§ LORD STRABOLGI rose to ask His Majesty's Government, whether they will state their policy with regard to trusts, cartels and combines, national and international, in post-war reconstruction; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to move the Motion standing in my name, and before the noble Lord opposite who, I understand, is to reply for the Government gives the answer to the question which I venture to put, may I remind your Lordships very briefly of the recent history of this subject? During the last war, the first World War, the growth of combines, monopolies, trusts and cartels aroused a good deal of anxiety, and my noble friend who sits below me, Lord Addison, who was then Minister of Reconstruction, appointed a Committee of investigation to look into the whole question. The Committee reported on the 24th of April, 1919. This was a very remarkable Committee; remarkable in the eminence of its personnel. I have the Report in my hand. The Chairman was Mr. Edward Shortt, who resigned in the following June on becoming Chief Secretary for Ireland, when his place was taken by Mr. Charles McCurdy. Amongst the members of this Committee were two very well-known economists, Mr. J. A. Hobson and the former Mr. Sidney Webb, who was afterwards such an addition to your Lordships' House as Lord Passfield, and a trade union leader of whom we have heard a great deal since, Mr. Ernest Bevin.
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The terms of reference were as follows:
In view of the probable extension of trade organizations and combinations, to consider and report what action, if any, may be necessary to safeguard the public interest.
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If your Lordships will permit me I will epitomize the Report. In the main Report the most relevant passage, I think, was as follows:
In the United Kingdom, combinations operating in restraint of trade are, though not criminal, unlawful if shown to be against public policy, as public policy is understood by the English Courts, where these words are construed in a somewhat narrow and technical sense.
A great deal of evidence was taken from scores of great combinations, cartels and trusts and many other witnesses. In essence, the recommendations were these.
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First of all, that machinery for the investigation of monopolies should be instituted, similar to that in existence in the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Secondly, that the Board of Trade should gather information about the workings of these monopolies. Thirdly, that a tribunal should be established, and that the Board of Trade should recommend State action to remedy grievances established by this tribunal of investigation. There was an addendum to the Report by Mr. Sidney Webb (as he was then), Mr. Ernest Bevin, Mr. Hobson, and another member, in which they recommended that monopolistic enterprises should not remain in private hands.
§ That was the Report, and I was always interested to know what the Government did about it. In November last, I ventured to ask His Majesty's Government what had happened, and my noble friend Lord Templemore was good enough to tell me that the action taken on the recommendations of this Committee—and here is the mountain in labour giving birth to a mouse—was the Profiteering Act of 1919, a ridiculous measure which many of your Lordships will remember very well, and with which we had a great deal of fun in the House of Commons. It never worked. It dealt in the main with the grievances which housewives might feel against shopkeepers, and did not touch the main subjects of the investigation of the Committee at all; and, as Lord Templemore admitted, the Act lapsed in 1921. The Act also charged the Board of Trade with the duty of obtaining information about the nature, extent and development of trusts and similar combinations. That was always the duty of the Board of Trade. There was no provision in the Act for the Board of Trade doing anything about it, although the whole essence of this valuable Report was that the Board of Trade in certain instances should do something about it. As I say, the whole Act lapsed in 1921.
§ It will be common knowledge that between the two wars, and indeed during this war, monopolies and cartels, both national and international, have greatly increased. When various measures of Government control are introduced during a war, as they have to be in a modern war, it is inevitable that the result is to 474 stimulate combines and associations. The Government Departments do not want to deal with individual manufacturers and traders, and, if there is not a manufacturing or trade combine in existence, they tell the people concerned to get together and form a trade or manufacturing association so that they can be dealt with as a corporate whole. That is quite natural and not objectionable in itself, but it has the result of stimulating and assisting the formation of combines, associations, trusts and eventually monopolies, and these can be harmful to the general public, as this Report has said, and as other authorities whom I will venture to cite have emphasized again and again.
