Lords Sitting of 12 February 1946

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the Clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers.

  CIVIL AVIATION: BERMUDA, AGREEMENTS.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, I beg to ask the Minister for Civil Aviation the following question, of which I have given him private notice, Whether he can make a statement on the Agreements reached at Bermuda between His Majesty's Government and the Government of the United States on Civil Aviation.
  THE MINISTER OF CIVIL AVIATION (LORD WINSTER): My Lords, the Agreements just concluded between the United States and this country at Bermuda represent an achievement satisfactory to both countries. The desire of the United States on the one hand, to avoid regulation which might be construed as restrictive of exploiting the potentialities of air transport to the full, and the desire of the United Kingdom on the other hand, to ensure that international air services are developed on an orderly basis which will eliminate wasteful competition and uneconomic subsidies, have been reconciled. The United States Government have agreed that all fares on air services of mutual interest to the two countries should form the subject of agreement, and this they propose to achieve in two stages. First, they have agreed to recognize for a period of one year the status of the International Air Transport Association, an international organization representative of operators, as a rate-fixing body acting through their various route conferences. They have also undertaken to seek legislation from Congress which will empower the Civil Aeronautics Board to control rates. This is, in itself, a considerable advance on the position which confronted us before the Bermuda Conference began.
  As regards the control of capacity operated on the routes, it has been recognized that pre-determination on the basis
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  of estimated traffic potentials is beset with practical difficulties and instead, it has been agreed that the principle for which we stand—namely, the maintenance of a close relationship between capacity operated on the various routes of mutual interest and traffic offering—can best be put into practical effect by providing for an ex post facto review on the basis of this principle. Machinery for close and continuing collaboration between the two Governments will be established to this end.
  Turning to the controversial issue of the Fifth Freedom, I cannot do better than quote the text of the Agreement on this subject. It reads as follows:—
  "It is the understanding of both Governments that services provided by a designated air carrier under the Agreement and its Annex shall retain as their primary objective the provision of capacity adequate to the traffic demands between the country of which such air carrier is a national and the country of ultimate destination of the traffic. The right to embark or disembark on such services international traffic destined for and coming from third countries at a point or points on the routes specified in the Annex to the Agreement shall be applied in accordance with the general principles of orderly development to which both Governments subscribe and shall be subject to the general principle that capacity should be related:

  (a) to traffic requirements between the country of origin and the countries of destination;

  (b) to the requirements of through airline operation, and

  (c) to the traffic requirements of the areas through which the airline passes after taking account of local and regional services.

  In addition to the Air Transport Agreement, the Heads of an Agreement relating to the use of the Leased Bases for civil purposes has been initialled ad referendum. The Bases to which I refer are those in the Western Hemisphere which were leased to the United States for military purposes under the Bases Agreement of 1941. The particular Bases which have formed the subject of these discussions are those in Colonial territories, and Heads of Agreement contain a clause which makes it clear that they are subject to preparation of a formal contract and to certain questions being resolved before any Agreement to use the Bases for civil purposes can become effective. The final text of the documents as signed and initialled is not yet available in this country. As soon as the final text

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  of the Agreement is available, it will be published as a White Paper.
  In the Agreements neither side has, of course, obtained recognition of every point of its policy, but the results have achieved the main objectives of both countries. As I am sure that the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, will agree, no agreement which does not confer benefits on both parties can stand the test of time. Let me say, however, that I cordially welcome the Agreements which go so far to resolve many points about which this country and the United States were previously in disagreement. I wish to express my appreciation of the fact that the United States delegation met our proposals in a good spirit of sincerely seeking to effect accommodation. We, on our part, were actuated by the same spirit and we shall work the Agreements in that spirit and not only in the letter. I must also take this opportunity of informing your Lordships that the British Delegation, led by Sir Henry Self and Sir William Hildred, upheld the British case stoutly and argued it firmly and deserve warm commendation for their labours.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, the House will be glad that the Minister has taken the first possible opportunity of giving a summary of these Agreements to Parliament. Obviously, these Agreements are of very far-reaching importance, and I am sure he would not expect me, either in a personal capacity, and still less in a representative one, to commit myself until I have had an opportunity of considering them fully. I appreciate that as soon as the texts of the Agreements come to hand—I presume the Minister has not yet the texts in his possession—they will be published in a White Paper. We will certainly desire to have an opportunity—and I am sure it will be agreed to by the Leader of the House—of debating this matter.
  I would only ask the Minister to elaborate two points, neither of which he really touched upon, but which seem to me to be of very great importance. In the first place, I would ask him whether or not these particular Agreements, directly and immediately, affect Commonwealth routes. They must affect them indirectly, and all these questions of the Fifth Freedom, as the Minister knows, have been the subject of the very closest
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  and most intimate consultation between us and the Dominions and India throughout their long history. Anything which we do must, of course, have a considerable repercussion, first of all, within the British Commonwealth, and, secondly, with other nations. I would like him to tell us what consultations he has had in the course of these negotiations with the Dominions and India.
  The second point is that in any agreement for giving effect to principles like the definition of the Fifth Freedom, traffic—I seem to recognise certain of the elements of that definition—and the reasonableness of fares, and so on, it is very important that, following agreement, we should have some tribunal by which we shall all be bound. Could the Minister say, in the event of disagreement on either the construction of the Agreements or their application, whether there is such an authority which we would accept, and they would accept, as binding on us?
  LORD SHERWOOD: My Lords, before the noble Lord replies I would like to ask him one question. He said it was going to be referred to Congress. Has he any knowledge of the time when it will be referred to Congress?
  2.40 p.m.
  LORD WINSTER: My Lords, on the first point in respect of Commonwealth interests, due regard has been given to that point. There has been the closest consultation with my colleagues who are affected by those matters. I can assure the noble Viscount that Commonwealth interests have been safeguarded.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: And that there has been consultation?
  LORD WINSTER: I have said I have worked in the closest consultation with my colleagues who are affected by these matters. Throughout the negotiations they have been consulted with regard to Commonwealth interests. With regard to the second point, on the provision for machinery in connexion with the fixing of fares, the United States have agreed to accept the I.A.T.A. machinery for one year, and when the text of the Agreement is published in the White Paper the noble Viscount will find that the most careful machinery has been set up.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: I appreciate the position with regard to fares, because the noble Lord referred to the proposed legislation in Congress to give effect to it. I was more particularly concerned with the interpretation of the agreement for the Fifth Freedom and whether, if there should be a dispute on either the meaning or the application of that—he will fully appreciate this point, which was a great point of discussion between us—there is to be some international authority, or whatever else it is, which will have power to decide between two parties who honestly cannot come to an agreement but neither of whom should be a judge in his own cause.
  LORD WINSTER: The noble Viscount will find in the White Paper that there are full provisions for consultation on disputed points arising out of the Fifth Freedom and other matters. With regard to what the noble Lord, Lord Sherwood, said with reference to Congress, my statement was that the United States delegation have undertaken to ask Congress to pass legislation which will enable the Civil Aeronautics Board to take the necessary steps with operators. It is not a question of referring the matter to Congress. It is an undertaking by the United States delegation that steps will be taken to ask Congress to pass that legislation.
  LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: Would the noble Lord be so good as to help me in this connexion? In the definition of the "Fifth Freedom," are you taking the Mother Country and the Colonial Empire as a single unit? And, if so, would that protect the traffic between ourselves and, let us say, west or east Africa, or would American aircraft be free to come over here, pick up British passengers, and take them to one of our Colonies?
  LORD WINSTER: The matter is governed by the provisions of that article which I read out.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: I am sorry to pursue this, but this is really a vital point. There was a very great deal of discussion at Chicago over the words "home land". The whole question was over that. In respect of what I might call British territory, territory over which we exercise and have the right to exercise cabotage, exactly as the United States have the right to exercise cabotage
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  over the whole of the United States, does it include the British Colonies or merely this country? Throughout every negotiation we have strongly maintained—and it goes to many things beyond the question of air; and under the Chicago Agreement it is so defined—that British territory includes the possessions, that is, the Colonies and Protectorates of this country. It is a perfectly simple question, if I may say so. In this Agreement, and for the purposes of this Agreement, does the "United Kingdom" or "British territories" include the Colonies and Protectorates?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DOMINION AFFAIRS (VISCOUNT ADDISON): Might I interpose for one moment? I think when the noble Lord sees the White Paper he will be satisfied with regard to the point which he has raised. However, perhaps I might appeal to noble Lords to consider this question, that we can discuss these matters with much greater advantage when we have the Paper before us. I can assure noble Lords that there will be no longer delay than is necessary.
  LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: There is a Motion on the Paper for February 28. Can the noble Lord give an indication if it will be available by then?
  VISCOUNT ADDISON: That is a fortnight's time. I should certainly think so.

FARES ON INTERNATIONAL SERVICES.
2.45 p.m.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I have another question with regard to civil aviation of which I have previously given the Minister private notice. It is to ask His Majesty's Government if they have any statement to make with regard to fares on international air services, particularly having regard to certain statements which have been made with regard to the South African service.
LORD WINSTER: My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for affording me an opportunity of making this statement. It is, of course, our policy that fares on international services should be agreed internationally, and that there should be economic rates based on the cost of the most efficient operation. It is my policy in concluding bilateral agreements, to include provision for the regulation of fares by initial agreement between operators on

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the route subject to the approval of their Governments. I hope that fares on our peace-time services, as they get going, will be appreciably less than those at present charged. This was evidently the idea behind the remarks made recently by the noble Viscount, the Chairman of the B.O.A.C., who quoted some figures which conveyed his personal idea of the kind of fares which should be aimed at on the Springbok service between the United Kingdom and South Africa. As he made clear, however, actual fares have yet to be discussed and agreed with South African Airways and approved by the two Governments, taking into account any recommendations made by the International Air Transport Association.

BANK OF ENGLAND BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments agreed to.
AGRICULTURE (ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION) BILL.
Brought from the Commons, read 1a, and to be printed.
MINISTERS OF THE CROWN (TRANSFER OF FUNCTIONS) BILL.
Brought from the Commons, read 1a, and to be printed.

UNITED NATIONS BILL. [H.L.]
2.48 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD JOWITT): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time. As its title indicates, it is an Act to enable effect to be given to certain provisions of the Charter of the United Nations. An examination has been made of all the provisions of the Articles of the Charter leading to the conclusion that there is only one Article, namely Article 41, which requires immediate legislation in order to put His Majesty's Government in a position to fulfil their obligations as a member of the United Nations. It is true that the Charter in various places envisages the inclusion of conventions and agreements and that possibly the pro-
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vision of these future conventions and agreements may necessitate legislation, but the time to consider whether any and if so what legislation is required to fulfil these agreements and conventions is when they have been adopted in final form and not now. For instance, there will probably result from the labours of the present Assembly a General Convention on immunities and privileges of the United Nations, which is likely to involve small amendments to the Diplomatic Privileges Act, but at the present time this draft Convention has not been approved by the Assembly.
Similarly, it is possible, but not, I think, probable, that agreements made under Article 43 of the Charter, generally referred to as Security Agreements, may involve legislation, but we cannot know whether this is so or not until these agreements have been drawn up. Lastly, there are in existing Acts of Parliament a number of sections rendering applicable, or capable of application by Order in Council, certain provisions of these Acts to territories administered under Mandate by His Majesty. It will be necessary some time to have legislation applying or rendering capable of application the same provisions to territories administered by His Majesty under trusteeship. It has, however, not yet been found practicable to draft satisfactorily the necessary clause until the trusteeship agreements are concluded and we know what territories His Majesty will hold under trusteeship and whether he will hold any territories under trusteeship jointly with any other Power.
That leads me to turn to the Charter and examine briefly the provisions. Your Lordships, of course, will be familiar with the provisions of Article 27 which deals with the voting of the Security Council. Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters are to be made by an affirmative vote of seven members. Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters are to be made by an affirmative vote of seven members, including the concurring votes of the permanent members, that is, you require seven, and at least five of the seven have to be the "Big Five" permanent members (so it is that if one of the five does not vote, you have what is called the Veto), provided that in decisions under Chapter 6, a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting. Chapter 6 is the Chapter dealing with the pacific settlement of disputes.

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Chapter 7, with regard to which, all the "Big Five" must concur, is described as "Action with respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression". Article 39 says the Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42. Article 40 provides that in order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security Council may decide on certain provisional measures. Article 41, and this is the Article in question here, says that the Security Council may decide what measures, not involving the use of armed forces, are to be employed to give effect to its decisions—that, of course, is its decisions under Article 39—and it may call upon members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.
Your Lordships will see, therefore, that assuming the Security Council takes such a decision—and, as I have said, before it can take such a decision this country, as one of the permanent members, must concur—there is an obligation on our Government to give effect to it. At present the Government have no powers to impose upon its nationals the duty to comply with such a decision. Hence this Bill, and the main part of the Bill, Clause 1 (1), provides that if under Article 41 of the Charter the Security Council call upon His Majesty's Government to take certain decisions, then His Majesty's Government may, by Order in Council, in their turn, impose upon their nationals the obligation and the duty to observe the provisions of the Order in Council.
The second subsection of Clause 1 deals with the territories to which Orders in Council under subsection (1) may be extended. The obligations of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom under the Charter extend not merely to the United Kingdom itself but also to all those territories which are within the British Commonwealth and Empire in the widest possible sense, and which are not within the jurisdiction of the members of the Commonwealth which are themselves separate members of the
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United Nations—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India—and except Eire, which may become a member of the United Nations but which has not yet done so. The scope of His Majesty's obligations under the Charter extend, therefore, to territories such as Newfoundland, Southern Rhodesia and Burma, to all the Colonies, to all the British Protectorates and to all British protected states, as well as to any territories which His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom hold under mandate or trusteeship. Subsection (2) does not, however, render Orders in Council capable of extension to all these territories. Burma and Southern Rhodesia are excluded on the understanding that the Governments of these two territories either possess or will possess the necessary local legislative powers to enable the Burmese or Southern Rhodesian Governments, on the request of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, to take the necessary steps in those territories when required.
Further, there are some British protected states, such as, for instance, the Arab States along the Persian Gulf and Tonga, for which Parliament has no power or only limited power to legislate. In those cases, therefore, the matter must be taken up with the local Governments, so that they, too, will be able to answer any call by His Majesty's Government for the fulfilment of Article 41 of the Charter. It may not, in fact, be necessary to extend the Orders in Council to all the Colonies and territories to which they are capable of extension under the subsection. If and when some of the local Governments obtain the necessary powers to deal with a matter by local legislation, it may be found preferable to let them deal with a matter by local measures instead of extending the United Kingdom Order in Council to them.
Those are the two substantial provisions of the Bill. I need not refer, I think, to subsection (3). Subsection (4) provides that Orders in Council shall be laid forthwith before Parliament, but it excludes the application of a provision in the Rules Publication Act requiring the publication in the London Gazette of notice of the proposal to make the Order in Council for forty days before the Order is made, it being obvious that the urgency with which decisions of the Security Council must be carried out renders any such notice quite impracticable.

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I commend this Bill to your Lordships, conscious of the fact that we all are putting our hopes and our trust in the United Nations Organization, and conscious of the fact that for that reason we must not be laggard in taking the necessary powers to see that we can fulfil, in the fullest measure and to the letter as well as in the spirit, all the obligations which we are called upon to do. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read22.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.2 p.m.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord Chancellor has on more than one occasion had to introduce Bills in this House dealing with Orders in Council which I do not think he has liked very much, and which certainly some of us have not liked at all. Today he is fortunate in being able to bring forward a Bill to enable this Government to do things by Order in Council which will, I believe, have the complete, unanimous, and enthusiastic support of everybody in this House. If this organization fails, all fails. If it is to succeed, it must be able to take effective action, and that action must be prompt and immediate. All the world must know that when it takes a decision, all the member States will be prompt and loyal in giving effect to such a decision. For the reasons the noble and learned Lord Chancellor has given, this method of Orders in Council is the only effective way by which we can do that.
All countries will, I trust, at the earliest date take the necessary powers, if they do not already possess them, but that is no reason why we should not be the first to take this action. By our lead we shall not only show our faith bat, I hope, encourage others to pass the appropriate legislation, if such legislation is required. Therefore it is right that we should take the lead here and now. This particular procedure, it appears to me, has another advantage. Not only can action be taken immediately in this country, but that action can be timed to be concurrent with the action taken by other countries. That may be very important. Therefore, because this is the way of making our membership effective, and of carrying out loyally our undertakings imposed by that membership in the most effective and the most convenient way, we on this side of the House give this Bill our wholehearted support.
3.4 p.m.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: My Lords, noble Lords on these Benches also will cordially support this Motion. It is of a limited character; it asks for the Second Reading of a Bill to confer certain powers on His Majesty in relation to action taken under the Charter of the United Nations. This might have been taken, if we had so desired, as a Parliamentary opportunity for discussing questions relating to the United Nations Organization in general, the great events which have been proceeding during the last few days in the close vicinity of this building and their bearing upon the future, but it would be far better if those matters could be discussed on a separate occasion, suitable and allocated for that purpose. I would ask the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack whether the Government contemplate that at an early date there should be a discussion in this House on the international situation, particularly in relation to the proceedings of the United Nations at the meeting here in London. Perhaps the noble Lord would kindly give an answer to that question.
This particular Bill makes provision for the eventuality that coercive measures may become necessary by the United Nations against some State which is indulging, or is apparently about to indulge in acts of aggression Those coercive measures may be either military or nonmilitary—what we are accustomed to speak of under the name of sanctions, economic sanctions, or similar sanctions. The Charter of the United Nations was approved by your Lordships' House on a formal Motion last August without dissension, and I am sure your Lordships would therefore agree that it is right now to pass this legislation, which would provide generally and in advance for contingencies which might possibly, arise at any time. His Majesty's Government have declared that the first principle of their foreign policy is support for the United Nations, and that declaration is, I think, unanimously approved throughout the whole country. We may feel proud that our country is, as I believe is the case, the first of all the fifty-one included within the ambit of this great international organization to take legislative action in order to show that it is prepared, willing and ready to carry out to the full the obligations imposed upon the member States by the Charter of the United Nations.
3.6 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am grateful to your Lordships for the way in which this Bill has been received. In answer to the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, who raised the question as to whether it would not be appropriate that we should have a discussion on foreign affairs, I am happy to say that, having discussed the matter with my noble friend the Leader of the House, I am able to give him an answer in the affirmative. We will gladly provide an opportunity in the not far distant future. The actual time and the form in which the debate takes place had better be discussed through the usual channels, but His Majesty's Government will be very pleased to afford an opportunity as soon as is convenient.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

WATER (SCOTLAND) BILL.
3.8 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD WESTWOOD: My Lords, the Bill to which this afternoon I invite your Lordships to give a Second Reading is the Scottish counterpart to the Water Act of 1945. That Act applied to England and Wales the principles of the White Paper on "A National Water Policy," presented to Parliament in April, 1944, by the Minister of Health, the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Secretary of State for Scotland of the Coalition Government of that day. The present Bill, however, differs from the English 1945 Act in one important regard, inasmuch as the opportunity has been taken to consolidate the general law governing water supply.
Before I attempt to expound the content and purposes of the Bill, it may be convenient to your Lordships if I mention the fact that of Scotland's population of approximately 5,000,000, nearly four and a half millions are served by public water supplies administered by local authorities or combinations of local authorities. In this respect the situation North of the Border differs from that in England and Wales, where statutory water companies are a very important element in the general picture. This
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difference is reflected in the absence from the Bill before your Lordships of any provisions specifically related to the operations of such companies in the field of water supplies.
There are in Scotland at present 208 "local water authorities" as the Bill terms the local authorities, or combinations of local authorities, supplying or authorized to supply water. These authorities fall into two groups—145 deriving their powers from public general legislation, and 63 (including most of the major authorities, and of course all the six combinations of authorities) working under powers conceded them by Parliament in local enactments. The essential difference between these two groups is that the powers of authorities operating under local enactments are strictly limited and can be extended only by a new local enactment, while authorities supplying under public general legislation have wide powers to "acquire and provide and arrange for a supply of water for the domestic use of the inhabitants … and do and execute all such works, matters and things, as shall be necessary and proper."
The present Bill has three main purposes. First, to give statutory effect to the principles of the White Paper on "A National Water Policy" to which I referred a few moments ago. The basic principle of the White Paper has been given legislative sanction in the Bill by the imposition for the first time on the Secretary of State of a formal and general duty in relation to water supplies—a duty for which he will be responsible to Parliament.
Another salient recommendation in the White Paper touched upon the need for greater co-ordination in the field of public water supply. The historical development of this vital activity in Scotland has been un-coordinated and sometimes (perhaps) even parochial. It is obvious that water-supply boundaries, being ultimately determined by the natural phenomena of watersheds and catchment areas, do not march with the contours of local government units. This fundamental fact makes it essential that in the interests of economy, efficiency and quality there should be a measure of central planning of future water-supply developments—the more so since the problem in Scotland is the expensive one of storage and distri-

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bution of the natural resources of the country. Under the present law the Secretary of State possesses no powers to compel combination; and only local authorities supplying water under public general legislation combine voluntarily. Water authorities—whether local authorities or joint boards—operating under local enactments cannot at present combine except after specific authority to do so granted by Parliament in a local enactment. As adumbrated in the White Paper the Bill provides simplified machinery for achieving combination and contains power to the Secretary of State to enforce combination and the giving of bulk supplies by one water authority to another where necessary to secure efficiency and economy. In the event of opposition to a compulsory amalgamation at the hands of the Secretary of State, there is, of course, provision for the submission of the issue to Parliament.
Another important provision derived from the recommendations in the White Paper is concerned with the giving to industry of a right to demand water from local water authorities subject to certain priorities in favour of the supply for domestic purposes. Where such a supply is refused or where the terms and conditions are regarded by the potential consumer as unreasonable, he may appeal to the Secretary of State who may himself determine the question or refer it to an arbiter. This provision in favour of industrial enterprises marks an advance over the existing position in which non-domestic consumers have no statutory claim to receive supplies of water from public undertakers.
I now turn to the second main purpose of the Bill—consolidation of the general law of water supply in Scotland. Your Lordships may think that I am taking a little longer than usual but this is a Bill covering 86 pages, with five Parts and five schedules. It is a very comprehensive measure, and I am trying to make my statement as brief as possible. The existing general law is to be found in some fourteen Acts of Parliament, mainly in two sets of Statutes, the Burgh Police (Scotland) Act, 1892, and the Public Health (Scotland) Act, 1897, which, while roughly parallel, differ in minor though significant respects—for example, in the definition of "a supply of water for domestic purposes." The
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opportunity is accordingly taken to provide in the present Bill one body of rules and one set of powers and duties for burghs and counties alike, incorporating such amendments as are called for by the change in conditions since the general law, whether in the Burgh Police Act or the Public Health Act, was enacted some 50 years ago. Broadly speaking, local authorities are under the Bill to be required to provide water for every part of their district where this can be done at reasonable cost and are required to execute this duty either at their own hand or by securing the provision of a supply by another local authority or a joint water board or otherwise (for example, from an estate having a private supply).
There is one particular feature of the consolidation and amendment proposed by the Bill to which I should like to call your Lordships' attention. The existing general law deals mainly with the provision of water by the local authority but also—and this was necessary if the local authority's efforts were not to be frustrated—with the Introduction of water into the houses themselves. It did not of course say—and neither does the present Bill—that the water must be taken from the authority's water system; many isolated houses can be served only by private supplies. The point is that since 1919 the law has required water to be introduced into the house where "reasonably practicable" and in the Bill that test remains in regard to existing houses. The Government feel, however, that the time has now come to prohibit by Statute the building of a house without an inside water supply, and provision to that end is made in Clause 53.
One power of water authorities is left almost untouched by the present Bill—their power to rate for water supplied. The reason is that in July, 1944, the Secretary of State set up a Committee under the chairmanship of Sir Robert Bryce Walker to go into the whole question of rating and charging for water. Their report was received by the Secretary of State while the Bill was in Committee in another place and is now under consideration. There is, however, one rating provision tucked away in the single sentence that forms Clause 48 of the Bill and abolishes the existing and out-of-date limitation of water and sewer rates.

