell us or his own honour. I do not know the name of the "thing" who tied sell us, and, indeed, I am glad not to. From my point of view, it would have been a good thing had he not been born. He is to me indescribable save in the savage terms that George Washington applied to the colleague who betrayed him, which are, of course, known to your Lordships.
But let it be betrayal, desertion, panic abandonment—no blacker page ever fouled the history of any British Government. No, not even the record of the 40,000 Loyalists who supported us, fought for us, and were cast out of the Thirteen Colonies and left to perish. It is true that in those days we had France, Spain and Holland on our backs, but even that was no excuse for such an act of perfidy. There can be no excuse, and yet the descendants of those 40,000 remained loyal and are loyal to this day. We could not sell them twice because they were too far away and too powerful. Their descendants are fighting for us now. Have the Government, I wonder, considered the future position, the status and the liberties of the Norman Islands at the end of this war? More war is certain. Let no man delude himself that we are in for an everlasting peace. Go back to Isaiah 2,000 years, to find out when you turn your swords into ploughshares, when nation shall not act against nation, and there shall be no more war. Are the Government determined to sell us, to cast away the most loyal of the loyal, and close the Channel against themselves—the Channel where once every foreign ship dipped its ensign?
Many reasons have been given to justify the Government's later policy. Leaflets, the Government said, could not be dropped lest anyone found in possession of a leaflet should be shot. The islands might suffer if anything so "spectacular"—that was the word—were done. Indeed, the islanders might be deprived of the radio. The radio has gone. We feared the spectacular and for this reason we landed on the small island of Sark. We captured a few prisoners, we bound their hands and we tried to slip them past a German post in silence. The prisoners, though they were bound, bolted, and to avoid alarming the German post we shot the prisoners as they escaped. It does not do to laugh; it is a hard laugh. Hypocrisy is the only evil which walks invisible except to God. Now our own proud people are starving and sweating blood, and a Government can be found unwilling to make any effort. Not so much as a word of encouragement or hope or help is sent to them. Yet the Government send greetings, praise, comforts, food to every alien country and to every foreigner.
Bear with me, my Lords, I am giving my heart's blood drop by drop, as I know

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your Lordships would do were you in my place. I am so conscious of the inadequacy of my advocacy, so crushingly conscious of it, and I am a new member, but, as was said nearly 40o years ago, my "armour is my honest thought and simple truth my utmost skill." I have asked repeatedly in this House, and privately, for some word of encouragement to be sent to my country, even to the sending of leaflets, as I have just stated. Not a sound. There is a grand New Zealand division which has received the country's and the Government's thanks, and most deservedly so. "On behalf of the Government and the people of the Homeland," said the Prime Minister, "I give you their exceptionally warm-hearted thanks and wish you Godspeed." Not a sound, not a whisper, has reached the islands' division, more numerous if more scattered, no less brave and efficient than the New Zealanders. Not a whisper has reached them or their parents, wives or children. And they are serving and offering all that they have and all that they are.
A further point and the last. This is as to the ship to carry food to the islands. It would have to be Jersey because Guernsey is so fortified and has such a tremendous strength of German troops in it that it would be difficult to ask the Germans to allow us to go to Guernsey direct, but they would allow us to go from Jersey to Guernsey which, comparatively, is no distance. As to a ship to carry food to the Norman Islands, since making this suggestion to the Government I have had several ships offered me, and very crowded crews, including women who are as brave as their menfolk. The ship would have to be manned by two or three Germans, and they would have to be Germans who are invalid prisoners of war—I have mentioned that before—now interned in this country. That ship is ready, and so am I. I have heard nothing whatever from the Government since making that suggestion to them except "The Germans would shoot you." I will take that risk gladly. I have shown that the German does not steal our parcels—not even our tobacco. You cannot read the daily papers without seeing innumerable cases of cigarettes and tobacco meant for the troops being stolen in this country. The German would not steal them because
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he knows if he did there would be no more sent. As I have said before, he is no fool.
The German Government would have to be consulted, but are we too proud to right a wrong? The German has shown himself in the islands to be very well disciplined, decent in behaviour and to have many soldierly virtues—in the islands. Will the Government not try to arrange matters with the German authorities? Will they not allow individual help or will they continue down the path leading to everlasting dishonour, the path which I heard Sir Edward Grey say led to death, destruction and damnation? When the war is over, when the war is won, have the Government, I ask, any plan for the future of the islands and for the feeding of these people. President Roosevelt said within the last weeks:
"We cannot escape history; no personal significance or insignificance can spare any one of us. The fierce treatment through which we pass will light in honour or dishonour to the latest generation."
Some love England—we all do, I hope—and it is because of that pride of England that I as an Englishman call upon the Government to be worthy of the Empire and to be worthy of the country. I ask the Government to be true to themselves and to do their manifest duty.
THE MINISTER OF ECONOMIC WARFARE (THE EARL OF SELBORNE):My Lords, we all have such a deep regard for the noble Lord who has just spoken and we all have such a great admiration for the heroism of the people of the Channel Islands and sympathy for them in the very distressing conditions in which they are at the present moment, that I can assure the noble Lord it is no pleasant task that falls to me to deny him or them that which we should like to give if it were within our power. I can assure my noble friend, if he will allow me so to call him—we were colleagues in another place for many years—that he is labouring in this matter under some very severe misapprehensions which I will endeavour to remove in the short time that your Lordships can spare me, and that he is not helping our fellow subjects in the Norman Islands by hysterical misstatements in your Lordships' House. I regret to have to say so, but there is no other correct description of parts of my noble friend's speech.

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My noble friend asked for a word of encouragement. He asked what were the plans for the future. I can assure him that the moment it is militarily possible we shall reoccupy the islands, and the moment we have reoccupied them we shall feed them and bring to them all the services that the people of the British Isles at present enjoy. Preparations to that end are of course being made in common with the other preparations we are making in regard to the problem of feeding reconquered Europe. What I regret so much about my noble friend's speech is the hysterical manner in which he talks about the "betrayal" of the Channel Islands. He knows perfectly well we were driver out of that part of our country by superior forces on the Continent.
LORD PORTSEA: My noble friend mows that we left the islands before the Germans arrived.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: That does not alter the truth of what I have said. Anybody can tell with the history of Crete front of us that in face of a local Air Force superiority such as the Germans had in 1940 in that part of France, it was physically impossible to hold the Channel Islands. H we had remained there the sole result would have been the slaughter of a great many of the Channel Islanders. By that evacuation we saved them a great deal of misery. It was impossible for us to hold those islands as long as German Air Force superiority in France was what it was in 1940.
LORD STRABOLGI: Will the noble Earl allow me to interpose a moment? I am sure he does not want that to go on record. Is he aware that that argument would have justified the evacuation of Kent, which was nearer to a superior o German Air Force than the Channel Islands?
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: The Channel Islands are islands and every support to them must be sent by sea in ships subject to air attack from the enemy, whereas Kent could be reinforced from the land. Therefore the two positions are not at all analogous. The nearest analogy which this war affords is the case of Crete. It all happened nearly three years ago, but I do regret that my noble friend should speak about "be
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trayal." It was no more a betrayal than any other of the many defeats which this country suffered at that time by reason of entering into a European war with inadequate preparations.
I am however concerned, principally, with his charge against His Majesty's Government of treating—I think that I am not misrepresenting him when I say this—of treating the Channel Islanders worse than we treat some of our Allies. He laid great stress on the fact that prisoners of war in prison camps in Germany were getting their food parcels without interference from the Germans, and he asked why the same thing should not apply in the case of the Channel Islanders. Let me make the position clear. There is undoubtedly a great shortage of food in the Channel Islands, there is very considerable distress and discomfort, but there is no famine or anything that could in the least be accurately described as famine. My noble friend is quite mistaken in thinking that people are dying as a result of lack of food or that their health is being impaired.
LORD PORTSEA: Would the noble Earl give his justification for that statement so far as it relates to children?
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: I can assure my noble friend that I have very accurate information on these matters.
LORD PORTSEA: So have I.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: I cannot give publicly the source of my information, I can only tell the noble Lord that when I went to the Ministry of Economic Warfare a year ago I was very much surprised at the amount of information I found there in regard to all the countries of Europe. That information comes constantly before me, and I am satisfied that the state of affairs in the Channel Islands is as I have described. The food situation is undoubtedly far worse in Poland and in Occupied Russia than it is in Western Europe.
LORD PORTSEA: What have we to do with Poland?
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: My noble friend asks, what have we to do with Poland? In the first place the people of Poland are our very gallant Allies, and we are in this war with them until the end. In the second place, I think it is important to realize that the food short-