§ Why the matter is so urgent and important now, when we are considering plans for the post-war period—and we must be considering them; that is the reason for the existence of the office held by the noble Lord, Lord Woolton—is that any combinations or trusts which by their nature are restrictive must be against the public interest. The Government, I understand, are committed to an expansionist policy, and the very object of the modern cartel is to restrict production and to limit it to the supposed capacity of the market. An expansionist policy, whatever may be the desire of the Cabinet and of Lord Woolton, will not be possible if these cartels, which are now so extensive, are allowed free play nationally and internationally. Without an expansionist policy—and here I know that I have Lord Woolton with me—the Prime Minister's declared programme of work, food and homes for all will not be possible. I suggest, therefore, that a Government policy with regard to cartels is one of those branches of the activities of Lord Woolton where action can be taken now and legislation introduced. It is not one of the great phases of reconstruction which will have to wait upon events and be delayed until the end of the war. This matter can be dealt with now and, as I hope to show to your Lordships' satisfaction in a moment, it is necessary to deal with it now to guard against a very serious danger.
§ We have heard a good deal lately, in various discussions on reconstruction and post-war economic policy, about the value of private enterprise and of freedom for the energetic entrepreneur. We are told what a good thing it is to have individual 475 enterprise in business and free competition, and I seem to hear silent cheers from the Liberal Benches on my right. Under a cartel system these things are all impossible. You cannot have free competition. There is no room for the able, young, energetic and usually, so we are told, liberal business man to break in on the combine; the whole object of the cartel is to prevent him from starting a new enterprise and competing. In fact, the defenders of monopolies and what they call rationalization talk of this free competition, which forms the theme of the perorations of many of the great speeches which I hear from some of your Lordships, as "cut-throat competition"—something evil. They are against it; they want to stop it, and if they can coerce or seduce the trade unions into helping them they will do so.
§ I ventured to say on a previous occasion, and I must repeat it now, that our rearmament and the American rearmament in the years immediately before this war, and in the early years of this war, was hampered and hindered by the prior restrictions of trusts and monopolies. Some of these were actively encouraged by the Governments of Baldwin and Chamberlain; to give only three examples, shipbuilding, textiles and agriculture. There was a deliberate dampingdown and prevention of production. I have quoted in your Lordships' House in pre-war years, with indignation but without support, the case of a Yorkshire farmer friend of mine who was fined for growing potatoes. That is but one example of many of the general principles of restriction and rationalization which destroyed looms in Lancashire and shipyards all over the country.
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I am glad to say that in this matter I am no longer a voice crying in the wilderness. I do not expect to convert any of your Lordships who have not already come to the same conclusion from an independent study of this great subject, but I will fortify myself by quotations from prominent statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I make one or two quotations, which shall be very brief, from their speeches. I will begin with my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, Mr. Herbert Morrison, a colleague of Lord Woolton in the War Cabinet. I may say
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that in all these quotations the language is a little more extravagent than I usually employ, and in some cases a good deal more picturesque than any of which I am capable; but these are quotations, not my own words. Speaking at Leeds on April 3 last, Mr. Morrison said:
Let us face the fact that such monopolies are restrictive in their very essence. That is the reason for their existence. You will never alter their nature by patching and tinkering with them. Their whole setup and relation to the community must be profoundly altered. I am convinced that the only answer consistent with national well-being is full and effective public control.
Let me break off here to say that if we had a normal Party Government at the present time in which any Cabinet Minister was speaking for the collective body of the Government, I should not bring this Motion forward. That would satisfy me. But we know now from various statements by the Prime Minister that Cabinet Ministers are allowed to think aloud at public meetings. It does not necessarily represent the policy of the Government. And where the Government have not got a policy members of it are either condemned to silence or they must state their own policy.
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I must again draw on the vast store of wisdom in the speeches of my right honourable friend by quoting two other sentences from another speech he made and this is the version in The Times of November 1. This was a speech made in London:
Vast concentrations of economic power were a political menace, however efficient they might be in their economic conduct. They had within their grasp power over fields of public well-being and public policy far greater in practice than Parliament itself yielded in the great majority of its legislation….
What I do feel strongly is that the semi-accident by which restrictive practices, which would be outside the law in America, have been able to be built up under cover of the law in this country, is something deserving of early and zealous attention. Once the law is changed and the old doctrine of conspiracy in restraint of trade is given new force in relation to price-fixing and other restrictive arrangements, you have made it possible to put the industry which wishes to take such steps in the position of having to justify what it wants to do before public authority, and to prevent any action unless this authority gives specific consent. In some instances, again, I would not rule out the possibility of allowing certain types of grouping to continue for a time to operate under a continuous measure of public supervision of some kind.