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The third main object of the Bill is to provide local water authorities with an up-to-date operational and administrative code. For their powers to construct works, to lay mains, etc., water authorities depend on either local Acts or the public general Statutes, but the relations of both types of authorities with consumers, highway authorities and so on in the day-to-day workings of the undertakings are in the main governed by the provisions of the Waterworks Clauses Acts, 1847 and 1863. It is now proposed to give authorities as a whole a revised code including the best of the provisions secured by local-Act authorities in modern water legislation. The new code appears partly in the body of the Bill and partly in the Third and Fourth Schedules. The general effect of the procedure will be to secure not only a modern administrative code for water authorities of whatever type but also a considerable measure of uniformity as between authorities.
One feature of the code appearing in the Waterworks Clauses Acts has not been reproduced—the obligation on a water authority to extend their main only when the return in water rates from the premises to be supplied will equal a tenth of the capital cost of extension and the intending consumer binds himself to take the water and pay water rates for at least three years. Now that in Scotland public water supply is the virtual monopoly of local authorities, it is felt that the extension of the water main should depend not on any arithmetical formula but on the public health conscience of the water authority. Accordingly "the tenth rule" as it was called, finds no place in the Bill but Clause 8 requires the main to be brought to such a point as will enable the buildings for which a supply of water is required for domestic purposes to be connected to it at a reasonable cost, always provided that the authority are not themselves involved in unreasonable expense. Any question as to what is reasonable cost (whether to the owner who pays for the service pipe or to the authority whose main is to be extended) is to be decided by the Secretary of State on the application of ten or more local government electors. This is no real innovation, for the principle of it appears in Section 3 of the Rural Water Supplies and Sewerage Act of 1944, where it was necessarily limited to rural localities.
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The Bill which I have attempted to expound to your Lordships is of crucial importance for the future development of water supplies in Scotland and despite its formidable size and necessarily technical complexion it has the simple aim of laying down a statutory basis for a better water-supply system in that country. That purpose it achieves and for that reason I confidently commend it to your Lordships and ask you this afternoon to accord to the Bill a Second Reading. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Westwood.)
3.23 p.m.
THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: My Lords, this is a Bill as the noble Lord, Lord Westwood, has said, which has long been due for Scotland. If the Government had not changed at the last election I should myself have been in the position of Lord Westwood of bringing in this Bill and therefore I am quite sure that he realizes that it is in no critical sense that I say these few words. When you see the terrific size of this Bill, composed of eighty-nine clauses and five schedules, you will realize that we had no time before the election even to consider introducing it into this House. But I have no doubt that large as this Bill is, it will be in future of great assistance to the County Clerk or the Town Clerk who is concerned with water administration in that he will be able to turn to one Act of Parliament instead of the fourteen Acts which are mentioned in the Fifth Schedule.
It is, however, with the new provisions of the Bill that I am mainly concerned, and I am bound to say from what I have seen of them that my reactions are mainly favourable. In particular I welcome the proposals in Clause 2 of the Bill that persons requiring water for other than domestic purposes should have a right to demand water from the local water authority, subject, of course, to certain safeguards to make sure that the rights of existing customers are not prejudiced. I am afraid that I have not examined Clause 2 very carefully, not minutely, but I take it generally that its terms will apply to agriculture as well as other things.
LORD WESTWOOD: I can give you an unqualified assurance on that point.
THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: I am very glad of that because from my own experi-

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ence and knowledge I am quite sure that an adequate amount of water is needed for the furtherance of agriculture and I am glad the noble Lord has given me his assurance. But there is another clause in which I am interested as regards agriculture, and that is Clause 61, if the noble Lord will turn his attention to that, because this clause seems to me to give a local water authority the right when necessary in the interests of a pure water supply to say how agricultural lands within the gathering ground of the water authority are to be cultivated. That is a very strong clause. It has to be done by by-laws and the Secretary of State is to be the confirming authority. The Secretary of State for Scotland is, I will not say a "Pooh-Bah," but at any rate he is a man with a large number of Departments under him and I earnestly hope that when he is using his prerogatives under this clause he will have regard to his functions as head of the Department for Agriculture as well as the Department of Health. He is equally in charge of both of these Departments and I can conceive it to be very often the case where the Department of Agriculture has regard to the working of these lands that it might easily be in contradiction to the working of the Department of Health. I hope the noble Lord will be able to give me an assurance that agriculture will in no way be prejudiced under this clause.
Let me turn for one moment to industry, which is also very much interested in this Bill. Under Clause 53 I notice that industry is affected to a certain degree. We all want to do what we can to encourage the setting up of new, and the expansion of existing, industries in Scotland. Under this Clause 53 I think pure water has got to be used as far as possible for everything in a factory—domestic, sanitary, and so forth. If this clause is enacted, as I understand it, drinking water will have to be used for central heating and sanitary purposes, and will have to be paid for.
As noble Lords know, some factories use water which is not drinking water and could perfectly well be used for central heating and sanitary purposes, and would not have to be paid for. The cost may not be much, but every single additional cost that goes on to the capital production of a factory is a factor. When we are making for the export trade and we are trying to get factories set up in
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Scotland as much as we can—in opposition, in a certain measure, to England and Wales—we have got to have those factories run as cheaply as possible. It may have escaped the notice of the noble Lord, Lord Westwood, that in England, they have the advantage of being allowed to use water that is not drinking water for heating and sanitary purposes. When a factory, therefore, is going to be set up, it will be found that the water for its purposes will have to be paid for in Scotland, but that in England and Wales factories may use water for which they do not have to pay. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Westwood, will look into this, and put Scotland on the same plane as England and Wales.
3.32 p.m.
LORD WESTWOOD: My Lords, I would like to clear up two of the points made by the noble Earl. His latter remarks seem to reflect another injustice to Scotland; that England can do something which Scotland cannot. We might have had better attention today if we had been discussing something other than water. I can give the noble Lord a definite assurance on the point he raised regarding agriculture. The other point was in reference to the requirement of Clause 53 that all water for domestic purposes, which includes sanitary purposes—I think that is the noble Earl's point—in new factories should be wholesome. All I can say to the noble Earl to-day is that he may be assured that the Government have taken note of the representations made and that the possibility of amending the clause on the Committee stage is under active consideration.
3.34 p.m.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I am afraid I do not fully understand the Bill, but I would like to ask the noble Lord to consider that there are probably a great many places in Scotland whose water supplies are local and old. After seven years of war, such authorities have not been able to carry out current repairs to their water supplies, and they are probably faced with very heavy expenditure. If such burghs are increasing, they may be faced with the necessity of a short-term water policy to supply the deficiency. I am sure the noble Lord will agree with me that, in the first place, there is by no means too much water in Scotland. We need every drop we can save, and the

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economic long-term water policies are obviously the ones that must be adopted. I would like to know whether, under this Bill, it is possible to get assistance for small burghs so that they may adopt long-term water policies and get necessary works carried out within a reasonable time, in order not to retard their prosperity and development.
LORD WESTWOOD: I would rather the noble Lord had a talk on this matter with me, when I might be able to put his mind at ease.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (FINANCIAL PROVISIONS) (SCOTLAND) BILL.
3.36 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD WESTWOOD: My Lords, I will be a little more brief on this matter. This is a purely Scottish Bill, the purpose of which is to make an interim adjustment in the block grant payable to local authorities in aid of local expenditure. It proposes to increase that grant, of which the annual amount is at present £6,827,000 by £1,375,000 in the present year, £1,512,500 in 1946–47 and £1,650,000 in 1947–48. The increases are equivalent to a rate relief of 7·7d. in the pound during the present year, 8.4d. next year and 9.2d. in 1947–48. The amount of the present block grant, and the method of distributing it, were fixed in 1937; and in ordinary course a revision would have been made in 1942. As it was clear that circumstances would then be abnormal, legislation was passed in 1941 stabilizing the grant at the existing level until such time as Parliament might otherwise determine. If the legislation of 1941 had not been passed a further revision of the block grant would have been due to take place in 1947. It is clear, however, that circumstances are still so exceptional, and the future level of local expenditure so uncertain, that it would be impossible to carry out a normal review, and make a long-term adjustment in the grant and in the method of distributing it, between now and the beginning of the 1947 financial year. On the other hand, the level of local expendi-
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ture has risen in the last two years, and it would be wrong in these circumstances to leave the grant at its pre-war level. It was accordingly decided to make an interim adjustment in the grant, and after discussion with the local authority associations it was agreed that the adjustment should cover the three financial years 1945–46, 1946–47 and 1947–48.
The total amount of the increase given to local authorities in Scotland is the Goschen equivalent (11/80ths) of the increase being given in England and Wales. This is an exceptional arrangement in calculating the block grant, and is not intended to form a precedent. It was adopted because statistics upon which to make a more exact calculation of the increase required in Scotland, similar to the calculation made for England and Wales, were lacking. Sufficient information is, however, available to enable an assurance to be given that the unusual method adopted to fix the amount of the increase is not unfavourable to Scotland. The Bill sets out in a schedule how the total amount of the new money is to be distributed among the various counties and large burghs. The method of distribution was settled after discussion with the associations of local authorities, and is in accordance with the wishes of the great majority of the authorities. The method of distribution adopted is, of course, not intended as a model to be followed in distributing the grant when it is revised on a long-term basis; and it will be necessary to discuss with the local authority associations before the end of the interim period covered by the Bill what the basis of distributing the grant after the year 1947–48 is to be. The Bill is accordingly submitted as a useful short-term measure, which it is believed deals fairly, and indeed generously, with the present needs of local authorities. It does not, however, in any sense represent the Government's long-term policy in relation to local government finance. This policy will require discussion and settlement when the future responsibilities of the local authorities, and the future level of local expenditure, can be more accurately assessed. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Westwood.)
THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: My Lords, from these Benches it is not proposed to

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make any comments until the Committee stage. We have had very little time to examine it. I would like, however, to tell the noble Lord before I sit down that the Goschen formula has long been out of date. It was made when Eire was a part of this country and it included Eire. I hope in future when he tries to get something for Scotland he will get us a better percentage.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

FURNISHED HOUSES (RENT CONTROL) BILL.
Order of the Day for the House to be put in Committee read.
Moved that the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly:
[The LORD STANMORE in the Chair.]
Clause 1:
Application of Act by order of Minister of Health, and appointment of tribunal
1.—(1) Where, as respects a district consisting of the whole or part of the area of a local authority, the Minister of Health (hereinafter referred to as "the Minister") is satisfied on representation by, or after consultation with, the local authority that it is expedient that the provisions of this Act should have effect in that district, he may, by order, direct that this Act shall have effect in that district as from such (lay as may be specified in the order, and this Act shall thereupon come into force in that district.
(2) For each district in which this Act is in force there shall be a tribunal constituted in accordance with the Schedule to this Act, and the provisions of that Schedule shall apply to each tribunal:
Provided that, if the Minister so directs, the same tribunal may act for more than one such district.
3.45 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM LORD CHESHAM moved, in subsection (2), after "tribunal," where that word first occurs, to insert "appointed by the Lord Chancellor and." The noble Lord said: You will remember that in this Bill in certain designated areas the Minister of Health may appoint a tribunal to deal with the question of the actual rents paid. I want to stress the very great importance of these tribunals. It was mentioned, especially by the Minister of Health, that this Bill forms
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only a part of the recommendations of what has come to be known as the Ridley Report on the whole of the Rent Restrictions Acts, and he forecast that there would be further Bills in the future which would implement other parts of the Ridley Report. These tribunals will undoubtedly be taken as models in further legislation dealing with rent in general, and therefore the composition of these tribunals is of the very greatest importance. There was considerable argument in another place as to whether provision had better not be inserted in the Bill insisting on some form of legal representation on the tribunal, but that was eventually dropped.
In the operation of the tribunal there is bound to be a number of people who will be dissatisfied. Three different classes of people can refer cases to the tribunals, the landlord, the tenant, or the local authority. A decision given will undoubtedy, in many cases, cause dissatisfaction to the person who does not "back a winner" so to speak, who does not get the decision in his favour. Therefore there is a chance that the impression will be given of political bias. I do not want to insinuate at all, and indeed it would be most improper to insinuate, that the Minister, or any Minister, would appoint a tribunal that would be biased, but what I do say is that that impression might be given. There is going to be dissatisfaction among a large number of people. That cannot be helped.
I would remind your Lordships that the members of these tribunals will be, or can be, in receipt of a salary. They are appointed by the Minister of Health. The local authorities form one of the classes who can refer a question of rent to these tribunals, and the Minister is working very closely with the local authorities. That he admits himself. I think perhaps it is a pity. I do not know, but it does appear to me that local authorities are becoming more and more the agents, or, to use an expression which I do not like but which is used here a lot, the "chosen instrument" of the Minister of Health. They are more and more carrying out edicts issued from Whitehall. Therefore, we might have one of the people who can refer matters to the tribunal, the local authority, working in close conjunction with the Minister of Health, themselves referring a case to a tribunal which is appointed indirectly in

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conjunction with themselves. It is possible.
I want to stress most strongly that there would be much more confidence in these tribunals if they could be appointed by the Lord Chancellor. I mentioned this on Second Reading, and I was given an answer, which I am sure was on the spur of the moment, but which I could not accept. That was that the Lord Chancellor was grievously over-worked; he had far too much to do; in fact he was a very tired man. I am sure I have got the greatest consideration for the noble and learned Lord Chancellor, but I really cannot quite accept it as a reasonable answer. Judging from the amount of legislation which we seem to be getting, if that is a genuine answer, I am afraid that most of the Government will be in a nursing home before long! I do urge upon the Government that it will improve the Bill if this Amendment can be accepted, and, even if they can not see their way to accepting it, perhaps a better answer might be forthcoming. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 15, after ("tribunal") insert ("appointed by the Lord Chancellor and").—(Lord Chesham.)
THE PROVOST GENERAL (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): I am glad the noble Lord has emphasized the importance of getting the right personnel for these tribunals, because that is a point on which we are all agreed. It is essential to find people whose judgment can really be trusted when it comes to deciding what is a fair rent. The noble Lord seemed a little afraid that there might be some political bias in the choice of the members of these rent tribunals. I do hope that he will be reassured if I describe, quite briefly, how it is proposed that the tribunals should be appointed, because I think he will be satisfied that every effort will be made to prevent Party political considerations from influencing the selection of the members of any of these rent tribunals.
In the first instance, the local authority in the area concerned which is going to have a tribunal will submit a list of names to the Minister. That is clearly the sensible thing, because the local authority will know most about the people on the spot. The names thus submitted will be chosen with a view to securing people
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with much experience in public work and public affairs, whose judgment can be regarded as impartial and whose judgment will also be respected by their neighbours. Such persons will not necessarily, although they may incidentally, have legal qualifications. The Minister might, of course, wish to consult the Lord Chancellor about the appointment of a former County Court Judge, just as he might wish to consult the Foreign Secretary about the appointment of a retired diplomat. The Minister of Health has always been the Minister in charge of the Government Department entrusted with the task of dealing with the relations between Whitehall and the local authorities in England and Wales, and the officials of this Ministry have more numerous contacts with the local authorities than have those of any other Government Department. The Government, therefore, take the view that the appropriate Minister to exercise these responsibilities is the Minister of Health, and this view, I should like to emphasize, is supported in paragraph 51 of the Ridley Committee's Report. The recommendation there reads as follows:
"The Minister of Health and the Secretary of State for Scotland to have unfettered responsibility for appointing members of the tribunals."
I think that is put very clearly and very strongly, and the Ridley Committee had every chance of considering the matter at great length and in great detail. Therefore, with much regret, I fear I cannot accept the Amendment of the noble Lord.
LORD CHESHAM: In view of that explanation, which is a good one, and the assurance that these tribunals will be appointed as the noble Earl has just stated, I am not going to press this Amendment. I wish to make it quite clear that I was not saying that there would be a political bias; I said it might give the appearance to dissatisfied people that there was a political bias. But I do not want to press this Amendment, and most of the Amendments that are down in my name are consequential on this. Therefore, I do not propose to move any of them until we come to the last Amendment on the Paper, which is an Amendment to the Schedule. I beg to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2:
Reference to Tribunal of Contracts for Furnished Letting
(2) Where any contract to which this Act applies is referred to a tribunal, then, unless at any time before the tribunal have entered upon consideration of the reference it is withdrawn by the person or authority by whom it was made, the tribunal shall consider it and, after making such inquiry as they think fit, and giving to each party (and, if the house is one the general management whereof is vested in and exercisable by a housing authority, to that authority) an opportunity of being heard, or, in his option, of submitting representations in writing, shall approve the rent payable under the contract or reduce it to such sum as they may, in all the circumstances, think reasonable, or may, if they think fit in all the circumstances, dismiss the reference, and shall notify the parties and the local authority of their decision in each case.
3.55 p.m.
LORD LLEWELLIN LORD LLEWELLIN moved, in subsection (2), after "tribunal," where that word thirdly occurs, to insert:
"unless they have considered a similar application by the same party within such a period as in their opinion makes the new application superfluous."
The noble Lord said: On the Second Reading of this Bill, as those of your Lordships who were in the House will remember, I raised the point that these tribunals have no power to stop any frivolous or superfluous applications being made before them. In another place I know well that it was sought to check anything of the sort by giving the tribunals power to award costs against a party who made an unnecessary and frivolous complaint. That was resisted in another place, and in the Amendment which I have brought before your Lordships to-day I have sought to deal with the matter in a different way, not by costs but by leaving it in the hands of the tribunal to decide, if the same party has, within a short period (such a period as the tribunal thinks is unreasonable) brought an application, that they need not consider it. I think it is a good thing to give them power. There are not a great many people who would come time after time, but there are a few, and if the tribunal had to consider each one it would mean hearing a person tell the same story perhaps through to the end. I think that would waste the time of the tribunal and would perhaps bring the proceedings into some amount of disrespect. Therefore we
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should give them this power. With those few words, I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 20, after ("tribunal") insert ("unless they have considered a similar application by the same party within such a period as in their opinion snakes the new application superfluous").—(Lord Llewellin.)
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: As I think I told the noble Lord opposite during the Second Reading debate, we are very much obliged to him for pointing out a minor defect in the Bill as it now stands, and we do share to the full his desire to prevent the valuable time of these tribunals from being wasted by litigious or vindictive persons. I believe his object would be secured if he would be willing to accept a slight alteration in the wording of his Amendment, as in the circumstances it is most important that the wording of the Amendment should not lend itself to even the smallest degree of ambiguity. If he would be good enough to withdraw his Amendment, I can assure him I will move an alternative at the next stage of the Bill, and in the meantime your Lordships will have an opportunity of seeing it and studying it as soon as it has been circulated.
LORD LLEWELLIN: In addition to that assurance, the noble Earl has also let me know what words he proposes to use. They are an improvement on mine, and. I shall be glad to see them on the Paper. With that assurance from the noble Earl, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
3.58 p.m.
VISCOUNT BUCKMASTER VISCOUNT BUCKMASTER moved, in subsection (2), after "reduce" to insert "or vary". The noble Viscount: said: This is a point which can be put in a few moments, because if I do not convince your Lordships of the justice of it in a few words, I shall certainly not convince anybody in a great many. It is a perfectly simple thing. These tribunals, as you know, have power to reduce the rents and they have power to dismiss the applications, but they have no power to increase the rents. Now there are cases in which a rent is abnormally low. Often it is a case of kindness or of charity. However, the relationship that then existed may go. A person may become spiteful and he may apply to the tribunal, knowing that he cannot lose. There are