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age, and the food situation generally, is much more serious in some parts of Europe than in others. The noble Lord has slid that the Royal Air Force dropped some coffee in Belgium, and he has asked why cannot we do the same thing for the Channel Islands. My Lords, there has been no appreciable quantity of food delivered to Belgium in that way. My noble friend is under a complete misapprehension if he thinks that we are feeding Belgium, and not feeding the Channel Islands. The dropping of the few bags of coffee which have been dropped in Belgium is in the nature of propaganda. It is like the dropping of leaflets, and it is not intended to be a serious contribution towards solving the food problem in Belgium. It is meant simply to give encouragement. If my noble friend thinks that a gesture of that sort would have important results if it were made in the Channel Islands, I will see that his suggestion is considered in the proper quarters.
With regard to Greece, as your Lordships know, the case is quite different. A year ago, before I had anything to do with economic warfare, a position of acute famine was reached in Greece, and it is the terrible fact that many thousands of people died there as a result. It was in order to alleviate that situation that His Majesty's Government consented to allow the blockade to be broken, and a system of food relief has been set up in Greece under the charge of the Red Cross and a neutral Swedish Commission which has made all the difference between life and death to the people of Greece. Even now, with all that relief going into the country, I do not think that it would be fair to say that the people of Greece are as well fed, at this moment, as are the people of the Channel Islands.
The noble Lord spoke about parcels reaching prisoners of war in prison camps. Of course there is no analogy there at all. These parcels are sent under an International Convention, the Geneva Convention, which provides most elaborate machinery under which the Red Cross International Organization handles parcels, sees that they get to the prisoners, has the right of inspecting the prison camps, and ensures that the transaction is checked at every stage. Through this medium English people are allowed to send parcels to their relatives who are
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prisoners in Germany, and German people are allowed to send parcels to their relatives who are prisoners in Great Britain. That is a very old organization. The Germans, it is true to say, so far as I know, have respected that part of the Convention, and food can be sent in that way to prisoners of war who are Channel Islanders as well as to others who are subjects of His Majesty without any fear of the Germans interrupting the supply.
The noble Lord cited the case of Dr. Kerschner and what he had done in the matter of sending food into France. I do not know if my noble friend is aware of it, but when Dr. Kerschner played an important part in sending food to France it was to Unoccupied France that the food was sent, and it was sent there at a time when America was a neutral country, so the situation was entirely different from that which obtains on the Continent to-day. Even so I very much doubt if it can truthfully be said that that food all reached the people of France. What I mean is not that the actual food was intercepted, but that its being sent there did make it easier for the Germans to extract food from Occupied France. That is the real problem, and it is a problem to which my noble friend did not address himself. If you allow a hundred tons of food to go to the Channel Islands, or to any of the other occupied territories, the people for whom that food is intended may very well receive it, but the Germans are able to take an equivalent amount of food out of the country.
That is what happened in Belgium in the last war. During the last war, there was an elaborate organization, sponsored by Mr. Hoover, which brought a great deal of food from America to Belgium. The Belgians got the food which Mr. Hoover brought, but Ludendorff, in the book which he wrote after the war was over, boasted that the Germans had taken very good care to take out the equivalent amount of food from Belgium. They took out the exact equivalent of what the Americans brought in, so that the unfortunate Belgians were not benefited by this philanthropic endeavour at all. The only country which was benefited was Germany. That is the root trouble with all these blockade problems. It is impossible for us to give this help to our fellow-countrymen and to our Allies who are under the German heel

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without benefiting the enemy. The noble Lord may ask why it was possible in Greece but not elsewhere. The answer is that affairs had reached in Greece a state for which there has been no parallel in any other part of Europe, and the Germans were willing to enter into undertakings and guarantees, including permitting the scheme to be administered by a neutral country, which have enabled food to be sent to Greece under safeguards which do not exist elsewhere. Even then, I do not think that it can be said that this effort has not been of some indirect assistance to the enemy. The alternative, however, was the most appalling starvation of thousands of our allies in Greece.
That is all that I can say about the matter. Until the Channel Islands are reconquered, it is impossible to send food there without the Germans either seizing it or seizing an equivalent quantity of food produced on the islands. I am sure that the Channel Islanders themselves would be the last people to demand that they should have preferential treatment over our Allies in this matter, any more than the people of London demanded that they should not be bombed as the people of Rotterdam had been. The suffering that all the occupied territories endure causes the greatest heartburning to all your Lordships, and to every member of the Government. Everything that we can do to alleviate their suffering without helping the enemy, we shall do; but, if the result of our efforts would be merely to increase the food supplies available to the Germans, we should in fact be prolonging the war and therefore injuring the very people whom we want to help.
LORD PORTSEA: My Lords, I must thank the noble Earl, who was kind enough to remind me that we are old friends, for a great deal of what he has said. It gives me confidence that my authorities and my remarks themselves are much stronger than even I had hoped, for, past master as he is in the art of replying to a debate, I cannot say that he has made out a case which in any way convinces me, or even persuades me. He spoke of the bombing of jersey and the bombing of Crete, but he spoke of them in the reverse order. Guernsey is thirty miles from the coast of Normandy; Dover is twenty miles from the coast of France. We hold Dover, we are told, because it
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is not an island. My geography must be wrong, because I have always understood that we are an island, and a very small island at that. If it was possible to hold Dover, which is a very important military station, it should have been possible to save Guernsey, which was further from the French coast and had no value at the time as a military station. Jersey would not have been worth the bombs which the enemy might have scattered over it. There is only one small town, and, if it had to be rebuilt later, it would be a very good thing indeed both for the town and for the island. That blood would have been shed there is no doubt, but I have always understood that that is the object of war. When in my young days I used to do battle with a friend, I was perfectly satisfied if I made his nose bleed; that was my object in fighting. I did not go in for battle to wash my hands in rose water.
My noble friend objects to the word "betrayal." I do not hold to any particular word, but what is betrayal? Every young islander of suitable age and strength was on this side of the Channel, fighting for the Crown. The older men were trained soldiers, and every man had his rifle. There were guns, and there was a rock fort built at the cost of a million pounds not a hundred years ago. The arms and ammunition were taken away; the guns were taken away. The flag was hauled down; the flag with the cross of Normandy and the cross of St. Andrew was hauled down by British hands, and we ran away and left the people there. I do not pretend to be a master of the English language, or indeed a master of anything, but what is that if it is not betrayal? It is abandonment, certainly; it is desertion, presumably. I say that it is betrayal. If I had a friend in jersey, and we had been the only inhabitants, and I had said to him: "My dear boy, the Germans are coming to-morrow, and I am off by plane"—if I had done that, I should not be addressing your Lordships now, and I should not be very proud of myself. A baser betrayal has never occurred in English history—and we have done some little things that I can remember. I can remember 1878, when we sent Sir Garnet Wolsey to tell the people of the Transvaal that as long as the British Union Jack was flying we would give protection to the Transvaal. Then a few Boers came in and joined us, and four years later the flag was hauled down, and