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And here may I take the opportunity of publicly thanking my noble friend Lord Nathan for sending me this morning a very scholarly article written by him which appeared in one of the great literary reviews this month on this whole subject of monopolies. My noble friend Lord Nathan stresses the evils of cartels and monopolies and the need for legislative action, and I am reminded of it by those last words of Mr. Morrison. But my noble friend does not deal with the international problem, no doubt for reasons of space; he deals only with the domestic problem, and in the speech which I have ventured to quote from Mr. Herbert Morrison your Lordships will notice that it is the domestic problem that he is concerned with. I am far more concerned with the international problem.
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Again I quote Mr. Herbert Morrison, and this is from the Daily Mail of June 20 —an unimpeachable source:
Before the war our industrial system was in many of its key areas, both in production and in distribution, not genuinely a system of private enterprise at all, but a system of private semi-monopoly governed by restrictive agreements and arrangements which were the absolute negation of enterprise. The result was that our country was falling into a decline. Its productive power was dropping back by comparison with other countries, particularly America. In plain English, it was not earning as good a living as it could have done.
I could quote a great deal more, all on the same lines, obviously showing that Mr. Herbert Morrison, Home Secretary, member of the War Cabinet and a very respected member of my own Party, is unhappy about this state of affairs, and hopes there will be legislation. I imagine his views are shared by my noble friend Lord Woolton.
§ THE MINISTER OF RECONSTRUCTION (LORD WOOLTON)Imagination.
§ LORD WOOLTONI was merely congratulating you on your imagination.
LORD STRABOLGIWhy? Because I venture to suggest that Lord Woolton's and Mr Morrison's minds might be working on the same lines? Surely there is nothing extravagant or imaginary about that. Has the whole theory of Government collective responsibility gone by the board since Lord Woolton became Minister of Reconstruction? It is no laughing matter; 478 my noble friends on this side of the House will be interested and the country will have something to say about it too.
But now I will quote the Minister of Aircraft Production as reported in the Manchester Guardian of November 20. The quotation is quite short, but Sir Stafford Cripps is a master of the spoken word and his legal training allows him to put matters in a very few sentences which mean a great deal:
Another problem which we shall have to face is the political and economic power of the great monopolies. Monopolies in vital industries must be run as public undertakings by the Government through appropriate organizations. We want to get out of the 'can't afford' attitude … and we must give our Government the authority to use all the controls strictly necessary to achieve that end.Those are quotations from prominent members of His Majesty's Government, and I could have, of course, no better companions in my case.But now may I quote from two members of the United States Administration? The first is Mr. Wendell Berge, the United States Assistant Attorney-General. He was addressing the American Pharmaceutical Association on December 14 last. This is what he said, according to the Daily Express. I do not quote the Daily Herald in these matters, not because I do believe it to be more reliable than all the other papers put together, but because some of your Lordships might not believe it. This is what Mr. Berge said about cartel domination:
Cartel domination of essential medical products has jeopardized the health of millions. Because of cartel and patent agreements American drug manufacturers have, in some cases, been denied the chance to develop the industry to its full possibilities. The myth of German superiority in the production of organic medical compounds has been dispelled for many years. This prestige rested not on superior skill but on the abuse of monopoly and patent privileges.That report is sent by Reuter.Lastly, may I quote the Vice-President of the United States, Mr. Henry Wallace. He spoke in Chicago last September, and the speech was extensively reproduced in The Times and in the Sunday Times. Quoting first the report in The Times I find the following very pregnant sentences:
There must be power to deal with those international cartels which are strangling production, competing unfairly, or using methods which lead to war.479 Mr. Wallace also said:Isolationism is the screen behind which special privilege seeks to entrench its control. Isolationism and special privilege spoke with equal force to produce the peace of Munich. Wherever isolationism is being pushed most vigorously, there, in the background, can usually be found, furnishing money and power, monopolistic cartels. These cartels are customarily seeking tariffs, quotas, subsidies, or other governmental favours which are the breeding ground of isolationism. Wherever the forces of monopoly are found our job is to fight them. Those groups which rule over economic empires have usurped the sovereignty of the people in international relations.I notice that the language has much the same bearing or meaning as that of Mr. Herbert Morrison.If we plan aright, there can be freedom from hunger and freedom from the fear of a poverty-stricken old age. The farmer can be free from his fear of impossibly low prices for what he sells and outrageously high prices for what he buys. The business-man can be free from the fear of those monopolies and