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no costs which can be given against him and there is no appeal; therefore he cannot go wrong in any way at all in making an application. It is only common justice in such a case that the tribunals should have power to make an appropriate increase in the rent. And it is not only common justice, it is common sense, because you are getting the benefit of the judgment of these tribunals which you are taking so much trouble to establish. Why should we not have the benefit of their knowledge and be told what the rent ought to be? We are told, as an alternative, that if the application is dismissed, it meets the case. How can it meet the case? The landlord knows he is charging too little. His only answer then is to charge too much. The answer to that is that the other man then lodges another application and so you go backwards and forwards.
There is a further point which I want to make. I hope I have not been provocative in anything I have said, but I do urge my noble friend to consider that if these one-sided tribunals are set up and if there is created an impression of injustice (which is the only impression I can get out of it) people will not be anxious to let their rooms. The purpose of this Bill is to control extortions and not to stop rooms being let, but that is the very thing which will be done if people are not given the common justice which they are entitled to expect and which, of course, the Ridley Report recommends they should receive. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 26, after ("reduce") insert ("or vary").—(Viscount Buckmaster.)
VISCOUNT MAUGHAM: I should like to say one word in support of this Amendment. It seems to me clearly just that the tribunal should have the right to increase the rent payable under a contract if they find that in the circumstances the cost of services has increased, as they naturally have in the last few years. While I am mentioning this, I should also like to point out that the cases where this provision would be of value are the cases of hotels and flats. I have already invited the noble Earl in charge of the Bill to consider whether at some stage or the other he should not remove luxury hotels and flats which may be described as
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luxury flats outside the purview of the Bill altogether. I can imagine from what I know that it would be very unlikely that he would not desire to retain within the Bill smaller hotels, where moderate prices are charged, and flats which would be likely to be used by people of not too great means. In those cases it is almost inevitable that the costs of services have gone up since the date when the rent or the other payment in respect of the accommodation was originally fixed. In some cases I am sure that the increase in the cost of services will be very great. Those are particular cases in which, as I said, the Amendment proposed by my noble friend Viscount Buckmaster would be useful in preventing injustice.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: The noble Viscount has three Amendments on the Order Paper, two on Clause 2 and one on Clause 7.
VISCOUNT BUCKMASTER: Perhaps I can help the noble Earl. I am going to ask the leave of the House to withdraw the final Amendment, which is superseded by the second Amendment standing in my name.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: That makes it easier for me to make the request I intended to make, which is, that I should deal with the two Amendments which he intends to urge on the House in one speech, because they are both designed to achieve the same object, namely, to give the tribunal the power to increase.
VISCOUNT BUCKMASTER: I hope that in doing that the noble Earl will not deny me the right to put forward my views on the second one, which I have not expressed yet.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: No. I had no ulterior motive at all. The noble Viscount's Amendments are the most important on the Order Paper and go to the root of the Bill, so that I am afraid I shall have to speak at rather greater length than I have been advised to do until now. What in effect the noble Viscount has proposed is that where a contract for the letting of an apartment or a flat with services is referred to a tribunal, that tribunal shall have power to authorize an increase in the rent payable when they are satisfied that there has been an increase in the cost of services since the contract was made.
VISCOUNT BUCKMASTER: Perhaps I may interrupt the noble Earl to say that the essence of the matter is that they should only do so provided that they are satisfied that the rent is otherwise just. There can be no increase at all if the rent is otherwise an unfair one.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: I quite appreciate the point. Let us see what the effect of the noble Viscount's Amendment would be if it were accepted. If the letting in question, the letting of an apartment or a furnished room with services, falls outside the scope of the Rent Restrictions Acts, the noble Viscount's Amendment would not add much to what can already be done under the Bill, because of the power of the tribunal to dismiss a reference and thereby to leave the landlord at liberty to increase the rent at the end of the existing contract. That, I believe, was an amendment which was accepted when the Bill was passing through another place. It is only in respect of lettings with services which are within the scope of the Rent Restrictions Acts, and therefore subject at the moment to a standard rent, that the noble Viscount's Amendments would have any important and far-reaching effect, and then, of course, only if the Rent Restrictions Acts were amended in this Bill as well. Both processes would be necessary. Your Lordships will notice that in Clause 7 of the Bill it is said that its contents will not affect any provisions of the Rent Restrictions Acts with the exception of two sections of the Acts relating to the charging of rents for furnished lettings, and those two sections will be repealed.
This feature of the Bill is really essential—that the main structure of the Rent Restrictions Acts shall be untouched by the provisions of the present Bill. The noble Viscount's Amendment, therefore, raises an extremely important issue of principle, as to whether this Bill should alter in a major way the operations of the Rent Restrictions Acts and allow standard rents to be increased in the limited cases which he has in mind. Of course, no one has ever suggested that there may not be cases where the rents of lettings and services subject to the Rent Restrictions Acts are at present far too low. Amongst the ten million—I believe the figure is approximately ten million—properties subject at the present day to those Acts, there are, no doubt, very many cases
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where the standard rent is too low, and where the landlord is suffering a genuine hardship. I think the noble Viscount himself mentioned an example of this kind in an earlier debate.
There are houses in the danger areas where the owner-occupiers had to leave because of war service, and who, at the time they went away, let their houses unfurnished at low rents, which of course then became standard rents, and still remain standard rents. The Bill, of course, cannot touch such cases as it stands at the present time. They will have to await the general Bill which the Government have in mind, and which they wish to introduce into Parliament at the earliest possible moment to give effect to the main recommendations of the Ridley Report. But, on the other hand, it should not be forgotten either that there are also tenants of unfurnished houses and rooms who are paying standard rents which are too high. Tenants as well as landlords are suffering under a hardship which will not be remedied by the Bill as it stands at the moment. They also must await what one might call a general amnesty for their position to be rectified.
The Government's view—which I expressed during the Second Reading debate, and which I will, therefore, not repeat again at any length—is that it would be preferable to leave any question of increase of standard rents in the limited class of lettings with services to be dealt with under a general Bill rather than to attempt to deal with it in this Bill which is designed for the special circumstances relating to the unfair advantage which is sometimes taken of hard-pressed tenants who are looking for accommodation at the present time.
There is this further point, which I think is an extremely important one, to be remembered. If the noble Viscount's Amendment were adopted the work of these tribunals would be greatly increased. There would be a very much larger number of cases, and the danger would arise in certain parts of the country, particularly in London, that the number of applications from landlords for authority to increase their rents would be so large as to make it extremely difficult for the tribunals to deal, without very prolonged delay, with references to them from tenants complaining of exorbitant rents demanded for uncontrolled premises. These latter are

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often cases of extreme hardship, tenants being charged very high rents for the furnished accommodation which they are able to get, and they are the sort of matters with which this Bill is intended to deal. Therefore the effectiveness of this Bill in bringing about alleviation of the lot of the people for whose benefit it has been designed might be seriously prejudiced if the wider issue raised by the noble Viscount were incorporated in the Bill. I very much hope that he will feel that the undertaking of the Government to implement the recommendations of the Ridley Committee's Report at the earliest possible moment is sufficient to warrant the withdrawal of an Amendment that obviously raises this much wider question.
LORD LLEWELLIN: I do not know what the noble Viscount who moved this Amendment will think of the reply given by the noble Earl, but for my own part I am not at all satisfied with it. First of all we have the reference to the Ridley Committee, which, after a considerable amount of trouble and discussion, recommended that these tribunals should be able, if they see fit, to act as tribunals and not only decrease rent but increase it as well. So far as I understand the observations of the noble Earl, the Postmaster-General, he has given as one of his reasons for asking for the withdrawal of the Amendment that there would be a great many cases and that the tribunals would be overworked. If there is going to be a great many cases it shows that there are a great many people with justifiable grievances. Otherwise, there would not be this very large number of cases. If the noble Earl had said that there were only likely to be one or two cases in the whole country, that might have been the sort of thing that could be overlooked. But if one of his reasons for opposing the Amendment is that there would be so many cases that the tribunals would be overworked, surely then the grievances ought to be put right at the earliest possible moment. The earliest possible moment is when this Bill is put through. There should not be a delay until another Bill comes along, this general Bill about which the noble Earl spoke.
Incidentally, can we have any kind of estimate as to when we shall see this general Bill? It does not look very likely that we shall see it this Session. If that is
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so, it means that these people have just got to wait on until some general Bill appears concerning which, so far as one can see, we have no idea of the date of its introduction. If—as the noble Earl himself asserted we should—we are to have confidence in these tribunals, no harm can be done by giving them this power. On the other hand, a great deal of good can be done, because then, as the noble Viscount has pointed out, they will act as tribunals. The whole idea of tribunals is that they shall weigh matters between two sides and be able to give a fair judgment between one side and the other. I really think this is an important matter, as the noble Earl said, and if there are all these people who are going to flood the tribunals we ought to give these people justice now.
LORD CHESHAM: On the matter of another Bill which we are told will put all these things right, I must say that I am afraid I am not very much impressed by that argument. I read the report of the debate which took place in another place very carefully, and I noted that the Minister of Health apologized for implementing the Ridley Committee's Report piecemeal. He stated that the reason he could not carry out all the recommendations of the Report was that the Government were so busy that, so far as he could see, it would be a very long time before the whole Report could be embodied in legislation. Therefore, it does look as if these people, these landlords who are definitely in many cases losing money through providing services which have increased in cost to such a tremendous extent, and for which they cannot increase their rents, will go on losing money for quite a considerable time and not just for a matter of a few weeks as intimated—not said, but implied—by the noble Earl.
VISCOUNT BUCKMASTER: I am in a position of some difficulty because the noble Earl by answering both my Amendments at once has made it seem a little irregular for me to speak again. I know that I am in order, but I dislike trespassing on your Lordships' good nature. The first thing I would desire to do to help your Lordships would be to beg leave to withdraw the Amendment asking power to vary the rent and confine myself to the second Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
VISCOUNT BUCKMASTER VISCOUNT BUCKMASTER moved, at the end of subsection (2), to insert:
"Provided that in any case where a contract to which this Act applies includes payment for services and the lessor shows to the satisfaction of the tribunal that the cost of the provision of such services has increased in respect of the house or part of a house since the date of the contract the tribunal shall, if satisfied that the rent is otherwise one which they would approve, have power to authorise the payment of the amount of such increase".
The noble Viscount said: I do not think I need say very much about the justice of this Amendment. The position is perfectly simple. Many of these people who own service flats have provided a vast amount of accommodation at reasonable rents. Many members of another place are living in such flats, and are taking advantage of those rents. No doubt they are very happy to be able to do so. Probably, some others have their names on waiting lists and are waiting to get into these flats. But the owners of the flats are in this position. They have negotiated agreements with their tenants, and the services which they have to provide were an integral part of those agreements. They are bound in law to continue those services. It does not matter how much more the services now cost or how much the landlords lose. They cannot get out of the arrangement, and they can be sued if they do not perform these services. They are in a further difficulty. They have got to take back—quite rightly—all the men they employed before.
This may double their wages bill but this is a statutory obligation they cannot avoid. So in two different ways they can be sued and yet they have no means whatever of recovering a penny piece from the tenant except by a voluntary agreement which some tenants have made. Yet there is no reason why because a few people are willing to do what they know to be just the remainder should take advantage of that which they know to be unjust. This is not only my view. The Ridley Committee had many supporters of His Majesty's Government in it and it was by no means a committee in favour of the landlord. Every single member said not only that an increase should be granted but that this should be done quickly and should receive immediate attention. The noble Earl not only
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says that it shall not receive that attention but that we must wait until some indefinite date in the future and all the time these tenants will be taking advantage of other people's financial loss.
I should like to deal with his two points. One of his points was not quite so convincing as his arguments usually are. He said on the Second Reading of this Bill that you cannot expect the Government to do a great deal at this time and that the major reform was to come later. But this is only a paragraph in the Ridley Report and the thing can be very easily done. He speaks of the flood of applications. All I propose in this Amendment is that if the tribunal otherwise approves, and the landlord proves how much the extra cost is, he should receive it. It is a short and simple thing which can easily be done. So that is no reason for postponing it. His second point was that you cannot interfere with the Rent Restrictions Acts. But those Acts are not sacrosanct. In the Committee stage in another place the Minister said he did not want to touch the Rent Restrictions Acts. He is the man who brought them in and it is for him to get out of his own difficulty. There are thirty of these Acts, all amending each other. There is no reason whatever why justice should not be done to these people and why some amendment on the lines I propose should not be carried.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 30, at end insert the said proviso.—(Viscount Buckmaster.)
THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: I hope the noble Earl will accept this Amendment. After all, a Government of this country is elected to render justice as far as possible. We have heard them talk a great deal about their mandate. Surely the aim is to do the greatest possible good and not merely to say that there are so many cases of injustice that you cannot possibly find the time to deal with them. In my opinion this particular Amendment is one which is extremely urgent. I can give you a definite example of what I have in mind in connexion with a charitable institution that I have a great deal to do with. It lets out houses for a small rent to a certain class of person and on one or two occasions the occupant has died. Before filling these houses—it took two or

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three months to do so—a widow was allowed to stay there at practically a nil rent. Now under the Rent Restriction Acts we cannot turn her out for a more worthy person and she stays there on a rent of practically nil. If we were allowed by this Amendment to make her pay even an ordinary rent we could get rid of her and put in a man for whom this charitable request was meant. I can see no possible reason why the Government should not accept this Amendment. The noble Earl has admitted that it was an injustice not to admit the Amendment, but he only says that the Government have not the time to look after these people. They are bringing in Bills at the rate of two or three a week, which are going to give the country enormous problems. Surely they can find time to accept this proposal.
LORD WOOLTON: I am going to make an appeal to the noble Earl to give consideration to the views expressed on this side of the House. The noble Earl knows that we are very loth on this side to use a lot the considerable voting power which would be ours and I think he will agree that my noble friends have, sometimes under considerable difficulties, shown great patience. Here we feel quite strongly that there is an element of justice with which I am quite sure the noble Earl must be in sympathy. In fact some of the phrases he used, which I am sure were not loose phrases, show that he recognised that that injustice existed. I hope therefore he will not press us to a Division on this, and that he will consider what he can do either by way of accepting the Amendment which has been moved, or alternatively by giving us some assurance that he will consider the matter before the next stage. Failing that, I am bound to tell the noble Earl that I shall feel it my duty to advise noble Lords on this side not to refrain from voting.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: I am perfectly certain that no Minister would turn a deaf ear to an appeal from the noble Lord opposite and indeed, as he rightly said, there is a new feature of the case which only emerged during the course of the afternoon, namely the speeches made by a number of noble Lords all of whom stressed the great importance of the time factor. I do not think that there is any difference in principle between the two
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sides of the House; the difference centres entirely on the time factor, and I can assure the noble Lord opposite that I will direct the attention of my honourable friend the Minister of Health to the speeches which have been made this afternoon and if it is possible for me to make an offer at a later stage I shall certainly do so.
VISCOUNT BUCKMASTER: I am much encouraged by what noble Lords have said and I would point out to the noble Earl that everyone opposed to him politically has given unqualified support to this Bill with this one exception. I hope I am not saying what I should not say, but I do not think it would be an ungracious act on the part of the Minister if he were to make some concession in this case. In the hope that that may be in his mind I beg leave to withdraw.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clauses 3 to 5 agreed to.
Clause 6:
Provisions as to local authorities.
6.—(1) For the purposes of this Act the local authority shall be—

(a) elsewhere than in the administrative county of London, the council of the borough, urban district or rural district;

(b) in the administrative county of London other than the City of London, the council of the metropolitan borough;

(c) in the City of London, the common council:

Provided that, for the purposes of Section one of this Act, the local authority shall, in the administrative county of London other than the City of London, be the London County Council instead of the council of the metropolitan borough.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL THE EARL OF LISTOWEL moved, in subsection (1), to leave out the proviso. The noble Earl said: The effect of this Amendment, which stands in my name together with that of my noble friend Lord Latham, is that the Metropolitan Borough Councils instead of the London County Council will become the bodies who may make representations to the Minister and with whom the Minister must consult before this Act is applied to the London area. This is, of course, a matter of machinery. I understand that the proposal has been agreed between the borough councils and the London County Council, and I am quite certain, if it were

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accepted, that it would make it easier to operate this Act in the London area. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, leave out lines 9 to 12.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to
Clause 6, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 7 to 11 agreed to.
Clause 12:
Interpretation and Saving.
12.—(1) In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires, the following expressions have the meanings hereby respectively assigned to them, that is to say:
"housing authority" means a council which is a local authority for the purposes of Part V of the Housing Act, 1936;
"local authority" has the meaning assigned to that expression by Section five of this Act;
"register" means the register kept by the local authority in pursuance of Section three of this Act;
"services" includes attendance, the provision of heating or lighting, the supply of hot water and any other privilege or facility connected with the occupancy of a house or part of a house;
"tribunal" means a tribunal appointed in pursuance of section one of this Act.
THE EARL OF LISTOWELhad given notice of an Amendment in the definition of "services," after the words "part of a house," to insert "not being a privilege or facility requisite for obtaining access thereto." The noble Earl said: The object of this Amendment is to meet a point raised by the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Maugham during the Second Reading debate, when he pointed out the somewhat loose wording of Clause 1 (1). What I am endeavouring to do is to exclude from the definition of services the means of access which a tenant shares with the other occupants of a building. It may be that the Amendment as drafted is not sufficiently precise, and does not exclude enough. I should like an opportunity to examine the matter further before the Report stage, in case it is necessary to amend the form of words I am submitting at the moment, and I hope your Lordships will allow me to withdraw the Amendment.
VISCOUNT MAUGHAM: I want the noble Earl, if he will, to be so good as to consider also the question of the supply
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simply of electric light in a room. I am not sure that, as the clause stands, a room is not within the Act simply because it has an electric light print—sometimes it would be a gas jet. To have merely electric light in a room ought not to bring the room in question within the provisions of the Act. If the noble Earl will undertake to consider that point before the Report stage, I shall be quite content. I have mentioned some other matters of greater importance, which he has also promised to consider.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: I will gladly oblige the noble and learned Viscount who has been so helpful in attempting to find a suitable form of wording. Generally speaking, lighting would be regarded as a service, but, no doubt, he has certain cases in mind.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 12 agreed to.
Remaining clause agreed to.
Schedule:
Provisions Regarding Constitution of Tribunals.
1. A tribunal shall consist of a chairman and two other members.
2. The chairman and the other members of a tribunal shall be appointed by the Minister. During the absence or incapacity of any member a person appointed by the Minister shall act in his place.
3. The members and acting members of a tribunal shall receive such remuneration and such travelling and other allowances as the Minister may, with the consent of the Treasury, determine.
4. The Minister may appoint a clerk and such other officers and servants as he thinks fit of a tribunal, and there shall be paid to them such salaries and allowances, as the Minister, with the consent of the Treasury, may determine.
LORD CHESHAM LORD CHESHAM moved, in paragraph 4, to leave out "Minister" and insert "tribunal".
The noble Lord said: This is a very small Amendment. The noble Earl has told me the Government are prepared to accept it in spirit with a very slight alteration of the words, and to bring it into effect. Therefore, I shall not weary your Lordships. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 7, line so, leave out ("Minister") and insert ("tribunal").—(Lord Chesham.)
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: I am obliged to the noble Lord opposite for

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putting down this Amendment. It cannot be accepted as it is, because the cost of the staffs of these tribunals will fall on the Exchequer. Therefore, the Minister of Health must have some say in the decisions as to the number of clerks and their remuneration. But if the noble Lord will be good enough to withdraw the Amendment he has on the paper at the moment, I will submit an alternative which will be circulated before the Report stage. The object of my alternative Amendment would be to give the tribunal the right to appoint its staff, which I think is what the noble Lord wants, subject only to the approval of the Minister.
LORD CHESHAM: I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule agreed to.
4.36 p.m.

TRUNK ROADS BILL.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved that the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Walkden.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly:
[The LORD STANMORE in the Chair.]
Clause 1:
Additional trunk roads and reorganization of trunk road system.
(2) The Minister shall keep under review the national system of routes for through traffic in Great Britain, and if he is satisfied, after taking into consideration the requirements of local and national planning, including the requirements of agriculture, that it is expedient for the purpose of extending, improving or reorganizing that system that any existing road, or any road proposed to be constructed by him, should become a trunk road, or that any trunk road should cease to be a trunk road, he may by order direct that that road shall become, or as the case may be shall cease to be, a trunk road as from such date as may be specified in that behalf in the order.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH moved, at the end of subsection (2), to insert:
"Provided that no order shall be made under this sub-section without prior consultation with the Minister of Town and Country Planning".
The noble Lord said: The rubric at the side of Clause 1 of this Bill is: "Additional trunk roads and reorganization of trunk road system." While subsection (2) of the clause is mainly concerned with the reorganization of the trunk road system, that is to say, the question of either a trunk road ceasing to be a trunk road, or of a road, not a trunk road, becoming one, there are some words in the middle of the subsection which are about any road proposed to be constructed becoming a trunk road. Secondly, there are powers here to make new trunk roads altogether. Of course, the decision as to what are to be new trunk roads is a very fundamental matter in town and country planning. It seems to me that the Minister of Town and Country Planning is the person who has just as great or even a greater interest in this than the Minister of Transport who is going to look after the road. Consequently, the object of this Amendment is to secure that these new trunk roads in particular shall not be designed and established without proper consultation with the Minister of Town and Country Planning.
When I moved an Amendment analogous to this to another Bill a few days ago in your Lordships' House it was refused by the Government spokesman on the ground that such a consultation with the Minister of Town and Country Planning was implicit in the Bill, and, consequently, I withdrew the Amendment. But this time, the situation is rather different, because here in the clause it is stated that the Minister shall keep under review the national system of roads, and if he is satisfied, after taking into consideration the requirements of local and national planning, he shall do so and so. That is no longer only implicit in the Bill; it is explicit that this Minister, the Minister of Transport, has got to think about town and country planning. That seems to be the most odd situation, and if you are going to put in the Bill that the Minister has to think about town and country planning, surely the Minister who has to do that ought to be the Minister of Town and Country Planning. Consequently, I think the argument of the representative of the Government last week that it was implicit in the Bill, and that therefore I must withdraw the Amendment, rebounds very forcibly on his head now that it is accepted in the Bill. It ought

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to be clear that it is the Minister of Town and Country Planning who ought to do it. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 18, at end insert the said proviso.—(Lord Balfour of Burleigh.)
LORD WALKDEN: I am glad that town and country planning continues to receive such keen support from the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, but I am sorry to have to disappoint him by saying that we cannot see our way to accept his Amendment. Our first reason is that it is not necessary. This Bill was prepared in consultation with the Minister of Town and Country Planning, and, all through, the work of the Minister of Transport, whether new roads or changes which he previously had power to make, was under consideration with all Departments concerned. What the noble Lord proposes should be put into the Bill involves a very important constitutional principle, namely, whether or not you should have single ministerial direction; whether or not you should interfere with ministerial responsibility by compelling official consultation with another Ministry, both of them being concerned, when a measure comes before the House or is under consideration. That would lead to confusion and perhaps to unhappy incidents. It would be most inadvisable and would be contrary to the practice which we have reached, and under which our system works with the utmost smoothness and in a businesslike way.
The noble Lord does not like what happened on February 7 in relation to another Bill—the Building Restrictions (Wartime Contraventions) Bill, but the principle is exactly the same; and the reasons for objecting on that occasion are precisely applicable to this instance. And it is not merely this instance. When I was working in another place I was on two or three very important committees, one of which dealt with the question of rural water supply. An assurance was wanted that what was done with regard to rural water supply would not disturb the amenities. We were very glad to give such assurance, but we would not put the words in the Bill. There was a Water Bill larger than the one Lord Westwood has brought in this afternoon, where the same questions were raised and rejected by the Committee. A more definite effort was made in the Location of Industries Bill. The
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town and country planning people came along and raised their points in the House and in Committee but, for precisely the same reason, namely a constitutional reason, we could not see our way to accept the Amendments to stipulate official consultations.
I assure the noble Lord that town and country planning will never be absent from the mind of any Minister of Trans, port when he proposes to make a new road. It cannot be. He must consider what he is doing. He must consider what he may improve and what, if he is not careful, he might dis-improve. I hope the noble Lord with that assurance will not press his Amendment.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: I am obliged to the noble Lord for what he has said. If he is prepared to give me an assurance that not only was the Minister of Town and Country Planning consulted during the preparation of this Bill, but that there will be a permanent standard arrangement for interdepartmental consultation at a high official level, I shall have great pleasure in withdrawing the Amendment.
LORD WALKDEN: I can assure the noble Lord that there will be continuous, consultation.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clauses 2 to 7 agreed to.
4.45 p.m.
LORD SANDHURST LORD SANDHURST moved, after Clause 7, to insert the following new clause:
Dual carriageways on new trunk roads.
"Every road constructed by the Minister or by any other highway authority after the passing of this Act and intended for use as a trunk road shall if used for traffic moving in opposite directions have at least two carriageways each not less than thirty feet wide separated by a strip of land at least five feet wide and the highway authority shall plant and maintain a hedge along the centre line of the said strip of land "
The noble Lord said: The Amendment standing in my name is quite a simple one, but it has a very definite object. There are far too many roads which have since been turned into trunk roads, which were single carriageway roads, and which by virtue of the fact that they carried a considerable volume of traffic, were extremely dangerous simply because there was no dividing line between the traffic.