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the people had their throats slit. That was not betrayal; that was abandonment. What does it matter what it is, if you leave your friends in the lurch? That is the main point.
My noble friend will hold that the position of our own people, our own blood, in the Norman Islands, and of the people of Greece and of Poland or elsewhere are on the same plane. Well, of course, that ends the matter so far as I am concerned, because I say they are not. If I had to choose between my noble friend and any Pole, any Belgian, any Greek—if it were Leonidas himself—I should drop them and help my friend. That may be idiosyncrasy on my part; it may be even hysterical. I do not think so, and as long as I have those opinions so long will I hold that we have betrayed those islands, and that we should help them.
I thank my noble friend for the suggestion that we would drop coffee. It is not a question of the mere pounds of coffee; it is the fact that the islander will know that he is not forgotten, that he has not been betrayed. He will say: "I still count for something. I am the property, the absolute apanage of the Crown, and the Crown, through the Government, has not forgotten me and is doing what is possible and will continue to do what is possible, besides bombing us"—because of course the Government have shown that little kindness to the islands. They have bombed Jersey harbour and killed a few Germans. Well, that was at any rate an indication that they valued Jersey and had not forgotten it. But I do not want them to remember it in that regard any further. I thank my noble friend for his kind words, and more still for the kind sentiments that I seem to feel lurk behind his words. I know that he is in an official position and he cannot give me all the things I ask for. But at any rate he does give me that comfort that he is thinking, and the Government are thinking, of the islands, and that they will in good time do their best for those unfortunate people. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

AGRICULTURAL HOUSING.
LORD BEAVER BROOK LORD BEAVER BROOK moved to resolve, That a total of 30,000 new cottages
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for agricultural labourers and their families is the immediate minimum number required for the efficient conduct of the farming industry of England and Wales and for the healthy housing of its workpeople. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I know that your Lordships do not like to sit too late, so I must try and make my case for the agricultural cottages in the shortest possible space of time. I can assure my noble friend, the Leader of the House, that publication in full will appear in one of the London newspapers to-morrow; in other newspapers only in part, and if you take an average over the London newspapers you will see that my speech will get less space than it merits. But my noble friend can read it just the same, if he does not care to stay to hear it, and, if he likes, I will ask to have it on the same page as his friend "Beachcomber."
The shortage of cottages is nothing new. It has been going on ever since I arrived in England some thirty-two years ago, and in the twenty-five years or so that I sat either on the Benches on that side of the House where I made my maiden speech, or on the Benches on this side of the House—in all that time I have heard this question raised again and again, and very little good has come from any speeches made by anybody. I do not know that much is going to come from my speech, although the case, I can assure you, is absolutely water-tight. In 1937 the Ministry of Health said in a published document that some labourers had been waiting ten years for their cottages, and I hoped that the most reverend Prelate, the Archbishop of York, would be here to-day and that he would say a word in support of the plea that I make. And I would remind him that Jacob only consented to wait seven years, but on a very intricate point made by the Lord Chancellor of the day, Jacob had to wait fourteen years all told. There has been a more serious difficulty, and that was the neglect of repairs and renewals. That was widespread all through the country, and in many parts of the country there were agricultural areas that were nothing more nor less than slums. I hoped that my noble friend Lord Horder would have been here to-day so that I might have raised that issue with him, for of course the agricultural slums all over the country are a serious question in relation to the health of the country. I But I would ask His Majesty's Govern-

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ment, of which I was for some little time a member: What have you done since the war began to increase the necessary supply of agricultural cottages? What have you done to give any attention to repairs and renewals? What have you built? Nothing. What have you repaired? Nothing. And that is the indictment of His Majesty's Government.
Now they bring forward a proposal for 3,000 cottages. But since the war began 6,000,000 acres of agricultural land have been brought under the plough. It is necessary to have two ploughmen for every additional 100 acres That means 120,000 additional strength in the agricultural industry. If we have 120,000 additional strength, then we require cottages, and we can only offer 3,000. What is proposed now is only one cottage to forty additional labourers; and that makes no provision for the pre-war shortage, and none for repairs and renewals. Here in this House we have one seat for every forty Peers, but unhappily there is a great deal of absenteeism, and the absenteeism gives as space to sit clown. If it were not for the absenteeism, we might find my noble friend Lord Nathan sitting on the knee of Lord Southwood. In Norfolk, a County where ninety cottages have been provided, there are in fact 1,500,000 acres under cultivation.
Having made this general statement about the shortage of cottages, and racing against time in circler to enable others to speak and my noble friend Lord Portal to make the official answer, I am asking for 30,000 cottages. You ask me how I justify that 30,000. By putting a naught after the 3,000—that is the way I came to the conclusion to ask for 30,000. But the Minister of Health, I am told, has asked for 300,000 cottages. I am told on very reliable authority that is the figure he demands. Surely the very fact that the Minister of Health has asked for 300,000 cottages justifies me in asking for one-tenth of his demand. And, of course, I ask at the same time for the reconditioning of the cottages that are in need of repair, and in particular for pipe water. For I assure you, being sprung from the ploughman class of the community myself, that pipe water is better than electric light. Pipe water above everything is what the agricultural labourer would like. And why not give us 30,000 cottages? What is the reason? Is it
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shortage of materials? There is no shortage of bricks.
THE MINISTER OF WORKS (LORD PORTAL): I agree.
LORD BEAVERBROOK: There is no shortage of bricks, there is no shortage of cement. If we can build the cottages of bricks and cement, there is no reason why we should not build more than 3,000, for bottlenecks do not arise. There is a shortage of timber, but we all know that cottages can be built without timber except for the doors and possibly the windows; but even in the case of doors and windows we may not need to make use of timber. It is agreed, therefore, that there is no shortage of bricks, there is no shortage of cement, there is a shortage of timber, but timber is in very small requirement. There is no shortage of these materials at all. I shall come to the question of labour in a moment. That my noble friend will say is the bottleneck, but in any case, even if there was a shortage of materials and labour, should there not be a reconditioning of the cottages? Should there not be reconditioning, not on the plea my noble friend Lord Horder would make if he were here, but on the plea that these cottages are part of the whole machinery of agriculture?
It is upon the cottages that agricultural production is based. It is like a factory or industry. If I were to go to my noble friend Lord Portal and say, "Here I have a factory that is out of condition and requires some materials to put it in shape," he would say, "Take the materials away," and I would get them at once. Although the cottage is part of the system of agricultural production, there are no materials for the reconditioning of cottages. It is a policy that is misguided. It is a policy on which I have tried to bring the light of public opinion to bear for ever so long, and I hope that to-day one more step will be taken. Where it will lead to I do not know—I do not think very far.
Labour is the bottleneck, but there is ample building labour, not unemployed but idle, waiting for jobs, waiting for materials, waiting for orders, or waiting for architects' plans. There is idle building labour. There are too many airfields—far more airfields than there are aeroplanes for them. The service of airfields is in