international cartels which use unfair practices in buying from him, selling to him, or competing with him.In the same speech—I shall not trouble your Lordships with the quotation—he goes on to explain that he is not really attacking business as business, that he is acting as the champion and friend of the American business man who is in danger of being crushed and obliterated by the growth of this cartel system in the United States. And of course what applies to the United States applies also—though not quite so glaringly—to a great extent to this country.I must now refer to what I consider is the gravest aspect of this whole problem, and that is the international aspect. Your Lordships, I am sure, know now that the international cartel system helped Germany very much indeed in her military preparations before the present war. The German cartels induced their partners in Britain, America, and other countries, but particularly in Britain and America, to rationalize and restrict production, and in exchange, of course, their partners were given a monopoly in certain markets. The German cartels secured closed markets in their own areas. Then, under the Nazi system, when they became in effect part of the Nazi totalitarian Government, they built up their own war potential. Profits did not matter to them; the German Government saw to that. They were able, under this cartel scheme in their closed markets, to build up an 480 enormous war potential, the results of which we saw soon enough. They obtained manufacturing secrets and formulae from their co-partners in Britain, America, Italy, Japan, and other countries. There was, of course, some reciprocity, but that did not matter, because the cartels in Britain and America were not part of a Government plot to prepare for war. Neither Britain nor America was preparing for war; they could give away a few secrets and manufacturing processes and it did not seem to matter at all. But in Germany they were preparing for war under the cloak of the Nazi system.
Now what has happened since the war? The greater part of Europe has been overrun or dominated, as in the case of Spain, by Germany, and behind the German army have come the German industrialists and monopoly-financiers, the men who built up and controlled these trusts and cartels. In France, Czechoslovakia, and the Low Countries particularly, and in other countries as well, they have got control of the great key industries, the great heavy industries, the manufacture of electrical equipment, iron and steel, coal mining, and so on. There they are, in virtual control of all Europe's industry. In German-occupied Europe and in countries like Switzerland, Spain, and Sweden, which until recently have not dared to refuse anything on the economic plane, they have got a complete network of industrial, manufacturing and trading control. They have their "hide-outs," if I may use that word—their financial hiding places—in Spain, in Switzerland, possibly in Sweden (I do not know about Sweden), and probably in the Argentine and Bolivia.
However the war ends, and probably while the Governments of the United Nations are busy rounding up war criminals and disarming Germany, the leaders of German monopoly-finance will try to re-establish contacts with their old friends in Britain and the United States of America. They will have an economic and financial empire of great potential value to offer. There may be political difficulties in unscrambling the omelette of the German-dominated cartels in France and other countries. It will depend a great deal on the nature of the Governments in those countries. I understand that, in France particularly, the German control of French industry has been most 481 cleverly concealed—nominee shareholders, Quislings, and so on hiding the real power behind the majority shareholders—and they will have a great prize in this almost complete European monopoly of great basic industries. This is not fanciful. I do not say for a moment that they will get a response in this country; I cannot answer for the United States. I do not suggest that for a moment, but that is the danger, and we cannot rely on its not meeting with a response, even an innocent response. On the very eve of the outbreak of this war, spokesmen of the Federation of British Industries were closeted with the leaders of heavy industry in Germany—your Lordships will all remember that, but forgive me for reminding you—to try to come to some such arrangement for partitioning out great portions of the globe for monopoly trading operations.
The leaders of the United Nations must be prepared to deal with this situation—and it cannot be left to the last moment, left to the confusion and congestion of business following an armistice—by, among other measures, (and this is the only real safeguard), the control of their own cartels. That does not mean nationalization necessarily. It means knowing what is going on and being able to intervene if arrangements are being come to which are contrary to the public interest here. Unless we take measures in time to prepare for this situation, I suggest that a successful expansionist policy of reconstruction, which I understand is Lord Woolton's aim, will be impossible. You cannot do it if you have great international combines controlling key products and strategic raw materials all over the world. All this talk of "food, work and homes for all" will be mere words. This matter is vitally important. It is most serious, and from the international point of view it cannot be ignored. It should be taken most seriously. This is not a joke, I beg Lord Woolton to believe. I ask him to take it seriously. I do not ask him to deal with me seriously, but I ask him to deal seriously with this subject. I beg to move for Papers.