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My Amendment is designed to compel the Minister, when he is making a new stretch of road, to replace some part of the road or to link up the two sections of a trunk road to make it a dual carriageway. It has got to be realized that a trunk road is only made a trunk road when it is carrying national traffic, and in respect of which it is not thought fair that the local authority should have to pay the cost of the upkeep of the road. In other words, it is almost implicit that a trunk road is a road carrying heavy traffic. I would refer the noble Lord who is replying to the report of the Government Committee on Road Safety and in particular to paragraph 129. If I may weary your Lordships by reading part of that paragraph, it is as follows:
"It is now generally accepted that, where space is sufficient and traffic reaches a certain volume, opposing streams of traffic should be separated by a continuous central strip, dual carriageways being thus created to operate as oneway streets…. For the future, however, the arrangement could be made standard practice in the case of all new arterial and sub-arterial roads."
That is a recommendation of the Government's own Committee, and all I am asking the Government to do is to adopt the recommendation of their own Committee and embody it in their own Bill. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 10, line 13, at end insert the said new clause.—(Lord Sandhurst.)
LORD HINDLIP: In supporting this Amendment, my main consideration is one of safety. I am quite convinced in my own mind that a dual carriage roadway is very much safer than a single carriageway. Your Lordships have seen several new roads built within the last twenty-five years, many of them around London. I would like to take one or two examples. One of them is Western Avenue. That is partly a dual carriageway and partly a single carriageway. I regret to say there have been rather a lot of accidents on Western Avenue. I believe that most of them have occurred on the first bit, which is only a single-carriageway. I personally when driving myself always have a feeling of greater safety and lesser risk of accident on a road with a dual carriageway.
As regards the hedge down the middle of the road, which is proposed in the Amendment, the object of this of course
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is to render night driving more safe. I know of one stretch of road which has been constructed in the last ten years or so, which has got a hedge down the middle of it, and that runs a little west out of Bournemouth. I happened to go down it the other day and there was no dazzle from on-coming traffic. Now another thing I notice is that buses are going to be allowed to be built a little wider. I think that was announced by the Ministry of War Transport this morning, and I feel that there is a tendency for all heavy transport vehicles to be built wider in future. If you are only going to have a single carriageway on a trunk road you will find that trunk roads become congested just as the main roads are which now lead out of our great towns. I do hope that in years to come our descendants will not look upon the trunk roads which we are going to build as being as antiquated as we now look upon the roads which have been built in this country in the last twenty-five years.
4.50 p.m.
LORD WALKDEN: It is very refreshing to hear wide and broad ideas vigorously advocated in regard to our roads, especially the roads of the future. I think we have all got away from the old "horse and cart" view of roads and we want to see the best possible highways in our country. That is the view of the Ministry. Indeed, we go rather further than is indicated in this Amendment. To think of a 5ft, space in the middle of a road, with a hedge in it, is not enough; we consider there ought to be a sufficient verge for a wheeled vehicle to go on it, in an emergency, out of the way of the road. Certainly a hedge down the centre of a double road would be a great blessing. Imagine a good laurel hedge six or eight feet high, cutting off dazzle lights from the road on the other side. We are in entire sympathy with the ideas indicated in this Amendment, but a moment's reflection will show that the adoption of it will put something on the Ministry which would be a serious handicap on its work in future; and would be unreasonable and, in some cases, uneconomic and unfair.
If it were put into the Bill that in every instance where a trunk road is made it must consist of two 30ft, ways, divided by space for a hedge, and then one thinks of the cyclist and the pedestrian who have also to be provided for, it seems to me that it would involve always a road 120ft.

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wide. Whilst such roads are desirable and in many cases quite practicable, and no doubt they will be made, that cannot be done in every instance, both because of lack of space and because of various other factors. We purpose having new trunk roads, building them or improving them, right into the Highlands of Scotland. There is one to go from Inverness to Thurso. The economic circumstances north of Inverness, however, are such that would not justify an expenditure of that order, neither would the traffic justify it. It would be a huge white elephant.
The same remark would apply to roads in the English Lake District, probably also to the Derbyshire mountains, and certainly to North and South Wales. It is not so much the economic factor as the physical factor. If we have to shave off a whole mountain side, what will our town and country planning friends think of it? If we leave a ghastly gash where the dynamite has blown away a lot of granite to make room for this tremendously wide road, what would they say? Moreover, it would be a most expensive process and would deter the Minister from making new roads which will be needed. Therefore I hope the Amendment will not be pressed and that the two noble Lords who have suggested it will accept our assurance that in so far as their ideas can be carried out they will be, but I hope they will not impose on us the obligation to do this in all cases.
LORD WALERAN: I would like to add one word on this question. I rather regret that my noble friend Lord Walkden should suggest that the Minister of Town and. Country Planning would find the thing too expensive if it is going to save lives. Wherever these trunk roads are being made or rebuilt, consideration should not be given to beauty but to the practicability of the road and its safety. I. hope that will always be kept in view. We have had a lot of talk on road accidents in both Houses, and I feel that everyone in this House would look askance at the Ministry of Town and Country Planning getting in the way by saying, "We must not lose this beauty spot; we would rather lose lives."
LORD TEYNHAM: I should like to support the. Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst. If we are going to build trunk roads we must build
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them with dual carriageways. The noble Lord who has replied for the Government has suggested that it is difficult to provide for pedestrians and cyclists. There is not a big allowance which has to be made for them, and we must do it when we build new trunk roads. The point was made that possibly in Scotland it might be necessary to cut through rock, and so on. One would not do that unless the traffic warranted it, and then it must be done. As the Bill stands, we may get trunk roads built which will be quite unsuitable to the traffic. The decision must be based on the traffic, and I do not quite follow the noble Lord's argument on that point. I strongly support this Amendment.
EARL HOWE: I think there is a slight confusion of thought in the minds of certain noble Lords at the present moment, due perhaps to the expression used in the Bill, namely, "a trunk road." If your Lordships will look at the Memorandum on the Layout and Construction of Roads, published by the Ministry of Transport, a copy of which I have here, you will see that it defines a road requiring a dual carriageway as one which is expected to carry 400 vehicles at the peak hour. In those cases it says that dual carriageways will be desirable. I do not know whether all the trunk roads which the Minister taking over will stand that test—400 vehicles at the peak hour—but if they do, hope the Minister will carry out what is laid down for him in his own bible here—the Memorandum on the Construction and Layout of Roads.
There is one other point I would like to submit to the Minister. Where you are making a dual carriageway, it surely is not necessary in all cases to make both carriageways run on the same alignment. Much has been done in other countries and much can be done here to meet the views of those who are keen about town and country planning by running one road on one alignment, and another road on another alignment, when you come to hilly country. It enormously facilitates matters if you do that. I do not suppose many of the trunk roads the Minister had in mind will really go through the Lake District or North Wales. I hope they will keep clear the Lake District and the Peak District of Derbyshire. What I envisage much more are the great main arterial highways of the country. In all those which the Minister will probably

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take over, in so far as they are highways which are expected to carry more than 400 vehicles an hour, I hope he will give an assurance that, even if he is not able to accept this Amendment, it will at any rate be the practice of the Minister, so far as he can, to see that they are dual carriageways separated by a medial stretch, as is suggested, and that he will not proceed necessarily in all cases on the same alignment.
LORD WALKDEN: May I point out that the noble Lord who last spoke has differed from the proposal in the Amendment? If he will be kind enough to look through the debates on the Second Reading of this Bill, he will find we are seeking to act on the very advice he has given—to have deviations where there are two carriageways, to have footpaths away from the main roads and to have cycle tracks also separated. Indeed, it is the purpose of this Bill to get rid of the previous legal stipulation that they must be in alignment.
EARL HOWE: The Memorandum on the Layout and Construction of Roads does not say anything about it at all, and it is what is in this document which is carried out by the Ministry.
LORD WALKDEN: That may be, but the Bill says a lot about it and I said a lot about it on the Second Reading. As for the point about safety, of course that is always in the forefront of our minds, and every precaution will be taken to make our roads safer as well as better for the traffic. The provision of a trunk road does depend on the amount of traffic to be provided for, and on that road I mentioned from Inverness to Thurso there are not 400 vehicles at the peak period, there are only 250 in the 24 hours. To provide this great road in those circumstances would be preposterous. Therefore I do hope the Amendment will not be pressed.
LORD SANDHURST: I cannot say that I am entirely satisfied with the reply I have been given. So far as the road to Thurso is concerned, I strongly suspect that the road already exists and that it will be a case of improvement and not of entire reconstruction. This Amendment only applies to entirely new construction and not to improvements. I should like to know whether the Govern-
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ment would consider putting in an Amendment which would make it compulsory, where a certain volume of traffic was envisaged, for the road to be a dual carriageway road. Perhaps the Government would consider doing that before the next stage. If they could give me an assurance on that, I would gladly withdraw the Amendment.
LORD WALKDEN: I am afraid we cannot agree to put detail of that kind into the Bill. It will be a matter of administration and the administration will be open to criticism if necessary.
LORD SANDHURST: I still remain unsatisfied, but I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 8 to 15 agreed to.
Clause 16:
Saving for Rochester Bridge.
16. The provisions of this Act with respect to the transfer of private bridges shall not apply to Rochester Bridge.
5.5 p.m.
LORD AUDLEY LORD AUDLEY moved, at the end of the clause, to insert: "Bideford Bridge and Barnstaple Bridge." The noble Lord said: My object in moving this Amendment is that Bideford Bridge and Barnstaple Bridge may continue under the administration of the existing Trusts. Very briefly, Bideford Bridge is scheduled as an ancient monument. As many of your Lordships may know, it is a fourteenth century bridge, and is probably one of the most beautiful and best known of the many historical pieces of architecture in the whole of Devon. Barnstaple Bridge is also a very famous and ancient bridge, and its history dates back even further. Both these bridges are under Trusts which in turn come under the Charity Commissioners. The finances of the Trusts are almost identical, and appear to be very sound. The Bideford Bridge Trust has property bringing in an income of £2,365 a year, and the Trust has capital of more than £150,000. The Barnstaple Bridge Trust has approximately the same capital.
The Minister, I understand, was approached on this matter, when certain undertakings were asked for. Those have since been given. The undertakings agreed to by the Trust are that the Trustees undertake to carry out whatever work in

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the future may be required to meet the needs of trunk road traffic. As I have already said, it would appear that their resources are ample for this purpose. I therefore feel confident that the Amendment standing in my name is a sound one, and I beg to move it, as I have said, in order that the administration of these famous bridges may be continued under the ancient Trusts established so many years ago, which have so faithfully and efficiently discharged their duties up to the present time. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 16, line 6, at end insert ("Bideford Bridge and Barnstaple Bridge").—(Lord Audley.)
LORD WALKDEN: This Amendment was suggested in another place, and has been under consideration for some time by the Minister, who is concerned only with the question whether, if he accepts it, these two beautiful old bridges will continue to be looked after in the future as well as they have been in the past. Our information agrees entirely with that imparted to the House by the noble Lord. There are abundant Trust funds, over £150,000 in each case, funded from original founders of the bridge—a most pleasant thing to discover. The Government have no intention or desire to do anything but to conserve such good things. Therefore we have great pleasure in accepting the Amendment, seeing that the Minister is now satisfied that it is the right thing to do.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 16, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clause agreed to.
5. p.m.
First Schedule:

TRUNK ROADS BILL.
  ADDITIONAL ROADS WHICH BECOME TRUNK ROADS.

    PART I.
    ROADS IN COUNTIES.

    Name of trunk road.

    General description of route.

    Ministry of war Transport classification number.

    LORD SALTOUN LORD SALTOUN moved, after the reference to Dennyloanhead-Kincardine-Kirkcaldy-St. Andrews road, to insert:

    "Edinburgh—Inverkeithing

    Edinburgh—South

    A.90."

    Queensferry—North

    Queensferry—Inverkeithing

    The noble Lord said: In moving this Amendment which stands in my name I will not take up much of your Lordships' time. I would just like to remark that I always understood these trunk roads were first established very largely for strategic purposes. It happens that according to the Bill now before your Lordships when the trunk road gets as far north as Edinburgh it there stops and does not go on until we get to Inverkeithing. I do not know whether it is supposed that the enemy will occupy the space in between, or when the connexion between the two branches of the road is to be established. If I may quote from a poet who is not Robbie Burns, perhaps His Majesty's Government may choose the method "that like the nousling mole doth make his path still underground until he overtake." Or perhaps they are going to fly the distance. It does seem that it is necessary to make a connexion, and I move that it-be made.
    Amendment moved—
    Page 27, line 48, at end insert—

    ("Edinburgh—Inverkeithing

    Edinburgh—South

    A.90.")

    Queensierrv—North

    Queensterrv—Inverkeithing

    —(Lord Saltoun).
    THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: Before I say anything on this, perhaps I ought to disclose the fact that this road from South Queensferry to Edinburgh runs almost entirely through my land, although I think no one who has seen the plans will think it will improve my land in any way—probably the reverse. I would like to call Lord Walkden's attention to the fact that we have been striving for and still hope to have a Forth Bridge one of these days. When we get out of the Forth Bridge on one side or the other, we have got to go either to Perth one way or to Edinburgh the other. It does seem to me that it must have been an error on the part of the Cabinet, probably due to the fact that we had not got a single Scots member in it except Mr. Westwood, who has been ill for four months, that this road was omitted. I am quite sure that after careful consideration on the part of the Government they will accept this Amendment standing in tie name of my noble friends, Lord Saltoun and the Earl of Elgin.
    LORD SEMPILL: I wish to support this Amendment. The noble Earl, Lord

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    Elgin, a joint sponsor of it with Lord Saltoun, telephoned yesterday from a bed of sickness, and asked me to apologize to your Lordships for the fact that he is prevented from being here to speak in support of the Amendment. Your Lordships who were present in the House on February 5 will be aware of the noble Earl's views. In a debate in another place, the Minister said that certain arrangements had been made in regard to the construction of a bridge, and that therefore the matter was not so important; but surely the mere fact that any arrangements may have been made, or may even be in contemplation, for a bridge makes it more than ever necessary that the road referred to by noble Lords who have spoken, from Edinburgh to Inverkeithing via South Queensferry and North Queensferry, should be scheduled on the list of trunk roads. As your Lordships will be aware, by including that section from Edinburgh to Inverkeithing via South Queensferry and North Queensferry there would be a saving of some thirty miles in the journey to the north from Edinburgh to Perth. I think it is essential that this gap should be filled, and I beg to support the Amendment that this addition be made to the Schedule.
    EARL HOWE: I do not know whether a mere Englishman may be allowed to say a word on this topic, but, as a great many of your Lordships know just as well as I do, this road is certainly one of the most important links between the Lowlands—as I suppose they are called—and the Highlands What occurs to me is this. We are hoping to develop the tourist industry in this country, and I trust that that hope will be realized. I am certain that the bulk of the tourists coming over here, it may be from America or from other countries, will want to see the Forth Bridge. If there is any proof of that required I may recall that during the war, as no doubt many of your Lordships know, swarms of American soldiers and swarms of all sorts of other people went to Edinburgh, and took the first bus they could catch to go straight to South Queensferry to look at the Forth Bridge. They then crossed the Forth by the Ferry and away they went up to Inverkeithing on the other side. I am certain that a road bridge across the Forth
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    somewhere in that area would be a most valuable link and would do more to encourage tourist traffic than almost anything else that could be done in that part of the world. I hope that the Minister will see his way to accede to the requests made in this matter to-day.
    LORD KINNAIRD: I would just like in a word to support the Amendment. As one coming from further north I think this would be a very valuable addition to our road system and a great attraction for tourist traffic. I hope it will not be delayed until a new Forth Bridge has been decided upon. We already have the railway bridge over the Forth, and if this project which we are now discussing is put off until the new bridge is decided upon we may have to wait for a long time. I think it is important that the road should be made a trunk road forthwith.
    THE MARQUESS OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR: If there are two points upon which Scottish desires are unanimous they are that there should be a Scottish airport and that there should be a road across the Forth. I cannot see why when we are discussing a trunk road Bill that particular aspect should be left out. I hope that the fact that it has been left out hitherto has been due solely to the illness of the Secretary of State for Scotland. I cannot help thinking that if he had been a fit man at the time when this Bill was drawn up a Forth road bridge would have been mentioned. I do hope and trust that Scotland may be sympathetically treated by your Lordships and that ere long we shall have not only a Scottish airport but also a direct road running north and south from what is described as the Lowlands to what I may perhaps call the Lowlands of the north—that is Dundee and Aberdeenshire. I hope that the noble Lord who is in charge of this Bill will undertake to have this put in at the Report stage if it is not done now.
    LORD WALKDEN: This was a subject of some quite pleasant passages in the Second Reading debate, and the whole matter was thrashed out pretty thoroughly then. But it has been raised once more on this Amendment for which the noble Earl, Lord Elgin, and Lord Saltoun are responsible. I am sure that we all regret that owing to illness the noble Earl is not able to be present. Personally I have

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    always found his contributions to our debates most refreshing. There are two propositions raised on the Amendment, and I may say at once that we do not share the pessimism of the noble Earl, Lord Rosebery, about the new Forth Bridge. No one need be pessimistic about that. Agreement has been reached between the associated local authorities in Scotland and the Ministry of Transport. Terms have been agreed, and the bridge is going to be made as soon as labour and materials are available. Do not let there be any lingering dubiety on that score. The Minister has undertaken to provide a 75 per cent. grant and the local authorities will be responsible for the remaining 25 per cent. The bridge will be built. Now the only remaining point is whether these two roads, one from Edinburgh to Queensferry and the other from Queens-ferry to Inverkeithing—
    THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: There are two Queensferrys, one on each side of the Forth—South Queensferry and North Queensferry.
    LORD WALKDEN: I am obliged for the correction. Many years ago, like the curious soldiers to whom reference has been made, when I went to Scotland on my first journey I lost no time in going to see the Forth Bridge. I went along this very road from Edinburgh to South Queensferry. I did not go over the private ferry that would have taken me across to North Queensferry. That has been the subject of some criticism, but it is a piece of private enterprise for which we are not responsible. Then with regard to the road from North Queensferry to Inverkeithing, this and the other road are both first-class roads—they are listed as Ago, I believe. The grant towards upkeep will be raised now to 75 per cent. It would have been only 60 per cent. if arrangements had not been made recently to increase it—so something has been done "while you wait," so to speak. But the proposal for taking over the two roads is one to which my right honourable friend the Minister cannot agree.
    The making of the Forth Bridge is going to cause a difference to both roads. About half way along the road from Edinburgh it will deviate to the left and cut along to a spot called Mackintosh's Rock—that, of course, is not the sort of rock which a boy buys at a shop and
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    eats, but a place. It is from there that the bridge will start, then the route will go away to the north on a new road, better than either of the roads we are talking about. Therefore, the Minister objects to taking over the old road when there is going to be some new road and a new bridge. Having regard to these matters, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw this Amendment on my assurance that this matter is closely in the mind of the Minister. It was first considered by the former Minister of Transport, Lord Leathers, who went up to see these places in July last. The present Minister has been up north himself and has clinched the matter. In due course no doubt both road and bridge will be built, then we shall be able to go to the Highlands—those of us who are able to travel north by car—under much better conditions than we are able to do at the present time.
    THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: I think we are all aware that there is going to be a new road from Edinburgh to South Queensferry. That was the road to which I referred and to which most noble Lords have referred. I have seen the plans, and that is the road which we hope will be put in the National Trunk Road Bill. So far as I can make cut the only hope we are given is that the grant is going up from 60 per cent. to 75 per cent.—and the Government is haggling over this meagre matter of 15 per cent. in dealing with a road which is one of the most important not only in Scotland but in Britain. As the noble Earl, Lord Howe, has said, we all want to encourage the tourist traffic of this country. We want as many people as possible to go north and we hope then that as many of them as can do so will make use of the road. Lord Walkden has said that he used it years ago. Why cannot the Government give way over this? It is a very paltry matter after all. They have spent plenty of money in other ways, why cannot they spend this paltry sum in Scotland? If this was in England the money would be forthcoming.
    LORD SALTOUN: I am very much obliged to the noble Lord for his sympathetic reply, but there is one question I should like to ask. Can he give me any indication of the time when we may expect the road?
    LORD WALKDEN: We want to get the bridge made first. Then we shall know where the road will be. There are two ideas about the bridge and the Minister favoured the Mackintosh Rock.
    THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: It has finally been decided by both Governments. The bridge plan, the Mackintosh Rock bridge and the plan for the new road have been agreed.
    LORD WALKDEN: It is no good making the road up to the Mackintosh Rock before the bridge is there and as for making the whole of the road to South Queens-ferry, a large part of it is going to be set aside and diverted westwards to go up to Mackintosh Rock. From North Queens-ferry to Inverkeithing we want to make the road straight, as at present it wriggles like a worm.
    LORD WOOLTON: We are getting very mixed on this side because we thought that the Mackintosh Rock was in the middle of the river!
    LORD WALKDEN: Whether it is in the river or not it is going to be used, we hope, as a base for the new bridge.
    LORD SALTOUN: The noble Lord is still unable to give any suggestion as to when we may hope for the date?
    LORD WALKDEN: Our difficulties of labour and materials are so great that we cannot give you a date. I hope you will let it rest where I have put it. It will be carried out in due course.
    LORD SALTOUN: I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    First Schedule agreed to.
    Remaining Schedules agreed to.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (FINANCIAL PROVISIONS) BILL.
  Read 3a (according to order) and passed.