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excess of the supply of aeroplanes—a very fortunate condition, but that happens to be the fact. As for munition works, they are going up all over the country—and hostels. My noble friend knows a lot about hostels. That word is written on his heart. But I am not urging my case for 30,000 cottages on the statement of idle building labour or on the statement of too many airfields or too many munition works building all over the country or too many hostels. I am urging it on the ground that You are taking away from the building industry far more labour than would supply the necessities for 30,000 cottages, and, You have no justification for doing so—none at all.
You have taken away in the last year—in fact in the last six months—25,000 from the building trade and civil engineering. In the first three months of this year you are taking away 28,000. You are to take 15,000 a month. These are for military service. In addition, on July 1, you are taking 35,000 who are unfit for military service and putting them on other jobs. Eighty-five per cent. represent building labour, the rest is civil engineering. In other words by July 1 you will already have taken 122,000 from the building trade for the Armed Services and for other jobs. It requires at least 3,000 mobile and 20,000 immobile labour for 3,000 cottages. Put on my naught and you get 30,000 mobile and 20,000 immobile—a total of 50,000 for my 30,000 cottages; and you are taking 122,000 away. If you applied all that great number of 122,000 to the production of agricultural cottages, you would solve the situation, and at last you would be able to accede to one of the few Resolutions I have brought forward in this House.
It is real folly on the part of the Government to take these men away for the Army and to deprive the system of food production of their services—real folly. You cannot use them as soldiers here unless there is an invasion, and it is not now Government policy to prepare to resist an invasion. I do not know; I cannot tell; perhaps not. You cannot send them abroad because the ships you might send them in are required to bring food. I do not say you could not send them abroad in other ships, but the ships bringing food to this country would otherwise be at the disposal of the Government. These ships bringing food from
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across the ocean are bringing it to feed these very building labourers you have taken away from their industry and put into the Army, thus putting an additional burden on ships bringing foodstuffs over the Atlantic when you might be relieving the burden of transport by applying that labour to building agricultural cottages here. Food production in the future as in the past demands an adequate supply of plant and equipment, and cottages are part of the plant. But even supposing you do set out on the programme of 3,000 cottages, the fact that my noble friend Lord Portal is connected with the project makes me think that something may be done. He is a man of great drive and energy, as I well know. But when will they be built? I can make a pretty good guess. "This year, next year, sometime, never." The child's rhyme just about describes the situation. The machinery of bureaucracy we have built up is a structure far stronger than the cottages themselves.
Mr. J. F. Wright, of Norfolk, one of the great agriculturists of Britain, a man who has not got a seat in the House of Commons and does not have a place in the House of Lords, but has got his two feet on the farm—he is one of the finest authorities on agriculture in the land, an authority who does not talk nonsense but real substantial common sense about the land, the sort of substantial common sense a descendant of a ploughman likes to hear—tells me there are eleven different authorities that have to be consulted, that have to be taken into consideration, before you launch on the building of ninety cottages they want in Norfolk. First of all, you have to go to the rural district council, then to the rural district council surveyor, then to the architect then to the county war agricultural executive committee; the Assistant Land Commissioner is the next visit, if you are not tired. Then you go to the senior regional architect, then you have to consult the Directorate of Land, then the district valuer, then the senior regional officer, then the allocation officer, and finally, if you have decided to build a cottage without a parlour, you have to go to Mr. A. Scott in Whitehall. Why when you want to build an agricultural cottage without a parlour you must go to Mr. A. Scott in Whitehall I do not know.
It sounds like "The House that Jack Built." It does indeed. Except that the

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"maiden all forlorn who milked the cow with the crumpled horn" will never marry the "man all tattered and torn" because they will have no cottage to go to if they do marry; so they will stay single. If they are so fortunate as to get a cottage in the by and by, what then? In rent and rates they will have to pay from 11s. 6d. to 13s. What an imposition on an agricultural labourer! What an imposition upon the ploughman of this country to make him pay 13s. a week on the wage you have set up for him by law! Deal with that section of the community decently, deal with them on a generous basis, give them the plant that is necessary to the production of the food that you so urgently need for the necessities of our country.
You have built no cottages by this beureaucratic structure. I do not criticize civil servants; I think they are a splendid body. I have nothing but praise for civil servants, particularly the men who have control of the Civil Service and manage and dominate it. They are fine public servants. That is not what I object to. What I object to is rule by Committee divorced from any control by the public, and that is what we have got at the present time—Committee rule completely divorced from any authority or responsibility of the public whatsoever. Unless Lord Maugham—I mention him because I heard him speaking so clearly discussing a legal subject in terms I could understand—and others take hold of the situation, then rest assured this system of control by Committee responsible to nobody will dominate every detail of our public and private life. We have to make a struggle against that irresponsible Committee control if we are to have a decent life in the community after the war is over, and indeed if we are to prosecute the war while it is or to the utmost extent with the intention of doing the greatest possible damage to enemy.
The farmer has to deal now with III rules and orders from the Agricultural Ministry. He needs a lawyer in his back-room or his front-roam in order to deal with those HI rules and orders. And he has also orders from the Food Ministry, from the Supply Ministry, from the Fuel Ministry and from the War Transport Ministry all rolling into him. Then, when he is least expecting it, there comes an order from the War Office or the Air
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Ministry. That may bring about either a terrible situation or a splendid situation; we cannot be sure which it will mean to the farmer. The order from the War Office or the Air Ministry will be for the taking over of his land altogether, and occasionally the farmer feels a happy release when he gets an order taking over his farm. He is done with filling up forms. He sometimes has as many as fifty forms waiting to be filled up. In nearly every case where he buys or where he sells he has to fill up a form. If he repairs a fence then he has to fill up a form in triplicate. He has to do that before he can repair his fence, and, meanwhile, his cattle may have strayed into his neighbour's field. I want to tell this to my noble friend for he can make the situation easier, particularly in regard to the supply of materials for repairing: fences, which is necessary for the farm. A proverb in New Brunswick, which also applies in Great Britain, says that good fences make good neighbours. A very good proverb that is, and I suggest to my noble friend that good fences here will make good neighbours. A farmer spends half his life book-keeping. Sometimes peasants are not good book-keepers. Accountants come from the city but ploughmen come from the countryside.
I want to say one further word, but I am anxious not to take up the time of the House much longer because I want to conform to the desire of your Lordships to go home at the hour you have selected among yourselves, without any wide consultation. I want to see you get home safely and well; therefore I will limit my remarks so that you can get home at a reasonable hour. I was going to say one word about county war agricultural committees. I hope they will come to an end when the war is over. These county war agricultural committees have cost this Government £10,000,000 a year at least; it may even turn out that £20,000,000 will be the cost of the war agricultural committees. The committees divide themselves often into twelve subcommittees. It is committees and subcommittees everywhere. The service which we are supposed to get from the county war agricultural committees is to turn bad farmers into good farmers, but you cannot turn bad farmers into good farmers by a committee meeting. It is not possible. You have to find some

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other method of dealing with that problem. I did intend to make some observations about the proposals of some noble Lords for agriculture in the future, but again for reasons of time I will say nothing further, except to hope that I have made my case for these cottages, and to suggest to your Lordships that we should not allow our farmers any longer to submit to be ruled by bankers and by brokers, by importers and by exporters, by middlemen and by milk combines. I return, therefore, to the Resolution which I submit to the consideration of your Lordships, and hope you will not be put off from supporting it by anything I have said about Committees. I know you are all members of many Committees, and I hope you will not be influenced adversely by anything I have said about such bodies, but will give your hearty support to the plea I make for 30,000 cottages for agricultural labourers. I beg to move.
Moved to resolve, That a total of 30,000 new cottages for agricultural labourers and their families is the immediate minimum number required for the efficient conduct of the farming industry of England and Wales and for the healthy housing of its workpeople.—(Lord Beaverbrook.)
LORD ADDISON: My Lords, it refreshes me exceedingly to hear the noble Lord's enthusiasm for this subject, because I happen to be one of those who have suffered much in this cause in the years that have passed. I remember very painfully that I did not always receive that consistent support from great organs of the Press which I really merited, but now I hope that those organs of the Press, which, as I think the noble Lord explained to us yesterday, he owns but does not control, will give consistent support from this time on to this cause.
LORD BEAVERBROOK: They always have; I was never faithless to the ploughman.
LORD ADDISON: We want to get houses built for the agricultural worker now. I asked the noble Lord before we came in why he did not put a naught at the end of the figure in his Motion and he gave me a very complete reply. He pointed out that in the Resolution there was the word "immediate," which of course governs everything to-day. I hope
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we shall hear from the noble Lord opposite what are the realities with regard to the difficulties of the provision of the necessary labour and materials. We shall certainly want 30,000 cottages a year for ten years. We should then begin only to approach the need, and should still be far from attaining what is really required. But I would like to say that I think we owe a real debt to the Ministry for the White Paper which provides for the large-scale organization of building labour after the war and for the training of it during the war. I hope we shall hear something about that this afternoon, because it has to be tackled at that end.
With the most profound respect for, shall I say almost fear of, the noble Lord who has just spoken, may I say that I am not quite sure he is so near realities as he would have us believe? He says he is a realist. Well, I am the Chairman of a county war agricultural executive committee and I do not recognize his description of those bodies. We have met in committee two or three times a week ever since the first week of the war, and I should like to assure the noble Lord that if he will only come along and let me be his host for one day, I will show him something of what we are really doing. I think he will see how extraordinarily imaginary is the picture he has painted of the work of the war agricultural executives. I will take this opportunity of giving the House one simple illustration. The small county where I have the honour to preside over the committee was much worse off than Norfolk. We only had fifty cottages allotted, but the notice of the allocation came in one week and within ten days of that welcome notification the Ministry had been informed of the complete agreement of all this medley of committees which the noble Lord has imagined. The Ministry was informed how many houses were wanted in the different districts, where the need was most urgent and precisely where they were to be placed in each village. The whole scheme was completed and sent back with our unanimous blessing within ten days. I do not think that the Daily Express could have been prompter than that. It was really express work.
I hope the noble Lord, if he has got that information from Mr. Wright, will have it carefully investigated, because I assure him that every one of the war agriculture executive committees welcome this