§ LORD WOOLTONMy Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord thought I was not dealing with him seriously when I made what I hope was a pardonable interjection when he said something about Mr. 482 Herbert Morrison. Perhaps I misunderstood him, and if I caused him any inconvenience by my interruption I beg him to accept my apologies. This is the third time the noble and gallant Lord has raised this matter in your Lordships' House. I hope I am not going to disappoint your Lordships in my reply. The subject is one which he need not fear I shall take lightly. It is a subject to which I have already, in the comparatively short time in which I have been in my present office, given very detailed consideration. The noble Lord is right in saying that it is a subject which is part of an expansionist policy to which I most certainly am committed. He is also right in saying that it is a subject which is not one for this country alone but one in which we shall have to take conference with the other parties in the United Nations. We have already taken some of the first steps towards that conference.
I make no apology to your Lordships for not following the noble Lord into the many things he has said and the many quotations that he has given us to-day from speeches of some of my colleagues. When I undertook this responsibility I said in the first speech I made to your Lordships that I should put first things first. Well, I have found myself, on assuming office, confronted with a great mass of Reports and very much wisdom. This requires to be canalized into some legislative form and I am busily engaged on that, primarily with the object of seeing that the housing problem is tackled first of all, because that is the most urgent problem which is before the public, and it has, indeed, taken most of my time and the time of several of my colleagues who are associated with me in this work. We are already engaged in the process of preparing our views on the question as to how we are going to obtain full employment in this country, and when we came to that subject then we found ourselves faced with the problems that the noble Lord has raised this afternoon. In due course His Majesty's Government will lay before the House a Paper embodying those views. I think it would be ill-advised on my part to enter into a discussion of this problem now and that it would be better to wait until I have had further time to digest everything in regard to it in order to bring it into line with all the other problems with which, as the noble Lord has said, it is associated.
483 When that time comes—and I hope it will not be long before it does come, because we are all working very hard on this problem of reconstruction at the present time—then your Lordships will have the Paper, for which the noble Lord now moves before you. It will be part of a Paper embodying the whole subject of employment. I hope that will satisfy the noble Lord as regards to-day's debate. I apologize to your Lordships for not having entered more fully into many of the arguments that have been put forward. There were many temptations that the noble Lord gave me to enter into a political argument with him to-day but that, I am sure, would have been very unwise of me. I do not ask the noble Lord to withdraw his Resolution demanding Papers, because I have every intention of putting those Papers before your Lordships. I hope the other members of the House will not feel that I have treated this subject too lightly because I have ventured to withhold a final opinion until I have had a fuller opportunity of dealing with all the facts.
§ LORD ADDISONMy Lords, I am sure every member of your Lordships' House would wish to avoid any attempt to hustle the noble Lord. We recognize the vastness of the undertakings which are committed to his charge and we would not, for a moment, wish to embarrass him in his work. At the same time I confess to a great disappointment at the small extent to which the noble Lord has referred to the most important matter brought before the House by my noble friend. I gather—and this is the only reason for my rising—that the proposal is that the question of the influence of combines and trusts on the possibility of the provision of employment or the restriction of employment will be dealt with in a forthcoming Paper dealing with employment. If that is so I am glad the noble Lord has decided that it shall be dealt with.
§ LORD WOOLTONThat is so.
§ LORD ADDISONBut I would like to be quite clear. It will not be a mere aside? This is a vital question relating to the possibility of employment and perhaps the noble Lord will give me a little more extended information on that.
§ LORD WOOLTONI will give the assurance that it will not be an aside.
§ VISCOUNT SAMUELMy Lords, this question of industrial monopolies is second to none in importance. It is fundamental in framing the economic side of the postwar world. At the same time I think it not unreasonable that the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, fresh to the great office that he now holds, should ask for more time before making a considered pronouncement on behalf of the Government upon this wide and complicated issue. He told us that it would not be long before a statement of policy would be made. I hope that it will not be so long as the period we have experienced in the case of town and country planning and the decisions on the various Reports that have been made which have been in abeyance for a length of time that has caused widespread dissatisfaction. If the noble Lord can hold out a hope that the time will indeed be short, a question not of years but of months and if possible of weeks, then I am sure the House, as a whole, will not demur.