  NATIONAL SERVICE (RELEASE OF CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS) BILL.
  5.26 p.m.
  Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
  THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (LORD NATHAN): My Lords, I beg to
  424
  move that this Bill be now read a third time.
  Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Lord Nathan.)
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, on the Committee stage my friends and I gave an undertaking that we would consider carefully the speech of the noble Lord on reading it in Hansard to see whether it met the difficulties which we had raised on this Bill. I am afraid I am bound to return to this for a few minutes because I do not think, having read carefully all that the noble Lord said and having considered the Bill again, that we are in any way met on either of the two points which we raised last time. I would put these two points to the noble Lord. It is not a question of whether a conscientious objector becomes liable on release to direction in the same way that an ordinary civilian of the same age is liable to direction. Of course he does. Nobody doubts that, but that is not the point. The question is the way in which direction is operating and the way in which the holding of people in their jobs under the Essential Work Order is operating. Will the conscientious objector not in fact be better treated than the man who is held at his job?
  The second point is this: Why should the conscientious objector be released at all before the last man in his age and group is released from any of the armed Services? I hope the noble Lord will interrupt me if I am wrong. He knows that the last thing I want to do is to mislead him or that there should be any misunderstanding. The conscientious objector is going to be released when the man of his age and category due for release in the Army is released. Is that so?
  LORD NATHAN: After.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: After, very well. The man in his age and category in the Army can be released first and the day after that the conscientious objector becomes entitled to release. It may be that men of the same age and category as conscientious objectors are held in the Air Force, possibly in India or anywhere else. They may be in the Navy, but it is more likely in the Air Force. What we say is that we do not want to do any injustice to a conscientious objector, but we do say that that conscientious objector

  425
  who has been excused from any military service at all should not be released until all the men in his age and category in any of the three fighting Services have been released. It seems to me that there is a simple element of justice in that and I should have thought it would have been much better for the Government in dealing with the inevitable difficulties which they have over demobilization. It must make for trouble if fighting men are held and conscientious objectors of the same age and category are released. The only reason which is given for this is that he was called up for the Army and therefore it is convenient to treat him as a man in the Army. But the Army is not really doing this; it is the Ministry of Labour.
  It is perfectly simple for the Ministry of Labour to know from the Army, the Navy or the Air Force when the last man, say of 29 years of age in a group, is released. They notify the Ministry of Labour and when the last man is out of the last Fighting Services then the conscientious objector should get his release. There cannot be any administrative difficulty in doing that. It cannot hurt the War Office because the people who are going to administer this are the Ministry of Labour who have put the man into the job, and even at this late stage I ask, in the interests of fairness to the fighting men in the Services and in order that there should be as little difficulty as possible over demobilization, that the Government will do the reasonable and fair thing as between the fighting man and the conscientious objector and let all the fighting men out first. That is the first problem, and the noble Lord has not denied—I am sure he would not attempt to deny—that I have stated the position quite fairly and accurately.
  Now let me come to the question of the position of the conscientious objector, vas-à-vis the civilian who is serving in the same employment. In certain occupations, civilians are still held under the Essential Work Order, or whatever it may be. In agriculture men are held and are told, because of the needs of agriculture, that they cannot leave their employment. But Men are not being directed into agriculture today. Do not tell me about being liable to be directed. I know the Minister of Labour has power to direct into a number of industries, but the real point is not whether there is a legal power, but what in day-to-day practice is the Minister of
  426
  Labour doing, and what does he intend to do. That is the fair way of putting it. Take two men of 28 years of age, one a conscientious objector who has got excused by the Tribunal, and who has been sent to work on a farm, and the other a man who, perhaps, tried to get into the Army and was unfit. He also has been directed or has volunteered to work on a farm. Those two men are working side by side on the same farm, but the conscientious objector is released, and the man who did not object, the ordinary civilian, is held. That, surely, is not fair as between those two civilians, because, in fact, a conscientious objector is a civilian.
  It is not necessary to say the Minister of Labour has a legal power to send a conscientious objector to that farm. The Government are not directing those people on to farms to-day. When that conscientious objector is released, he will not be sent back to that or any other farm. He will be left free to get a better-paid job somewhere else. People are being held in the Civil Service also, I understand, but they are not being directed into the Civil Service. If a conscientious objector in the noble Lord's own department gets released, he will not be sent back by the Minister of Labour to the War Office. He will be free to get a job where he can, but the others will be held. I have tried to put it as fairly as I can. I believe I have stated with accuracy what the factual position is, and, if what I have said is correct, the way this thing is working out is unfair. In my opinion the objector ought to be held until the ordinary civilian of the same age and category is released, and I think that will appeal to the common sense and the common fairness of this House.
  5.34 p.m.
  LORD NATHAN: The noble Viscount has returned to the charge. The matters he has raised this evening are, in substance, the same as those raised both on Second Reading and in Committee. But that is no reason why they should not be raised. Let me take first the actual facts as regards this Bill. It is a Bill designed for a purpose, and that purpose is to grant release. Apart from this Bill there would be no possibility of the conscientious objectors in question being released until the end of the emergency under the National Service Acts. A machinery,

  427
  therefore, has to be created for this purpose of effecting release. The machinery chosen is the age and service group system as applicable to the Armed Forces, and the Army has been selected as the force by reference to which the age and service group of the conscientious objector shall be ascertained. This is because it is much the largest force, and the system of release there under is well understood and is simple. What is perhaps the most important thing of all is that it is predictable in the sense that it applies to a whole number in an age and service group and is announced beforehand.
  With regard to the other Services, different considerations apply because in those Services there are differences of release according to trades and occupations, rather than to the mere fact of being a member of the Service. The noble Viscount opposite says that instead of being related to the Army, instead of the objector being postponed in his release till after the conclusion of the period fixed for the release of his age and service group—I am afraid I have lost the thread of my thoughts, and must ask the forgiveness of the noble Viscount.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: Do you want my point again?
  LORD NATHAN: No, I know your point. Let me put it to the noble Viscount this way. Under the scheme as I have related before to your Lordships on previous occasions, and as I have indicated now, the conscientious objector knows when he will be released. It is noticeable that although this Bill was introduced for Second Reading in another place as long ago as the beginning of November, no single instance has reached my ears—and no single instance has come to the attention of the Ministry of Labour and National Service—where any Service man in any of the three Services has made any complaint or any suggestion objecting to this scheme on the ground that it was unfair or otherwise. In fact, it has been accepted completely by those serving in the Armed Forces. The complaint which has been made arises not from the Armed Forces.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: Have conscientious objectors been released?
  LORD NATHAN: This Bill, with these proposals contained in it, as I have explained, has been before the country since November, and no single complaint has heretofore been made.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: As no conscientious objectors haw been released, the soldiers, sailors, and airmen cannot possibly know. They do not read either the noble Lord's speeches or mine in barrack rooms. Of course, the time when the noble Lord will get into trouble is when the Bill has gone through and he before fighting men. It is a most extraordinary argument that we are not to do justice because some fighting men have not complained about the Bill.
  LORD NATHAN: My experience in the Department in which I hold office is that a matter has only to be raised in either House of Parliament, or in the Press, in however obscure a journal, to spread like a bush rumour among all the Forces, wherever they may be, and the most unlikely and unexpected complaints or references are made to the Service Departments. I am quite certain that if this Bill had roused any of the kind of feeling to which the noble Viscount has referred, then during the period of the three or four months that have elapsed since it was introduced and debated on Second Reading, Committee stage and Third Reading in the House of Commons, and debated on Second Reading and Committee stage in your Lordships' House, we should have had a good many complaints, and it must be assumed, therefore, that it has been accepted by the Forces and by the public at large.
  The noble Viscount referred to an entirely different point, namely, the relative position of two civilians, one a conscientious objector and the other not a conscientious objector. I stated in answer to a question put to me by, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, in Committee, and I now repeat, that the position of the two civilians is this: the non-conscientious objector remains in the work to which he has been directed, and the conscientious objector is released from the particular occupation to which he has been directed, because it is the whole purpose of the Bill that he shall be so released, and if he were not, the purpose of the Bill would be wholly frustrated.

  429
  But the conscientious objector remains liable to direction.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: Yes, liable to, but is he directed?
  LORD NATHAN: I repeat he is liable to direction. I repeat what I said on the previous occasion, and which, apparently, in spite of a close study, the noble Viscount has not observed in the report of my speech. I repeat that the Minister of Labour is exercising, and is proposing to continue to exercise, his power of direction so far as it relates to men of what is commonly called military age, namely, at present, those under 30, and that it is exercised in relation to industry, and in relation to agriculture, and it is proposed to exercise it as far as he may consider appropriate in the case of conscientious objectors who may be released under this Bill. I do not think I can make a statement more comprehensive or more definite than that.
  EARL DE LA WARR: Would the noble Lord just be a little more explicit? I gather he says that a conscientious objector will be released from the obligation to work upon the land, but he remains liable to direction by the Ministry of Labour presumably to some other occupation. Will the noble Lord tell us what other occupation at the present moment, in the light of the present food situation, is more important in the national interest than work on the land?
  LORD NATHAN: If the conscientious objector had been directed to work in agriculture, and if he is of the appropriate age and service group which under this Bill would entitle him to be released, he will be released from that occupation. But he will remain directable to some other occupation, and should the Minister of Labour consider it best in the public interest that he should be directed, so he will be directed.
  EARL DE LA WARR: The noble Lord has not begun to answer my question. The question is what is the point, in the light of the present food situation, of removing the direction from the conscientious objector, which compels him to work on the land, and then retaining the power to direct him elsewhere, and why this disregard of the importance of the food position at the present moment?
  LORD NATHAN: The conscientious objector, by claiming to be registered as a conscientious objector, has exercised a right deliberately given to him by Parliament. The exercise of that right exposed him to certain disabilities, one of which was that he should no longer be a free man, but, instead of serving in the Armed Forces, he should be liable to serve in some occupation to which he was directed. On the assumption made by the noble Lord opposite, he has been compulsorily directed to agriculture. Service in agriculture is therefore the service which he is performing in the interest of the State in compliance with the rights and obligations expressed deliberately by Parliament. It is now desired that he should be released from the obligations—
  EARL DE LA WARR: Why?
  LORD NATHAN: —released from the obligations which were imposed on him by reason of the fact that he is a conscientious objector. The only way of effecting release is to effect release! And that implies that he should be—
  A NOBLE LORD: Released!
  LORD NATHAN: —withdrawn, that he should be allowed again to resume the position of a citizen who is not subject to the direction of the Conscientious Objectors' Tribunal. But he remains subject to the general law of the land, applicable to all those below a certain age and not in the Armed Forces, and one of those obligations is that he shall be liable to direction at the judgment of, and by the action of, the Minister of Labour. I have said on Third Reading more than once, I have said to-day more than once, and I now say for a third time—
  A NOBLE LORD: That is too many.
  LORD NATHAN: —that the Minister has exercised, and will continue to exercise, his right of direction in respect of men of military age with regard to industry, including agriculture.
  EARL DE LA WARR: Am I to take it these men may be directed back to agriculture?
  LORD NATHAN: No.
  EARL DE LA WARR: No, they may be—this is what I am trying to get at—directed into any other industry than agriculture. Could the noble Lord now per-

  431
  haps answer the question I originally asked, and, indeed, which I have asked him twice? Why, if he is maintaining the right to direct these men, should they not be directed into the industry which is suffering most from shortage of labour at the present moment, and which is likely to suffer a further shortage of labour and cause immense hardship to the country?
  LORD NATHAN: I would answer the noble Earl by saying if that were done it would make a fraud and a farce of the Bill, because it would not be release at all; it would be going through the machinery of release while depriving the citizen of the actuality.
  EARL DE LA WARR: I am sorry to interrupt again, but it is most important. The noble Lord suggests now it would not be making a fraud of this Bill if, on being released from agriculture, he was directed into cotton. It would only be a fraud if he were directed into agriculture.
  LORD NATHAN: The point is surely clear.
  EARL DE LA WARR: No, not a bit.
  LORD NATHAN: It is surely clear—
  EARL DE LA WARR: No.
  LORD NATHAN: It is surely clear to the noble Earl that, where it is determined there shall be a release, that means there shall be a release from the obligations sunder which the conscientious objector rested, and if that involves that he should be released from that particular occupation of agriculture on the assumption that he has been directed to it, from that occupation he will be released. I repeat from that occupation he will be released. But a conscientious objector, who was employed in some other occupation, on being released may be directed into agriculture.
  EARL DE LA WARR: He may be directed back into agriculture?
  LORD NATHAN: Certainly.
  EARL DE LA WARR: The noble Lord said that would be a fraud. The noble Lord—
  LORD NATHAN: I hope the noble Lord will not do me an injustice. If
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  he will be good enough to listen to me I will do my best to make myself clear. You have your conscientious objector who has been directed to agriculture. He is to be released from his obligations as a conscientious objector. He is therefore released from agriculture, but he remains liable to be directed elsewhere; and for all I can say in anticipation of a particular person, he will, in fact, be directed to some other occupation. That is the combination—
  SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Why?
  EARL DE LA WARR: Why is that not a fraud?
  LORD NATHAN: That is the combination of the operation of two principles: first, that release means release, and second that liability to direction means liability to direction.
  EARL DE LA WARR: No, no.
  LORD NATHAN: The noble Viscount opposite is far too experienced and far too shrewd a business man not to understand quite clearly. He does himself an injustice in professing he does not understand how the scheme operates. By parity of reasoning, a conscientious objector who is in the engineering industry is released from the engineering industry, because that is the method, and the only method, of releasing him from his obligations.
  EARL DE LA WARR: I think I see—
  LORD NATHAN: I cannot give way to the noble Earl again. Man-power in agriculture, therefore, may not only remain as great as it is now, but may, under this release scheme, be actually increased; and I hope it will satisfy, on that point, the noble Lord opposite.
  EARL DE LA WARR: May I have an assurance from the noble Lord that those working in engineering will be directed to agriculture?
  LORD NATHAN: The noble Earl will agree that, as I have wished to do, I have shown courtesy to him, but I cannot give way indefinitely. We must get on. There was a third question put to me by the noble Viscount, and that was with regard to the position of civil servants. He pointed out, with perfect accuracy, that civil servants are liable to be held—that is under Defence Regulation 58AAA. I

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  am answering a question the noble Viscount specifically put to me.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: Yes, I am listening.
  LORD NATHAN: The regulation does not exclude the right of the civil servant to apply to his chief, the Permanent Secretary, the head of his own Department, for release, and if that release be denied to him he has a right of appeal. But it is perfect, true—
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: The conscientious objector has a right to release; the other has a right to appeal.
  LORD NATHAN: It is perfectly true the civil servant is held, subject to that right of appeal. The point that the noble Lord put to me as to there being two civil servants, one a conscientious objector and the other not, one held under the Regulation and the other released under this Bill, does not, in fact, arise, because conscientious objectors from the Civil Service have not been directed back by the Tribunals to the Civil Service, nor have Tribunals directed into the Civil Service any who were not in the Civil Service before. Therefore the position which the noble Lord put to me is one that does not and cannot arise in the way in which he suggested it might.
  Now I have spoken upon the three objections that were taken on this occasion. I think they have all been taken on previous occasions, to a greater or less degree, by the noble Lord Opposite. The object of this scheme, to put it again in a single sentence, is to enable the conscientious objector to be released who otherwise would not be releasable until the end of the emergency under the National Service Acts, and the releases to be effected in such a way as to do substantial justice between one member of the community and another member.
  5.57 p.m.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, I can only speak again with the leave of the House. I am bound to say that I think this is a most unsatisfactory position. It is not a large House, but rather than do injustice we had better not pass a Bill if it is a thoroughly unjust Bill. What I do suggest would be very wise of the Government would be to consider this a little further and put down an Amendment.
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  They could put down an Amendment on Third Reading. This Bill is an unjust Bill as it stands. It is not only an unjust Bill, it is a very silly Bill, because you take a man out of agriculture and you say he is liable to direction, but the only thing you will not direct him back into is agriculture, which needs him and which he knows how to do. You direct a man into engineering, and then you take him out and presumably direct him into agriculture, if he is an engineer.
  We have tried to help the Government over a large number of these measures and I think they will say we have had some very useful debates to-day. The Lord Chancellor and some others have been extremely helpful. We have tried to make Bills better Bills and have made some very useful Amendments. I do not believe anybody sitting in any quarter of this House believes this Bill is a reasonable Bill as it stands, or would be satisfied to pass the Bill as it stands. If necessary, I will formally move that the debate be adjourned, but I hope the Leader of the House will do so. There cannot be any great hurry to pass this Bill about conscientious objectors. They are not going to be released tomorrow morning. Indeed, it will not really do any harm if a few of them stay on the land for a few more days until the German prisoners arrive. It cannot do any harm to keep them on the land while U.N.O. resolutions on food are being passed and other things are being considered.
  I would suggest to the Leader of the House that instead of making me move the Motion, by common consent we may have the debate adjourned to a day next week when a little more thought can be given to it. If the noble Lord would like me to do so, I will move accordingly, but perhaps he will.
  VISCOUNT ADDISON: You move it.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: Then. I move that the debate on this Bill be adjourned.
  Moved, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Viscount Swinton.)
  VISCOUNT ADDISON: There seems to be some misunderstanding, or not sufficient clarity of understanding on this matter, and I think perhaps it might be useful if we did adjourn.
  On Question, Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned accordingly.

  STRAITS SETTLEMENTS (REPEAL) BILL [H.L.]
  6 p.m.
  Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
  VISCOUNT ADDISON: I beg to move that this Bill be read a third time. In doing so, perhaps I might say that my right honourable friend, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, has looked into two matters into which he was asked to look by noble Lords opposite. He has considered the point of further consultation, as it was suggested, with experienced persons, or, as an alternative, the sending out of a Commission. He does not think the sending out of a Commission would be at all a practical and useful way of dealing with the matter, but he is quite prepared, and he proposes to do so in deference to the request that was made to him, to take a number of gentlemen with whom we are all well acquainted and who are in this country and to have a formal consultation with them.
  With regard to the religious authority of the Sultans, I think noble Lords are now aware of the proposal of my right honourable friend that the Attorney-General of the Malayan Union shall give a certificate in respect of Bills, and if a Bill is certified as relating solely to the Mahomedan religion, it will be solely within the jurisdiction of the Sultans.
  Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Viscount Addison.)
  LORD ALTRINCHAM: My Lords, I rise for one purpose only. That is to thank the noble Viscount opposite for the two statements he has made, and to say that they give very great satisfaction on this side of the House. We are grateful to him for having given such consideration to the suggestions, and to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and are well content that the Bill should proceed on that basis.
  On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
  6.4 p.m.