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suggestion even for a handful of cottages. It is a mere handful of cottages, but I believe the matter has been dealt with remarkably quickly. I would join heartily with the noble Lord in the hope that the effort will not be smothered by any of the machinery described, and I think we can trust the noble Lord opposite that this will not happen. If he can modify the call-up in the building trade so as to get nearer 30,000 than 3,000 cottages, that would be welcomed by all, and if that is done I think we shall feel immensely indebted to the noble Lord for bringing the matter forward.
Now I would like to add a word out of my painful experience on the subject with regard to the larger issue. It is true that 30,000 cottages would be an enormous help now. The survey to which the noble Lord alluded showed that an immense proportion of the cottages now occupied by agricultural workers are very dilapidated and very unsatisfactory. The housewife has not half a chance, and that is one of the main reasons why young men will not remain in the villages. It is not 30,000 cottages that are required in the interests of sound agriculture, nor even 300,000, but vastly more. I find that in this country 38,000 workers in the last year before the war drifted away from agriculture. Notwithstanding that, the number of people, including the occupiers of the smaller holdings, who were employed in the industry in England and Wales, was 959,000. The number of labourers who have left agriculture, the biggest industry in the country, is not less than a quarter of a million during the last generation. I am quite sure that the provision on a large scale of cottages in the country districts, with the amenities that the noble Lord talked about—with a decent water supply, so that the housewife can wash up without having to walk along the road to a pond to get water—will do more to keep men in the villages and their wives contented than almost anything else.
I remember only too painfully that after the last war I was urged to build houses. "Get on with it was shouted at me every day, not by the Press to which the noble Lord referred, but by other organs of the Press. I was allowed to make one great mistake. I agreed, although I should not have agreed, to pursue the endeavour without adequate control of material and prices. After this war build-
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ing enterprise will be enormously more urgent than after the last war, and I do entreat the noble Lord to represent to whoever is responsible for the job that the mistake that was made last time shall not be repeated. The job will have to be done by complete control for many years of prices and materials and of the whole organization in as striking a way as we now control the means of war production. Otherwise prices will soar to unholy heights, as they did last time, and whoever is in charge will be destroyed as I was. That was a mistake.
There is one other thing about which I think a warning should be given. Immediately after the war there will be an immense outcry for lots of things and the cry for houses will probably be the biggest. How many millions will be wanted I do not know, but the task will need all the mobilized labour that the Ministry can bring together. I hope that those who live to see that time will do whatever they can to prevent a recurrence of the betrayal of 1922. Some of us were parties to the promise of "homes for heroes"—I was one of them—and I have never ceased to be thankful that I went out when that promise was proposed to be broken. I have a great fear that after the enthusiasm of the war period there may come a reaction, and I hope that everyone of us will resolve that whoever is in charge shall be given complete power—even if it involves the establishment of a number of Committees—over all that is necessary to secure economic and rapid building, because if that is not done there will be sooner or later a reaction such as there was in 1922 and we may suffer similar disasters. I am delighted with the enthusiasm of the noble Lord on this subject, to which I have given faithful and suffering allegiance for more than a generation, and I sincerely hope that he will sustain it at all costs.
LORD PHILLIMORE: My Lords, it is a refreshing thought that the Addison cottage may be shortly followed by the Beaverbrook cottage, and I feel that all the agricultural world ought to be grateful to the noble Lord for bringing forward this Motion. I was surprised, if not shocked, at the moderation of this proposal. Thirty thousand cottages! They will go nowhere, as the noble Lord, Lord Addison, knows. I do not suppose it means three cottages in a parish. However, I

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rose not only to draw attention to the noble Lord's very conservative estimate, but to challenge him on a little of his knowledge about country life. Does the noble Lord appreciate that far more than 30,000 agricultural cottages already exist, but are unused by the agricultural population? The real truth of the matter is that during the depression the best cottages, the ones that would fetch the most money for the impoverished farmer, were let to people not engaged in agriculture. You cannot go to any village, at any rate in the South of England, without finding cottages which were normally occupied by agricultural workers when England was farmed as it is now farmed, now in other hands.
And if that is true, and it is true, it will be found, I think, that those cottages are best placed for the work of the farm. Naturally they were let with the farm to the farmer and they were so situated that the men concerned might get as easily as possible to their work. They were also the best of the cottages left to the farmer, for they were the ones that would fetch the higher rents. This to my mind is a very pregnant factor in the situation. Might it not be better to consider building new cottages for the people who are now in those cottages; that is to say, providing them with new homes, and handing over the older cottages to the agricultural labourers? Those older cottages, as I have said, are certainly placed where the labourers will most desire to be. It may be argued that a new cottage will be more attractive to the housewife than the old one, and no doubt that is partially true. But the rents of the old cottages may be much lower, and such buildings, after all, have many advantages that the new, quickly run-up dwellings which the noble Lord, Lord Portal, will be forced, I am afraid, to put up, will probably not possess. The older cottages will, I think, be more comfortable with their warmer walls, warmer roofs and greater number of outbuildings. They are, in fact, generally more fitting for the use to which they were intended to be put. I will not detain the House longer, but I do think that this is a very important point and one which should be borne in mind right throughout the campaign—which I hope will not be dropped—to provide the agricultural labourer with the sort of cottage he ought to have.
LORD PORTAL: My Lords, the Resolution which has been moved by my noble friend Lord Beaverbrook proposes, as we know, that a total of 30,000 new cottages for agricultural labourers and their families should be provided immediately. I have listened with great attention to his speech to-day and I gathered that he is of opinion that these cottages will not be built this year, next year, sometime or ever. I can only say that if the 3,000 which are now contemplated are not built, I imagine that his Lordship in the near future will again be having something to say in this House, for he has taken this matter up with all his accustomed fervour and zest. A great point which he stressed was that in his view no more men should be taken from the building trade, which he considers so important, to go into the Services or to work on munitions. Manpower is a very big question indeed and the people whose chief concern it is look at it from many different points of view. They have to consider all sorts of questions connected with priorities and allocations and they have to decide which needs are the most important.
I think it is only fair that I should say at the beginning of my remarks that the actual building comes under the Minister of Health, and both the Minister of Health and the Minister of Agriculture would be only too glad if they could start immediately to build 30,000 homes for agricultural workers. And it is not only 30,000 that they have in mind. They visualize, as Lord Addison has suggested, a ten-year programme which will include putting up about 300,000 cottages for the agricultural workers. Most of your Lordships are aware that just before the war started the annual rate of building of new houses was nearly 350,000, of which 55,000.were in rural areas. I tried to get for your Lordships figures showing what proportion was for agricultural workers but I was unable to do so. But let us take the 55,000 as representing the annual number which was being built at that time in rural areas. As Lord Beaverbrook has already pointed out, what has happened since the war began is simply that the houses which were then in process of being built have been finished off. Then, as Lord Phillimore has said—and this is a matter which is in the minds of everyone—one of the most important problems to be faced now is that of maintenance. The maintenance of houses has fallen very