§ LORD WOOLTONMy Lords, I must not mislead the House—not of weeks. I must first deal with the Reports to which the noble Viscount has just referred, upon which I think the country is waiting for some pronouncement, but certainly within a very few months I hope that we shall have presented your Lordships with this Report.
§ VISCOUNT MAUGHAMMy Lords, I hope your Lordships will forgive me saying something, not from a Government point of view in the least, in reference to the very important topic which is before the House. I have long been interested in this matter of combines and cartels, and I have done what few members of this House can have done, studied the Sherman Act and endeavoured to understand the vast difficulties of the problem with which the United States Government have found themselves confronted after the passing of that Act. I am acquainted with some portion of the very many actions that have been brought in the United States to enforce the Act and am aware of the fact that the great majority of them have failed. No more difficult problem could be before any Legislature than that of attempting to deal with this question. It is a very important one and the difficulties at the root of it can be appreciated by anyone.
485 The noble Lord who opened this debate declared himself in favour of the view that every combine to limit production was wrong. I wholly disagree with that proposition. It seems to me perfectly and demonstrably a mistake. The noble Lord forgets for the moment the terrible effects of unrestricted effort by people to compete against each other. Unrestricted competition is a terrible thing in an industry. I am only going to say a very few words, but I cannot help mentioning one industry with which I was at one time very well acquainted, that of rubber There was unrestricted competition at one time in the matter of rubber. The trees take seven years to grow and be in a condition to be tapped. When they are ready to be tapped everyone wants to get rid of his rubber. It cost at that time about 1s. 6d. a pound to produce. Of course that has greatly diminished now. Yet by unrestricted competition the price went down, I think, to 2d. a pound. That was a wholly unremunerative result. It threw a great number of growers, especially the smaller growers, into a state of bankruptcy, and plantations were sold for a song. Nobody, I think, can reasonably suppose that it would be unfair in a case like that, or that it was unfair in that case, to make some sort of bargain between the various growers in the different countries concerned so as to prevent ruin to the industry as a whole.
That is only a single instance. There are instances that could be given of other products all over the world. Take the question of coffee in Brazil. Coffee grows so easily in Brazil that Brazilians have found it perfectly impossible to sell their coffee in a large measure, and in order to prevent it being sold at half or one third the cost of production the Government have stepped in and thrown the coffee into the sea. I believe that was going on a year ago. I do not know if it is still going on. You want some limitation there. You may say that the Government should intervene, but the noble Lord has enough experience of Governments to know that if you wait for the Government to intervene probably all engaged in the industry will be ruined. This problem sounds so easy to state, but it is difficult to deal with. Every combination which has for its object to enable goods to be sold at a reasonable price to the public, including a reasonable and not an unreasonable 486 profit, is perfectly fair. Every combination which is directed to raise the price to an extravagant amount, so that the public do not get properly served in connexion with that particular article, is wrong. I challenge the noble Lord to produce a Bill which will carry out those two objects. The United States have done their best, but, if I may say so without any offence to that country, they have not been particularly successful in their efforts.
LORD STRABOLGIMy Lords, I am very much obliged to the noble Lord for accepting my Motion. I understand it will not be very long before we get a White Paper on the subject. May I thank my noble friends Lord Addison and Viscount Samuel for their support? It is the first time in my life I have ever had support from spokesmen of two separate Parties of their eminence. I hope my noble friend Lord Woolton will take warning from that fact. It is a very big subject and the public is really very interested and in some ways exercised about it. I am sorry the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, is not even doing what my noble friend Lord Addison did in the last war, that is to set up a strong Committee to look into the present development of the subject. It did not take a long time for the inquiry to produce its Report before and the Report could have been acted on. However, we shall see what the White Paper contains. I am sorry if I displayed any irritation because I thought the noble Lord was taking the matter somewhat lightly. I know now from what he says that he is not taking it lightly, and I am glad to realize that he and I agree that it is a serious subject.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRYMy Lords, I do not understand whether the noble Lord withdraws his Motion or not. The wording of the question is:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will state their policy with regard to trusts, cartels and combines, national and international, in post-war reconstruction.The noble Lord has come up against a brick wall of the Government declining to disclose their policy, and the Motion holds good.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRYIf the noble Lord cannot get an answer he must withdraw his Motion or continue.
§ On Question, Motion for Papers agreed to.