  EMERGENCY LAWS (TRANSITIONAL PROVISIONS) BILL.
  Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be
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  read a third time. We have had a good deal of discussion about this Bill; hard things have been said about it, and I myself have said some of the hardest. It it not a Bill that any of us like very much, but I think it is only fair to remember that we are getting rid of the Defence Regulations, and that is something we all like very much. Therefore we must be prepared to pay a certain price to achieve that wholly desirable object. As your Lordships know, the Defence Regulations will come to an end on the 24th February.
  We had an interesting discussion in Committee on the Bill. Three points were raised. With regard to billeting, I pointed out quite definitely that I knew we could not do away with that provision within the course of two years. There is there a physical limiting factor. There are not, and there cannot be, the necessary number of houses built. Having regard to the number of men who are going to come back from the Forces in the near future, and to the lamentable shortage of houses, if the Minister had the wisdom of Solomon, and if all his labour force, or double his labour force, worked to the utmost capacity, it would be quite impossible to produce a number of houses in the course of two years to make it possible to do away with billeting. I said that then, and I repeat it now.
  Then there was a question raised about the Special Constabulary in Scotland. The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, and the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, pressed me about that. There is a clause in the Bill, your Lordships remember, in which we are making it possible for the calling up of Special Constables to be made at an age as low as eighteen. It is quite true that this is the position in England where by Order in Council, you can call up Special Constables at the age of eighteen, and so far as the permanent Police Force is concerned, in Scotland also you can do it. The noble Lords pointed out, I thought myself with great force, that whereas if you take a regular policeman you submit him to some sort of training, if you call up a man as a Special Constable, you may quite suddenly, when he has not had adequate training, call upon him to perform some rather difficult task.
  I could not accept any Amendment, but after the debate I did convey to my right

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  honourable friend, the Secretary of State for Scotland, my own personal feeling that he ought to send round an instruction to the various police authorities in Scotland making it quite plain that it should only be in the most exceptional circumstances that they should allow any young man who was of the age of 18 only to enrol and work as a Special Constable. I am glad to say that just before I came to this House this afternoon I got his answer, which does enable me to give that assurance to your Lordships. He says he is quite prepared to issue instructions to Chief Constables in Scotland, when the Bill becomes law, that the power of appointing men between the ages of 18 and 20 as Special Constables is not to be used save in very exceptional circumstances. That is not perhaps quite what the noble Lords would have liked, but it is by no means a bad issue out of this controversy. Then we come to the difficult question of the nurses. I am sorry if I seemed, as I think I was, rather waspish when this question was being raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton. I never like to be.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: I was, too, probably.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The noble Viscount was, of course, only doing his duty. It is perfectly proper that Parliament should be astute to look into this matter to see if we are taking the easy course of keeping on the Regulations instead of taking the much more difficult course of seeing if we can evolve some more satisfactory method. He asked for some figures about which I have taken some trouble, and which I am going to give you, but your Lordships will remember that Regulation 32A (B), which is being carried on in this Bill for a period of two years—we can, of course, abolish it earlier but it cannot be kept on for longer than two years—is being carried on for that period subject to a limitation, that is to say, no new Orders can be made. Therefore we can consider the existing Orders as though they were the Order in Council itself, because there can be no new Orders. The position is this. The Order for England and Wales is dated August, 1941, and the Scottish Order is dated some two years later.
  Those Orders, as your Lordships know, only apply to institutions in which recognized rates of pay and conditions of service
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  are being observed, and they do enable the person in charge of a mental institution, or the Board of Control, to dispense with services. Of course, in those institutions where there is a very serious shortage of staff, it is inevitable that applications for release have to be refused, but I am glad to tell your Lordships that it has become now the common practice to give permission to leave in certain cases. For instance, in the case of a woman who took up this work as her war work, and who now wants to leave, because her husband has been demobilized and because she wants to return to her domestic duties, permission is granted for her to do so. There is power, therefore, in hard cases of that sort, to grant permission to leave.
  There is this to be said for the existing Order, which, as I have said, cannot be replaced by a new Order. The existing Order only applies to whole-time, and, of course, remunerated staff, who have twelve months aggregate service. As that Order was dated 1941, it is probable that a very large number of nurses—I will deal with the numbers presently—may be said to have deliberately continued their work, thereby bringing themselves within the Order. But I do not want to stress that too far. I do not think it would be fair to do so for these reasons. First of all a great many of these women conscientiously felt it to be their duty, and they were not going to relinquish their duty whatever the consequences. Secondly, many of them must have felt, I think, that probably when the war ended these Orders would also come to an end. So I do not stress that unduly. But the point is there to be met. In the course of the debate I said:
  "We will do the best we can to make the period for which it must stay as short as possible so that it can be measured in weeks rather than in months."
  I think I overstated it, and that I may have misled your Lordships. Of course, there is no physical obstacle in this case—as in the case of billeting—in the matter of houses. It is simply a question of getting nursing staff to undertake this important but not very pleasant work. It is possible, of course, that we shall get the staff so as to make it a matter of weeks and not of months. On the other hand, I cannot pretend that there is any indication of our succeeding at the present moment.

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  I now come to several specific matters on which information was sought. The noble Lord wanted to know how many nurses are affected. The pre-war, strength—I am taking England and Scotland together, but I can split the figures if necessary—was 39,500. The present strength is 31,300, so you see that there is a shortage of 8,200. That is over 20 per cent. on the pre-war strength. Of that 31,300 some 18,500 are women—that is to say more than 60 per cent. are women.
  Next the noble Lord wanted to know about the number of patients. The number of patients in England to-day is 185,000 odd. I have not got the Scottish figures, but we can make an estimate and I think the total figure for England and Scotland would probably be something of the order of 200,000. So it struck me rather forcibly that a rather large number of nurses—something like 40,000 nurses—is required to deal with something like 200,000 patients. I suppose that this may be accounted for, to some extent, by the fact that a large proportion of the patients are more or less helpless, many are senile, and some, I suppose, are violent and have to be protected against themselves. Probably, also, a good deal of the nursing duty has to be done at night time. The figures show that the number of patients now is rather less than at the beginning of the war because the number of admissions into mental institutions has declined during the war years. I am sorry to say that the number is now increasing. I hope that that is not to be attributed to the Labour Government—but it is a fact. So I am treating it not unfairly, I think, in taking the number of patients to be dealt with as being substantially the same. On that basis your Lordships will see that there is a shortage of rather over 20 per cent. of nurses on the pre-war figures, in spite of the fact that we have been holding these people since 1941.
  How many of the 31,300 who are now in this service are affected by this Order? How many had, in September, 1945, completed twelve months' service in the aggregate? I cannot give you the precise figure about that. I could give you the precise figure for Scotland, and from that we can make an estimate taking the same proportion for England. I should estimate that the probable figure is of the order of 25,000 out of the 31,300. That
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  is the estimated number of those affected by the Order. How many institutions are affected by the Regulation? The answer is that there are 278 institutions affected, thirty-eight of which are in Scotland. What about visits? Well, these institutions are all visited by medical and legal Commissioners of the Board of Control. In some sense I have some responsibility for the Board of Control, and therefore, in some sense, this problem weighs upon me. I had not realized it. But it enables me to say with greater force what I am going to say.
  I am asked: what steps have been taken to remedy the shortage of nurses? The Government—whether this one or the last one I am not sure—have issued the statement on the "Staffing of Hospitals" which contains a code of conditions of service for nurses including conditions for nurses in mental institutions. The Ministry of Labour are assisting in organizing local recruiting campaigns for the nursing service. The Board of Control have recently issued a circular to mental institutions making certain detailed suggestions for economizing the use of nursing staff. Have nurses wages been made sufficiently attractive? To this, I answer that rates of pay have been Unproved as a result of recommendations of the Rushcliffe Committee. I am told that that Committee are now considering further improvements in scales of pay for mental nurses. The noble Lord, Lord Rushcliffe, I am glad to note, is in his place today and he will correct me if I am wrong about that, but I think it is right. It is already the fact that the lower grades in the mental nursing profession receive £20 a year more than the corresponding grades in general nursing.
  The noble Lord then asks: why not till up the shortage by conscription from the general community? I do not turn that down as a possible thing which may become necessary. We cannot allow these people to go on secula seculorum obviously, but conscription is a rather drastic step to take. After all, one man can take a horse to the water but ten men cannot make him drink. If you were to conscript unwilling people as assistants at mental hospitals I do not know what the consequences would be. But I should be very sorry indeed to resort to that experiment save in the very last resort.
  Then the noble Lord asked, could not the duration of the regulation be limited

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  to a period of six months? Your Lordships will remember that on December 13 last the Ministry of Labour announced the Government's intention to rescind the Control of Engagements Order which, however, is to be kept in operation until June in the case of ordinary general nurses. I wish that we could do the same for the mental nurses, but we must retain an adequate nursing staff to look after these people who are not able to look after themselves. We cannot run any risks in this matter. I say quite frankly that I agree with every word the noble Lord said. This regulation, this restriction, is repugnant to all of us. Believe me, it is no part of Socialist doctrine—even of the extremest Socialist doctrine—that nurses should be conscripted. Indeed, I can imagine a poster being issued at a General Election—if we keep this thing on—which would be far more effective than the Chinese slavery posters which some of your Lordships may remember. The poster would depict nurses in handcuffs, their hands being bound by a Socialist Government. That, if I may make the suggestion to your Lordships, would be a very valuable poster, from some points of view. Therefore, believe me, in our own interests, apart from anything else, this is a regulation which we want to get rid of at the earliest possible time.
  I have said that I have round that this business is, in some sense, operated under my control. But whether it is or whether it is not my colleagues would always readily let me look into it. I would undertake, therefore, that when June or July comes, I will personally make a full statement to your Lordships in which I will review all the relevant acts and circumstances, and I will put your Lordships into possession of every single piece of information that comes to me. I wish I could say more, but quite frankly I think that if I said more than that I might be in danger of making promises I could not satisfy. I very much hope that with that explanation your Lordships will allow us to have this Bill read a third time, a Bill which is, after all, going to put an end to these Defence Regulations.
  Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
  6.20 p.m.
  LORD RUSHCLIFFE: My Lords, since the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has referred to me I should like to say this. Personally—and I speak for myself and for nobody else—I am very glad that this matter has been ventilated here today and the other day because it is just as well that this country should know the tremendous debt we owe to these men and women—they are mostly men, but perhaps it is about half and half—who are performing this valuable service. It is perfectly true that the conditions and the salaries and the pay of all classes of nurses have been very considerably improved lately and indeed they well deserve it. But I might point out this. I think perhaps that the conditions are at least as valuable as an improvement in pay, but it must be remembered that as you lengthen the holidays to which the nurses are quite properly entitled and as you quite properly diminish the hours of work, so you need more nurses to make up what would otherwise be a deficiency. It is not generally known that the present number of women entering the nursing service is larger than it has ever been, but the demand on their services is so much greater that there is still a tremendous shortage of nurses, both men and women.
  I think and believe that this improvement in recruitment has been due at any rate to some extent to the improvement in their conditions, and what the noble Lord said is perfectly true that the whole question of the mental nurses is being considered by a sub-committee of the main Committee of which I am Chairman. I hope it may be that the result of their recommendations may attract more recruits to this important branch of the nursing service. The noble Lord told us the other day that he had consulted, I think, the Home Secretary and he had been advised that it was absolutely essential that this present arrangement should continue for a number of months at least. I venture to think that if he had consulted the Minister of Health he would have got exactly the same answer, because I believe it is absolutely essential that the public service should have the services of these men and women for some little time ahead. I welcome the suggestion that the noble Lord has just made

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  that in the course of this year, say within the next seven or eight months, he will be able to come here again and tell us what the position is with regard to these nurses and indeed of the other matters referred to.
  6.24 p.m.
  VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, I think the whole House will be deeply indebted to the Lord Chancellor for the very full particulars he has given to your Lordships. It does seem at the moment to be an absolutely insoluble problem. No other nurses are being held and we have not got to extend this to other forms of nursing which I suppose present greater attractions. Yet we must find a solution which prevents us from holding these people indefinitely in what must seem to all of us a most unattractive yet onerous and self-sacrificing employment. It is one to which people ought to go if they feel they want to do so, but I can imagine that even the most kindly hearted and equable persons might find that the work got frightfully on their nerves. Quite frankly I cannot criticise or obstruct if I cannot suggest a constructive alternative, and at the moment I do not see one. There may be some consideration as to whether the numbers look to be high. I should be grateful if the Lord Chancellor would go into that because his figure was five to one. It means one trained person to five lunatics. I do not know if some form of dilution could do something to that. I cannot oppose this for the time being, but I am perfectly certain that after what the Lord Chancellor has said everything will be done and I am very glad that he is going to follow this up himself. For my part I readily accept the offer he has made that he will be able to tell us how far we have gone.
  6.27 p.m.
  LORD O'HAGAN: My Lords, I should like to associate myself with what the noble Viscount has said, I had an opportunity of saying a few words on this particular matter on another occasion, but I appreciate very much indeed the extremely courteous and helpful way in which the Lord Chancellor has dealt with the situation. I should only like to add my voice to that of Lord Swinton in saying how much we welcome the steps he proposes to take and to give the House more information later in the year.
  6.29 p.m.
  LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I should not like the Bill to pass without thanking the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack for the very sympathetic way he met with the Amendment moved by my noble and gallant friend Viscount Trenchard and myself in the Committee stage. I realize some of the difficulties he had to encounter, but I honestly think that having got the Chief Constable not to enrol special constables under the age of twenty without some special sanction is a very big gain. I cannot imagine any Secretary of State who is not in grave terror of Parliamentary criticism in relaxing that rule at a time of civil unrest.
  On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed.

  AGRICULTURAL WORKERS' WAGES.
  6.30 p.m.
  LORD BEAVERBROOKhad the following notice on the Paper: In view of the need for maintaining agricultural production in Britain, to call the attention of His Majesty's Government to the necessity of making representations to the Central Agricultural Wages Board as to the desirability of an immediate increase in wage rates to agricultural workers; to the need for making available supplies and services required for the repair of farm workers' cottages; to the need for increasing the regular food rations to farm workers over and above the special cheese ration; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, we have heard a great deal this afternoon about the shortage of labour in agriculture, and it is on account of that shortage that I put down this Motion. I am sure that both landlords and farmers in this House—I regret there are no agricultural labourers here, as far as I know, with the possible exception of one—will all agree that the shortage of labour is the most serious issue in the agricultural industry at this moment. There is only one method of overtaking the shortage, and that is by raising the standard of wages and the conditions of employment to the level of other industries.
  The Motion to which I direct your attention is divided into three sections. First, wages, then cottages, and, lastly, additional food rations. In all three respects the agricultural worker is at a

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  disadvantage compared with the industrial worker. The minimum wage of the agricultural worker is 70s.; the minimum wage of the miner is 100s. The railway worker gets 84s, and the average for the engineering worker is 95s. 6d. But we are told that benefits are conferred upon agricultural workers which are of immense importance, and that these have to be taken into account. I do not deny that, but what are these benefits? First of all, there is the cottage, which, after all, is not a very great benefit to the worker. There are, I am told, 150,000 tied cottages altogether. Of that number, the rental is an average of 3s, or 3s, 6d., with an advantage to the worker of 5s. But there are 750,000 workers, or something like that figure, so that if you distribute the benefit over the whole working force, you get something like 1s, a head. We are told about milk; that is said to be another important advantage that the agricultural worker gets. But milk is very generously estimated if it is valued at 1s, per worker. Then there are potatoes, fuel and greens. Here we get an exact figure of 1s., a figure that will be accepted by the Government as accurate. At any rate, that was the figure on January, 1941, which I now double, making 2s. That brings us to a total of 4s, spread over the whole of the agricultural workers in the industry.
  The benefits conferred upon them are worth 4s., so that you get the minimum wage of 70s, reinforced by 4s. But the miner gets benefits too. The miner, with his 100s, gets a cheap cottage, and he gets free or cheap coal. Altogether, the benefits that the miner reaps are worth 45. 1d. I give you a figure again which is not my figure but one taken from the Government records, the report of the Board of Trade Journal of November 24, 1945, which values the miner's benefits at 4s. 1d.—1d. more than the agricultural worker. Yet, we hear the same old story about the benefits and advantages that the agricultural worker gets in addition to his minimum wage. When we examine the situation, we find the miner actually gets more benefits than the agricultural worker.
  Then we are told about the conditions of labour, and about the beauty of the countryside. Of course, the countryside is indeed beautiful if you look over the fields and see your own herds of cattle, your own cottages and your own house, but it is not such a good proposition to
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  the agricultural worker who is tied to a cottage with very disagreeable conditions, a cottage inadequately equipped and with no hot water, no bath, no water closet, and bad drainage. That is the condition of the cottages of the agricultural workers throughout the community. Often there is no adequate cooking arrangements. Again and again I have seen in the cottage of the agricultural worker no proper cooking equipment. Then there is the weekly journey to town which he must make, and the cost of that journey. He must carry his children, or must have them transported, to the bus stop in order that they may go to school. The miner has his schools at hand, and his cinemas nearby. He has shops, too; I sometimes think all too many shops. If he has inadequate cooking arrangements, at least he has plenty of coal to build up his fire, whereas the agricultural worker these days very often goes short of coal.
  Then, again, there is another story of the agricultural worker which is hard to kill. That is the story of the 70s, minimum. It is said that this minimum is not really the proper method by which his wages should be estimated, and that a very much higher wage level is paid to the cowman, the shepherd, the cattleman and others. Of course, there is extra pay, but a recent report shows that of this extra pay one-sixth is for extra skill, and five-sixths for extra hours worked. That is a report handed down by the Central Wages Board, and I hope we shall hear a great deal less one day of this story of extra payment for special classes among agricultural labourers. Then there is piece-work. Of course there is piece-work, but piece-work issues do not arise when we are trying to determine the value of the wage of the agricultural worker. The agricultural worker does not get piece-rates. Piece-rates are for a very special and particular class, and have no relation to the issue I am now laying before you. I think I have established the point pretty successfully that the agricultural worker has not got the same advantage or benefits as the miner, the engineering employee or the railway worker. I think I have shown that the benefits of the agricultural worker are no more than those gathered by the miner.
  The next question that arises is, Can the industry afford to pay higher wages? I think it can. I came to that conclusion by casting up the statistics. I have them

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  in my pocket if I am asked to produce my authority. The industry has had the additional income since the war of £ 300,000,000. Of that £ 300,000,000, the worker gets £ 70,000,000, so that there is £ 230,000,000 left for other outgoings. The cost of electricity has not doubled; electricity is purchased at the same price now as before the war. There has been no increase for water services. Implements are up by about one-third, and fertilizers and feeding stuffs—wheat, barley and oats—are up by about one-half. Tractor fuel, railway and transport costs are up by a half at the most.
  The receipts from the farm have gone up by £ 300,000,000, which is just double, or a little more than double, what it was before the war, but the agricultural worker, of that £ 300,000,000, receives £ 70,000,000, which is just double what the agricultural worker received before the war. But for these other services, where there has been any advance at all, there has only been an advance from one-third to one-half. Thus it will be seen that with many outgoings up by only half the pre-war prices, there is a probability of a surplus in the pockets of the farmers, which would enable the industry to pay an increased wage to the agricultural worker now. Even if there is not a surplus in the pockets of the farmers, there is the Government's policy of an assured market with guaranteed prices. If the industry is permitted to charge extra prices, if there is to be an increased price, then it is much better that the agricultural workers should not be allowed to dwell in penury any longer, and that they should be in a position not inferior to their co-workers in Britain.
  Now to deal with the cottages. I suppose the unsatisfactory condition of the cottages is admitted everywhere. Any person who walks about the rural districts in Great Britain will see cottages that are in an unsatisfactory condition. They will see good landlords, excellent farmers, with cottages that are in a derelict state, largely because they cannot provide the repairs that are necessary at this time. The whole cottage plan has gone down to such an extent as to be an abuse and a disgrace to the people of Great Britain. Repairs are urgently necessary and must be carried out forthwith. It was wrong to abolish the grant, quite wrong. But that has gone. That
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  was the grant which was provided for reconditioning cottages. If the labour and material can be released now, it is really an economic benefit to the country to do so, because the cottages are rapidly falling into such a condition that they will be beyond repair. Many of them are actually beyond repair now. If the labour and material can be released then the nation will benefit by it. There are small builders all over the country everywhere who are only too anxious, if they are permitted to hold their labour, to carry out the reconditioning of the cottages. If the Government takes the decision to permit them to hold their labour and to supply them with the necessary fitments, then the work of reconditioning can go forward to such an extent that the cottages which are falling into complete disrepair can be dealt with before they become of no value at all.
  Failure to provide facilities is simply going to mean the loss of many more houses. More will be lost in a short space of time than the Government has built in the last six months unless some system of repair, rehabilitation and reconstruction is carried out.
  I come to my third point, more food for the farm workers. More food means more work. It is absolutely and simply a question of seed corn. Plant seed corn now by giving the farm workers more food. The industrial workers have more food; they have their canteens. The agricultural workers do not have canteens. Heavy workers have double meat rations. Agricultural workers do not have any double meat rations. I know they have the harvest ration, but that is for a very short period of time. Farm workers produce more wealth than any other industry in this country. By farm workers I mean the farmers, the smallholders and the farm workers—all of them together. There are 1,100,000 of them on the land, and they are producing an annual wealth of £ 600,000,000. The coal miners have a 100s. minimum wage with more benefits than the agricultural workers get, yet the coal miners, 700,000 in number, produce only £ 275,000,000 of wealth, so it will be seen that in agriculture we are dealing with an industry which is the greatest wealth producer we have got. If ever there was a case for planting seed corn for the agricultural workers now, then it seems to me that the arguments

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  which I have put forward today ought to carry us some little distance anyway.
  And now a word for the smallholders. The smallholders are not even entitled to the extra cheese ration that the farm worker and the miner get. The miner gets just the same cheese ration as the agricultural worker in addition to his other benefits, but the smallholder does not even get the extra cheese ration unless he is employed by another farmer. He must have an employment card, otherwise he does not even get the cheese ration. I know there are others who mean to speak, and I must not take up too much time, but I want to say one more word about the state of the industry. The state of our greatest industry is really most unsatisfactory, and we are only blinded to it by the present prosperity that is abounding amongst the farmers. In fact, fortified somewhat by statements made by the Secretary of State for the Dominions a day or two ago, I have come to the conclusion that there has been no increase whatsoever in the money value of agriculture during the war, that is, no increase whatsoever taking money value into account. The only increase we get is money increase, but actual increase there has been none. Yield has gone down. A view which is widely held, and respecting which statements have been made in newspapers—not always the Daily Express, although I have seen it in that paper, too—up and down the country is that the milk production of Great Britain is up. Nothing of the sort. The milk production of Great Britain is down. The yield of cows is down—I mean compared with the pre-war figure—by fifty gallons. Excluding the heavy milkers, I say without any doubt or question the yield per cow is something in the vicinity of 400 gallons per cow per annum, which is far below the level that should be maintained. There has been no increase in output per man. An examination of the financial results, the statistical results, will show that there has been no increase in output per man: and that is no reflection on the agricultural worker, for you would get better results if you would give him a better home and more food, he being one of the heavy workers of the country. Nevertheless, there is no increase per man. And the cow stalls! Probably many members of this House know a good deal about the cow stalls, that they are dirty and dilapidated.
  A NOBLE LORD: Abominable.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: Their condition is disgraceful. If some consumers saw the conditions of production they would not drink milk.
  A NOBLE LORD: In England.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: They would not drink milk if they saw the conditions of production. There has been no repair of the many cottages and buildings for years and years. I was intending to go further and deeper and deeper into this subject, but I am going to bring my remarks to an end by moving the Motion which stands in my name so that others may get a chance to speak. I do so with this final declaration, that agricultural production waits on man-power, and that man-power can never be obtained until we raise the rate of wages and conditions of employment to the level of other industries. I ask you to help us; I ask for all of us to work together to see that the ends I have enlarged on to-day he obtained.
  6.50 p.m.
  LORD RENNELL: My Lords, I find it a pleasant task to follow the noble Lord who has just spoken and to feel so much sympathy with what he has said on all the three points that he has raised in his Motion. I venture to think that there are very few in your Lordships' House who will disagree with the tenor of his Motion. There is not much at this late hour, without going into controversial matters, which can or should perhaps be said, except this. It has been recognized by all who have had any association with land or with agriculture, even to a very minor degree, that the farm worker in this country is one of the most skilled workers in any industry. He is not a labourer in the common sense of the word, a man merely of muscle; he is a man who, after years of experience, has acquired a knowledge which cannot be taught in books, which can only he learned by the work that he does in the fields in all seasons of the year, good or bad, work without which the industry cannot go on. However much the industry is mechanized, however much machinery is provided to assist him in his labours, ultimately the farmer and his labourer, his farm hand, require experience to grow the crops that come up; and without that experience and skill, with all the machinery that

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  human ingenuity can provide, the crops will not be grown.
  Yet that skill which a man has learned and very often inherited from his father before him, is remunerated on almost the lowest basis of labour in this country, and his conditions will be admitted by all your Lordships and by everyone who has come across them to be a disgrace to this country. Writers who have written about agricultural conditions and who have tried to point to the labourer's remuneration as being adequate, have almost invariably taken the cases of good landlords and have taken the somewhat rosy view of the pleasantness of life on a farm. But by and large, those rosy conditions do not exist except in a few happier areas and among a few of the more enlightened and wealthy landowners and farmers.
  Is it impossible to do anything to improve the conditions of rural workers houses? In the part of the world in which I live it is wholly exceptional for a farm workers cottage not merely to have sanitation but even to have running water, let alone electricity or anything like that. Questions of cost, and things like that, do not enter into a man's budget: he is lucky if he has only a quarter of a mile to go to get water, in most cases. Certain improvements have been envisaged and it is mainly on those which I wish to dwell a little this evening, rather than on the actual monetary wage, because we are at a point where large numbers of young men are being released from the Armed Services, many of whom have in the past worked in factories or in towns, and who want to go and live on the land instead.
  What can we offer them? At the present moment we can not only offer them nothing in the way of houses, but we cannot even offer them, owing to recent changes of policy in rural housing, the hope of the houses which is being held out to those who dwell in towns. The Housing (Rural Workers) Acts have been dropped and nothing was put in their place. We have been led to hope that one day there will be improved water supplies in rural districts, but, without waiting for the wide scheme, the perfectionism which may take years to accomplish, we are able to hold out to them nothing in the immediate future of
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  the next year or two, for the improvement of the lot of those who are there, nor can we hold out even reasonable conditions for those who want to come from the towns in which they lived before.
  It is not only money and money wages that matters in this problem of attracting labour back to the land and increasing the labour force; it is a problem of how people live. Nothing that one sees in the countryside now could possibly attract a man who is being released from the Services, nor can we hold out to him that in a year's time, or even in two years' time, his prospects will be materially improved. There are two things which have been done which have made the position worse. One is that what little improvements were being made under the Housing (Rural Workers) Acts, and the grants which were being made, have been suspended; and, as a result, uncertainty reigns among people who wish to make improvements. We are waiting to know what the next step is going to be. Some of us have waited for months already, even to have an indication of what the next step is going to be. So that so far from improving the position, the dropping of that measure has created greater uncertainty than there was before.
  The second point, which touches very closely on a point the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, made, is that of repairs. With the limitation of repairs to £10 throughout the country, the repair of rural workers' cottages has, in my experience, had a very definite set-back. I personally have no complaint against the machinery for granting permits. We want to see controls abolished; we want the thing free. I have been able to secure the permits for which I have asked, but with such a delay that season after season is lost. It is perhaps unfair to criticize the many controls for their dilatoriness, but the fact is that month after month passes, and the repair which could have been done in May is postponed until July; it is then postponed until September because another permit has to be obtained; the season is lost and it is postponed until the next year, by which time the state of the cottage requires a new scheme. That has not been helpful in dealing with rural workers' housing.