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much behind. But it is not only the maintenance of houses that has fallen behind. The maintenance of plants in industrial buildings is also falling back in a like ratio. Moreover, the completion of the houses which were under construction when the war began has been more than offset by the number of dwellings which have been destroyed or irreparably damaged by enemy action.
The Minister of Flealth envisages for the future a programme of building 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 houses and of that scheme the building of 300,000 cottages for agricultural workers will be a part. As I have said, we are suffering now from big arrears in the matter of maintenance. The Minister of Health has publicly drawn attention to these facts. A vast amount of work will be required to bring housing conditions once again up to the standard of 1939. A start has been made—as I think my noble friend Lord Beaverbrook mentioned—on the reconditioning of houses in rural areas. In this connexion I would like to refer to what I may call the bombed areas of this country. For some time before I went to my Ministry a figure of £150 was allowed for the reconditioning of houses irrespective of first-aid repairs. During the last two months that figure has been increased to approximately £300. The Ministry of Health and my Ministry are beginning to operate on the repair of 40,000 bombed houses. We are going to get them into a proper state of repair and the country will then gain to the extent of 40,000 more homes. The first and principal reason to which Lord Beaverbrock referred for not being able to deal with more than 3,000 agricultural cottages is labour. I think it was the Archbishop of York's Committee which went into the question of reconditioning rural houses. That question is now being considered and practical steps will undoubtedly be taken when the labour is available. That I think is something to go on with.
And now I want to tell the noble Lord that I would be very pleased to accept his Motion if it were not for the word "immediate." I know that he and I will not agree on that. He has maintained that labour should not be taken away as it is being taken from toe building trade. Before the war there were in England and Wales 1,200,000 people in the building and civil engineering trades. At the present
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time there are less than half that number in those trades, and programmes which are still being carried out for the Service Ministries, the Services themselves, and for other Ministries whose work is regarded as part of the war effort, absorb about two-thirds of that labour. Moreover, before the war approximately 300,000 men were employed on the maintenance of houses, factories and other buildings. That figure has now fallen to about 170,000, and in that figure of 170,000 are included 35,000 men who are dealing with bombed houses, first-aid repairs and so on. Our difficulty is, therefore, that we have a minus number of men available.
The question of priorities in regard to building has to depend at the present time on the war effort. The noble Lord has referred to the increase in the number of agricultural workers, due to the policy of ploughing-up land and so on, but the extra numbers who have come to help in carrying out the agricultural programme are, for the most part, temporary, and for them hostels can be provided. I do not think that I know any more about hostels than my noble friend did when he was Minister of Supply, but hostels are being built for these people, and over 400 hostels and camps have been provided. The camps are used for prisoners of war, and up to 700 are accommodated in each camp. The most popular type of hostel holds about 50, but the capacity of others varies from thirty to one hundred.
In addition to these 40,000 to 50,000 unskilled workers who have been brought into agriculture, we must have a nucleus of experienced workers, and these 3,000 houses are to be built for them. That is the intention of the Minister of Agriculture, and it is supported by the Minister of Health. They work together on these questions, and they have, as Lord Addison knows, asked the local authorities to find sites for these houses at once. They are to be advised by the agricultural war executive committee of each county, and the tenants will be chosen by the committee for the time being. I understand that most of the sites will be near villages, and so the provision of water—a point mentioned by my noble friend Lord Beaverbrook—will not be as difficult as it is in the case of some farms which are a long way from water supplies. The figures which I have given show that we have only half the labour which we

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used to have, and that two-thirds of that labour is being used for the Service and Supply Ministries, while 170,000 men are being used for maintenance work generally and the repair of bombed houses. We are therefore left with very few men.
Then we come to the question of material, and my noble friend Lord Beaverbrook asks what we have. He asks whether we have bricks, and the answer is that we have bricks. He asks whether we have cement, and the answer is that we have cement. The difficulty at the present time is timber. So far as these 3,000 houses are concerned, however, we have to get over that difficulty. I regard 3,000 as a token figure. This is our first piece of planning on a long-term programme. When we talk of hostels, there is always a feeling that they are not permanent, but with these houses it is different. We must make a success of them. I am certain that after the war there will be a shortage of timber. No one should know that better than I do, because when one is concerned with the allocation of these materials one obtains first-hand knowledge of the position regarding them. We are developing designs and methods of pitched-roof construction, therefore, which will avoid the necessity of using timber.
An interesting point to consider is the increase in the cost of building at the present time. For cottages it is about 80 per cent. With ordinary buildings about 33 per cent. of the costs is for material, and about 66 per cent. for labour. For camps and aerodromes the increase in cost is not as much as 80 per cent. One of our great difficulties, with the reduced amount of labour available to us, is that those men who remain in the industry are, for the most part, the older men. Although the mellow craftsman is worth a great deal, you also need youth. In the country areas at the present time we shall have to rely a great deal on the older men, because all the younger men are being taken from us gradually. When we get down to below half a million, we shall find a great proportion of them are older men.
We shall all agree that it is necessary to provide more cottages for agricultural workers, and we may well be asked what plans we are making for this purpose. My noble friend Lord Addison has
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warned us about what may happen after the war. If supply does not equal demand prices may go up rapidly. That is a reason why, as he says, controls are imposed, and we realize the importance, until supply and demand can be brought into a proper relation, of maintaining controls. On April 21, 1942, I made a few remarks in your Lordships' House on planning and future personnel, which I said was all-important. I said:
"There is a question which is closely allied or shall I say goes hand in hand with the question of planning, and one which is bound up with my Ministry of Works… Directly the war is over, it will be essential to have this industry organized so as to cope with the vast amount of work with which it will have to deal. Most of the material required is at hand in this country. A very large number of new houses will be required, as well as repairs to many thousands, and we shall require new schools and other buildings. A well-balanced programme will have to be planned. The men to carry out this work will have to be made available very quickly. We are already well advanced in considering what will be required. The question of apprentices being taken into the trade is being thought out, and that of getting the large number of men hack both from the Services, and the munition factories, is being gone into. The training of men on demobilization is also an essential factor. We must think out a long-term programme. Your Lordships will realize that this is no easy task, made no easier by the fact that the number of our building operatives is decreasing very fast as men are called up."
The Government have now produced a White Paper which gives effect to what we were saying at that time. In this White Paper, we accept the principle of a planned building programme for ten or twelve years, with a labour force of 1,250,000. We accept the principle of regularity of employment, if the trade itself agrees as to the method. The White Paper recognizes that there will have to be a large expansion of the building industry at the end of the war. It provides for the special training of up to 200,000 men demobilized or coming out of munitions, which will be directed by the Ministry of Labour with the advice and co-operation of the Ministry of Works. It covers the training of men in the Forces before demobilization, both in this country and abroad. Apprenticeship is the normal way of entry into the industry, and arrangements are indicated for the maximum encouragement of such training within the industry, with the assistance of the Ministry of Works and other Departments concerned. It provides for the establishment