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  There are many cases of estates' small builders who could have got on with repairs if a rather greater latitude had been given, and one of the greatest improvements that could be made now by His Majesty's Government would be to "let out" on that, to allow these repairs to be done without the formalities and without the permits which involve us all in so much correspondence and so much delay. We may ultimately get them hut, as in my case, it is very often a year after we started asking for them.
  When the question of rural labour is discussed, it seems to me that we must have something very clearly before us. What is it that we are trying to do? We are trying not: only to keep our labour there but to increase our labour force. I am one of those who believe that the productivity of the soil in this country, great as it was during the war, can be increased even more. I believe that two blades of grass can be made to grow where one has hitherto grown. But that requires labour, and in order to get that labour the conditions of life of that labour must be made attractive.
  They can be made attractive in the three ways to which the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, has referred, but mainly by improving the amenities of the man who has the skill and who is the only man who can make two blades of grass grow where one grew before. If, therefore, the objective is to increase our productivity, to make ourselves more independent of imports, then the highest priority must surely be given to encouraging the labourer, who is there already, by adequate remuneration and housing, and to importing new labour to take the place of the prisoner-of-war labour which, within a measurable time, will have disappeared from our fields.
  I do not believe there is anyone in your Lordships' House who would argue against the thesis which Lord Beaverbrook has put before you. What we ask is that we should be told what the Government—if they agree, as I am sure they must—propose to do to make life more attractive to those who are there and to those who want to go there. An agricultural policy is not merely a policy which envisages the growing of so many bushels of wheat or the breeding of so many cattle or sheep. What we want
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  is a statement from His Majesty's Government to the effect that they do regard the agricultural industry, and those who are in it, as having at least the same rights, both with regard to wages and housing, as any other industry in this country, and those engaged in it, and that workers in the agricultural industry should not continue to be treated as the poor relations of industry as a whole. At this late hour I do not think there is anything more which I need say, or which I should say. I hope that a full statement upon these points will be made by the noble Lord who replies.
  7.2 p.m.
  LORD QUIBELL: My Lords, I could not help but agree with the concluding sentences of the noble Lord who has just resumed his seat, in which he said that in his view until we gave to agricultural labourers conditions equal to those of other industrial workers in this country we should never solve the shortage of labour in our rural areas. I think the noble Lord must have listened to some of my speeches delivered in another place 15 years ago, when I was almost a voice crying in the wilderness. I entirely agree with him; that is exactly my policy. The responsibility in the main for those horrible conditions mentioned by him and by the noble Lord who moved this Motion—with whose speech and whose Motion I am not in great disagreement—must be laid on the fact that we have never yet had a price level fixed for agricultural commodities which would encourage, help, or induce the landlord to put his buildings into proper repair—indeed many of them have not—or a farmer to farm properly or to pay proper wages.
  I disagree fundamentally with one statement of the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, namely, that there is no more money in agriculture to-day than there was pre-war. I do not want to misquote him.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: I said the total cash value of agriculture has increased by £300,000,000 over the pre-war figure.
  LORD QUIBELL: I took it that he meant that so far as the farmer was concerned, he was in no more prosperous a condition to-day than he was pre-war.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: I tried in my speech to make out the case that the farmer's condition had improved.
  LORD QUIBELL: All I can say is this. If the noble Lord will spend a weekend with me, I will take him to one or two markets in my own area, where he will meet some of the people who previously supplied him with the artificials, with the seeds, etc. He will discover that while ten and twelve years ago they were up to their necks in debt, in these days most of them are smiling. So far as the farmer is concerned, he is in a fairly good financial position at the present time. That is what price levels have done for farmers. I know that some members of your Lordships' House are asking that this present Government shall get on with the reconstruction of shippens, sheds and so forth in agricultural areas, and with the rural housing which is so necessary and essential.
  When we talk about the building of cottages and the rebuilding of agricultural holdings, is not the whole problem now one of labour? I went to the village where John Wesley, was born, and I said to a man who is an agriculturist "There are a lot of people walking up and down this road. Where are they going?" He said," There is a house being built"—this was some time ago—" at the other end of the village." I said: "What are they going there for?" He said, "Because there has never been a cottage built in this place in the lifetime of anybody that is in it, and they are all going to look at what sort of thing it is." That applies equally to every village. I do not remember one being built in the village in which I was born until as recently as when the Council built some houses. What was wrong with them? As a previous speaker has said, and quite rightly, the agricultural labourer is not living in them. Why? Actually it was railwaymen and other skilled men who occupied the houses built for agricultural labourers, because the agricultural labourers could not in those days afford to pay the rent. That is the state of affairs which exists.
  I went round the area in which I was born and in which I now live and have done for all my life with the exception of a few years. I went round and canvassed them to get to know why, twelve houses having been built to house agricultural labourers, not one single agricultural
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  labourer was occupying them. That was the condition, and it was a condition due to the fact that the Tory Party has always pretended to be a friend of agriculture, but has neglected it. Those who have held political sway in this country ever since I can remember have always been doing something for agriculture instead of getting off its back and allowing agriculture to do the job for itself. Those are the conditions; but they imply no criticism of us whatever. The picture is ugly, it is not nice to look at; it is even worse than you have said it is, but if you look through the mirror it is a reflection of the Tory Party's policy which has been in force ever since I can remember. It is the biggest condemnation of them that could be made. It is why they are ceasing to live, why they are ceasing to get support in some of the villages. The difference between the two Parties which were in power for so many years was the difference between two cock sparrows on the ridge of a house, one wagging his tail down and up and the other wagging his tail up and down. Each of them left agriculture in a derelict condition.
  LORD ALTRINCHAM: Will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt? I would remind him that the long controversy on a cheap loaf was not a controversy which was raised by the Tory Party.
  LORD QUIBELL: The poor agricultural labourer was the victim of the big loaf and little loaf, and whichever side he voted for he lost all the time. But that particular political plaything, I hope, has now vanished for good. I want to see prosperity in our countryside. I was brought up in the country, and as a little lad, ten years of age, I was taken from school and set to work on a farm. I know what it is to work on a farm for nine pence a day. My generation never got more than 15s. a week, and I remember when some men used to get only 12s. 6d. a week. Those are the sort of conditions which obtained in little villages in my own county of Lincolnshire. Do you think that the men in those places do not want to get on to a better economic footing? Of course they do.
  Take the matter of cottages. I have given a picture in a little book which I published of the cottage where I lived as a boy. There was only one bedroom which had to be used by members of both sexes.

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  All of us, grandfather, grandmother and all the rest, slept in that one apartment. There was no water supply at the cottage. We had to cart water from a distance of a quarter of a mile. Many cottages still lack water. Despite these conditions we were invited to vote yellow or blue, as the case might be, but however we did vote we were in fact voting green all the time, because those for whom we voted never attempted to alter the conditions under which we had to live.
  I agree that the agricultural labourer should have a wage equal to that of any other man of similar status in this country. We are providing for cheap cottages, cheap insurance and cheap other things. What is the principle on which we are dealing with the agricultural worker? Is he always to be the bottom dog, and is he always to have things "on the cheap" because his wages are always going to be the last to be dealt with? I want, the wages of these workers to be equal to those of other workers so that they may have a standard of independence and discharge their responsibilities in the same way as any other workers.
  Now with regard to food. This class of worker should certainly have the food which is needed for men engaged on such labour. I think that the improvement which is suggested should be carried out. An attempt was made in my own county by what was called I think a "pie scheme" to give him extra food. The effort was organized by well-intentioned people who wanted to see the agricultural worker given extra nourishment. I can assure your Lordships that if I lived on some farms they would not ration me as easily as they ration some of the lads there. I have my own ideas about that. But I must tell you that they are not as badly off for food as you may think they are. We do not teach our grandmothers how to suck eggs in Lincolnshire.
  So far as farm buildings are concerned, may I say that it is quite erroneous to think you can only spend £10 if you can find a builder to do work which you wish to have done? In this matter, I am talking about something that is within my personal knowledge. I have tried to modernize one of those filthy places, of which mention has been made, and I did modernize it. I had no trouble, because. I went right away to the county war
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  agricultural executive committee and got a proper permit. I should like the Minister of Agriculture to look at that permit and take it as a model. The place of which I am speaking was a filthy tumbledown old place—as indeed so many of them are. A great many of them cannot now be repaired because of the shortage of labour. The landlords have the money now but they cannot get the materials and the labour. Before, when the work should have been done they had not got the money, and I do not blame them for the fact that it was not done; I blame successive Governments in this country who have neglected their duties, and I would if I had the power, insist that these buildings should be brought up to date as described by Lord Beaverbrook.
  In the maiden speech which I made in this House I said that if I had the choice between drinking a glass of milk, produced under the conditions in which milk is produced on many of our dairy farms, or of drinking a glass of beer I should have the glass of beer every time. I reiterate that, in view of the conditions in which milk is produced in this country. Again I am not speaking without personal experience. I have been round scores of farms and I can assure those of your Lordships who are unaware of these conditions that you would hardly believe in what terrible places we are producing milk which, after all, is the finest and the most important of foods. I join in urging the Government to take steps to bring the buildings up to modern standards and to give, if possible, extra food to the agricultural labourers—difficult though that is, I know. I further join in urging the building of more cottages in the rural areas. All these things urgently need to be done, and I sincerely hope that the speeches delivered here to-day will not be lost on the Government.
  7.16 p.m.
  LORD PERRY: My Lords, I think the noble Lord who introduced this Motion must be very flattered by the enthusiasm with which it has been received by the noble Lord who has just sat down. I think, however, that no useful purpose is to be served by overstating a case. As I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Beaver-brook, it certainly seemed to me—if he will permit me to say so—that he was very much overstating his case. He was asked something about the increase of wealth

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  during the war. I want to ask the noble Lord if I may some question on that statement of his about "no war-time increase." I believe he distinctly said that, or, sitting behind him as I do, perhaps I did not hear him correctly.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: I said no wartime increase in agricultural output—no increase in production. Production before the war and production now are the same in volume though not the same in money value.
  LORD PERRY: I ask your Lordships to take particular note of that because I am going to take it up with Lord Beaver-brook and to ask him where he gets his figures. His statement is altogether contrary to anything said by the Minister of Agriculture or by any other of the authorities during the war period. The noble Lord spoke of wages. He quoted the minimum wage for agricultural workers and compared it with the average wage paid in other industries.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: No.
  LORD PERRY: Then I did not hear the noble Lord correctly. I must read the report of his speech in Hansard to-morrow. I made notes at the time, and I took it down that he said, "the average wage for miners, engineers and other industries," whereas of course—
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: The minimum wage for miners—
  LORD PERRY: The minimum wage for miners then, because theirs is the only industry except agriculture which has got a minimum wage.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: And the minimum for railwaymen.
  LORD PERRY: Agriculture has a minimum wage and I would call your Lordships' attention to this difference. The agricultural worker, almost exclusively, has a week's tenure of office. You cannot as in other industries discharge him at an hour's notice. You have to be fair and employ him for the whole week and pay him for the week. Then think of the other advantages which he enjoys. He lives on top of his work. As a rule he has not got to spend money in bus fares, or to waste time in getting to and from work. All those things have to be taken into account.
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  As I say I consider that the noble Lord has overstated his case. The agricultural worker with a wage of 70s, a week, living in the conditions which the noble Lord enumerated—plus many which he omitted to enumerate—is actually receiving as much consideration to-day for the work he does as any other tradesman in the country.
  That is a broad statement, I know, of course. I know that you can pick out instances generally speaking of a man at 70 shillings per week living on top of his work, paying little rent, having a garden, and having chickens and pigs. He is well off and I should be very pleased to see our urban workers as well off as our rural workers to-day. But I agree with the noble Lord who has just sat down that he has only had that wage for a very little time and he only had it at the instance of the Government which gave him it and virtually locked the stable door after the horse was gone. Wages were put up from the disgracefully low level prevailing only ten or twelve years ago to double, almost overnight. I have not very much sympathy with any Government which does that. I have had a little bit of difficulty, because I am a practical farmer myself, at finding the ordinary frugal housewife who in my district (which is Essex) was having to bring up a family on 32s. 6d, a week, being suddenly given 70s, a week. Our working classes are not educated to have such manna from heaven. It should have been given them in a sensible manner (I did not mean that as a pun) but in a sensible mode so that they can learn the value of money. I myself have done a great deal to teach workers the value of money. I think they are very well paid now. I am criticizing the noble Lord on his case only in respect of wages. In regard to amenities I certainly agree with everything he has said. I think he was a little enthusiastic, as I think the noble Lord opposite was.
  LORD QUIBELL: We need not be pessimistic anyway.
  LORD PERRY: There are many cottages which are quite good, and they are not always as bad as the noble Lord portrayed. That I know because I own very many of them myself. But the disgrace of taking amenities like electricity and water right over the fields past the very doors of the farm and rural workers

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  in order to serve urban industry is one, I think, which should be stopped and can very readily be stopped. We could have electric power all through our countryside with very little delay if we insisted that the big power companies who own the grids put in a reducing station so that the electricity was available. But no, it is carried right past their doors. It is the same thing with water, particularly in Wales. The water comes down from the Welsh hills or the Westmoreland hills, right past the workers' doors in order to serve the urban districts. That is something I think the Government could deal with almost tomorrow and so improve the amenities of the agricultural worker.
  There is one thing I should like to tell the noble Lord who moved this Motion, and I ask him to believe me when I say it, and that is that having studied this agricultural problem for a good many years I do not think—I have every reason to think otherwise—that the exodus from the land has been caused owing to smallness of wages. To some extent a man would emigrate to a town because wages were higher there, but generally speaking it has been because of the lack of amenities in the rural districts and that is the question that should be tackled. It could be tackled; it is not a great big problem of building thousands of houses. They can get electricity and water and improve cottages very quickly. I am in entire sympathy with the Motion. I have sat here all the afternoon and I am keeping your Lordships here late at night but I sympathize with everything which has been said except that I venture the opinion that I think it was a pity to overstate the case. If you do that, the first time it is criticized the case becomes deflated. I venture to make these remarks and I hope the noble Lord who moved the Motion will please excuse my seeming impertinence in checking up on his figures.
  7.25 p.m.
  EARL DE LA WARR: My Lords, I had not meant to intervene in this debate and I assure you that what I want to say can be said in a very few moments. For that reason I am not going to follow any of the previous speeches, but simply to present to you one or two points I wish to snake. No one has mentioned what scorns to me to be the kernel of this pro-
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  blem. I do not think anyone wants to disagree with a great deal of what the noble Lords, Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Quibell, have said with regard to the wage level and conditions in the country. I will not go into that now, but I want to assert with all the strength at my command that if to-morrow the Central Wages Board were to meet and to recommend that the wages were to go up by ten shillings or twenty shillings, within a month every county council in the country would have met and put up the wages of their roadmen by another five shillings or ten shillings above that. There would then come an application from the quarrying industry for a corresponding rise, from railwaymen in the country, the sugar beet industry and from the workers who deal with the flax I help to look after, and it would gradually spread.
  Unless something is done to meet that question of the spiral and unless the Government, as the National Farmers' Union said the other day, are prepared to face the issue of a national wage policy, no rise in agricultural wages at the moment is going to affect the relative status—and that is one of the points we are interested in today—of the agricultural worker in relation to other industries. I want to stress that point to noble Lords sitting on these Benches. There are only a few points on which I would venture to express disagreement with the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook. I know what a lifelong friend he is of the agricultural industry and he would be the very last to say or do anything which would be of harm to the industry, but he suggested in Ins remarks that the farmer generally was enjoying enormous profits at the moment and could easily, presumably without increasing prices, pay largely increased wages. We all know perfectly well that the large farmer with plenty of capital and land, plenty of money to put into labour-saving implements and to conduct his work on a large scale, is making profits and he made good profits during the war.
  The national price policy during the war was that prices should be high in order that crops could be grown on land on which, at ordinary economic prices, those crops could not be grown. It was equally a national policy to allow big profits to be made by the big farmers, and to take those profits back in the form of Excess Profits Tax, In-

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  come-Tax and Super-Tax. But the vast majority of the farmers in this country are not large farmers. They have not got a great deal of capital, and I assert that the smaller man to-day—perhaps employing only two or three men—is not making large profits. I think a great injustice would be done to those who to-day are struggling not only to make a living, but to make their contribution to the national well-being and to the food supplies of this country, if it went out that the farming community as a whole was making enormous profits.
  The other point on which I venture to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, is his statement that there was no increased production during the war. I have not the figures in my pocket, but they have been given to us repeatedly, not only by the last Minister of Agriculture, but by the present Minister, and by Lord Woolton and other Ministers of Food. Those figures show that the increase in production during the war was in the nature of 70 per cent. The noble Lord mentioned a certain figure with regard to stock. We all know that production of stock went down. We all know that what he said with regard to the milk situation is perfectly right, but in the bulky food that absorbed the maximum of shipping there was an enormous increase. If the noble Lord will be good enough to look back to the time when he was in the Cabinet, he will find from his Cabinet papers that, in tae saving of shipping space, the agricultural industry did a great service to the well-being, safety and security of this country.
  7.33 p.m.
  VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, we have heard a great deal from the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, and much more from my noble friend Lord Quibell, about the state into which agriculture has descended as the result of long neglect. Those two speakers have been accused by others of overstating their case. I do not know about other parts of the country, but I would like your Lordships to take a look at my own part of Wales—Pembrokeshire. Let us take the state of repair of agricultural cottages in Pembrokeshire. The position there is that more than half of the agricultural cottages which existed fifty years ago are now completely uninhabitable and almost unrepairable. It
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  is true to say that a large proportion of them are actually reduced to being foundations, almost under the turf. There are not even walls left. The number of agricultural workers who have left agriculture in Pembrokeshire must be enormous. If all those cottages were once inhabited, as presumably they were, then it must be true to say that over one-half of the workers have left that trade and gone elsewhere.
  In my own home village, over three streets have vanished, leaving a single village street. There are many men and women still alive who can remember when that village was twice the size it is now, and who can point out numberless places round the village where houses once stood. On old survey maps there are lots of little clusters of gardens marked which once contained cottages, but do net contain them any longer. The present state of affairs is no sudden "blitz." It is the result of neglect, not only by the Conservatives who were in power the major part of the time, but also by the Liberals. They have gone marching about waving banners of Protection and Free Trade, and whichever one they put in force—and they tried them alternately—the agricultural labourer and the farmer were just as badly off. They were both wrong, and nobody will now deny it.
  What are we to do to remedy this? I suggest that we do something about improving the life in the countryside. The noble Lord, Lord Quibell, has told you of the cottage in which he and his family lived when he was a boy. I can assure noble Lords that the majority of cottages in Pembrokeshire which are still inhabited are like that now. There is no water, and if there is a well within one hundred yards or so the people are lucky. Sanitation, of course, is carried out as best it can be done. There is no sanitation inside the cottages. As to cooking facilities, there are fine large fireplaces in which the people burn mainly home-made fuel. They can cook very well, but the facilities are not modern. I do not know where the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, gets the idea that electricity has much to do with agriculture. There is no electricity in agriculture in Pembrokeshire, and it is high time there was some.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: I hope the noble Lord realizes the importance of electricity to agriculture.
  VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: I think that one of the reasons why the noble Lord and his friends on that side of the House are sitting there is because they neglected to supply electricity and water to the country districts all the time they were in power. They had a long time in which to carry out the small improvements suggested by some people, but they did not do it. That may explain quite a lot of things, including the results of some elections. Then there is another point which makes a difference. The bus service in my part of Pembrokeshire used to consist of a bus which went to the market town twice a week. There was no chance of the farmer going in to do anything else in the way of shopping or to go to a cinema. We did not get a decent bus service until the Americans established an aerodrome near by. We have got it still; they left it behind. But these things ought to have been done years ago. There has been a great neglect of every sort of facility which would make the farmer's and the farm labourer's lives happy—an enormous neglect—and these things must be brought in as soon as they possibly can.
  EARL DE LA WARR: It is a wonderful chance for this Government.
  VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: Yes, it is a wonderful chance for this Government. They were in this Government's election policy, and I am sure they will be carried out. We are carrying out our promises. As for Lord Beaverbrook's suggestion for improving matters, he suggested that His Majesty's Government, this country's Executive, should put a pistol at the head of an independent tribunal, and that the way to improve matters was to get this independent tribunal to say, "We did not mean our decision; We must reverse it; we meant the other thing." It would be the worst possible thing that could be done, not only for agriculture, but for every trade in the country as a whole to set up a Wages Board, leave it to come to its own judicial decision, and then for the Executive to put a pistol at its head and say, "Now then, say the opposite." That is to bring the entire machinery for negotiating wages crashing down on the heads of all the workers in the country. It is true we must do something for agriculture. I wish the noble Lords on the other side of the House had thought of doing something a long time ago, but, since they have not, it has got to be done
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  by this Government, and I think that the best thing they can do is to carry out their election promises.
  Once we have got these facilities in the country there will be no reason for everybody to flock to the town. As everybody knows, the countryside is a far better place in which to live. A great many of our evacuees have found that out, and they are not returning; they have discovered the beauties of the countryside, the wholesomeness of the life, and they are not going back. If the present Government will do what they have promised at the Election, instal the amenities that are needed to put the rural dweller and farmer in contact with town life, provide proper bus services and communications, and provide decent houses, then we will see a change in agriculture.
  7.43 p.m.
  LORD NUNBURNHOLME: My Lords, Lord Beaverbrook's Motion is very sound, but it does not tackle the immediate problem of more food for the people in Great Britain. It is too late to increase materially the cereal crops for the 1946 harvest. During the war we ploughed up the most suitable old pastures, and ploughing further fields now will not produce the goods this summer. The only sure crop I know not affected by wire worm is linseed, which is a most valuable addition to the balanced ration for winter feeding of live stock. To get food, what the country needs is better co-ordination between the Ministry of Food, the Ministry of Agriculture., and also the Ministry of Health, so that we can plan ahead. What the farmer needs is a clearly defined policy as to whether he is to produce cereals or live stock. After six years of siege rations the nutrition experts say we need more proteins. Therefore encourage the production of live stock. I suggest that a subsidy in the form of an acreage grant for wheat is uneconomical. It puts a premium on bad farming. Pay by results. I suggest a subsidy of about 10s. per quarter on wheat over the present price and in proportion a quarter age grant on other corn crops used for live stock feeding. The land sown this spring should be for feeding our live stock. Let us use all the foreign exchange we can muster for the

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  importation of wheat. Live stock will not only provide our protein food, but they will replace the fertility in the land which was skimmed during the war under Government orders. But live stock needs labour and to get labour we need cottages. Better cottages, better labour. Reestablish and enlarge the grants in the Rural Workers Housing Act, 1926. Encourage the private building of cottages on the farms, so that we have got our men to look after our live stock on the spot, and the farmer and his men will produce what is wanted.
  7.47 p.m.
  THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON): My Lords, I think we are all very much indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, for raising this Motion to-day and giving us an extremely eloquent speech reviewing a subject which must be in everybody's minds. I cannot say I completely agree with all his statements, but one cannot help sympathizing with a lot of what he brought forward in his Motion. The noble Lord, Lord Winster, reminded me that when he was fighting an election in Basingstoke some years ago he saw written on a cottage wall there, "Vote for the Tory Candidate and Prosperity." Well Basingstoke has returned a Tory candidate for something like sixty-six consecutive years, and the question is, "Who has had the prosperity?" One must say that the Conservative Party must take a lot of the blame for the conditions which we find and which the noble Lord has described so extremely clearly and eloquently to-day.
  I can assure him of one thing, and that is that this Government do fully realize the seriousness of the situation, both with regard to the labour on the land and to the necessity of building up our production of food, in this very real crisis and emergency. Where they disagree with the noble Lord is with regard to the means of doing, it, particularly in his suggestion, which is in his Motion on the Order Paper, about the advisability of making representations to the Central Agricultural Wages Board as to the desirability of an immediate increase in wage rates to agricultural workers. On the contrary, His Majesty's Government
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  believe that there are very strong reasons indeed for not intervening. It has been suggested I think outside this House, and also in the noble Lord's speech, that following the decision of the Agricultural Wages Board, which refused the demand for an increase above the minimum of 70s, a week, the Government should approach the Board and ask them to reverse their decision and suggest that the minimum wage might be put up. Well, my Lords, I think it will be clear to this House that this would be interfering, and it is a policy which the Government could never stand for, to interfere with the wage-fixing machinery in any industry if they can possibly help it.
  Particularly in the case of agriculture where there is a statutory authority, where Parliament has actually delegated powers to this Central Wages Board, it would be highly improper for the Government to infringe in any way on those powers and to dictate to that Board what they should do or what they should decide was the just thing in the circumstances. As your Lordships know, under the Agricultural Wages Act a statutory Central Board exists with this duty of determining the minimum wage, taking into account all the relevant circumstances and the economic conditions which exist, and my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture has no right to interfere in those decisions and certainly has no intention of doing so. I think the fact also ought to be emphasized that this Wages Board is the result of a long struggle on the part of the different workers in the industry and the unions to bring about this machinery, and it would be extremely unwise, in the present circumstances, or possibly in any circumstances, to do away with it, as one would have to do in order to reverse this decision.
  In view of the statutory position it would be obviously inappropriate for me either to comment on or to criticize the decisions of the Wages Board. At the same time, I do think we ought to make it quite clear what the facts are. The facts should be recognized. While it is true that this application to the Board for an increase in the minimum wage to ninety shillings, which is what was asked for, has been turned down, yet there are other provisional awards which were suggested and which are of no small value to

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  the worker. For instance, the Board proposed that the hours in respect of which the minimum wage is payable should be reduced to 48 a week all the year round. They proposed also that there should be a considerable increase in overtime and that minimum wages for women workers should be increased. Those are the considerable concessions which have been suggested. And I should like to remind your Lordships that this is concerned with the minimum wage and that there is nothing to stop the farmer paying a very much higher wage. In many parts of the country those higher rates are being paid; there are men who are getting very considerably more than the minimum.
  The Board made another very important suggestion, and that was that the different parties in the industry should get together and try to work out a scheme of grading of wages for the different skills and the different experience of the workers. I would like to agree very much with Lord Nunburnholme and others who said that the agricultural worker is an extremely skilled worker. He obviously is. At the same time I think it has perhaps been a disadvantage to the agricultural industry that there has been no "ladder" of advancement; that there has not been any recognized gradual scaling up of wages according to the increase of skill or the increase of experience to which the worker can look forward. His Majesty's Government earnestly hope that the industry on both sides will come and discuss this and reach some scheme which will please both parties. That, I think, is as much as I can say in regard to wages.
  EARL DE LA WARR: Was the noble Earl going to be good enough to answer my point on the national wages policy? It is a matter to which I think we all attach some importance.
  TETE EARL OF HUNTINGDON: The national wages policy is obviously an extremely big matter. I should like to point out to the noble Earl that it would be impossible to have any national wages policy, as I think he will recognize, without taking in practically every industry in the country, and it is such a far-reaching suggestion that obviously I could not give an opinion upon it on this Motion.
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  It is a very far-reaching suggestion indeed.
  May I turn for a moment to the other part of the noble Lord's Motion which deals with houses, rural cottages, repair and maintenance? Again we have had very eloquent descriptions from the noble Lord, Lord Quibell, the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, and others, of the conditions in which some houses are, and we have had from the noble Lord, Lord Perry, who is perhaps a shining example of the owner of cottages, the other picture—that some cottages are very good indeed. We get a balanced picture, but I think taking it all round, we would all agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, that the rural houses are in an extremely bad condition. There is no question of disagreement there.
  Now what is the provision of the Government in this respect? The Government's policy is that owing to the extreme shortage of materials and the extreme shortage of labour, it is more valuable first to give priority to building new houses and then repairing houses which are not habitable, and filially to come down to improving actual cottages that are being lived in. Not that, for a moment, it is suggested that many of the cottages do not want improving; they obviously do; but in regard to the immediate urgency we want to get the greatest amount of living space for the greatest number of people. Therefore the Government take the line of putting what supplies and labour are available into new houses and afterwards building up uninhabitable houses in order to house the population.
  I see the noble Lord, Lord Rennell, has gone, but I would have liked to call his attention to the very generous housing subsidy which the Government have announced for rural cottages and of which they hope the local authorities will take full advantage. As to the repair and maintenance work on farm buildings, including farm workers' cottages in Great Britain, this position, which is very serious—we agree there—has been fully discussed among the Ministry of Works, the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. There is, as we all know, a terrible shortage of building trade and other workers—that really is what is holding us up—and in order to

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  help this position it has been agreed to include in the special allocation of Class B releases for the building and civil engineering industries provision for the release of 4,000 experienced craftsmen from the Services to undertake such work in connexion with agricultural building. Out of the releases given to the building and civil engineering industries, 4,000 will be put aside for this job of repair and maintenance of farm buildings and workers' cottages. Where the release of general craftsmen under the block arrangements might not provide men of particular crafts required in certain cases, a limited number of men of special experience and ability will be nominated for release within the total allocation. It has also been agreed by the Ministry of Labour that within this general total allocation mentioned above, men who have been previously employed in estate and agricultural building work, including maintenance; should normally be allowed to return to their previous employers or placed on similar work. These are all concessions to try and meet the situation.
  The Ministry of Works Regional Officers will co-operate in these arrangements in conjunction with the agricultural committees as is necessary. I should also like to point out to the noble Lord, Lord Rennell, that the Ministry of Works' powers to license building work in excess of £10 have now devolved upon local authorities, who have complete freedom of action in granting licences for essential repairs to all dwellings, including farm workers' cottages. That, I think, is an important point, which the noble Lord will take to heart when he reads the Report. I pass from this difficult question of houses to the other and last point in the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook's, Motion, that of food. With regard to the rations of the agricultural worker, it is the general policy of His Majesty's Government that they should try to give equal rations all round, that the whole population should have a decent ration rather than that different rations should be given to different sections of the community. It is recognized that in comparison with the urban worker the agricultural labourer is in many respects not quite so well off. That is quite true, owing to the nature of his job and to having no works canteens and so forth. However, there are other considerations
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  which I should like to call to the attention of the noble Lord and other noble Lords in this House. It is quite true that he misses his canteens, but, on the other hand, he has certain opportunities to augment his domestic rations other than by obtaining meals near or at his work. To compensate for this disparity, the Ministry of Food has made general concessions for agricultural workers, so that this disparity can be alleviated a little. For example, the agricultural worker does receive an extra cheese ration. Pie schemes have been devised and are being carried out in, anyway, 5,000 villages, perhaps more; meat pies are being supplied so that the worker can get them for his lunch, which all helps the mid-day meal. In addition there is the fact that the average worker on the land does have a chance either to rear domestic poultry or to join local pig clubs. That is an additional help.
  Finally, of course, farmers can obtain additional allowances of food for providing meals and hot drinks for workers, particularly during the busy periods on the farm, such as harvest and so forth. I have, as a matter of fact, consulted my right honourable friend, the Minister of Food, about this, but I am afraid it is not possible to go beyond these arrangements. The food position, as you will all appreciate, is extremely urgent and difficult, but I am sure the noble Lord will appreciate that point. Not only that, but if we do allow an increase for the agricultural worker, we would at once be faced with the problem of all other workers in heavy industries; they would all demand increases, and the position would become extremely complicated and difficult to work out fairly between them.
  I think noble Lords on all sides of the House will agree on the great importance of these matters raised by Lord Beaver-brook, the effect of wages, housing and food rationing. They do contribute to the amenities of agricultural life and to the nourishment of the workers to a great extent. There are also questions of water supply and electricity supply. They are very much in the Government's mind, but I hope noble Lords will appreciate the tremendous limitations and difficulties with which we are faced in getting these schemes under way. As I have said, there is a tremendous shortage in materials and a tremendous shortage in labour. As regards wages, I hope I

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  have convinced the noble Lord that there is really nothing the Government can do upon the lines he has suggested, but I do assure the House that the Government will do everything in its power to mitigate these effects and to restore as soon as possible conditions conducive to full production.
  8.5 p.m.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Parliamentary Secretary for the admirable way in which he has replied. I want to refer to two points, one of which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Perry. If he tried to part with one of his industrial workers without a week's notice he would have some trouble. He was comparing the advantages of the farm worker, who has a week's notice, with those of the industrial worker. If my noble friend Lord Perry is under the impression that he can get rid of his industrial worker without a week's notice, he will find he is in real difficulties.
  LORD PERRY: The noble Lord will forgive my interrupting him, but throughout industry a man can be discharged at one hour's notice. I am not referring to the application of the Essential Work Order, which is a war measure. In general practice, right through industry generally, a man is engaged by the hour, and is discharged or discharges himself at one hour's notice.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: That is the past.
  LORD PERRY: The present too.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: If I can persuade my noble friend to come with me to some of the agricultural districts he will see agricultural cottages which will convince him that he is one of the model farmers of the community. It is well known everywhere that he is such a very fine farmer that he treats his employees wonderfully well, and I regret to hear him putting impediments in the way of efforts to persuade, induce, or compel other employers to treat their employees as well as Lord Perry does his. I was delighted to hear this attack on the Tories, and to hear some of the ex-Tories on the Bench opposite cheering the attack on them. My noble friend Earl De la Warr made an estimate of seventy per cent. increase in agricultural production. I never heard
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  that estimate before, and I am surprised that he should give credence to it.
  THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON: That is approximately the figure that we have.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: It is a figure you have got which is quite fictitious. We know quite well what the figure means, it means increase in proteins; it does not mean increase in production at all. The figure has been given again and again, but it is quite preposterous. The highest figure I have ever heard from anyone in authority and in a position to make an estimate was twenty-one per cent., and that was an estimate made in reply to an estimate by me of ten per cent. I saw the estimate of one of the statisticians from the Ministry of Agriculture in a speech made a few days ago—thirty per cent. That is the highest estimate I have ever heard. I am sure that the noble Earl, the Parliamentary Secretary, will not be prepared to stand by that estimate of seventy per cent. because it relates to proteins.
  EARL DE LA WARR: I do not want to interrupt, but that estimate was given by the Minister of Agriculture in the last Government at a time when the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, was then a colleague of his. I cannot say anything more.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: I am sure it was given by the Minister, but with the qualification that it was the production of proteins.
  EARL DE LA WARR: There was no qualification.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: Does the Under Secretary want to make that qualification?
  THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON: That is our figure.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: You do not want to put any qualification on it?
  LORD HUNTINGDON: No.
  VISCOUNT ADDISON: I am interested to hear this. I am not responsible for any of these figures, but I think that the seventy per cent. increase in production was the estimate given by Mr. Hudson.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: With a qualification, no doubt.
  LORD ADDISON: I do not think there was a qualification, and I was rather surprised there was not. I believe that was the figure he gave without qualification.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: I regret to tell you that inquiry, adumbration, discussion and dispute will result in you all coming to the conclusion that 10 per cent. is the outside figure. Well, the fall in milk production has created a situation which has got to be taken into account. The decline in the number of beasts, the reduction in the numbers of sheep and pigs, have to be reckoned with. Do you know that pigs now number something like 1,800,000, as against a previous figure of 3,550,000? Hens are down in number till there are only 18,000,000 of them left in this country—or perhaps the figure is 34,000,000, I cannot remember. Every form of live stock is down.
  EARL DE LA WARR: Agreed.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: I do not deny that shipping was saved. There was an immense saving in shipping. But that has got nothing to do with the production from the soil. However, I must not go on.
  The noble Earl has referred to Basingstoke. May I assure him that I am not putting up a defence of the Tory Party in this matter? They never defend my conduct. But I am at variance with the Parliamentary Secretary on one subject—and that is the responsibility of the Government to intervene in this wages situation. In 1940, Mr. Hudson intervened in the wages situation and directed the county committees to reconsider their wage scales. As a result, if I remember aright, a wage of 48s, was fixed in 1940. I am, of course, speaking only from memory.
  THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON: The circumstances were very different then.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: Yes, I agree that the circumstances were different. A statutory power rests with the Minister not with the Central Board. May I make my point? I beg noble Lords to interrupt me as often as they desire, and I will sit down every time. But I assure the Parliamentary Secretary, that I want to make my point. The Act which establishes the Central Wages Board does not deprive the Minister of the right to refer back again wage findings with which he is not
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  satisfied. The Minister is deprived of the right by Defence Regulation. That Defence Regulation transfers or rather deprives the Minister of the benefit of Sections 5 and 6 of the 1924 Act, which gave him authority to refer back, and that Regulation expires on February 25 next. It has not been renewed so far. Therefore, on February 25 next you have the power to ensure that you can, if you wish, refer back the question of wages. Now I hope that you will not seek to escape the responsibility by passing another Defence Regulation. I hope that you will stand up to it. You ought to do so; it is your duty, and I am greatly anxious that you should do so.
  Then there is a further point. You promised the workers—you did indeed the whole lot of you—who voted Labour that you would give immediate increases in wages. Surely you will not deny that. The Labour Party's Speaker's Handbook for 1945 on page 66 dealing with the Union's claim—that is the claim of the National Union of Agricultural Workers—states:
  "The Union's claim for a weekly minimum wage equal to that of the town worker is abundantly justified."
  What does that mean? You invited all voters in the country to put their voting papers in the box for you in the belief that you would give to the agricultural workers wages equal to those of the town workers. And you have, told us to-day—the noble Earl the Parliamentary Secretary has told us—that the town worker has better wages and better conditions. Fulfil that Election pledge.
  Further, may I say this to the Parliamentary Secretary? That struggle of the workers was not designed to deprive the Minister of the right to refer back a decision to the Committee. That was not their purpose. Their purpose was to have established a national wage. I was very much in favour of it. But neither the workers, nor I, nor anybody else who supported it wanted to deprive the Minister of the right to refer a decision back. That was done for the purpose of protecting the Minister, and the wall of protection falls down on February 25.
  Now I must be brief I know, but the Parliamentary Secretary has said that there is no benefit in reducing working time to 48 hours. He knows that industry has a forty-eight hours' working

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  week practically everywhere else. Where does it not? I suggest that there are very few such places. He spoke of higher rates paid to certain agricultural workers. I have made a case concerning that already to-day. There are higher rates, it is true, for cowmen, horsemen, shepherds and others, but you will remember my telling you that the Central Wages Board, the independent members of it, expressed a finding, only on January 2 last, that of the extra pay in such cases one-sixth was for skill and five-sixths was for overtime. Do you want me to produce a document in connexion with this matter? It will only take a little longer. I thought that Lord Keynes might be here and so I brought the document. Then the Parliamentary Secretary has spoken of the agricultural worker who has the opportunity to grow vegetables in his garden or to keep pigs. So has every other worker. Surely there are allotments everywhere. Why should the agricultural worker be asked to give up something, to give up some of the rightful pay for his services, because he goes out and works at night, or in the evenings, on his own behalf? It is a monstrous proposition. Now, I come to the happiest duty which I have had to perform in this debate. That is to say how joyously I withdraw my Motion because of what the Parliamentary Secretary said about the release of 4,000 men for repair and maintenance. We are to have 4,000, I understand.
  THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON: Yes, specialists.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: That is just splendid. More than that, the little builders in agricultural areas throughout the country who repair cottages and cowsheds are to have employees returned to them. That is great news. And the licence system—is that now thrown over so far as agriculture is concerned?
  THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON: Not thrown over—the £10 limit is withdrawn.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: This is grand news. I am delighted to hear it, and I want to say that I shall go away from this House rejoicing at the very considerable concessions that have been made. I am under the impression that a wage concession will have to be made pretty soon. It is not far off, I think. Now I want to close with one last word
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  about Viscount St. Davids. He is under the impression that when I spoke about electricity I was complaining about lack of electricity in the farming industry. As a general proposition, the farming industry has a wonderful supply of electricity. All the big milk establishments, for example, are operated on electricity. I know of the hardships that are experienced by the agricultural workers because of the lack of electricity in their homes—there is need for it, in that way, almost everywhere. But when I spoke before of electricity I was not speaking of the agricultural workers, I was explaining that for electricity, which is one of the essential advantages which the farmer enjoys, he pays with some of the £600,000,000 which he gets for the sale of his products. I pointed out that he has been receiving £300,000,000 more than he received before the war, but he has yet been paying no more for electricity than he did before the war. And the use of electricity by the farmer is a very important item in his bill.
  VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: May I tell the noble Lord that it is not merely a matter of electricity for the labourer. There is not even electricity in the farms in Pembrokeshire.
  LORD QUIBELL: And very few cases in Lincolnshire.
  LORD BEAVERBROOK: All the big herds that are milked with machines have to have electricity. Otherwise I do not see how they can milk. But my point was that the farmer does not have to pay more for his electricity than he paid before the war, whereas he has got twice as much for his produce as he received before the war. The case was not against the farmer, but the farmer can afford to pay the additional wage, not perhaps the wage asked for by the worker, but a substantial addition on seventy shillings. Now I withdraw my Motion with grateful thanks to the Under-Secretary not only for the manner in which my Motion has been handled, but for the deportment of the Under-Secretary which, if I may say so, was a fine Parliamentary performance, and I offer my thanks for this concession. I beg leave of the House to withdraw my Motion.
  Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
  House adjourned at twenty-two minutes past eight o'clock.