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by the Ministry of Works of an Apprenticeship and Training Council to cover the whole industry. Such arrangements will operate in the provinces and throughout the country. There is a section in my Ministry to-day which is working out the future building requirements of each Governrnent Department, of which housing will obviously, be one of the first priorities, and rural housing is a part of a good general housing programme. There are the requirements of the Post Office and other Government Departments which are now to be worked out with the number of men who are going to be introduced into the industry for the first time.
I served an apprenticeship myself in the question of providing employment in the Special Areas. The main thing one has striven for is that men should know what they are gong to have to work on from day to day, and they will be given a chance of this by the White Paper scheme. So when, after the war, a young man wants to serve an apprenticeship his father and mother will have a trade which they can be proud to see their boy enter, because he will have some continuity of work and prospect. I am in sympathy, and His Majesty's Government are in sympathy, with Lord Beaverbrook in his Resolution, but I think I have made it clear that at the present time 3,000 houses are all that can be built, with the labour and material available.
LORD BEAVERBROOK: My Lords, I take it that the Government reject my Motion. I listened with some interest to the story of what is going to be done after the war, but that is riot what I am asking. I am asking for 30,000 agricultural cottages now. That is the Motion. The fact that Saul is among the prophets and Portal among the planners does not affect this issue at all. I still want to know whether the Government are willing to increase the programme to 30,000 cottages. I am quite ready to discuss priorities of labour in this House. If the Government want to put off the issue to another day, when we can discuss priorities of labour, I will put it off to that time. But if I cannot get the assurance that the matter will be reconsidered on the basis of priorities of labour I must press my Motion to a Division. The issue as I put it to the House was that 122,000 men are being taken from the building industry now and that 40,000 would provide the cottages I am asking for. I ask
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that 40,000 of those men should be diverted to building agricultural cottages. My noble friend says "No." He goes into a discussion of the limitations of labour, but he does not answer about the 122,000 men that are being taken for the Services and for other industries. We contend that 40,000 should be directed to the building industry on account of the present need for 30,000 cottages.
The information I have given the House to-day can be got from other sources besides that very reliable farmer, J. F. Wright. It can be got from an article in The Times a week ago and elsewhere. My noble friend has made no attempt to deny the information I have given the House about the committees. My noble friend Lord Phillimore made a most valuable contribution, and I should have had something to say on the same subject if I had not cut my speech short. There are many other issues raised by my noble friend that I should have liked to discuss. He speaks about 40,000 houses that are subject to their being repaired, but these 40,000 houses are not agricultural cottages; they are for the gentry, not for the ploughmen.
LORD PORTAL: The 40,000 are in the bombed areas, in the East End and various other places.
LORD BEAVERBROOK: It is not much of an answer to my plea for 30,000 cottages to speak about bombed houses in the towns. I still submit that 30,000 cottages can be built. Even the shortage of timber can be met by the supply of beaverboard, and if beaverboard is not available it can be made here; it is only a matter of using certain machinery for the purpose. With regret, therefore, but none the less with confidence that I do my duty, I propose to go to a Division unless the proposal is accepted that we should discuss priorities of labour later on, with the intention of showing that priorities of labour are properly directed otherwise than to the building of agricultural cottages. There has been a case throughout for far more than 30,000 cottages, so surely I can hope for support from your Lordships for my modest demand for 30,000.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (VISCOUNT CRANBORNE): My Lords, perhaps I might say one word if the noble Lord still feels inclined to go to a Division.

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I must confess I think it would be unfortunate if there was a Division on this subject, and I do not think the noble Lord would be justified in forcing the House to a Division. What my noble friend has said is that the Government are in favour not only of the 30,000 cottages for which the noble Lord asks, but for 300,000 for which he might have asked if he had not been so moderate. The real difficulty at the present time is purely a man-power difficulty. I think the noble Lord recognizes that himself. I understand that he has not accepted the figures given by my noble friend, but I can assure noble Lords that the man-power situation, which is one of the utmost difficulty at the present time, has been examined and combed through again and again and again by His Majesty's Government. There is not a single man in this country now who is not doing work of essential importance. And therefore suddenly to suggest at the end of a debate that there are plenty of men for that purpose—
LORD BEAVERBROOK: The point is that I have shown that 122,000 men are being diverted from the building industry to the Services and to other industries, and I ask that out of that 122,000 a quota should be detached for building agricultural cottages, and my noble friend answers me by talking about the immense decline in building labour. He did not make any reply at all to my argument about the 122,000 men.
VISCOUNT CRANBORNE: But the clear and obvious reply is that the Cabinet, having considered priorities of labour in this very difficult situation, thought it was more necessary to divert those 122,000 men to the Armed Forces and to, the other industries of which he has spoken. It is not a thing that they have not considered. They have considered it with the utmost care. It seems to me that for the House to divide on a question of that kind at the present moment would not only create a very bad impression but would be perfectly unjustifiable. If the noble Lord wishes to press his Motion to a Division he can, but I hope every other noble Lord will come to the support of the Government.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: My Lords, I share the hope that Lord Beaverbrook will not ask the House to put itself on record as censuring the Government for
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not providing an additional 30,000 agricultural cottages. It would be very easy to represent such a Division as a Division between those who are in favour of more adequate rural housing and those who are against it, but that would be a very wrong and unfair impression. I for my part have been interested in this cottage questian for many years before the date the noble Lord gave, some thirty years ago, when he first came to England, for I remember writing a pamphlet on this subject about fifty years ago when I was a young candidate for Parliament in an agricultural constituency.
When we are asked to vote for or against this Resolution, we naturally ask ourselves why we are requested to insist that the Government should build 30,000 cottages. Why 30,000? Has the noble Lord made a careful statistical survey of the requirements of the agricultural industry at the present time and of the actual shortage that prevails, and so built up from actual fact the statistic of 30,000? Not at all. He has taken 30,000 because it is ten times the 3,000 and one-tenth of 300,000; that figure of 3,000 being the number proposed by the Government, and the figure of 300,000 being the number the Ministry of Health have said will be ultimately necessary. Three thousand is obviously too little, and 300,000 is impracticable at the present time. Therefore, he says, "Let us plump for 30,000." On such statistical basis he asks the House of Lords to place on its records the opinion that we consider at the present time 30,000 is the figure of additional agricultural cottages necessary. As regards the priorities of labour, on which the whole matter turns, clearly that is a matter for the most careful investigation by the Government. In fact, it is one of the main tasks of any Cabinet conducting a war. If we are now to say, without any further evidence than that provided by the noble Lord's speech, that the Cabinet have been wrong in not providing labour for 30,000 cottages instead of 3,000, we are not supporting the Government in their conduct of the war. We should only withdraw our support on points such as this when we consider the evidence is clear and overwhelming. I have not been sparing in my criticisms of the Government on many occasions, and I should be quite ready to criticize them again, but I would not he prepared to support the noble Lord in the Lobby on the statis-

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tical evidence he has put forward in censuring the Government cut in their conduct of fie war for not providing sufficient labour in this particular priority.
LORD BEAVERBROOK: My Lords, I am going to ask leave to withdraw, but M doing so I would point out that the question has not been answered. It is idle for noble Lords to come to this House and present cases to the Government which are not answered. The point is that 122,000 building labourers are being diverted elsewhere. I have made a plea for cottages. That is the evidence which the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, wants—this statement that 122,000 building labourers are being withdrawn. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion, but would point out that the Government have not answered the question I brought to this House, and very often that is because there is no answer.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

ANTI-U-BOAT WARFARE COMMITTEE.
LORD WINSTER: My Lords, I beg to ask the question standing in my name.
[The question was as follows:
To ask His Majesty's Government, how many of the Anti-U-boat Warfare Committee, have been held since it was constituted, when it last met, and who is the Minister responsible to Parliament for the work of this Committee.]
VISCOUNT CRANBORNE: My Lords, the Anti-U-boat Warfare Committee have met regularly once a week since it was constituted. Twenty meetings have so far been held. Admiral Stark, Commander United States Naval Forces in Europe, and Mr. Averill Harriman, Personal Representative of the President, attend the meetings of the Committee. As regards the second part of the question, as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister explained in another place on the 15th December, the existence of this Committee in no way supersedes or replaces the regular and systematic control of the anti-U-boat warfare by the Admiralty.
LORD WINSTER: My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for his reply. It is not quite clear who answers for the Committee, but I can understand that that varies according to circumstances. There
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will be an opportunity of debating the matter in the near future, so I shall not press it now.

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA (GOVER NORS' ALLOWANCES AND PRIVI LEGES) (AMENDMENT) ORDER, 1943.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA AND BURMA (THE EARL OF MUNSTER): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name.
Moved, That the Special Order, as reported from the India and Burma Orders Committee yesterday, be approved.—(Earl of Munster.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CONSOLIDATION BILLS.
First Report by the Joint Committee, being a Report upon the Courts (Emergency Powers) Bill [H.L.], made, and to be printed. The minutes of evidence (with the Proceedings of the Joint Committee) laid upon the Table, and to be delivered out.
COURTS (EMERGENCY POWERS) BILL [H.L.]
Reported from the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills without amendment, and to be re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

ADJOURNMENT: PERSONAL STATE MENT BY LORD WEDGWOOD.
VISCOUNT CRANBORNE: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn.
Moved, That the House do now adjourn.—(Viscount Cranborne.)
LORD WEDGWOOD: My Lords, on this Motion may I raise a personal issue? I am very loth to do so, but I was publicly traduced yesterday by Lord Winster, who commented on my speech unjustifiably. I seek this, the earliest opportunity of trying to put myself right. Lord Winster said this—I am quoting from his speech in the Official Report:
"Then there was the statement that the First Army are doing themselves well, that they have all the bread and beer they want and generally having a good time, but not

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fighting. I wrote the words down—'are having a good time, but not fighting'."
The words I actually used are also in the Official Report, and I would call your Lordships' attention to them:
"It seems to me that in that First Army we have too much organization and too few fighters. Are all these things really necessary? We hear that they are all doing themselves very well—bread and beer, and canteens and libraries, and welfare and entertainments. The War Office take a pride in doing it thoroughly. But that is not fighting. It is all very well for an army of occupation, it is all very well for trench warfare, such as we had in the greater part of the last war. But it is not much use for a mobile war. In the South African war—and many of your Lordships took part in that—you will remember we did pretty well on biscuits and bully for two years, and we wore none the worse for it."
I submit to your Lordships that the words which the noble Lord stated he put down are not in that speech. He put down the words having a good time, but not fighting.' If I had used these words they would have been an insult to the common sense of the House as well as to the Army, and they are not there. What I did complain of, and what I complain of still, was that too large a proportion of the Army is engaged behind the lines and too few in the front line.
The second misrepresentation was as follows:
"That was followed by the statement 'If you cannot invade Italy, because you cannot take Tunis'—these are the significant words or do not want to.' What is this insinuation? That our Expeditionary Force in Tunisia is a feint, or that we are pulling our punch because you cannot take Tunis or do not want to'? What is the suggestion? That the whole Expeditionary Force in Tunisia is engaged in a sham fight and that we really do not want to take Tunis at all? "
There again, if I had said that, the indignation of the noble Lord would have been shared by the House. What I actually said was quite different. I said:
"If you cannot invade Italy, either because you cannot take Tunis or because you do not want to, there are plenty of other places where you could be of even more use."
I did not put these commas in; they are put in by the reporters. Obviously the whole sense of that remark was, "If you cannot invade Italy because you do not want to"—not Tunis; everyone knows we want to take Tunis. "If you do not want to invade Italy, then invade some other part, and get on with it." It seems to me that that is a perfectly proper statement,
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Now, my Lords, I expect most of us, after making a speech, are a little doubtful of the exact words we have used, however certain we may be of our meaning. I went down to the Reporters' room at once to look at my speech to correct any folly such as has been attributed to me. Judge of my surprise and pleasure when I found the reporter's draft accurate even to the comma, and differing entirely from the words Lord Winster had written down. I have no objection to acquiring a reputation in your Lordships' House for saying things which may appear indiscreet when I think they should be said in the free Parliament of a free country, and of that I must be the judge, but I do object to being given a reputation for insulting the Army by deliberate misrepresentation or misquotation. I have known the noble Lord for many years in the House of Commons not well but with appreciation of his great ability, though I fear the wit of his early speeches there has turned somewhat sour in later years. We have crossed swords before on non-intervention in Spain, and I have no doubt we shall cross swords again. May I beg him to remember that in seeking to injure my reputation for common sense he risks for himself a very unfortunate reputation?
LORD WINSTER: My Lords, the noble Lord most courteously gave me notice that he intended to raise this matter. I enjoy controversy. I have never before been accused of misrepresentation. The words which I can only say I did write down yesterday, the words to which I refer, were in regard to what was said about the First Army. I am in the recollection of your Lordships who were present when those remarks were made. I think that your Lordships were of my opinion. It seemed to be the sense of the House that unfortunate reflections had been made on the conduct of the First Army, and I think, as the words stand in the Official Report, it will be agreed that they are capable of being construed as bearing that implication:
"We hear that they are all doing themselves very well—bread and beer, and canteens and libraries, and welfare and entertainments… But that is not fighting."
I really think I can hardly be blamed if I received the impression that the First Army was having an extremely good time, and was far more concerned about its beer and welfare than it was about fight-

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ing. That seemed to be the impression which other noble Lords received besides myself. Again, remembering what was said and especially the manner in which it was said, following on other remarks of the noble Lord's concerning what is happening in North Africa, I certainly think that it was an ambiguous statement quite capable of bearing the interpretation which I placed on it.
However, no one rejoices more than myself to hear to-day that the noble Lord did not intend to convey those impressions either in regard to the conduct of the First Army or in regard to the bona fides of our intentions in Tunis. I think it is very satisfactory that that has been elicited this afternoon, and if I have been guilty of any misrepresentation I assure your Lordships I should be the first to wish to withdraw and to apologize. But I must say this in addition. I regarded that speech yesterday as mischievous and misleading, and as I read it again to-day I find insinuation after insinuation made upon individual after individual, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, Mr. Robert Murphy (the President's personal representative), General Weygand, Mr. Joe Kemedy—one name after another, one institution and organization after another, referred to with some slighting remark capable certainly of a certain interpretation. I must say that when I notice that the noble Lord is always so thick-skinned about other peoples' feelings I am surprised to find he is so thin-skinned in regard to his own. I cannot help remembering this afternoon many misrepresentations to which he has, in my opinon, given currency. I mention two in particular—Sir Harold MacMichael in Palestine and officials in Palestine who are doing their duty under the most difficult and arduous circumstances and who have been made the victims, in my opinion, of vituperation and misrepresentation at the hands of the noble Lord. That is all I have to say, but again I repeat that if the House considers I have been guilty of any misrepresentation of the noble Lord's remarks yesterday I withdraw and apologize.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Winster will remember the immortal novel of the late Captain Marryat, Midshipman Easy. He will remember the delightful passage describing
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the three-cornered duel. In this case I think he is rather in the position of the purser who so annoyed the other two that they both directed their fire upon him with damage which his tailor had to repair afterwards. I am a neutral in this matter. I could not be here yesterday; I am very sorry I was away but I was doing a public duty. I have read the debate very carefully and I can quite see what happened. My noble friend Lord Winster had his feelings lacerated, a kind of red film came up before his eyes; in other words he saw red and went for Lord Wedgwood. We are all three members of the same Party and I want to say this publicly. I wish my noble friend would remember we here are a very small party in a House that is always courteous and always fair, but of course is for the most part opposed to what we stand for. If we begin talking against ourselves on these matters when really we are fundamentally agreed—I know that is the case from my long friendships with both these noble Lords—we only weaken the cause for which we stand. However, I want to say this to my noble friend Lord Winster. He and I have never fallen out on political matters and I do not expect we ever will. We were brought up in the same school. I have always found myself in agreement with him on most matters. If I find myself in any disagreement with Lord Wedgwood I examine my conscience. I have been many more years in another place and in this House than my noble friend Lord Winster, and may I most respectfully ask him to examine his conscience as to attacking a colleague in your Lordships' House with all the publicity and the opening which that gives to our opponents to misrepresent us? May I also ask him to examine his conscience on the members that he assails?
LORD WEDGWOOD: My Lords, I am loth to intervene again but that is the strangest apology I have ever listened to in either the House of Commons or elsewhere. I charge the noble Lord with saying that he has written down words of my speech which are not there. They are not in the speech and never were in the speech. I conceived that for that he should apologize, but if he does not we shall know exactly where we are in future.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned.