Lords Sitting of 12 March 1946

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers.
The Lord Hemphill—Took the Oath.

LONDON NECROPOLIS BILL. [H.L.]
Bill read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

IMPROVEMENTS IN POSTAL SERVICES.
LORD WOOLTON: My Lords, I beg to put the following question of which I have given private notice, namely, to ask His Majesty's Government if they can state the improvements proposed in the postal services.
THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord for the opportunity of making a statement in accordance with my undertaking of December 5th last about the improvement on the war-time postal services which I propose to effect this year. I intend, in May, with the co-operation of the railway companies, to restore seven more travelling post offices, which will enable the Post Office to guarantee de-
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livery by first post next week-day anywhere in England and Wales of correspondence posted in London in time for the 4 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. collections. Posting times will also be improved in other parts of the country for delivery by first post on the following week-day. In October, I intend practically to complete the restoration of the network of night travelling post offices which will give a posting time of 6 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. in London for delivery by first post next week-day. Posting times will also be improved further in other parts of the country.
I also intend with the further co-operation of the railway companies, to make a start in May with scheduling parcel mails to individual passenger trains, a practice which had to be abandoned during the war. By October next, further progress will be made in accelerating parcel mail circulation and the interval between posting and delivery should be reduced by as much as twenty-four hours on medium and forty-eight hours on long distances. I should like to take this early opportunity of paying tribute to the helpful spirit of co-operation in which the railway companies have sought to overcome their great working difficulties in order to improve the letter and parcel mail services.
With regard to air services, as night flying inland air services develop, I propose to use them to improve the mail service in suitable cases. To begin with, I have directed that first priority be given to consideration of the question of night flights between England and Northern Ireland and Eire.

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As regards letter collections and deliveries, the position will be considerably improved this summer in many places, and by the end of the year the improvement will be general. In London, on week days, excepting Saturday, additional collections will be made at 7.30 p.m. and 9 p.m. (the 9 p.m. collection being restricted to the Central Area). On Saturdays and Sundays, the last collection will be at 6 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. There will be five deliveries (one a restricted delivery) in head districts in place of the present three deliveries, and the starting time of the final delivery in head and sub-districts will be 7 p.m. instead of 3 p.m. to 4.15 p.m., as at present. We shall aim at an earlier finish for the first delivery.
In provincial towns, a later collection, restricted as before the war to certain collecting boxes, will be given at 8 p.m. to 8.45 p.m., and the afternoon collection will be made later in many rural districts, timed generally to connect with the outgoing main evening mail from head office. In provincial towns of 50,000 inhabitants and over, there will be an additional delivery, making three in all in the central districts. In rural areas having only one delivery at present, an additional delivery will be given where the traffic justifies this service. I hope that may affect localities in which many noble Lords have a special interest.
I propose, in connexion with these changes, to give provincial town postmen on outdoor services a half-holiday on Saturdays by making the final delivery at about noon to 1 p.m. and the final collection at about 6 p.m. I propose a concession on similar lines for postmen serving rural areas. It will be open to local authorities to take up individual cases with the Post Office, if they so desire.
LORD WOOLTON: My Lords, I am very much obliged to the noble Earl for the information he has given to us, and I am sure that your Lordships will feel that we are grateful to the Post Office for taking these steps which will regain its old reputation for speed and efficiency in which quite justifiably before the war it had considerable pride. The information the noble Earl, the Postmaster-General, has given to us will not only be satisfying to the public but, if I might for one moment speak for the commercial community, I am sure it will give them great
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satisfaction. I am grateful to the noble Earl for the statement he has made.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DOMINION AFFAIRS (VISCOUNT ADDISON): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name.
Moved, That leave be given for the Lord Llewellin's Motion (now standing for Thursday, the 21st instant) to be advanced to to-morrow.—(Viscount Addison.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

DISTRIBUTION OF INDUSTRY (DEVELOPMENT AREAS) ORDER, 1946.
LORD PAKENHAM: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing on the Paper in my name.
Moved, That the Special Order, as reported from the Special Orders Committee on Thursday, the 28th of February last, be approved.—(Lord Pakenham).
On Question, Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (MORTLAKE CREMATORIUM BOARD) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Bill reported without amendment.
2.38 p.m.

NATIONAL INSURANCE (INDUSTRIAL INJURIES) BILL.
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. There is no particular Party which can claim the credit for this Bill, and such credit as it brings is equally to be shared, I think, by all Parties. I may, perhaps, remind your Lordships of the circumstances in which this Bill came about. At the out-break of war, a Commission was sitting on the question of workmen's compensation. Their labours had to be suspended by the outbreak of war after they had

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done a very considerable amount of work, but it was felt that the work they had done and the evidence they had collected should not be wasted. Accordingly the Home Office—the Secretary of State at that time was Mr. Herbert Morrison, and the Under-Secretary of State was Mr. Peake—worked at the plan and evolved, I think, the main germ of the idea, namely, that workmen's compensation should be transferred and become a social service and that it should be very closely equated to the principle of war pensions with which, of course, at that time we had all become familiar.
At that stage I think that the credit for the idea was due to one member of the Labour Party and one member of the Conservative Party. The Bill passed then into the general charge of the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, who was Minister of Reconstruction. In those days the noble Lord used to stress his non-Party character; so much so that I looked forward with confidence to being able to welcome him into the ranks of the Labour Party. I need hardly say I still look forward to that, with perhaps rather less confidence than a year ago. Anyway, he took the matter in hand and I had the great privilege and honour of serving on his Committee. Members of all Parties served on that Committee. A White Paper was published, I think, in September, 1944, Command Paper No. 6551, and I would recommend any of your Lordships who want a short statement as to the reasons for this Bill to read the foreword to that Report, which sets it out with a lucidity and a brevity which I could not possibly emulate to-day.
In the next month, October, 1944, I became Minister of National Insurance. I am getting so old that perhaps I may now justifiably claim to become reminiscent. I realized that my tenure of that office, which of course was dependent upon the German war, was not likely to be very long, and I was very anxious whilst I did hold the office to be able to produce some Bill. It would, I think, perhaps have been better if we had concentrated on bringing in one long insurance measure, of which this social insurance would have been a part and family allowances perhaps another part. It was quite obvious that I could not hope to do that in my term of office, and therefore I pressed that I might be allowed to work first on family allowances and
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secondly on industrial injuries insurance. I got my way and I managed after a considerable Parliamentary tussle to see family allowances through, and then I turned to this question of industrial injuries insurance. I was working against time for the reasons I have given. I confess I worked very hard, and I confess, too, that I was beaten by the shortest of possible heads. I got the approval of all the necessary Committees. The House met, as we now know, for the last time in the days of the Coalition Government on Friday, May 18. Unfortunately the edict went forth that I was to obtain the formal approval of the Cabinet on Friday, May 18, and therefore I could not give notice of introduction of my Bill. I was unable therefore to publish the Bill under my own name, but my successor in the new Caretaker Government, Mr. Hore-Belisha, did me the great honour of introducing the Bill in exactly the same form in which I prepared it.
To-day I catch up with my dear friend again. I feel rather like the old nanny who by tradition is always looking down from the gallery to see how the young lady, whom she helped to bring into the world and nursed through her tender years, is comporting herself on her first public engagement. I should also like to pay a tribute to the work done by Sir William Beveridge. He also investigated this matter and he too came to the conclusion that workmen's compensation should be transformed into a social service. Although I confess that I think on this matter of workmen's compensation, his report was not so satisfactory as it was on some other matters, yet we must pay our debt of gratitude to him.
I think anybody who considered the system of workmen's compensation as it has developed, realized, as those of us who practised in the law realized, what a godsend it had been to workers in industry. Yet certain limitations and failures did reveal themselves. The first among them I think was this. The scheme of workmen's compensation was based entirely on earnings, and what was compensated for was loss of earnings. Consequently, one could have a case like the following: Let me take the case of a shorthand typist who was injured by some accident arising out of or in the course of her employment, who had lost both legs, but who managed to get to the office afterwards perhaps by the aid of wooden

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legs or what you like, and earn just as much as she earned before. No compensation would be payable in such a case because there had been no loss of wages. The Act did not take into consideration the loss of enjoyment of life, the loss of the privileges which all of us who enjoy good health enjoy automatically. That was the first defect in the Act. Then there was the very great difficulty of ascertaining what the wages were. A very large porportion of the cases in the latter years turned on an ascertainment of wages which formed the basis of the calculation. Then it followed that if an injured person made an effort to go back to work, and did go back to work, the mere fact that he earned wages automatically involved the reduction of the compensation. I am quite convinced from what I saw in the time that I held the office—and it made me more certain than ever—that part of the curative treatment of these people is to get them back as wage-earners earning their own living.
Then, too, there was this difficulty. Employers used to insure—indeed under some more modern legislation they were compelled to insure—and the conduct of this matter passed into the hands of the insurance companies, and, although I must not be understood for a moment as making any attack on the insurance companies, vet a good deal was lost in that the employer could not deal directly with his man; he had the matter taken out of his hands, and in some cases undoubtedly there were rather unworthy attempts made to get the injured workman to enter into a composition which was going to put an end to his right of remuneration. Further, there is no doubt that the administrative cost of the existing system was too high. In some cases it amounted to as much as 50 per cent. Fifty-three per cent. was the figure quoted. Only 47 per cent. therefore of the amount paid found its way into the pockets of the workers. In other cases, such as in the case of the mutual companies, it was by no means so high, but even there it was seldom under 20 per cent. Your Lord-ships will, I am sure, agree that if we can adopt a system which is going to cut down considerably the percentage of administrative costs it is very desirable to do so.
The other point is this: when Mr. Joseph Chamberlain introduced his great
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scheme he was very anxious to keep it out of what I may call the legal atmosphere. He wanted to have the thing dealt with by all authorities, as it were, sitting round a table. He wanted a system of friendly arbitration. That was a failure. As your Lordships know, no topic of the law lent itself more readily to famous legal battles than the determination of the issue as to whether an accident had arisen out of or in the course of employment. When I came to draft this Bill I confess I was very anxious to see if I could get rid of that phraseology altogether. Various other suggestions were made in connexion with employment and so on, but I came to the conclusion that we had better stick to the words "out -If and in the course of employment" which by this time had become clarified to a very great extent; at any rate, we knew what we were talking about.
Now some of your Lordships may ask—and I felt this very strongly—is it really capable of any qualification at all? This case used to be put to me, and I put it many times to myself. You have two men, one of whom slips on a piece of orange peel just outside the works gate, falls down and breaks his thigh. That is not an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment. The other man has precisely the same accident inside the works gate, and that accident would be arising out of and in the course of his employment. So those two men, who have met with very much the same disaster, are treated in quite different ways. I agree that that is an anomaly which we failed to get rid of, but if you consider the history of the matter I think you will come to the conclusion that it is quite impossible at this stage to get rid of it. Under the Workmen's Compensation Act, in war-time conditions, a married man with one child, who is injured by an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment, gets fifty-five shillings a week, whereas if he is injured by an accident not so arising he gets today very much less. Under the new social insurance scheme a single man would get twenty-six shillings, whereas a single man under these proposals will get forty-five shillings.
We could not afford, without making the contributions impossibly high, to bring the twenty-six shillings up to forty-five shillings. The alternative was to

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lower the forty-five shillings to twenty-six shillings. That was, to my mind, the great weakness of Sir William Beveridge's suggestion. He wanted to deal with this problem by dealing in the same way with the first thirteen weeks after the injury, whether it was or was not arising out of or in the course of the employment, and he proposed, subject to a variation depending on the value of money, twenty-four shillings for a single man for the first thirteen weeks. You could not expect the workers to agree to that. Under the present system, they have a scheme provided for them to which they do not contribute directly at all, and from which they get very much more. They would say, with convincing logic to my mind, "Now you are asking us to come in and contribute directly. Are you really proposing that the compensation we get to-day—forty shillings for a single man for thirteen weeks—is going to come down to twenty-four shillings, or twenty-six shillings, or whatever it may be?" That is impossible.
I hope, if this country reaches once again that prosperity which we all desire, which of course will only come through the industry of its inhabitants, that in the fulness of time we shall be able to move this social insurance scheme up until it reaches or approximates to the level of the industrial insurance scheme; but I am not prepared to move the industrial insurance scheme down to fit into the figures which alone we can afford for a social insurance scheme.
Now let me say a word about the finance of the Bill. I hope we shall have none of that jeering which I have sometimes heard—I am sure we shall not in your Lordships' House—that "This is one of those ridiculous claims of nine-pence for fourpence," and so on. Of course, these benefits have to be paid for. Let us see how the figures stand. It is estimated by the actuary—and in this difficult and novel field he can do little more than make an instructed guess—that the amount of the contributions will be of the order of £30,500,000, and, following the normal principle, one-sixth of that money comes from the taxpayer, so that the other two sides, the employers and the workers, have to find £25,000,000; that is to say, they have to find something like £12,500,000 each. So far as the employer is concerned, that is very sub-
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stantially less than he is finding to-day. That is one of the vices of considering this Bill apart from the other Bill. We are putting very heavy burdens on the employer in regard to social insurance. Your Lordships should understand that so far as the employer is concerned he is finding actually less in the way of premium for workmen's compensation than he is having to pay to-day. £12,500,000, then, is the amount of the contribution. The contribution for the man is eightpence, the man himself paying fourpence and the employer four-pence, and for the woman sixpence, the woman paying threepence and the employer threepence. The expenses, when the scheme is fully working, are estimated to amount to £32,000,000 a year, a deficit of £1,500,000. I said, "when the scheme is fully working," and it will be many long years before the scheme is fully working, before the full burden has to be borne. In the meantime the excess payments—for that is what they will be—will be funded, so that we shall be able to finance the full scheme at a later date. But even if we cannot, the ultimate deficit is equivalent only to one halfpenny extra contribution.
Your Lordships will see that the scheme provides for a quinquennial review by the actuary, who will, of course, report on the fund. The cost of administration is estimated to be £3,500,000, and as the expenses are estimated to amount to £32,000,000 you will see that the cost of administration is estimated to come to very little over ten per cent., which is a much more satisfactory figure than the fifty, forty or twenty per cent. under the existing scheme. We have rejected the idea of a levy on particularly dangerous industries. We are applying the law of averages to everybody. It is a fact that the bank clerk is very much less likely to sustain injuries than the miner, but the bank clerk and the miner both have to pay their fourpence in order that in this matter all can stand equally, because those men who are injured in the course of their work are really very much in the same position as the soldier who is injured in the course of his duty—they are the soldiers of industry.
Now I must, without undue length, say something about the details of the Bill. It is divided into some six parts. Part I deals with the question as to who is in,

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who is to insure. The answer, broadly speaking, is everybody employed under a contract of service. But you must distinguish between a contract of service and an office. I do not suppose the Lord Chancellor or the Judges would be held to be employed under a contract of service; they hold offices. But there would be many border-line cases where it is very difficult to decide whether a contract of service is the governing document or not. In those cases the Minister decides, and there is an appeal to the Courts who can review, the Minister's decision.
I am sorry—I have always been sorry—that the self-employed person is not in the scheme. That is very hard, and there are many small people, working on their own account, who want this help just as much as the employed man. But they have no employer, and the whole system of a contribution by the employer and the employed person breaks down. At all stages of the Bill, under all Governments, this matter was most sympathetically considered, yet we all came to the conclusion most reluctantly that we could not take these people in. As to the benefits, I have told you that we adhere to the words "arising out of and in the course of employment," but we have modified the rigour of those words to some extent. If you look at Clause 7 (4) of the Bill your Lordships will see we have provided that if the accident takes place in the course of the employment it is presumed to have arisen out of the employment, unless the contrary is proved. Sometimes there is the case of a man who falls dead and it cannot be said whether the disease of the heart which caused the death was or was not brought about by something he was doing, because he, the only witness, is dead. Therefore we have put in something to deal with cases of that kind. Then we have said a man is to get workmen's compensation, even though he is disobeying instructions, as long as he is engaged on his employer's business. Clause 9 deals with the case where a man is travelling on a vehicle which is provided by his employer, even though he is not under an obligation to use that vehicle. Clause 10 deals with the position where a man is injured in meeting an emergency—whilst engaged in rescue work and that sort of thing.
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As to the amount of benefits, the Bill differentiates between injury benefit and disablement benefit. Injury benefit is a benefit which is payable for the first twenty-six weeks, if disablement lasts so long. For a single man it is forty-five shillings; if the man has a wife, sixteen shillings is paid in addition, and for his eldest child seven shillings and sixpence, making a total of sixty-eight shillings and sixpence for a married man with one child. The other children, your Lordships will remember, are provided for under the Family Allowances Act. That is important, because no less than ninety per cent. of the cases are finished and cleared up within a period of twenty-six weeks, but if you have a case where a man is still incapacitated at the end of twenty-six weeks, then he is assessed for a disability pension. If his degree of disability is assessed at less than twenty per cent. he receives a gratuity and his case Is cleared off, but if it is more serious, he is assessed to a percentage of forty-five shillings, which is a one hundred per cent. payment. It has the great advantage that he receives that pension for life in an ordinary case, and if he can earn money that fact does not prejudice his pension. He still has every inducement to go to work to earn his own living and contribute to the general well-being. In certain cases there may be an unemployability supplement. Clause 13 provides for an unemployability supplement of twenty shillings. In bad cases where a man needs constant attention he can obtain an extra allowance for that, up to as much as two pounds a week. In normal cases it would be twenty shillings only.
Finally, the Minister has done something which I was not able to do; he has dealt with the case colloquially known to lawyers as "the engine-driver's eye case." Directly you depart from a basis of wages, you encounter this difficulty. There are certain cases, of which the engine-driver's eye and the compositor's finger are the classic examples. A compositor may lose the top of one finger, which would be a very slight injury to an ordinary man, but in the case of a compositor it would make it absolutely impossible for him to follow his trade. An engine-driver, who is earning good money as a highly-skilled man, may have an accident, involving the loss of the sight of one eye; for all ordinary purposes he would be all right, but he could never

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drive an engine again. Therefore, in those particular hard cases, the Minister has provided, by Clause 14, that those people may get a supplement over and above that which they would normally get, amounting to as much as a quarter of the forty-five shillings, always provided that that does not bring them above the forty-five shillings which is the maximum.
The provisions as to death benefits are very complicated, and I should not be justified in detaining your Lordships in describing them. It is sufficient to say that generally what is provided is a pension and that the essential qualification, save in the case of a widow, is that the person receiving the pension should have been wholly or mainly maintained by the deceased person. In certain cases where the maintenance is less than mainly or wholly, there may be gratuities.
Part III of the Bill deals with the determination of questions, apart from the Minister's determination, which are in most cases subject to an appeal to the Courts. Medical matters, that is to say, the degree of disablement, are dealt with by a medical board consisting of not less than two doctors, and, by a medical appeal tribunal, consisting of a chairman and two medical practitioners. In legal matters, since the employer no longer has any interest or there is no insurance company having any interest to say that the man did not receive his injuries in the course of his employment, we have an insurance officer. It is his duty to decide whether the accident did or did not arise in this way. There is an appeal to the local appeal tribunal, which consists of representatives of employers and workers, and a chairman with legal qualifications. With leave, there is an appeal from that tribunal to the Commissioner. Leave may be given either by the local tribunal or by the Commissioner. The Minister is very anxious—and when I was Minister I took the same view—that we should try to get back to the original idea of trying to reduce legal formality so far as we can. Therefore, he does not propose, in the regulations he is going to issue, to allow legal representation before the local appeal tribunal except with the consent of the Chairman. However, if the case comes before the Commissioner—and before him there will be important cases on which other cases may turn—it is obviously right that the
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legal representation should be allowed. Part IV extends the provisions of the Bill to industrial diseases. There is an immense amount of work to be done by the Minister in regard to this matter, particularly in regard to these dust lung diseases such as pneumoconiosis.
Part V deals with finance, administration and legal proceedings. Clause 57 provides for the setting up of an Industrial Injuries Fund. Clause 58 provides for quinquennial valuation. Clause 60 makes provision for an Industrial Injuries Advisory Council, which will consider all those matters, and give the Minister the benefit of its advice. Clause 61 deals with inspectors. The powers of an inspector certainly seem to be very formidable in the clause as drafted. That was the subject of a good deal of discussion in another place and the Minister promised he would look into it. In the course of our Committee discussions here, I shall bring in certain Amendments which, I think, will modify the rigour of the clause without, I hope, interfering with its essential effects.
The next part, Part VI, deals with miscellaneous and general matters. Clause 72 enables the Minister to institute research. I was very insistent on obtaining this power, and my colleagues were very ready to agree. I think it will be a good thing it the Minister is able to say, "This pneumoconiosis is proving too expensive: I am having to pay out an enormous amount in respect of it. I will get some scientists on to the job and see if they cannot devise a method of stopping the disease." I think that is of great value. Vocational training is dealt with in Clause 73. Under Clause 74 the Minister has power—if necessary, free of charge—to provide such things as artificial limbs and those articles which are needed by people who have been injured. Clause 81 deals with past cases. It is very hard that men who happen to have been injured before this Bill becomes an Act should find themselves less well provided for than those who receive their injury after the Bill has become an Act.
I had made some provision in Clause 81 for payments to supplement the allowances provided for in such cases. The Minister has made it plain that he is anxious to go still further, and I may be in a position—I cannot definitely promise anything now—at some later stage

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to suggest to your Lordships an Amendment dealing with these past cases. My hope is to see if I can bring them more nearly into line with the present situation. I am not attempting to deal with the man whose case has been settled. I am talking about the man who is still continuing to receive a pension. The burden of providing the pension falls upon an insurance company, and it would not be right that we should relieve them of that burden. On the other hand if we are going to pay that man more handsomely, it would not be right that they should bear that extra burden. In that way, I think it is possible that something may be done.
One other matter upon which I would touch is the question of alternative remedies. At the time of the White Paper the Minister appointed—following a suggestion in the Beveridge Report—a Committee which is presided over by Sir Walter Monckton to consider alternative remedies. The fact is that though I am told that that Committee is to report shortly, I have not yet received their Report, and I do not expect it for another month. If that Report comes to hand in time, before we have finished the Committee stage of this Bill, I may be able to introduce an Amendment to deal with the situation. It would be, in many respects, more satisfactory to get the whole thing tidied up in this Bill if that can be clone. If, on the other hand, the Report is not ready I shall ask your Lordships to pass the Bill as it is, and we shall have to have another Bill to deal with the question of alternative remedies.
As I have said, in what, I hope, has been a not too lengthy review of the Bill, I can cordially commend it to your Lordships. I believe that it is a really important measure, and that it is conceived on absolutely sound lines, though, of course, there is much that may be said when we come to detailed consideration of the clauses. I can assure your Lordships that you will find us very ready to consider any practical suggestions and I have no doubt that the Bill is capable of improvement. I know that suggestions will not be made or considered in any Party spirit. This Bill is the product of men of good will working together for a common end, and I am sure that it is in that light that it will be dealt with by your Lordships. I commend it to your
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Lordships and ask you to give it a Second Reading.
Moved that the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.14 p.m.
VISCOUNT SIMON: My Lords, this is a very important Bill affecting, I suppose, one third of the population. Perhaps if one were to confine oneself to adults, it would be true to say that it affects the greater part of the adult population of the country. I am sure that we are all extremely indebted to the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, for the way in which he has moved the Second Reading, and for the explanation which he has given. Certainly, no Bill for which general support is sought could have been commended more felicitously or in more reasonable terms, and I would like to assure him, at once, on behalf of those who are around me, that we shall certainly do everything in our power to contribute to the passing of this Bill into law. We believe that by so doing we shall be joining in a very important reform—indeed, as regards the matter in hand, in almost a revolution. It is not, of course, true that the old system which is now going to be replaced by this Bill had not very good points, which may perhaps be acknowledged. But in fact to-day the provisions of the Workmen's Compensation Act, which is repealed, lock, stock and barrel, in the Schedule to this Bill, are really out of keeping with modern developments for dealing with State assistance, administered by the State, for those of our fellow-citizens who fall into misfortune of one kind or another.
Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's name should always be held in honour, because he was actually the inspirer and the author of the Workmen's Compensation Bill of 1897. It is worth while spending a moment to see how great was the change that was brought about at that time. The claim which a workman who was injured at work might have against his employer was limited before that time to the cases where he was able to prove, and prove affirmatively, that his injury was due to negligence for which his employer was responsible. Therefore, it was a complete answer before Mr. Chamberlain's Bill became law, for the employer to say: "I am very sorry that you have met with this disaster at work and while working for me. But it is not my fault, and,

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as it is not, there is no question of my having, by force of law, to compensate you." That was a matter which was changed by the Bill of 1897, and it was a great and beneficent change. It treated the employer as being as much answerable, within the limitations of the Statute, for dealing with the case of an injured workman as if he was dealing with a case of injured machinery. He had to mend the machinery, and it was made equally his duty to do what he could to mend the injured workman.
That was a provision which effected an immense revolution in the relations between workmen and employers. It has been improved and amended by Parliament since, but, at this moment, it is the basis of the law on this particular subject, and when this new Bill is passed it will lapse into history and be swept completely out of the Statute Book. I was very glad to hear my noble and learned friend say, what I have long thought, that the first and possibly the principal advantage of the change was that you did not make the compensation which a man received depend upon an inquiry into his earnings. After all, when an injury is suffered in the home in consequence of a man being laid aside through an industrial accident it is a very hard-hearted and imperfect method to measure that injury by treating it as some portion of his earnings. Whether the income in the home is smaller or larger the things that have to be done to try to deal with the injury and help the injured man, within reasonable limits, are the same. Therefore, I mark it as the first and most important feature in this legislation that it gives the go-by altogether, when the injured man claims to receive benefit, to the questions: "How much were you earning?"—or, more strictly, "How much were you earning on the average in the course of the last so many years?"—"Have you allowed for times out of work?"—and all the other questions of that kind. I feel that it really does not matter what the earnings were of a man who meets with an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment when he was under contract of service.
The noble and learned Lord, when he replies at the end of the debate, will tell me if I am wrong, but I suppose a managing director is a person who is acting under a contract of service. I suppose the newly-appointed head of the
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Coal Board may very well be acting under a contract of service, but I do not know. It will be some consolation to persons in that position to know that if they squirt the ink into their eye as they are signing a letter on behalf of the institution for which they are signing, they will be entitled to forty-five shillings a week. It is better to have that than to keep up this irritating and essentially unjust idea that a man should receive compensation based on what he is getting paid.
All of us who have known this subject at all—I claim to know it fairly well because I was called to the Bar almost immediately after Mr. Chamberlain's Bill became law and I have had much experience of this subject both as lawyer and judge—will mark a second change which this Bill tries to secure. Many an employer, when his workman is injured, might feel that he wanted to deal with him without taking every point of objection and deal with him as man to man. But, in the nature of things, under the system of workmen's compensation every employer in a big way has to insure. The insurance companies are very well-run bodies, and I must say in my experience generally have acted very fairly, though I have known of exceptions. Once the employer insures under the Workmen's Compensation Act and an accident happens, he has to hand the case over to his insurance company, and no feelings of his own can be allowed to influence the decision arrived at if he is going to have the advantage of the insurance for which he has paid.
That is a bad system. It does tend to harden the relations between employer and employee. It does tend to make the workman feel that he is being treated as though he were a mere machine instead of a being of flesh and blood. I know one of the main objects of this Bill—and one which the Government had in view when I was a colleague of my noble and learned friend, although my part was a very minor one—is to get rid as far as may be of that strictly legal view of the matter and to substitute, if we can, something which is more domestic and, some people would say, more human. Well, that seems to me to be very good. There are one or two considerations the other way. As things stand under the Workmen's Compensation Act the careless employer, the employer who brings upon himself constant claims because his

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machinery is not properly fenced, or because his arrangements are carried out in a thoroughly careless manner, is liable to find an insurance company will turn on him and say: "If you have accidents like this we shall charge you a higher rate of premium." I do not myself see in this new Bill any provision—perhaps no provision is possible—aiming at securing that the employer who pays his four-pence a week has got any inducement to be careful. He might produce a very large number of claims, and I do not see any means by which he is to be restrained or kept in order. Perhaps it is impossible to do that.
There is another thing upon which I feel everybody may not agree, but it is my own conviction. I am not sure—and here I address myself to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack more particularly—that it is unimportant for the workman that the decision as to whether he is going to get benefits is to be arrived at in the first instance by a civil servant—largely, I suppose, as the result of a paper application. The decision should ultimately be only a few weeks later, but it might be more, and it would be handed to him on a piece of paper in which he will read whether he has got it or not. I speak subject to correction from those who know more about it, but I have the strong impression that there is a certain satisfaction which the workman derives froth seeing his case presented; from hearing the witness examined; from hearing the County Court Judge discuss it and argue it out. Very often he comes away saying: "I know that County Court Judge very well. He is a perfectly fair man and even although the case was decided against me, I can see why." I am sure he is more satisfied with that than he would be with receiving a letter marked "O.H.M.S.," without a stamp on it, and opening it to find out whether the insurance officer—one of a large number of hard-working upright men—has decided he should get it or not.
You cannot have all advantages in any scheme, and my own quite deliberate view, which I venture to press upon your Lordships' House, is this. Taken as a whole this Bill is an immense improvement on the existing arrangement. If I say one or two words on matters of possible criticism I hope that the noble and learned
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Lord on the Woolsack and the House generally will not think I am criticising the Bill generally. This is a case where a good deal of responsibility falls on this House, and we must prepare ourselves to discharge it. First of all, there are alternative remedies. The Lord Chancellor, no doubt wishing not to occupy more time, did not spend very long in explanation of that point. It is familiar, of course, to some people but not, I think, to everybody, and if I may be allowed I wish to explain the situation which has to be faced and which has not yet been dealt with at all.
When a workman meets with an injury at his work there are many cases in which he may have a perfectly good claim against his employer for a lump sum by way of damages for negligence. A very good example is a failure to fence machinery. For example, take a case where the employer is prosecuted and fined in the Police Court because that piece of machinery which ought to be fenced was not, and where the man who has lost his fingers brings an action against the employer in the ordinary way in the Courts, because employers are answerable for their negligence. This Bill does not alter that in the least and, therefore, there are really two roads, either of which is open to him, or rather both of which are open to him. One is the road of applying for benefit under this Act, and the other is making a claim quite apart from this against his employer for negligence. That is a very well-known difficulty in this particular branch of the service of industrial protection. It is dealt with in the Workmen's Compensation Act—as it has been dealt with ever since the first Act—and it is usually described as the section which deals with alternative remedies. As Mr. Chamberlain thought it right and in the law as it now stands, as it has been made by Parliament, there is a limitation on the right of the injured person to pursue both roads, to Seek both remedies. The remedies are not cumulative, they are alternative. He may get his remedy by one road or he may get his remedy by the other if, of course, he can prove negligence.
One of the most difficult sections of the Workmen's Compensation Act (I think it is now Section 29 which some of us had to deal with) is the one which deals with alternative remedies. It is provided, for instance, in the present law, that if

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the injured workman makes a mistake and goes against his employer for a lump sum of damages for negligence and fails, he can save his position and have an award made in terms of the Workmen's Compensation Act. That is quite right, though it is subject to the possibility of an order being made about costs, inasmuch as one action has already been fought. At present this Bill, though it professes to be, of course, a perfectly complete piece of legislation, consisting of these six Parts and a number of Schedules, contains a great gap. It is quite impossible to suppose that Parliament is going to pass it finally without dealing in some proper way with the question of alternative remedies.
I must say I was distressed to hear the Lord Chancellor hint at a possibility that this Bill would become law without the necessary new clause or clauses about alternative remedies being put in. That, I think, my Lords, has never been said on behalf of the Government in Parliament before. In the House of Commons the Minister of National Insurance expressed his regret that he could not already produce clauses about alternative remedies, but he used language which was quite plain. He anticipated and asserted that, of course, upon getting the Report of the Monckton Committee, these clauses would be inserted in your Lord-ships' House. In order that he might get a little support for that proposition, I recollect that he apologized to his supporters for having to use such an instrument. Now we are told by the Lord Chancellor that there is a possibility, or he hints that there is a possibility, that this Bill may reach the Statute Book without that being done. I think that would be a very wrong course. You certainly cannot leave it alone, and surely you must make a provision about this, whatever the reasonable provision is, before you repeal altogether the Workmen's Compensation Act, which does make such provision, and carry this new legislation which does nothing of the kind. Otherwise, the employer is really not going to be fairly treated. He is going to make his contribution of fourpence a week, and he is not otherwise going to get any benefit out of the Bill. It would be a very strange result if it were said: "Let the workman have both remedies without any restriction at all."
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I see the difficulty in devising what would be right, and I suppose that is the explanation of why the Monckton Committee, which was appointed in July, 1944, has not yet reported to the Government about it. But is it not really right to say, with great respect to His Majesty's Government, that the responsibility is primarily theirs, and they cannot justify passing into law a Bill with this striking omission merely because they are waiting for somebody else to recommend to them what they ought to do? I say that in the most friendly way, but I do hope that what I am saying will commend itself to the judgment of the Lord Chancellor, because I feel convinced that if this Bill went on the Statute Book and became law with out such a provision, very great difficulties might hereafter arise. Sir William Beveridge was not so successful, I agree, in dealing with this part of the subject as he was with the rest in his great Report, but Sir William Beveridge's Report, which was issued long ago, included a chapter headed, "Problem of Alternative Remedies." I must say I think it would be only reasonable to ask the Government to offer us a solution of that problem before they seek to get the Royal Assent to this Bill.
The next point is about self-employed persons. I quite appreciate the sincerity with which the Lord Chancellor told us he would like to get such persons included. I quite appreciate the great difficulty that does exist. But does the House appreciate the full existence of the anomaly which this Bill is going to create if you do not bring what is called the self-employed person in? Take the instance of the village joiner, who is very often the village undertaker as well. He works on some piece of local building, fitting window frames—when he has the necessary licence—and perhaps he employs a mate, a single man, a workman whom he pays. They are working on a scaffolding, and the scaffolding collapses. The two of them meet with exactly similar injuries; each breaks his leg. Do your Lordships realize that the result of this Bill will be that the workman employed by this self-employed man will get forty-five shillings a week, whereas the self-employed man, incurring exactly the same risks and doing exactly the same work, will get only twenty-six shillings a week; and the only compensation he will have in addition will be that

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he will have paid fourpence a week to help to insure his mate? Really, can that stand as right? Can it be right to say to the local builder and to the various people engaged in small trades, such as the local shopkeeper: "You are actually working at your trade side by side with one person whom you employ, and where you both meet with exactly the same accidents in exactly the same circumstances, one of you will get 45s. per week under this Bill and the other will get 26s."?
I thoroughly understand the difficulty in providing against it, but I think ingenuity ought to be sufficient to find some sort of remedy. The Minister in charge of the Bill in another place said he would be glad to consider it if he had representations on the subject. Well, the small shopkeeper, the small joiner, is not necessarily a member of some powerful trade union; but surely, my Lords, you will agree that he still has his rights, and he has a right to be dealt with on fair terms as compared with other people. It is not really true to say that this Bill is limited in its benefits to people who are employed on a contract of service. This Bill expressly covers, for example, a taxi-cab driver who is driving a taxi-cab on hire. He is not employed by anybody. He is expressly included. It includes share-fishermen who join in going out and bringing in a catch and who are not employed by anybody. It includes firemen. I am not sure that it does not include policemen. The question is: Cannot we justly ask in this House for further consideration for this particular class of person who it does seem to me under the present Bill is not being fairly treated? If he were his own workman he would get 45s. a week as a single man, another sixteen shillings if he had a wife, seven and sixpence for a child, and it may be, as the Lord Chancellor explained, another one pound because he is really so very much smashed up, and perhaps another two pounds because he needs to be specially attended to. Is it right to say to another man, whose only fault is that he is not actually employed under a contract of service, but who is doing exactly the same thing: "Oh no, you are not a person under contract of service. Therefore you must fall back on the 26s. a week"? I do not think it is fair.
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Before I sit down I would like to say a word about the relation of the profession of the Law to this Bill. I my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack will forgive me—although he speaks with far greater knowledge of the Bill than anyone else in this House—I thought I detected him saying that the chairman of a local advisory committee would be a person of legal qualifications. I cannot find that in the Bill. We might move an Amendment in order to justify what the Lord Chancellor said but I do not think it is in the Bill. Indeed, it is very remarkable how scared the framers of this Bill seem to be of legal assistance in any quarter. It is true that they compel a certain amount of respect by adopting the phrase "an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment." That has been the phrase ever since the first Workmen's Compensation Act and if it is said that workmen's compensation has led to a good deal of litigation it is to be observed first of all that the number of cases otherwise disposed of is infinitely greater than the number litigated. Secondly, this phrase "an accident arising out of and in the course of his employment" has been one of the principal subjects of legal exposition. Many of us have had occasion to do our best to give it a clear meaning and I think the judges have done a great deal to clarify and simplify the essential considerations.
I should like to ask my noble and learned friend, if he intends to speak in reply, whether the insurance officer, and on appeal from him the local appeal tribunal, is going in any way to be guided by, or governed by, the decisions which have been laid down as to what does constitute an accident arising out of and in the course of employment. It would be a very great pity if these rules and principles were not observed. It would simply open the floodgates of endless confusion. On the other hand, if they are going to be observed might it not be as well to take the opportunity to include the help of those who know something about the subject? I quite understand that in merely trivial cases you do not want to have the interposition of specially trained legal practitioners. There is a good deal to be said for a domestic forum up to a point, but I think that the contemplated provision—it is not in the Bill—of regulations which are aimed at excluding professional

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lawyers from appearing before local tribunals is ill-advised in the real interests of the public.
The conception which some people seem to take pleasure in expressing, that the professional man enters on needless, lengthy, technical and meaningless arguments, is in my experience without foundation. On the other hand it is perfectly certain that there are many cases in which a completely lay tribunal or lay commissioner—there is nothing about the qualifications of a commissioner either, in this Bill—may be accepted. I know it may be said that there is a regulation of this sort already to be found in the unemployment insurance regulations. It is a regulation to this effect, that during the consideration by a court of referees the claimant, insurance officer—any officer of the Ministry of Labour that the Minister may direct—shall be entitled to be present at the sitting of the court and that the claimant may be represented at the court by any persons not being counsel or solicitor authorized by him. Is that really a reasonable provision? I suppose that trade union secretaries carefully avoid being called to the Bar! One or two of the Under-Secretaries of the present Government have that distinction. If he were a private member of the House of Commons and an individual wished to be represented by him, he could be told, "You cannot do that. You are counsel or solicitor." These, after all, are the people who have received some training in this matter. It is really ridiculous to say here in the House of Lords that you do not in many cases put an applicant under a severe disadvantage because he is not entitled to have this particular form of service. The good lawyer is the least technical, but he is very often the person who sees what the case turns upon and puts the right questions in consequence, whereas I have heard people who have not had that ability spend a good deal of time asking questions which were not to the point. I hope I can have some assurance on that point.
I venture to make these comments because I know something of this subject—it has been of the greatest interest to me all my life—and I most warmly approve of this very great effort made by all Parties to improve the law on this subject. But I do not think that you will be doing all that you ought to do
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in connexion with this Bill, technical as its appearance may be, unless in some of these matters you give your attention to securing means by which this instrument, on which we sincerely congratulate the Lord Chancellor, will effect its purposes in the best possible way. This is a great and valuable revolution. It may be, and I hope it will be, an influence for good in relations between employers and employees. You will not have them as opposed parties where one is injured and the other has got to pay. That is all to the good, but let us make it a conjoint effort, the best we can. If the Lord Chancellor should think any of the observations I have to make are of any value I hope he will receive them in the spirit that I intend, of a single-minded desire to improve this Bill.
3.49 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: My Lords, in his attractive and welcome explanation of this Bill the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack took the House sufficiently into his confidence to say that in its early stages he had asked to be allowed to produce some Bill. Anybody looking at the result will I think agree it is some Bill and he is entitled therefore to the credit for it. It is changing what has been now for a period of fifty years a most valuable part of our legal system, in removing the procedure under the Workmen's Compensation Acts and substituting a procedure which is quite obviously much more in consonance with the whole trend of modern social thought and legislation and therefore one which, as a matter of consistency and convenience as well as from inherent justice, ought to be adopted by Parliament. At the same time, although we are prepared to give this Bill a Second Reading, and indeed to welcome the general propositions on which it is based and the main system which it expounds, we also at a more convenient stage perhaps will decide to put forward some suggestions in concrete form as to improvements which might be made in Committee.
The greatest tribute I could pay in what I had been going to say to your Lordships is that it has already been said by the noble and learned Viscount who has just spoken and therefore that absolves me from going into any detail today, but I would specifically desire to reinforce as strongly as I can what he said on the subject of the contemplated omission

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from this Bill up to the time when it actually takes its place on the Statute Book of any satisfactory provision with regard to the alternative remedy. That is going to leave the whole position so unsatisfactory that I do suggest to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack with all respect that some effort should be made to galvanize the Committee who are considering this matter into a little more urgent action. Alternatively I suggest, if such a regrettable course were necessary, that this Bill should bide its time until it is possible to incorporate in it a proper clause based upon the findings of that Committee, if it is necessary for the Government to wait until that Committee has reported before they come to any conclusion as to what is the right course to follow.
Another point made by the noble and learned Viscount, in respect of which I confess I feel very strongly, is the exclusion from this Bill of the owner of the one-man business, the master craftsman. We have had instances given. Numbers of them immediately come to one's mind. You may get a man under a contract of service with a great industrial company to receive £10,000 a year as chairman and managing director who in his room in the offices of the company sustains some injury arising out of and in the course of his employment, and who is therefore entitled to claim under this Act, In the course of that injury he may have caused some damage to the room and a master carpenter may be brought in to repair that damage. He may have the misfortune to suffer a similar injury in the same place. But although the chairman and managing director of the company is going to get forty-five shillings a week, he will get for an exactly similar accident in exactly the same place the sum of twenty-six shillings. I understand the difficulties in a contributory scheme of inserting a class who will not be primarily contributors, but at the same time I should have thought with the noble and learned Viscount that it would not outstrip the ingenuity of the Government to find some plan which might open rather wider the door of this Bill and let that class of man in. I hesitate to use what is at the present moment a highly inflammable phrase and suggest anything in the nature of "contracting in" of persons who are
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not ex officio, so to speak, within the scope of this Bill, but it may at the same time be worthy of consideration whether some such scheme on those lines could not be devised.
The only other point I wish to deal with at this stage is the matter which is covered by Part III of the Bill, the Determination of Questions and Claims. The noble and learned Viscount has said there is no provision at the moment for the chairman of a local appeal tribunal to be a person of any legal experience at all, and indeed, although it is perhaps implied from the fact that difficult points of law are to be left to their decision, there is no actual provision that the Commissioners to be appointed under the Act shall be members of the legal profession either, although it may, as I say, be implied from the functions which are allotted to them. There was some tendency in another place rather to regard the history of the past years of litigation under the Workmen's Compensation Acts as a sort of lawyers' Bank Holiday. Well, there has been a great deal of litigation. Some of it has probably lasted a great deal too long, but on the other hand in the course of forty years of the application of these Acts a great many valuable decisions have been arrived at. I think it is not unfair to say that the law now is substantially clear on most of the main points of the Acts, and indeed that consideration has led the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack to retain this famous and much-disputed phrase, over which the legal armies have swung back and forth for so many years, of the accident arising out of and in the course of employment.
I agree entirely that you want in the interests of the workman to get a decision as concisely and as expeditiously as possible and that you do not want to go on protracting the matter through an unnecessary number of Courts or tribunals. I say an unnecessary number. After all, under the Workmen's Compensation Acts the matter started first with the County Court Judge as arbitrator and then went direct to the Court of Appeal, and only in proper cases proceeded to your Lordships' House.
VISCOUNT MAUGHAM: By special leave.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: By special leave. As I say, so many matters

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under that Act have now been clarified. The number of cases which are still obscure is probably very small. If this Bill and the machinery that it will set up were doing what there was some indication in another place they were intended to do, and indeed to which the Lord Chancellor made some reference, if it set up machinery to decide claims by the process of a sort of fireside chat, there might be a very good argument for saying you want to get rid of the formal and perhaps formidable atmosphere of a Law Court and conduct it all nicely and comfortably over a table. But, although I do not want to go into detail at this stage, just think of what is going to happen under the Bill as it stands. If there is any question as to whether a man is a proper person to come within the Act, that goes to the Minister. If the Minister or the claimant is not satisfied, that goes to the High Court. If there is any question as to the injury, that goes to a medical tribunal. If there is still not satisfaction it goes to a medical appeal tribunal.
Other questions start with the insurance officer and proceed from him to the local appeal tribunal, and then, if there are difficult questions of law, proceed to be tried by three Commissioners: if there are not difficult questions of law, by one Commissioner. You have not got so simple a framework or so easy and swift a machine under the present plan as to say you can afford to dispense, in the interests of expedition and general friendly atmosphere, with any intervention by the Court. You let in the Court by way of an appeal being made to the Court from those questions which are left to the Minister's decision, and yet there is no appeal to the High Court from the decision of these one or three Commissioners whose business it is to try difficult points of law. And there is no indication at the present moment as to how far their decisions are to be binding on each other, on whom they are to be binding or whether they are to be binding on the local appeal tribunal. I do suggest that in the end the probability will be that there will be a very great confusion of decision amongst those various bodies which could be resolved if an appeal were allowed from those Commissioners to the High Court.
You want finality, and you will not get finality unless you get a decision of the High Court. We shall, in all probability, set down an appropriate Amend-
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ment at a later stage. With those criticisms—and they are serious, and I hope the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack will give them attention—we of course welcome this Bill as a long delayed but very proper attempt to bring the whole question of insurance against industrial accidents into line with the present trend of social legislation.
4.1 p.m.
VISCOUNT MAUGHAM: My Lords, I desire only to add a very few words to those which have fallen from the previous speakers, and I have this excuse: that like my noble friend Viscount Simon I have sat in quite a large number of these cases. I have sat both in the Court of Appeal and in the House of Lords, and I have long been aware of the absolute necessity for fresh legislation to deal on a fair and equitable basis with the claims of workmen arising out of industrial injuries. For myself, I think the Bill on the whole is an admirable measure. It carries us a long way towards justice, and I agree with the encomiums which have been bestowed upon it.
I think it would be just, in order that the House may be aware of the position of practically all lawyers, that I should say that I entirely agree with what has fallen from my noble and learned friend Viscount Simon and my noble friend the Marquess of Reading, as to self-employed persons and as to the vexed question of alternative remedies. With regard to the alternative remedies, I cannot help thinking that it would be a completely new departure if the Legislature were to say, "We cannot at the moment state what the proper regulation should be on this question, and therefore we are going to omit all reference to it in the Act." I do not think the Legislature has ever taken up that standpoint. Although it is, of course, very desirable that we should have the advantage of a report on the matter from the Committee that has been considering it, there is a comparatively simple course which I think should be taken by this House and by the Legislature if the Monckton Commission has not yet reported. An Amendment should be accepted to the effect that a workman who has suffered an injury should have the option of proceeding under the Act of Parliament (as it will be) or of taking his proper steps against the employer. There really is no injustice in that. It

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gives him an election, and until some better plan can be proposed I think it is fair and just. I venture to say that is far better than leaving the hideous gap which will be left if nothing is done in reference to alternative remedies.
The question of self-employed persons is, I admit, very much more difficult. I agree with what my noble friend the Marquess of Reading has just said, that it seems to be a terrible thing that in some of the cases which he has mentioned by way of illustration, the unfortunate owner workman can have no redress whatever. He may be ruined by an accident taking place. I venture to hope that the Government will find it possible to do something to meet the grave injustice of that case, but I would like to say, as a matter of fairness, that I know it is a very difficult point.
Then we come to the question of counsel and solicitors who are not to be allowed to help, and who are, as my noble and learned friend Viscount Simon has said, the only people who are really accustomed to deal with matters of this great difficulty and complexity. Here I will say, with complete good faith, as I am sure everybody will admit, that there are no cases more difficult and complex than some of the cases that have arisen in relation to workmen's compensation for injuries. Unless you have sat in the Court of Appeal or the House of Lords for days, listening to such cases, unless you realize the terrible doubts and differences that arise, unless you have studied the books which show how often the decisions in Courts below have ultimately been reversed in higher tribunals, you will hardly be able to realize the weight of the argument which I am now just mentioning to your Lordships as to the extraordinary difficulty of presenting some of these cases before a tribunal, with adequate arguments, unless you have spent a fair proportion of your life in studying the question. Therefore this is the last case in which, as I think, the advantages of having trained assistance should be taken away from the unfortunate claimants.
That is all I have to say, except one remark in reference to Clause 8 of the Bill. I agree that something like Clause 8 is necessary. It is a clause which deals with accidents happening
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while acting in breach of regulations. I believe there is a real danger that one of the results of the Bill as it stands will be to lead to carelessness and recklessness on the part of workmen. I know very well that, after a long period of work, when people are tired and badly in need of a holiday, they often get reckless in reference to the regulations under which they ought to be carrying on their occupation. It really would be a lamentable thing if it were to be found that as a result of this Bill, which is intended to secure great advantages to workmen, there will result a larger number, and it may be a substantially larger number, of accidents than before.
My own impression is—and I hope it will be considered at a later stage—that if the accident really is due to complete recklessness on the part of the workman he ought to be deprived of a remedy, not in order to punish him, poor fellow, but in order to show the workmen as a whole that there is a necessity for the utmost care in the management of some of the industrial machines which are now in use for producing various goods. Although no clause that can be suggested would be perfect, I venture to think that in cases where there has been on the part of the workman, not a casual piece of forgetfulness but a deliberate disregard of some absolute provision made for the protection of himself and his fellow men, or complete recklessness, something should be done to exclude him from the benefit which the Act otherwise would give him. I feel that these observations are very largely Committee stage observations, but this Bill is so important and it is so desirable that we should all of us, on either side of the House, work together to improve it, if it be possible to do so, that that is my excuse for intervening in the matter.
4.11 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, your Lordships will perhaps allow me to reply briefly to the observations which have been made. In general, I am grateful for the way in which the Bill has been received, although I must say that some of the criticisms are so far-reaching that, if effect were given to them, it would be very difficult to carry the Bill through.
With regard to alternative remedies, there really is no suggestion of the hideous map that has been referred to.

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The Workmen's Compensation Acts do not come to an end on the passing of this Bill, but only on the appointed day. Quit obviously a very considerable time must elapse before the appointed day comes, because it is necessary to have the same appointed day for this Bill and the other Bill, and before the appointed day comes we must have legislation dealing with alternative remedies. I quite agree that it would be wrong to leave the employer in a position in which he could be shot at twice over for the same thing. The point is, shall we do it in this Bill (if we get the Committee's Report in time), or shall we wait and do it after-wards? In any case, it obviously has to be done before the appointed day comes. In Clause 88 of the Bill you will find it stated that the repeal of the existing Acts will be only as from the appointed day. I give your Lordships the assurance that we shall deal with it; the question is whether we deal with it in this Bill or in a separate Bill.
VISCOUNT SIMON: Do I understand that the appointed day for this Bill will be the same as the appointed day for the general Social Insurance Bill?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: That was always the intention. The arrangements for cards, payment of contributions and all those things must go together. I do not want to commit the Minister, but our idea has always been that it is fundamental that the two dates must be the same. I can give your Lordships the assurance with regard to the alternative remedies that certainly the matter must be dealt with.
Then I come to the matter of the self-employed man. I know full well that all your Lordships have great ingenuity and a great knowledge of this matter, and I would very much like to see the proposals which you put forward. All I will say is that everybody who studied this subject started with the same idea, namely, that the self-employed man ought to come in, but subsequently came to the conclusion that he could not be brought in. I will go so far as to say that I believe that if you bring in the self-employed man yon will go a very long way towards destroying this scheme altogether. After all, this is an amendment, a modification or a redrafting, if you like, of the Workmen's Compensation Act. The self-employed man is not a workman employed
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by anybody; he is his own employer. If you are going to allow the village joiner to come in—he is a small man and we have every sympathy with him—are you going to allow everybody to come in? Is this going to cease to become a Bill for workmen and is it going to extend to everybody? If so, the whole finance of the Bill must be considered again. The consequences of that, to my mind, would be far reaching. I can only say that we looked at it, those of all Parties and of no Parties, with the greatest sympathy, but we came to the conclusion that it could not be done. However, I am quite receptive about the matter. No doubt your Lordships who have spoken about this matter have given careful consideration to the way in which it can be done, and we will look at any proposals you make, but for the moment I am bound to tell your Lordships that, having lived with this Bill for a good many weeks and months, and having discussed this very matter with colleagues of all shades of opinion, this is the conclusion to which I came. Therefore, although I will certainly keep an open mind, I am, quite frankly, not very hopeful about the proposals which were made but I shall look with interest to see what your Lordships may suggest.
Then I was asked a question about the chairman of the local appeal tribunal. If I said that the Bill provided he was to be a legal chairman then I was wrong. The Minister said quite plainly in another place that he contemplated that the chairman would be a legal chairman, and I do not suppose it really matters to him very much whether it is in the Bill or not. I suppose his answer would be that there might be some rather odd and peculiar case in which he could not get a suitable lawyer and therefore would have to get somebody else. However, in 99 cases out of a hundred he would certainly want a lawyer, and I gather that he would certainly be guided by the jurisprudence which has arisen with regard to what is an accident arising out of and in the course of employment. In principle, therefore, I concede that it is desirable to have a legal chairman.
With regard to representation before the local tribunal, I am a lawyer myself and I have spent all my life in the law. It was when I became Minister of National Insurance that, for the first time, I got out of the law and was able to look at

35
it from a rather different point of view; at any rate, I learned how other people looked at it. There is no point on which the unions and the employers are more insistent than that this thing should be taken out of the legal atmosphere. They say "If one side has a lawyer before the local tribunal the other side will say, 'He has got a lawyer: I must have one too' In that way lawyers will become common and people will say 'I have got to have a lawyer'".
VISCOUNT SIMON: The other side would be the Minister.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The other side would be the Minister, I agree. However, my noble and learned friend knows very well that he and I in our young days have often heard a solicitor say, when there has been a solicitor on one side and counsel on the other, "The other side has got counsel; I did not know they were going to do that. Please may I have an adjournment to get counsel on our side?" The sort of idea is that if you have counsel on one side you must match him on the other. I am not saying it is right; I am only mentioning the representations that were made to me. Perhaps we might meet the difficulty in the Committee stage. I hope we shall not, as a rule, allow legal representation before the local tribunal, just as I hope we shall always allow it before the Commissioner, but I think there may be exceptional cases in which representation before the local tribunal is necessary. I suggest that it is a matter which might well be left to the chairman of the local tribunal, who might be asked in any particular case: "This is a difficult point on which we want Mr. So-and-So of counsel. May we be represented by counsel?" Then he would say "Certainly you may do so." If the other side, the insurance officer, wanted legal representation, he could have it too. That is a possible way out of the difficulty which we will certainly consider.
As to the last point which was raised by the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Maughan, I find myself very much against the idea that we should say that, because a man had been reckless and had thereby suffered some frightful injury, he should be deprived of all remedy. I think that would be a most retrograde step. My recollection is—I have not looked it up.—
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that even to-day where the injury results in serious or permanent disablement you allow the worker compensation although the accident was brought about by his serious and wilful misconduct. To say that in no case where there has been recklessness is there to be compensation would be, I think, a most unfortunate step.
VISCOUNT MAUGHAN: That is going much further than I suggested.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: If I misunderstood the noble and learned Viscount, I am sorry. I understood the proposition was this, that you ought to lay down a firm rule that where an accident was caused by recklessness you were going to deprive the worker of the benefits under the Bill. If the noble and learned Viscount did not say that I apologize for having misunderstood him. But I think that that, at any rate, would be a retrograde step, and I would be very sorry to see it taken. I do not believe that a worker is restrained from recklessness—which unfortunately it does happen that he is sometimes inclined to, particularly at the end of the day—by the thought that: "I must be very careful, because if I do this, that or the ether, I shall not get compensation." I do not believe that that is the proper way of looking at it. However, if the noble and learned Viscount puts down an Amendment to deal with this, I shall certainly give it most careful consideration. I am very grateful to your Lordships for the support which you have given to this Bill. I believe that it is a very real and very valuable reform.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

PROVISIONS FOR SECURITY.
4.23 p.m.
LORD VANSITTART LORD VANSITTART rose to call attention to the unsatisfactory provisions for security in this country; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, security is a very important part of national defence, and, therefore, I make no apology for returning to the subject. Just over a year ago, I brought forward a Motion in this House drawing attention to some defects in our system, and asking that they should be remedied. That Motion was agreed to, and to-day I would

37
be glad to know what if anything has been done in the interval. I stressed four points, First, in regard to naturalization, I pointed out that this should no longer be the monopoly of one branch of the Home Office. I suggested that there should be formed an Inter-Departmental Committee composed of representatives of the Home Office, the Foreign Office, the three Fighting Services, the Board of Trade and the Board of Education. I suggested that to that committee all matters pertaining to naturalization should be remitted, and they would then be able to judge them in the light of their pooled experience. I would be glad to know whether such a body has been set up. I know, of course, that the Home Office draw upon the experience of other Departments when required. But that is not at all the same thing. What I asked for was a standing committee whose members would automatically have the opportunity of volunteering their knowledge and experience without waiting to be asked.
Secondly, I asked that any person or body drawing directly or indirectly subsidies from abroad for purposes of politics or propaganda should declare the fact and the amounts received. I should like that knowledge to be also available to the public. Once the Government were in possession of that knowledge they could easily discriminate between a friend, a foe and a doubtful person. Now, a word about the methods of importation of foreign subsidies. It is rather necessary, because it points to a distinct joint in our harness. Before the war we knew that the Fascists were getting funds from abroad. We were pretty certain that we knew the way in which this was being done. Indeed I was pretty certain I knew the man who was doing it. But we were quite powerless to verify, and even if we had had the power to verify, we could have done nothing. There is nothing to prevent a man leaving Dover with £5 and returning with £5,000. That sort of thing went on under our noses, and I believe that we should not again allow ourselves to lapse into a position of that kind.
I asked, thirdly, that drastic restrictions should be applied to the intake of aliens into this country immediately after the war, until we are in a position to cope with an influx which otherwise might contain dangers. I know that, on the contrary, we have thrown open this country
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to any displaced persons who have relatives here who are willing to receive them and look after them. I am not criticizing that. It is a measure of humanity. But I am asking the Government if they are really quite sure that their measures of control and investigation of this intake are satisfactory. After the last war they were not. I would like to be sure that better methods are being followed this time. Let me give an example to show the sort of thing to which I refer. Two or three days ago I read in the Press that the Board of Trade were importing a couple of hundred German scientists and technicians. Again, I am not criticizing. I am sure that the Board of Trade have very good grounds for this action, and that it is fully warranted. But, I wonder if the Board of Trade or the Government quite realize that ninety per cent. of the scientists and technicians working for big industrial German firms were not only Nazis but ardent Nazis. I presume that this lot has been properly "vetted" or "screened"—to use a word which is fashionable now. At the same time, I would like to remind the House that the verb "to screen" has two meanings—the first is to sift, and the second is to conceal. If we are not careful we may find that verb, used in this connexion, gradually degenerating into the second sense. In that case we shall be laying up for ourselves a good deal of trouble in the future. Fourthly, I touched on the subject of undesirable bodies in this country. To-day I must say a good deal more about that, but before I begin I would like to assure your Lordships that I shall speak with moderation and with knowledge of the facts. I think it is particularly necessary to avoid all exaggeration in these matters. There is no cause for alarm, but there is a case for vigilance. Exaggeration is to be deprecated, because any word in that direction is immediately pounced upon by enemies, or even by professing friends, abroad, and grossly distorted.
With that preface, I would remind your Lordships how, on the occasion of which I am speaking—it was I think a year ago last February—I alluded to only two bodies, one, "The Link" and the other, Captain Ramsay's associates. I must say a few words more about Captain. Ramsay to-day, because that episode points to another joint in our harness. For a long time before the war, I was

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getting, by means of my own, a full account of what went on at Captain Ramsay's meetings. I can only say that they were imbued with rabid Nazism and rabid Anti-Semitism. And here I am going to diverge for a moment to say a word about Anti-Semitism. It is the prep-school of violence. It is part of the ordinary technique of what, I think, is rather misleadingly called Fascism. As a matter of fact, there was very little Anti-Semitism in Italy. In any case Fascism is relatively moribund, and was never very formidable, whereas Nazism was always intensely formidable and is still very much alive. I daresay your Lordships will have noted that Field Marshal Montgomery stated last week that seventy-five per cent. of the Germans are still Nazis. I can remember years ago that a great many people in this country were very down on me for saying that I would not allow for more than twenty-five per cent. of good Germans. But I am not going to repeat that now.
I would, however, like to refer further to Anti-Semitism and to remind your Lordships that it is deliberately used to create a violent frame of mind, and when that frame of mind has been created it is exploited for other purposes. That is why it was so immensely valuable to the Nazi technique. About a fortnight ago I saw in a Swiss review, Die Weltwoche, an article which was headed "The Diary of a Werewolf." It was the musings of a young S.S. Officer, in which he wrote, "Anti-Semitism was always the best of our propaganda weapons, and when we start again we shall have to start on the same basis." I pursue that subject no further, and come back to Captain Ramsay for a minute. When I found out what Captain Ramsay was up to, I wanted to have him prosecuted, knowing that there was another war coming, and I wanted him inside in good time. Other people took a different view, and he was, left at liberty until the hour of our direst peril, in 1940, to consult with The traitor, Tyler Kent, whom I consider an exceedingly lucky man not to have been hanged.
We have been assured that all those bodies were officially dissolved. Yes, but they are beginning, as I predicted, to come to some sort of life again. You have the 18B Detainees' Fund, the 18B Publicity Fund, with addresses at 21, Gray's Inn Road and 15, Woburn Square.
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Again, you have the League of ex-Service Men and Women, which is closely connected with them. Most of those who attended the functions of that body were ex-members of the British Union of Fascists. The British Union of Fascists has not been re-constituted, but it was sought to replace it for a while by a body known as the Independent Nationalists, which was launched at a meeting on March 24, 1945. I his is an example of the necessity of keeping the thing in focus, because that movement has been a flop. It ran a certain number of meetings last year, of which I have a record, and I do not think the biggest had an attendance above five hundred. By the end of the year the number of people attending those meetings had grown very considerably. Thus, on December 15, at the Royal Hotel, there were no less than 2,000 people, all howling away to their hearts' content. I think the figure I have given you shows that without any exaggeration or overemphasis there is an expansive tendency there, and I predict the Government will find the expansive tendency is continuing.
Next I come to a rather more inner circle which styles itself "The National Front after Victory Group," which is housed at 15, Craven Street. Its membership is rather more interesting than that of the other bodies, but again we must keep the thing in focus, because they also are very short of funds and there have been abortive efforts to merge this body with the British People's Party. Coming a little lower down the scale, let us cast a glance at the so-called British Protestant League in Glasgow. That is run by Radcliffe, who also edits the Vanguard. The Vanguard is just a subversive rag, and I shall not worry you with any accounts of its turpitudes. Radcliffe has accused the members of the Government Front Bench of perpetrating worse atrocities than the Germans or the Japanese. A good many people have urged upon successive Home Secretaries that the V an-guard should be prosecuted, but no action has ever been taken. The reason given, of course, is that its circulation does not warrant the action, but that is a rotten argument. It means that a Home Secretary will prosecute when a paper has a circulation of 50,00); but will not prosecute papers, let us say, of 5,000, where the circulation works out exactly double.
I think it was in the second speech I made in this House that I said, "You cannot measure sin by circulation," and I repeat that to-day. This matter of prosecution is again one of our weaknesses, and one of our deficiencies. May I drive that home with an even more cogent example? In 1936 a man called Leese, leader of the Imperial Fascist League, was prosecuted and jailed for six months for an attempt to create a public mischief. When he got out he immediately repeated the offence in a very aggravated form by publishing a book called, My Irrelevant Defence, and naturally he should have been prosecuted and jailed for considerably longer. But presumably nothing happened to him. After an interval he cropped up again. Early this year three men were convicted by a United States Court for inciting to riot, and the principal charge against them was that they had been circulating that very book. Only the day before yesterday this man hit the headlines again with more of the same offences, and he has been able to cock a snook at the Law.
I have mentioned these three men among others, Ramsay, Radcliffe and Leese, because I think jointly they point to a weakness in our system. I venture to suggest that the remedy may lie in some form of law of community libel. When Radcliffe accuses noble Lords on the Front Bench of atrocities, or when Leese accuses the Jews of ritual murder, I think there should be some law under which action against people of that kind would be facilitated. There is no explanation for these matters whatever, and it is fatal ever to dramatize them. As a matter of fact there are probably only about 5,000 registered Fascists in this country, but I think it is common knowledge that in all totalitarian movements the number of inscribed party members is always surpassed by the unregistered adherents.
I do submit to the House that it is entirely anomalous and absurd that we should be pledged to eradicate Nazism on the Continent and allow it to begin growing up here in even an attenuated form. That kind of thing always exposes us to a certain amount of legitimate misunderstanding on the Continent and to a great deal more wilful misrepresentation. For the past six months the actions of this country have been subjected to
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a chorus of anti-British propaganda such as I have never in my life known or even dreamed of in peace-time, let alone from a professing Ally. One of the recurrent causes of these complaints is our alleged indulgence towards Fascism in this country. I think we might contribute to restrict the area of misrepresentation by slightly better methods for the control of what is not a danger but is certainly a nuisance. I know what I shall hear anon about freedom of speech, and I say in advance that I approve of freedom of speech. I can use a good deal of it myself and enjoy it, and I should be the last person in the world to wish to curtail it by any undue method. At the same time, freedom of speech should be a reasonable god, and not a fetish.
What I propose to the Government is what I hope your Lordships will find entirely reasonable, and which I hope meets the case without any exaggeration. I ask that there should be enacted legislation which will make it an offence for any person to print, utter or distribute material calculated to stir up civil strife or hatred in this country or to subvert the Constitution of this country on totalitarian lines. I ask, moreover, that it should be an offence to import any funds or material from abroad for this purpose.
I ask, further, that it may be made an offence to import funds for any political purpose without declaring them. We have a democratic Constitution of which we are justly proud, and I submit that we should be prepared to defend it with clarity and vigour. I believe you are going to need those qualities. Therefore I ask that the principle and practice of our security should be reconsidered in the light of what I have said to-day. In one respect I think it may easily get on to the wrong lines. I shall say no more on that to-day and I hope that I may not have to revert to the subject. I beg to move for Papers.
4.40 p.m.
LORD AILWYN: My Lords, I rise to support the Motion before the House. I think the House is indebted to the noble Lord for bringing to your Lordships' notice these supremely important matters. His eloquence, as usual, makes it difficult for those who follow him. My interest and concern in this matter of security have led me on two former occasions in the last twelve or thirteen months to submit certain information and put certain

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proposals before your Lordships. On both occasions the country was still in the grip of total war, and the measures which I then ventured to advocate for the better security of the community are to-day mercifully no longer applicable. My protest, which I am reluctantly compelled to repeat to-day, against the employment of considerable numbers of German nationals in our Government Departments and in other walks of our public life, brought upon my luckless head a storm of disapproval from the Liberal Benches when the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, whom I am glad to see in his place, poured scorn upon the views which I then expressed and, with great eloquence and a somewhat caustic wit, vigorously assailed me for my lack of charity towards those Germans resident in this country. It was a brilliant performance displaying great histrionic qualities, marred only—
THE MARQUESS OF READING: What does the noble Lord mean by "histrionic"—that it was put on?
LORD AILWYN: The word "histrionic" is one which the noble Marquess will understand as well as I do. It was marred by certain misrepresentations and distortions of what was actually said. The difference between us, of course, was fundamental. The case for the alien was being most ably expounded in that quarter of the House while I was more interested in putting the case of this country and of the Englishman. My Lords, I still am. I should like to ask the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack why it is necessary to-day for numbers of unnaturalized Germans to be employed in our Government Departments. I am aware that Defence Regulation No. 60D authorizes their temporary employment if, firstly, they have special qualifications and if, secondly (and this is the point I would particularly stress), no suitably qualified British subjects are readily available. Well, it is conceivable, of course, that during the war, with its immense call on man-power, there were not readily available sufficiently qualified British subjects. But to-day, with demobilization in full swing, can it possibly be said that that situation still exists? I am most anxious not to overstate this case, and I readily admit that from the point of view of security to-day
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the employment of these Germans is not the menace that I hold it to have been while war was being waged.
But from a long-term point of view, I ask your Lordships to consider whether it is wise, with the world in its present unsettled state, and whether it is fair and just to our own people that foreigners and ex-enemy nationals in particular should be employed in our public service. It may well be that we shall hear from the Government that there is no intention of retaining this Defence Regulation 60D for very much longer. It certainly is very difficult to understand why it should not be repealed forthwith. I should be most grateful if the Lord Chancellor would give the House some information on this matter. I went into considerable detail when inviting your Lordships and the Government to consider the matter last May. The only satisfaction I received from the Government spokesman was a series of waspish remarks accusing me of making grossly exaggerated statements and of raising hares. He ended with the amiable suggestion that the matter should not have come up for discussion in your Lordships' House, and finally made the strangely improper request that I should refrain from raising the question again.
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: In the usual terms.
LORD AILWYN: I beg your pardon?
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: If the noble Lord had read the concluding remarks of what I said last May, he would observe that what I told him then was that he should not bring up the same question again with the same remarks he employed on that occasion. I have no reason to withdraw now and I certainly have no intention of doing so.
LORD AILWYN: The noble Earl might wait until I ask him to withdraw. Ever since I have had the honour of being a member of your Lordships' House I have tried not to make exaggerated statements. I am far happier sitting in my place imbibing wisdom and gathering the pearls which fall from your Lordships' lips—some of them. But when I am moved to leave my safe refuge and rise to address your Lordships, I try to be objective and to have my facts well documented. I hope the noble Earl, Lord Munster,

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may be disposed to agree in retrospect that the emulation of the hornet is not the happiest way of replying in Parliamentary debate, and incidentally that your Lordships' House is a very suitable and proper forum for these matters of security to be discussed. A noble Lord at the end of that debate remarked to me "Depend upon it, when you are met with rudeness in a Government reply you may be sure you have got under their skin." My Lords, I would not like to get under anybody's skin; it sounds a most uncomfortable performance!
What I am concerned to do is to bring to the notice of the Government of the day a situation which is distasteful to the people of this country. I was assured on that former occasion—and indeed in February, 1945, when I first raised this question—that the employment of aliens in Government Departments would never prejudice the employment of our own people. I have to say that information which has come my way, entirely unsolicited and unsought by me, appears on the face of it to refute that assurance. So I am left in that sore state of perplexity to which 2,000 years ago Pontius Pilate gave expression when he cried "What is truth?" Because of that perplexity and because of my real disquiet in this matter, I do ask for a very solemn assurance from His Majesty's Government that the most searching vigilance may be applied and observed in this matter, to see that under no conditions whatever the employment of these aliens and ex-enemy aliens shall ever be allowed to prejudice the employment of our own people. I am persuaded that none of your Lordships will under-estimate the importance of this matter.
Before passing to my next point, I want to register a mild protest at the unsatisfactory form of reply one gets from the Government to a straight question. I asked a week or two ago the same question that was asked in another place in January, 1945, and asked by me last May, to wit: "How many un-naturalized Germans are employed in our Government Departments?" The same stereotyped form of reply was given on both former occasions, the only difference being the numbers quoted. Those numbers, by the way, progressively increased. In January, 1945, the figure was 66; in May, 1945, it was 83; and in
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February, 1946, it was 97. One wonders why. The Treasury, appearing anxious to cover itself, did not say that ninety-seven are actually employed but said "Consent has been given in the case of ninety-seven persons of German nationality." To make it still more disingenuous and evasive they said, "In some of these cases employment has been terminated." That is what I call a rather tortuous reply and I ask the Government if in future we may have a straight, plain answer to a plain question. A further point I wish to put before the House is exercising many other minds besides my own. Is it wise or desirable that large numbers of aliens and Germans in particular, should be allowed to change their names to British names? What are the qualifying conditions governing these changes, these metamorphoses? You meet a Mr. Shaw and find that yesterday he was Herr Schwabacher, or a Mr. Graham who was Herr Steinberger or Mr. Ian Stewart Menzies who yesterday was Herr Hans Menzinger.
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: No, no.
LORD AILWYN: The noble Earl says no. I can repeat the names. With Germany's record as fresh in our memory as it is—and for our better security hope it may long so remain—it does seem to me, in spite of one remark in the admirable speech of the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, last Thursday, an intolerable position. There was only one point on which I disagreed with Lord Lindsay and that was when he said that one of the greatest qualities of the English is that they have short memories. It is one of their greatest qualities that they do not remember and they meet the occasion at the time as the situation demands. It is unfair to take a sentence out of its context, but I want to say that in my own humble opinion a very long memory is required in all our dealings with Germany. It seems to me intolerable that German nationals should be allowed to live in this country masquerading under British names. I for one should like to see the Government take a strong line in this matter and prohibit these people from changing their surnames into English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish names for a period of ten or even twenty-five years. There is no prejudice in such a proposal. It seems to me it is stark common sense

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and facing up to reality and, I suggest to your Lordships, a due regard for the dignity of this country. Someone wrote the other day, "What is wrong with a country that has so little pride in its ancestry as to permit such prostitution?" There will be many who will agree with that view.
I am a little tired of being told that these things are in accordance with the traditions and customs of this country. I find myself unable to accept that line of argument. I have as much reverence for tradition in the real sense of the word as other noble Lords, but to-day we are slowly and painfully emerging from the devastation and agony of the second of two world wars brought about by Germany. Are we really to accept the axiom that what we did in the spacious days of the past when happiness and security reigned supreme in our land, we must always continue to do? Autres temps, autres moeurs. Let us not confuse the word "tradition" with "quixotry" and let us guard against allowing what someone called the other day that national characteristic of ours—extreme tolerance—to degenerate into a vice.
I was greatly interested to see the report of a debate on a Motion moved in your Lordships' House in 1918 by a very distinguished sailor, Lord Beresford, under whom I had the honour to serve as a midshipman forty years ago. He, too, asked for information about aliens employed in Government offices and the number of Germans who had been permitted to change their names. In the course of his remarks he observed that he thought he voiced public sentiment when he objected to Germans being employed by the Government and maintained that, as taxpayers who pay these people salaries, we are entitled to know the names and characters of the people whom we employ. I can only say that I am glad to find myself in such good company; but I am pained to notice that in the course of the debate he too, while receiving very considerable support from noble Lords, was given nevertheless unsatisfactory replies from the Government of the day. History repeats itself but, as your Lordships know, "sailors don't care."
There is one other point. I desire to draw attention once more to the alteration in the nationality rule for the admission
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of candidates to His Majesty's Civil Service. It was contained in a Civil Service Commission Regulation dated November 21, 1944. By this revision permanent appointment to the British Civil Service is now open to "a naturalized British subject who has resided in His Majesty's Dominions and/or been employed else where in the service of the Crown for at least five years out of the last eight years preceding the date of his appointment." There is one qualification. The appointment of a naturalized British subject to the Foreign Office and to the three Service Ministries shall be subject to the consent of the political heads of those Departments. May I draw your Lordships' attention to the implications of this regulation? The majority of Germans now living in this country have fulfilled the residential qualification and have now only to apply for, and be granted, naturalization to become eligible for permanent appointments in His Majesty's Civil Service. Bearing in mind that implication it would appear to my uninstructed mind that Parliamentary approval should have been sought for such a measure. I may be entirely wrong in this, in which case I shall no doubt be corrected. Nevertheless, this change was made in an unobstrusive way and the public was suddenly made aware of the fact that key posts in our public service were no longer reserved for British-born subjects. Apart from the impropriety, in my view, of such a measure, the question of security is clearly involved. If it was not so, there would have been no reason for the proviso I have just read about the Foreign Office and the Service Ministries. Lastly, how can such a measure be justified to-day when demobilization is at its height and when, as I understood from the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, the other day when the House was debating the noble Marquess, Lord Reading's Motion on the work of the Civil Service, there is no evidence of any lack at all of British subjects coming forward as candidates? Surely one's yardstick in all these matters should be: is this or that innovation likely to be beneficial to our country? I ask the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack with great respect to say in what way this measure can be said to be in the national interest.
Let me end by suggesting to your Lordships that there are many contributory causes to war and unrest. It is difficult

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to assess with any accuracy those causes, direct and indirect. If the gods of old had only been content to remain in their abode on the summit of Mount Olympus, feasting on ambrosia and nectar, instead of descending to earth and meddling with the affairs of mortals, there would, for example, have been no Trojan war. The direct cause, as your Lordships will remember, was the elopement of Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, with Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy. But observe the sequence of events. A wedding feast; a slighted goddess, uninvited. Disgruntled, she peevishly throws the Golden Apple among the guests with the inscription "For the Fairest." Jealous commotion follows. Venus, Juno, and Minerva all claim the apple. Jupiter, not man enough to decide in so delicate a matter (and perhaps his spinelessness may be excused when one remembers that that difficult lady, Juno, his wife, was one of the aspirants) he shoos them all off to Mount Ida, where we are told the beautiful shepherd, Paris, was tending his flocks. To him is committed the decision—a dirty trick. They all importune him, poor mortal. Venus wins after promising him the fairest of women for his wife. Under her protection he sails for Greece. By her machinations the lovely Helen, until then living happily with her husband, is persuaded to elope with Paris. And so the stage is set; the ruinous Trojan war begins, and for nine long years the Grecian heroes go to their death.
Admittedly, as Mr. H. A. L. Fisher tells us in his History of Europe, the facts of history are obscured in a haze of legend. But the moral is clear. Tradition was largely to blame for the catastrophe. If the celestials had stayed put and confined their love-making and other intrigues to their own company min domain, Jupiter might have been less of a voluptuary; Juno might have been less vinegary; the fateful decision would not have been relegated to a mortal, and the earth would have been spared the cataclysm which followed. A little farfetched, you say. Perhaps. But there may be a moral there, nevertheless. I have kept your Lordships too long. Let not our passion for tradition blind us to the realities and the requirements of the present time. Let me beg His Majesty's Government seriously to consider whether our future security is to be built upon the rock of British enterprise or upon the shilling sands of a Tower of Babel.
5.3 p.m.
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Ailwyn, who has just spoken to your Lordships, was good enough to inform me that he intended to refer to a speech which I delivered to your Lordships last May, replying for His Majesty's Government, I thought it would be fit that I should intervene for a very few moments in this discussion to amplify the remarks which I made to the House on a previous occasion. At that time I was speaking with the whole authority of His Majesty's Government, and one member of the Government was the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, who I understand is replying to the Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, this afternoon. May I be permitted to give your Lordships some indication of the procedure which is followed at the present time, upon the admission of foreigners into this country? For indeed nine-tenths of the debate to which your Lordships have listened this afternoon depend practically wholly upon the admission of foreigners. No foreigner, either at the time when I was at the Home Office, or I understand to-day, was allowed to enter this country without a passport. That passport is issued by his own country. In addition, he has got to obtain a visa; and in any case he is not allowed to land in this country either at the port to which he sails, or at the aerodrome at which he arrives, without the permission of the immigration officer. That officer can subject him to any condition which he may see fit to impose. This rigid control should be sufficient to protect the national interest and indeed the security of the State. There may, of course, be isolated cases in which there is illegal entry, but I know of no case (certainly none came to my knowledge during the time that I was at the Home Office), where this method of illegal landing had undermined the security of the State, except possibly in war-time, when, of course, that was the nature of the method of enemy spies to accomplish.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: I hope my noble friend will forgive me for interrupting him for a moment, but what about all the displaced people who have not got passports and cannot get passports and who may come to this country? I am only asking as a matter of information.
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: The noble Viscount is a little early in interrupting. I am coming to that now. I will turn straight away to the refugees who were landed here during the war. Those refugees were landed on conditions, and amongst a number of conditions it was clearly laid down that they were not to be allowed to land, if they intended to set up businesses or to take up employment, without the authority of the Home Secretary. I am quite certain during the time I was at the Home Office that there was no fear that those refugees, to whom we had given entry for the period of the war, and perhaps a little beyond, were entering into any occupation which might deprive British Service men of their rights of employment when they were demobilized. But I intend to ask the Lord Chancellor, who I understand is replying, to say if these important conditions are still in force, whether those conditions apply to those refugees who are still in this country, who came here at the beginning of the war, and who were allowed entry on the conditions which I have just mentioned.
I stated on the previous occasion that, if His Majesty's Government were satisfied that the existing powers which they possessed to control the entry of aliens into this country were insufficient, they would not hesitate to come to Parliament and to ask Parliament to grant them additional powers, however drastic and however severe those powers may be. I would, indeed, ask the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack if that is still the case, that if His Majesty's Government feel they have insufficient powers, they will come to Parliament and ask Parliament to give additional powers. These aliens of enemy nationality who came to this country at the beginning of the war were all interned when France fell. Each and every case was considered on its merits, and the individual was released only if the Secretary of State was satisfied that his or her sympathies lay with the Allied cause.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: The noble Earl will forgive me for interrupting. He says they were all interned. He must except those who by that time had entered the Armed Forces.
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: I am coming to those. These aliens whom I have just mentioned, who were interned
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and whose cases were subject to review on merits, were released if the Secretary of State was satisfied that their sympathies lay with the Allies. These cases, from my recollection of them, were considered one by one, and it was physically impossible to generalize about the whole crowd who came over here. I am perfectly satisfied that none of those foreigners in this country to-day, of enemy nationality, who came here to avoid the persecutions and the terrors to which they were subject in their own country, have been guilty of espionage or of efforts to undermine the security of the State. I am saying nothing about the Englishmen to whom the noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, referred in the course of his speech. I am wondering if I might ask the Lord Chancellor whether these foreigners of enemy nationality, who are at the moment in this country, are being encouraged to return to their own countries when the danger to their lives has ceased and when the totalitarian Governments from which they fled in 1939 or before have been wound up.
Finally I would like to make a very brief remark on the position of naturalization. A short time ago—at the end of last month — the Home Secretary announced in another place that it was intended to widen the scope of naturalization, and amongst those who might send in claims to be naturalized as British subjects were a large number of foreigners who had served in one capacity or another in the service of the Crown. Personally, speaking entirely for myself, I have no objection. It is a proposal which I frequently persuaded my right honourable friend the former Home Secretary, the present Lord President of the Council, to agree to, and I am glad to think that my persuasive powers have had some effect upon His Majesty's present Government. I understand it is intended that those individuals who have served in the Armed Forces or who have priority to the claim for naturalization on the ground of their contribution to the war effort or to the economic welfare of the country, will be carefully considered and, indeed, will receive very favourable consideration on any demand they put forward. Now who were these aliens who were employed, not necessarily in the Armed Forces, but in the Government Departments, and whom the noble Lord, Lord

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Ailwyn, held so much to ridicule and contempt?
LORD AILWYN: Would the noble Earl repeat that? Ridicule and contempt of whom?
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: I said that the noble Lord held up these individual enemy aliens who were employed in Government Departments to ridicule and contempt, and said that they should never be so employed. Will he disagree with that? I do not think so. Now who were these enemy aliens? The noble Lord should surely know better than I do, being a gallant naval officer, that certainly one if not two of these enemy aliens who were employed at the Admiralty throughout the whole period of the war was vital to one scheme the Admiralty had in mind. Is it proper, is it right, to turn round now to ridicule the services which they rendered to this country during the time of the last war? Those men who were employed in the Civil Service—and the figure which the noble Lord gave was the maximum that had been employed; they may not all have been employed at the same time—were taken into the service because of their particular qualifications, because of the views which we knew they held and the knowledge which we knew they possessed of some particular subject which was vital to the success of the scheme we were putting through at that time. I have no hesitation in saying that the views I expressed last May on behalf of His Majesty's Government are the views which I believe, and I certainly hope, the present Government hold. I have no reason whatever, in spite of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Ailwyn, to withdraw one word or to express regret to your Lordships that I made the remarks I did on that occasion.
5.16 p.m.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, I do not propose to go into any cases of detail. I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Vansittart that it is important that at this time we should not fail to learn and apply the lessons of the past. Equally, however, I think we want to be pretty sure that we do base ourselves on real experience and that we learn and apply the right lessons. I venture to intervene for a moment or two because I happened, for some years at the beginning of the war, to have considerable responsibility for and ex-
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perience in co-ordinating these security matters. I would like very shortly to put to your Lordships one or two propositions which I think are fundamental and with which I do not think my noble friend Lord Vansittart will disagree. In the first place, security is not an absolute abstraction; it is and must always be a balance of advantage and disadvantage. I know that in the early stages I found a tendency to impose so many regulation and so many restrictions on operations, on industry and on shipping, that it would not only have occupied mast of the Army we had at that time in guard duties but it would almost have rendered production, transportation and shipping impossible. There was a quite natural tendency to try and guard against every possible chance. I agree with him in this: that it is vital to continue that combined experience which we all had at the present time.
We very soon found that the real thing we had to consider was this: What is the balance of risk, what is the real risk, and how is that risk to be met? If I may put it in a sentence, it would be that security should always be informed by Intelligence—and I use Intelligence with a big "I" in the first place, but certainly equally with a small "i" as well. It really is essential that you should not treat these as abstract propositions but that the whole of your sources of Intelligence should be used, as indeed the noble Lord knows very well we did use them, in order to appraise the risk, see what the right solution was and then apply it. If I may say so, there should be another cardinal rule, and that is that no Department, no Office, should be allowed to say, "This is my business and it is not anything to do with you." On the Security Executive we had the rule that nobody was allowed to say that. Everybody came, we faced up to our propositions quite irrespective of what was the function of this or that Department; everybody had to put what he had into the common pool. Then we appraised the problem and we arrived—or I hope we did—as nearly as we could at the right solution and decided who were the proper people to carry it out. That really, I think, worked pretty well. I think I shall carry with me on those propositions anybody who has had practical experience.

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The question of aliens has been debated a good deal. I am sure it would be foolish and wrong to deprive ourselves of the great knowledge which we can get from Germany at the present time. We shall not only get that knowledge by sending our best experts over to examine inventions on the spot; we must draw upon the people as well and use them. I agree it may be said there is a balance of risk, but I am quite certain that unless that is done—done with scrupulous care if you like—those people will certainly go somewhere else, because they are not going to be left in a vacuum, and we shall lose at a critical time of industrial development knowledge which it is vital for us to have. I agree those people must be carefully vetted. There is a difficulty in discussing these things in public debate but it would be idle to pretend that after six years of war, during which certain services worked very well indeed, we do not know a great deal about a great many things and a great many people. Provided that that knowledge, that Intelligence, is applied, I certainly should not be under any anxiety.
May I respectfully say, also drawing on experience, that the most dangerous man—it may be the most dangerous woman, too—is not always the most outwardly disreputable? As to the scum, quite rightly, we put lots of them inside at the critical time, but a great many of them did not really matter very much. They were used, willingly or unwillingly—probably willingly. I dare say some of them did not quite know what they were up to, but others certainly did. The really dangerous man is not the active black-shirted leader of some semi-secret, semipublic organization; he is quite a different person. He is intensely respectable; he has the most respectable friends in many countries, in many Parties and in all quarters.
I am certainly not going to mention any names, but I remember one man whom nothing would have induced me, so far as I could use my influence, to permit to come near this country, but whose entry was vouched for by some of the most respectable of my friends in all quarters. He was very rich, he was prepared to be quite generous to many causes in this country, and he had some respectable—really respectable—relations. He had some very curious sources from
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which he made some of his money. I remember a very good friend and colleague of mine who said, "But this sort of man cannot do this sort of thing." I said to him, "What sort of man do you suppose is really at the back of this sort of racket? It is not the person who appears in the police courts; he is too far back for that kind of thing and it is very seldom you can catch him, even when you know about him." Do not let us think it is just the people who are obvious. That is one of the reasons why information by Intelligence, with a big "I," is so important, so that we know who is who. I was very much interested in Lord Vansittart's proposals about cash and so on. He read out a definition which—I hesitate to draw on my very slender legal knowledge—sounded to me like the present law of sedition.
LORD VANSITTART: I did not read out anything. It was a very loose form of words which I did not mean necessarily to be the one adopted. I am not a legal man either. It was a suggestion.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I was not criticizing my noble friend's law. What I was going to say was that it sounded to me very like the existing law of sedition. I am greatly interested in his suggestion that there should be knowledge and publicity about organizations which receive cash from outside. I think there is a great deal to be said for that, but, if I may make the suggestion to him, it is not only cash which matters. It is just as important to know whether people are receiving orders from outside as whether they are receiving cash.
5.26 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I cannot hope to remember all the questions which have been asked in the course of this discussion, but I will do the best I can to answer, at any rate, some of them. My experience of aliens since the war started has been rather like that of the noble Earl, Lord Munster, who referred to the Admiralty men. Before Mr. Churchill's Government was formed I was a private Member of Parliament and I was elected as chairman of a certain Parliamentary Committee. The two Secretaries of State for Air in those days, first of all Sir Kingsley Wood and later the noble Lord, Lord Temple-wood, gave us every assistance they

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could. We very soon came to the conclusion that the whole essence of expenditure was to increase production. We looked to see what was the bottleneck in aircraft production and we very soon discovered where it lay. It lay in a certain technical process which I do not suppose I should mention even now.
What did we find? Owing to the fact that Hitler had started persecuting the Jews, a Jewish gentleman called Mr. Loewe had come to this country and had brought about eight assistants with him. Had it not been for the work those people were doing for us at that time I think we should have been in a difficult position. When the critical time came the military authorities and the Home Office clapped everybody who had a funny-sounding name into gaol. What did they do at once, but put in all Mr. Loewe's assistants. By this time Lord Beaverbrook had become Minister of Aircraft Production, assisted by Lord Llewellin. Mr. Loewe came to see me in my room at the Law Courts and he said, "What do you think has happened? They have locked up all my assistants." I said "I will speak to Lord Beaverbrook," and I did so. I should not like to tell your Lordships all that he said but he did say, "Leave it to me. I will see what I can do." He had a tremendous struggle but, I need hardly tell your Lordships, he won, and after a few days those people were back again at their work. I know, having talked it over with other colleagues of mine, that that story can be duplicated and that there are very many instances of the same kind. There is no doubt that we owe a very great deal to some aliens.
Most of them had far better reasons for disliking Hitler than any of us in this Chamber. Therefore, let it be quite plain that I am not by any means ill-disposed towards these people. Further, I like to think that the traditional doctrine of this country has been to provide an asylum for political refugees. I am very glad to think that, in the past, Karl Marx and the Empress Eugénie came over here. So, you will see from what I have said, that I am not, in any sense, ill-disposed to these aliens. I should like to say, in the first place, that I realize, of course, that the grant of naturalization is a very serious matter. It is a very serious matter for this reason. The 1914 Act provides that:
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"A person to whom a certificate of naturalization is granted by a Secretary of State shall, subject to the provisions of this Act, be entitled to all political and other rights, powers and privileges, and be subject to all obligations, duties and liabilities, to which a natural-born British subject is entitled or subject.…."
That is the right he gets, and as that is the right, it is incumbent upon us to take the very greatest care to see that we only grant it to people who are worthy of it. And, believe me, my Lords, the very greatest care is taken. The noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, on the last occasion when this was raised, put forward the suggestion that there should be an Inter-Departmental Committee instead of, as at the present time, a Home Office Committee. That suggestion was considered, but it was not accepted. It was considered—and, I think, rightly—that it would not strengthen the present organization. So long as the responsibility is cast fairly and squarely upon the Home Office, and so long as there is complete liaison with other Departments, who may be likely to have anything to say about a person whose case conies up for consideration, that seems to me the most satisfactory solution. And that is what we, in fact, have.
By the next question which the noble Lord asked he indicated that societies that receive any form of subsidy from abroad should be registered, so that the public might know of the fact. Now when I am discussing foreign affairs, and I have to answer the noble Lord on behalf of the Government, I always feel that I am at an undue disadvantage. He understands all about such matters, and I understand very little. But on a subject of this sort we are on a footing of equality. Let me tell the noble Lord not to put his trust too much in the making of all sorts of laws. Laws are obeyed by the law-abiding people. When you are dealing with people who are getting money from abroad, you have to bear in mind that there are many ways of doing it. It is not, of course, an easy thing to detect, and it is very questionable if new regulations would effect an improvement. I have myself a small.22 rifle, for shooting rabbits, and the difficulty which I have, filling up forms and so on, to get ammunition is colossal. I have never yet heard of any gunman who has been held up in his activities because he could not get a revolver or cartridges for it. Making

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regulations in matters of this kind is apt to result in simply putting impediments in the way of the law-abiding citizen, while leaving the other fellow, who is not a law-abiding citizen, unaffected because he simply ignores them. I do not believe in dealing with persons who engage in murky pursuits of this sort by way of regulations. I do not think that they would be deterred by hearing that an announcement was to be made to the public that they were receiving subsidies. What would happen would be that they would receive these subsidies and make no disclosure of the fact. On the one hand, thoroughly respectable people who receive subsidies would be in the published list, while, on the other, the really bad ones would not appear. I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, that what we want in this connexion are not more regulations, but intelligence and information. And His Majesty's Government is not so completely without information as some of these people might, perhaps, desire.
With regard to restriction upon the entry of aliens into this country, the noble Earl, Lord Munster, has stated the position perfectly correctly. The admission of aliens is now very strictly controlled. A visa is granted for a prolonged stay only to an alien with a strong connexion here already, and there are all sorts of stipulations about engaging in business. The grant of a visa however does not guarantee an entry, and the alien still has to satisfy the immigration officer and register with the police if his visit is to extend over a certain period.
The noble Lord went on to ask that there should be greater supervision of undesirable societies—pseudo-Fascist societies. He mentioned some gentlemen I know very well—Mr. Radcliffe, Captain Ramsay and Mr. Leese. I know them very well. I am not going to say very much about the matter now except to make it clear that I think that although there is no cause for alarm, any Government, at the present time, that did not take serious notice of these matters, would be very ill-advised. I can assure your Lordships that this Government is taking serious notice of all the matters which have been mentioned. I am not going further than that, except to say that we shall continue to take that notice.
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The noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, who suggested a form of words, might like a reference to the Digest of the Criminal Law by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen. The noble Lord will find on page 93 of the Seventh Edition a statement of the law on sedition. I think the noble Lord will agree that he has there something which is very much what he wants.
"A seditious intention is an intention to bring into hatred or contempt, or to excite disaffection against the person of His Majesty, his heirs or successors, or the Government and Constitution of the United Kingdom, as by law established, or either House of Parliament—
I suppose an intention of such a kind against the Front Bench of this House would be included. Then, at a later stage it goes on:
"…. or to raise discontent or disaffection amongst His Majesty's subjects, or to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different classes of such subjects."
There are the words, and may I tell the noble Lord, as one who has had responsibility as a Law Officer of the Crown, that I know very well what you have to consider in taking action? First, you have to consider if you are going to get a conviction. It is very unfortunate if you take proceedings and do not succeed in getting a conviction. You want to be tolerably certain that you are going to get a conviction. Where you have a man who wants a little cheap advertisement, very often you find that he is trailing his coat to make you prosecute him in order to get the advertisement he wants. It is a fact which you have to bear in mind. That I think deals with the question which he asked.
Now I come to the noble Lord, Lord Ailwyn, who enlightened what is after all a dull subject. He asked why it is necessary to have unnaturalized Germans in Government Departments and what is the statutory authority. Regulation 60D of the Defence Regulations, which is now continued by the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, 1945, makes it lawful to employ them so long as there are no equally suitable British subjects. I will try to explain why to the noble Lord, because I have not the slightest desire not to give him a candid answer. It is difficult for this reason, that it is easy to find out in how many cases consent to employment has been given, but unless you go through and check up each person and see whether he or she is still

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employed, you cannot say how many are still employed. I can say that the number is 160, but that includes enemy, neutral or stateless aliens who have been employed with Treasury consent. Without finding out what is the life history of each of the 160, it follows that I cannot tell him whether all the 160 are still so employed. He will realize that it is not only Germans, but also neutral or stateless persons. Whether any of them are now left I do not know. He asked why unnaturalized Germans apparently in increasing numbers are employed in Government Departments. As far as I know, that is not so. I have no figures which make me think they are being employed in increasing numbers, but I do not know on what figures the noble Lord is relying.
LORD AILWYN: I read the figures to the noble and learned Lord, 60 in January, 1945, 80 in May, 1945, and 97 to-day.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Those are only people for whom consent has been given. Of course if you are going to carry on like that, each date you mention must be a larger number, but it does not in the least follow there are a larger number employed, and so far as we can trace it is probably not true to say that the number employed is larger. May I add this? In spite of demobilization, in certain branches it is so extremely difficult to obtain any helpers that I should be thankful to have some Germans. Take, for instance, the Services divorce scheme. The whole of the Services divorce scheme is being held up because I cannot obtain sufficient typists.
The next question was: "What check is there on Germans in this country changing their names to British ones?" Under Defence Regulation 20 (1) it is an offence for any alien to change his name without the authorization of the Secretary of State. Consent was given occasionally during the war to aliens who were serving in order that they might conceal their real identity, so that if they did fall into enemy hands they would not be penalized. Subject to that, consent has been given only in a very few cases. If an alien has become naturalized, however, then as I read the British Nationality Act of 1914, he has all the rights of a British subject and can change his name just as much as any of us can change our names.
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Another question was "Why are naturalized British subjects admitted to permanent employment in the British Civil Service when there must be a sufficient number of British subjects available?" Well, there is not a sufficient number of British subjects available in many classes and many types of work. The Nationality Regulations were revised in 1944 because it was felt that this was carrying out the principle of the Act of 1914, which said that once naturalized you are a British subject for all purposes. In the case of the Service Departments and the Foreign Office the special permission of the Head of the Department has to be obtained before a naturalized British subject can be appointed, but with regard to the other Departments a person who has been naturalized is eligible to enter the Service.
I was asked that we should take very great care that Germans and other aliens were not allowed to compete with British subjects in the labour market. May I give the noble Lord this word of warning, which I am sure he does not need? It should not be thought, as some people used to think before this war, that the labour market is a limited thing, that there are only a certain number of jobs available, and if one alien comes in and takes a job then there is one job less for a British subject. The long and short of the matter was stated by Viscount Swinton. I believe myself that we shall get the best reparations from Germany by trying to imbibe some of the German technical skill and knowledge, and therefore I am glad we are going to have 300 or 400 highly skilled Germans over here. I am willing to risk their being Nazis—and I think they probably are—so long as they are highly skilled technicians who will teach our people something which they did not previously know. They may, like the Huguenots of old, be worth their weight in gold. I do want to say that if an alien comes and contributes by production more than he consumes, he does not diminish the demand for labour, he positively increases it.
I will give the noble Lord this assurance. If it is a question of there being a British subject and a German competing for the job, both being equally suitable, I will give him the most absolute guarantee which the law requires that in such circumstances the British subject should be employed. I hope the noble Lord

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will rest satisfied that we are not going to allow our subjects in this country to be preferred to an undesirable alien. I think, to the best of my recollection, I have dealt with the various questions that I can remember, and I hope I have been able to satisfy your Lordships.
5.45 p.m.
LORD VANSITTART: My Lords, the time is getting short and there are four Motions to follow this. As I have caused a good deal of trouble, perhaps I may be absolved from entering into what arose between the two noble Lords who followed me, particularly as the points they raised were slightly aside from those on my Motion. Of course if I am asked to adjudge, as Lord Ailwyn suggested, between a good memory and a bad one, there is no doubt where my money would go. But I would like to remind the House in that matter of the saying of the famous French epigrammatist, La Rochefoucauld, when he remarked that every-one complains of their memory and no one of their judgment. Some time ago, in a book called Black Record, I was indiscreet enough to quote Tacitus and it took me an awfully long time to live that down. I should be reluctant to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ailwyn, right back into Greek mythology because I am sure I should never hear the last of that.
I was very grateful for the support given to me by the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton. I can assure him that I do not wish to introduce any cumbersome regulations or red tape, but I ask for consideration of quite a small number of points and quite simple ones. I could not agree with him more when he says—I do not think he used quite these words but something very near it—that these matters should be handled with and by Intelligence. That is the essence of the whole thing. I also listened with approval to what the noble Lord said on the dangers of respectability. Perhaps we should all endeavour to avoid anything so suspect. I am afraid I did not get very much change out of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. He said that he turned down, after mature consideration—and everything I know is always turned after mature consideration—the idea that matters of naturalization should be handled by an Inter-Departmental Committee. I suppose I must take your word that it is the better sys-
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tem, but I still prefer my own, not unnaturally.
On the matter of registering or declaring subsidies from abroad, I think I got even less encouragement. He was good enough to say that on this matter we were at least on a footing of equality. I hotly disclaim that; he was right up there and I was down here; that cock will not fight either. I am exceedingly sorry to hear that. Finally, coming to what I propose in the matter of legislation to meet subversive action in this country, he used the argument of the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton. They both said that legislation to that effect already existed, and the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack was even good enough to read it out to me. That reminds me of a famous passage that took place between Mr. Owen Seaman, one-time editor of Punch, and Sir Max Beerbohm. Sir Max Beerbohm said: "You have the nicest job in the world." He said: "I know I have." "You must get an awful lot of good material as editor of Punch." "I do." "Why don't you use it?" asked Sir Max Beerbohm!
I would only add one comment to what I said then, and that is that the passage quoted by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack did not cover part of my submission, which was that there should be penalties for trying to subvert the Constitution of this country on totalitarian lines. I am sure that no such provision appears in the tome from which he read because totalitarianism did not exist when that was drawn up. Therefore, while I am not really quite satisfied with the reception that my Motion has received, I hope at least it will have done something to stimulate interest in these matters. As I said at the end of my speech, I have reserved to myself the right to revert to the subject if I think I find that our present method, or lack of method, is not giving the best results. With these remarks, therefore, my Lords, and still with my eye on the clock, I shall beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

IMPORTATION OF TOMATOES.
LORD SEMPILLhad the following Notice on the Paper: To ask His Majesty's Government why licences to import Canary Islands tomatoes are still

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withheld; to draw attention to the fact that all sections of the British fruit and vegetable trade are willing to take the sole risk of importing on the Canary Islands authorities' terms the 25,000 tons awaiting shipment to Britain, for which they were specially grown; that many tons are rotting away as a result of the present inaction; that the trade is willing to accept these terms as a precedent for the importation of Colonial and Continental products; that great hardship is caused by the refusal to deal equitably with importers without selling premises, and that as a consequence quantities of fruit and vegetables may be denied the British public; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, much has happened since several weeks ago the Motion now before your Lordships was set down on the Order Paper. There has been considerable agitation on the "tomato front." The first part of the Motion that I have the honour to submit deals with licences to import tomatoes and arrangements as between importers and exporters. Your Lordships will have seen that on February 27th the Minister of Food announced that licences to import tomatoes from the Canary Islands were to be granted, and your Lordships, too, will have noted with considerable satisfaction that the first cargo of tomatoes is on the high seas and will arrive at one of the ports in England this week. So far so good, my Lords. But why this long delay in bringing so essential a food as the tomato to our table? What has happened to the bulk of this season's crop which we used to consume between the months of November and April or May in pre-war years? Where are the tomatoes that were grown during this season that is now moving rapidly to a close? The importance of any matter that relates to food cannot, I suggest, he overstressed, and in particular is this so with tomatoes since there has been a failure to secure this valuable commodity that was grown in the Canary Islands for the British Market.
May I remind you that the Minister of Food very properly encouraged this affair and indicated to growers in the Canary Islands on July 31 last that importation would be arranged for commencing from November of last year. A month before that date and many months before the present season opened I drew the atten-
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tion of my noble friend Lord Llewellin (then the Minister of Food) to the tomato potential, in which he expressed a very keen interest and gave instructions that the matter should be fully considered and asked me to lodge with the Ministry all the information that I had. Such, my Lords, was done and, as your Lordships know, licence have been granted an the first cargo of tomatoes is coming along. How vital is the need for such a food? Had it been possible, my noble friend Lord Harder would have been here to stress the dietetic side of this question, but the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, and the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, will deal rather fully with this side of which they have made a special study. Your Lordships will, I think, remember that. Dr. Franklin Bicknell said quite recently:
"At the end of six years of permanent malnutrition the situation is getting worse daily. The housewife is suffering more and more from malnutrition, with all its attendant symptoms of bad temper, inefficiency and strain."
It has been emphasized in previous debates in your Lordships' House that the unbalance that is now so much a feature of all affairs to-day must be attributed to a large extent to a diet which is deficient in the essential vitamins, in calcium and other essentials. Dr. Elizabeth Gourley, the Medical Officer of the L.C.C. said quite recently:
"We have never had so many multiple boils, sores, rashes and scurvy patches, caused by the lack of vitamins C and D contained in fruit and fats respectively, and the lack of calcium. With regard to vitamin C we have been reduced to almost 18th century plight."
The Minister of Food was good enough to write to me at the end of February, some hours before leaving for the United States, and suggested that, since he had arranged to re-issue licences to import Canary Islands tomatoes, perhaps the Motion might be withdrawn. I greatly appreciate the Minister's letter. In the letter the Minister pointed out that it was his duty to take the greatest care to see that perishables like tomatoes were shipped in such fashion that they arrived as near as possible undamaged and that they were bought "upon terms which will take from us as little as possible of our limited stock of foreign currency." The Minister also said that he had hoped to get better terms for the purchase of Canary Island tomatoes, but in order to

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avoid a further delay he had decided to accept the new terms and let the tomatoes come in.
No mention was made in the Minister's letter in regard to the last part of the Motion before your Lordships touching the hardship that will be caused to the importers without selling premises as a result of the Order of October, 1945, which altered the Emergency Powers Order of April 7, 1941, which merely confirmed the existing practice known as the A. B. C. D.—exporter, importer, wholesaler and retailer—and introduced a new figure into this cycle in the person of the first-hand salesman. Since the Minister was on his way to the United States when I received his letter, I wrote at some length to the Parliamentary Secretary, pointing out this omission. The honourable member, Dr. Edith Summerskill, wrote on March 7, and said that she was causing inquiries to be made about the matters I had raised, and would let me know. Perhaps at the termination of this debate we shall hear from the noble Lord replying for His Majesty's Government the result of these deliberations. Your Lordships will be well aware of the keen interest which Dr. Summer-skill takes in such matters. Recently she said:
"I know that one of the finest ways of rehabilitating a country is feeding the people plentifully and well. We are not withholding anything from you."
So we may infer that the Parliamentary Secretary is in full sympathy with the idea of importing without delay the maximum amount of tomatoes.
The Minister in his letter said he wanted to be sure the best terms were obtained. The Ministry of Food announced on July 31 last that the importation of tomatoes from the Canary Islands would be resumed when the season started, on November 1, and continued until the middle of May. Nothing further, however, was heard from the Ministry until the middle of December, when the Minister, in a statement to the Press, stressed the desirability of obtaining tomatoes without delay. In those days there surely can be no doubt at all that terms were not only actively under consideration by the Ministry but under discussion with the exporters and the importers.
The terms on which tomatoes are being imported were fixed between the respect-
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tive Governments in December of last year, and yet we see no tomatoes until the end of March, nearly the end of the season. The importers have been successful in persuading the exporters to give them terms which are more advantageous than of old. The terms now in force do not call on the importers, as did the terms before the war, to pay 100 per cent. f.o.b. Las Palmas or Teneriffe, but 85 per cent., the remaining 15 per cent. or a portion thereof being dependent on damage to the cargo and being assessed at the port of unloading in England. The introduction of the middleman, who receives a 5 per cent. commission, plus 6d. a packet, weighing approximately 25 lbs., is really not necessary, since the A. B. C. D. arrangement already referred to will now the war is over work very well. So why disturb it? My noble friend Lord Woolton, who has unique experience in these matters, may, I hope, feel disposed to say a word or two on this question, because he knows only too well that the result of the introduction of this firsthand salesman is to cause delay and increase the price to the consumer. It is ridiculous to suggest that whatever may have been found desirable in time of war, when the Government was the sole purchaser but had no distribution organization, should apply to the circumstances of to-day.
The present arrangement reacts most unfairly, as I said before, on the bulk of the importers, who in the past have borne their share of the heat and burden of the day. The bulk of them have not got selling premises, since they have been accustomed to make adequate arrangements with the wholesalers so that there was a minimum of delay and also the minimum of cost involved in the goods reaching the retailer. The present situation favours such few importers as there are who have selling premises and enables them not only to secure the fair profit that falls to the importer and to the wholesaler, but in addition an extra profit, a third profit, that is now to be paid to the newly introduced first-hand salesman. This arrangement is not one which is required. It adds to the price the consumer has to pay.
The Ministry have not seen to it that their actions kept pace with their words. Your Lordships will remember that they have stressed time and time again the

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need for the obtaining of tomatoes, and have encouraged the Canary Islands tomato growers, but their lack of planning has been so outstanding that without exaggeration 35,000 to 40,000 tons of this season's tomatoes have been lost to this country. Just consider the fact that the Ministry in November had four ships in the Canary Islands, two at Las Palmas, and two at Teneriffe, and these ships were sent for the sole purpose of bringing back cargoes of tomatoes. There they lay for three or four weeks, and they came away empty. There was no lack of tomatoes—the ships could have been filled—but there was a complete absence of planning. There can be no doubt at all that the terms which could have been negotiated at that time with the exporters would have varied very little from the terms which are now in force, which, as I reminded your Lordships, were fixed in December last year.
Surely it is small wonder that the Prime Minister of Australia, speaking in the House of Representatives a few days ago, relative to food for Britain, said according to The Times report:
"The difficulty all along has been to know just what is wanted. There has been so much vagueness, and such a mass of official contradiction, that incalculable opportunities have been lost already, and the latest statement from the Ministry of Food does little to clear the air."
I beg to move for Papers.
6.9 p.m.
VISCOUNT BLEDISLOE: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Sempill, who has just delivered to us a most interesting and informative speech, in regard to the shipment of tomatoes from the Canaries, has asked me to say a word in support of the appeal which he has made. So far as the dietetic value of tomatoes is concerned, this is, of course, beyond dispute. Not only is the tomato of high feeding value, but of course its therapeutic value is probably greater, with the possible exception of onions, than any fruit or vegetable we raise in this or any other country. I know nothing whatever about the trade conditions under which this importation was contemplated, but I venture to say, in the light of what the noble Lord has just said, that if there were actually ships in the harbours of the Canaries waiting with a view to shipping large quantities of tomatoes, lying there in the wharves, ready for shipment to this country, and which eventually sailed away with empty
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ships' bottoms, in the face of the present appalling shortage of food it is surely nothing short of a crime that these tomatoes should not have been carried to Great Britain or some other part of starving Europe.
I am reminded of an instance which perhaps my noble friend Lord Woolton will remember when, as Chairman of the Empire Canners' Council, then concerned in the shipment of various canned foods, particularly fruit and fish and some vegetables from our various Dominions, some three years ago, I went with a deputation from the Empire Canners' Council to meet Lord Woolton and drew attention to the fact that there were large quantities of canned fruits and, fish and jam awaiting shipment from South Africa and that ships were actually leaving the ports with little or no cargo bemuse the consignors of other commodities had not sent these commodities in time before the departure of those ships. To our very great delight he gave a very emphatic order that that sort of thing must never occur again during the war, but that those who had valuable food cargoes that they were able to ship should be entitled with his authority to ship these foods from those South African ports. Surely something of the same sort ought to have happened with regard to these tomatoes awaiting shipment from the Canary Islands.
I would only add in conclusion that I do venture to hope that the Minister of Food, in the face of the prospective shortage of foods of high nutrition value, will make a special appeal to grow such vegetables as tomatoes and onions in our gardens and allotments to the utmost capacity during the next two years. Given a favourable season (in 1941, 1942, and 1943 we had the most remarkable ripening conditions for tomatoes all over this country) we might as a result of such an appeal very substantially augment our own production of this very valuable vegetable, to the increase of our food and to the enhancement of our national health.
6.12 p.m.
LORD HANKEY: My Lords, earlier in the afternoon on my noble friend Lord Vansittart's Motion we were discussing one aspect of security, and now on my noble friend Lord Sempill's Motion we are discussing another security question, for tomatoes are a valuable protec-

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tion to human health. In view of the lateness of the hour I shall confine myself to the role assigned to me by the noble Lord who has raised this question, but I cannot pretend to understudy for Lord Horder who is a much greater expert than I. I will deal with the question not fully but as briefly as I can. I turn to the excellent Manual of Nutrition which was published by the Ministry of Food in 1945, and there I find that a proper supply of all vitamins is necessary for an adequate diet. They give three. The first is Vitamin A, which is found in dairy produce and eggs and in vegetable foods. Among vegetable foods are tomatoes which with 288 international units per ounce come fifth in the vegetable list. Next comes Vitamin B. I need not say much about that because I believe we are quite secure in Vitamin B since the Government had the wisdom during my absence in foreign parts to return to the 85 per cent. bread.
LORD WOOLTON: It was not wisdom. It was a matter of compulsion.
LORD HANKEY: If I am in order, I should like to congratulate the Government on that action. My only regret is that they did not seize the opportunity to spread the good news to our countrymen that they were at any rate going to receive a much more wholesome bread. The third vitamin mentioned was Vitamin C, and that occurs mainly in fruit and vegetables including the tomato which, with seven milligrammes per ounce is tenth in the fruit and vegetable list. According to the same authority, if insufficient Vitamin C is provided, the growth of children will be checked, the gums and mouth will become susceptible to infection (our old friend the question of teeth), the healing of wounds and fractures becomes slower, and in the last resort the final result is the appearance of scurvy. Vitamin C is on the whole, I understand, the hardest of the three to obtain in sufficient quantities. We need every scrap of Vitamin C that we can get. Some of the best sources of it like oranges, grapefruit and lemons are always in rather short supply. Some others like black currants, which is the best of all, are seasonal, and they usually have to be reserved for children, so that that makes the question of tomatoes all the more important. There is one other reason
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why tomatoes are so important Unfortunately Vitamin C is easily destroyed by cooking, but tomatoes are one of the fruits which most people are quite ready to eat in a raw state, so that you can get away easily from that disadvantage. Also it is an extremely popular form of food.
From these remarks it will be seen how important it is to keep open any source of tomatoes that exists, particularly at this time of the year when Vitamin C is short. That is why the alleged delay in granting licences in the Canary Islands is peculiarly regrettable. I recognize for my part that food control is unavoidable at present and likely to remain so for some time to come. It must obviously be very difficult for the Ministry to keep in touch with all the vagaries of the markets of so many essential foodstuffs. The only safe rule seems to be to work as much as possible through the ordinary trade channels. I do not pretend to know the intricacies of this particular trade, but I understand from my noble friend that this rule has been neglected in the case of tomatoes, and that one important element in the machinery, namely, the "pure" importers who were responsible for the importation of the majority of the Canary Islands tomatoes in normal times, were excluded from acting as first-hand salesmen by this Order which was issued in October, which created a new firsthand salesman and gave him great advantages, but resulted in a failure to get the food to the markets. Whatever is said about this in the past, I do hope that we shall receive adequate assurances from the Front Bench about the future so as to ensure that nothing of the kind takes place in the case of any of the produce containing Vitamin C that will be coming forward in the countries adjacent to our islands.
6.9 p.m.
LORD WOOLTON: My Lords, may I intervene for one moment? We have had a marvellous investigation into the value of tomatoes this afternoon. I am looking forward with very great pleasure to the time when once again I may be able to eat one. But that is not what I thought we were going to discuss. I thought we were going to discuss this Motion which on the whole seems to me to deal with something other than the value of tomatoes. I think we can take the value of tomatoes for granted. I support everything

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that the noble Lord who has just spoken has said as to their value from a health point of view. We like them, too—which is important. I could not form a judgment on this issue without foreknowledge, and that I am sure we shall gain from the noble Lord who will reply. I should just like to say this, however. During the period of the war, when exchange was difficult, when shipping was difficult, when we really could place no reliance on the ordinary channels of distribution being in existence, it was necessary for the Government to determine things. I hope the time will come—and I am sure noble Lords on the other side would take this view, too, certainly regarding perishable things like tomatoes—when we shall abandon that machinery.
We did get very ample supplies of tomatoes before the war. They were brought in at the risk of people in this country who, for the most part, put their money into the concerns of the growers and of the planters overseas. Sometimes the risk was not a good one. But, as a result of taking the risk, they certainly brought a very large number of tomatoes to this country. I wonder whether His Majesty's Government and the Minister do not consider that the time has come when we need not bother so much about an orderly marketing of tomatoes, a precise definition of "first salesman," "second salesman" "and" "importer," but that it should be left to the trade, putting on a ceiling price so that the public cannot, in a time of scarcity, be robbed. I think this may be one of the places in which Government regulation might be cut down a little. I would beg the Minister not to let regulation interfere with us getting the food, and it looks in this case as though it has done so. That is all I wish to contribute to this debate.
6.23 p.m.
LORD AMMON: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord who has just spoken for his statement, which has helped me somewhat. As to the remarks made by the noble Lord who preceded him regarding dietetic value and that sort of thing, I do not propose to follow them at any length. We concede all that right away, but it is hardly indicated in the Motion on the Paper. I make only one aside of my own. While not disputing at all Lord Hankey's pronouncement as
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to the great advantage of 85 per cent. wheat in the bread, I, for one, do not like it; therefore it seems to me that discounts all the dietetic value so far as I am concerned, and I imagine there are a good many more who look at it from the same point of view.
Turning to the Motion on the Paper, I think the noble Lord, Lord Sempill, who opened this debate, must not have been completely in touch with the circumstances and the conditions obtaining in this particular trade. The noble Lord, Lord Woolton, remarked that he hoped we would entirely abandon the machinery. To a large extent one would agree with that. He said, "Leave it to the trade," but he himself set out with the idea—and I am sure he would not desire to depart from it—that the one thing we wanted to do was to preserve the trade, and that those agencies which operated legitimately before in handling the trade should be kept in being. He knows there were a large number of people concerned with it who were not actually the owners, nor did they at any time handle or touch the produce. They were commission agents. They had no premises on this side. It was felt that that should not continue during the period of the war and the period of stringency which now exists. The Ministry have always maintained that position having regard to the limited supplies, as it would add very considerably to costs, to say nothing of the difficulties.
Now there is no lack whatever of adequate machinery, proper to the trade, for the distribution of tomatoes as and when they arrive in this country. The difficulty arises largely before then. Lord Sempill was not quite right when he said, for instance, that the payment of eighty-five per cent, was laid clown, fifteen per cent. being left to cover losses, damage, etc. That is not at all an accurate description of the position. The Spanish Government decreed that tomatoes should be sold at a firm price—that is to say, that without any regard whatever to selling price here there should be an agreement made with, them by the person directly dealing with them, at a fixed price from which there should be no departure. They decreed, too, that eighty-five per cent. of the cost should be paid on shipment.
I may mention, by the way, that the traders at first refused to handle the

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shipments on those conditions, and the import licences were withdrawn. After some discussion, there was a slight reduction obtained to the extent of 5 per cent., and the traders picked up the matter again. It is found, however, that in trades dealt with like this, particularly those dealt with through the Spanish Government who are mostly concerned, most of the goods are severely damaged, to the extent, sometimes, of as much as 50 per cent. of the whole commitment. The produce is more particularly open to that damage when it is sold in this manner, where there are no people dealing with it in a proper manner and where the exporters are not responsible for the goods until sold. That is one of the things which has to be borne in mind when one is considering this matter.
LORD WOOLTON: If it does not embarrass the noble Lord, may I ask if it is true, then, that the Spanish Government insist on a flat price regardless of the qualities?
LORD AMMON: That is the difficulty which I am trying to impress upon the House. The Spanish Government themselves have decreed the price. Therefore we, on this side, have had to have regard to our sterling and the dollar exchange, and we cannot accept what really amounts to almost a kind of blackmail: "Either you have got to have them at our price or you do not have them at all. What is more, you not only have them like that, but you have them under the conditions under which we choose to send them, without your having any word in it."
That is the difficulty in which we find ourselves. Although the Ministry of Food are anxious to get as much food as possible into this country, they do not intend to do so on any terms foreign exporters may try to extort. They have laid down rules for ensuring, as far as possible, that the proportion of waste is low, and for limiting the expediture of foreign currency what is absolutely necessary. It is quite true, as has been said by two noble Lords, that ships did lie in port empty, waiting for cargo, and that our Government had secured space in those ships, but, to use a colloquialism, the Spanish Government grew tough and put up the price. The British Government refused to submit to that, but after nego-
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tiation, knowing the need for foodstuffs in this country, particularly of the dietetic value of tomatoes, they had to give way. They secured a concession to the extent of five per cent. of the amount to be paid before shipment. Still, they were pretty harshly treated. That is all that lies behind the whole business in this particular connexion.
So far as the distributors are concerned, the Government have followed all along the line that has been laid down. From the beginning it has been the policy of successive Ministers of Food to distribute through the existing channels of trade. Nobody would know better than the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, that probably there is a bigger margin in the vegetable and fruit trade than in any other trade, and therefore they have to take steps to keep it within proper and reasonable limits, which also has a tremendous effect on price. There is nothing to hide; the Government are willing and anxious to buy everything they possibly can at reasonable prices in the ordinary way, but they refuse to be held to ransom in this particular manner, particularly as they have no guarantee under the conditions that have prevailed hitherto that, even at the increased price that is demanded from them, they are going to get food which will be quite fit for consumption. That, I submit, is the answer.
6.32 p.m.
LORD SEMPILL: My Lords, time is getting on, and your Lordships have other things to do this afternoon, so I will not detain you more than one minute. I thank the noble Lord for his interesting reply. I am sorry that he has not time to deal with this question of the normal procedure, and the doing away with this recently injected first-hand salesman. I should like to take this opportunity of thanking the noble Lords who have supported me in this matter. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

THE MISSION TO INDIA.
6.33 p.m.
LORD RANKEILLOUR LORD RANKEILLOUR rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether it is the intention of the Government, following the precedent set in the case of the Cripps' Mission, to make public the Cabinet instructions under which the new Mission

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of Three will operate, before that Mission enters upon its task in India. The noble Lord had also given notice to ask His Majesty's Government whether their present policy with regard to India abrogates the provisions of the Declaration of March 30, 1942, in respect of relations with the Indian States and the protection of minorities. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in asking the two questions which stand in my name, and which are complementary to each other, I have no wish whatever to enter into the many complications and controversies which at present affect and afflict the various peoples of the Indian sub-continent, but I do think that we ought to get some clearer idea of what the Government have in mind at the present juncture.
We know that a Commission of three Cabinet Ministers is about Ito go to India. This is not the first Commission. The first Commission in 1942 was composed solely of one of the three Ministers who form the Commission now. The former Commission announced a bold and clear policy which was expressed in a declaration by the then Prime Minister before the Commissioner, Sir Stafford Cripps, set out, and which was amplified in a White Paper published when the Commissioner had been some time in India, but when he had not fulfilled his Mission and had not finally got answers from those with whom he had to deal. The method which the White Paper of April, 1942, disclosed was that there should be created an elected constituent body. It is unnecessary to go into the details although I have them before me if they are required. That was the main idea.
When that body had been created, it was intended that it should enter into a treaty with the British Government in order to bring about, as far as that is possible, a final and agreed settlement. But the Commissioner was not given in negotiating, or in preparing the ground for the negotiation of that treaty, an unlimited discretion. Three conditions were imposed upon him: first of all, that no Province of British India should be obliged to come into the arrangement for a Central Government against its will; secondly, that no Indian State should be required to do so; and thirdly, that racial and religious minorities should be protected. That basis of the constituent body has been changed, and now all we know is that the Government propose to
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act on a basis not yet specified and only on certain, so far as we know, conversations with unspecified parties. That is a big change, but I do not wish to comment on whether the Government are right or wrong. What I wish to know is whether there are any other changes. It is necessary to observe that the conditions I have mentioned were overriding conditions: they did not depend in any way on what the views of the proposed constituent body, when it was constituted, would be; they were absolute conditions of any treaty that might be agreed upon. Those same conditions. I may remark, were at any rate implicitly endorsed by the present Viceroy and the present Prime Minister in their declaration of September 19 of this year.
The question as to the minorities is specially important. There is a very mistaken impression, not in this House but in the country generally—you see it continually expressed in articles and letters to the newspapers--that you have only to reconcile the Hindu and the Mahomedan and all will be well. That is very far from being the case, and that, I think, is admitted in the declaration of the former Prime Minister in 1942. In particular, official statistics are somewhat misleading. If you will refer to Whitaker's Almanac, you will find the Hindus number 254,000,000, but from that you have to deduct the numbers of the Depressed Classes. You cannot regard the Hindus as in any sense a body united in their views. There are apparently not published the numbers of the Depressed Classes. From all the information I can obtain, there cannot be fewer than 50,000,000 and they might approach to 60,000,000. That, of course, makes a very large deduction from the 254,000,000 that I have mentioned. I think I ought to add that no body expressed views adverse to the proposals of 1942 more strongly than the Depressed Classes through the mouth of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, whose acquaintance I made on the Joint Select Committee. He impressed me as being a man whose education and ability were quite equal to those of any other of the Indian delegates. In a letter to Sir Stafford Cripps from Dr. Ambedkar and Mr. M. C. Rajah, the following passage occurred:
"We are all of us absolutely convinced that the proposals are calculated to do the greatest harm to the Depressed Classes, and are sure

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to place them under an unmitigated system of Hindu rule."
Dr. Ambedkar actually referred to others as Hindus. He does not apparently claim the name of Hindu for himself. The letter went on:
"Any such result which takes us back to the black days of the ancient past will never be tolerated by us, and we are all determined to resist any such catastrophe befalling our people with all the means at our command."
Considering their numbers and their views, I feel that their position, in any arrangement that is made, must be borne in mind.
Then I might say something about the Mahasabha. They are militant Hindus, but they are very far from acknowledging the organization of Congress as necessarily to be obeyed. But I do not want to dwell on the question of numbers. Any minority has a right to be protected. All minorities have rights, and there are others, besides those I have mentioned, which are not to be ignored. There are between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 Christians, some 6,000,000 Sikhs, and a smaller number of Jains—about 1,500,000. The aboriginal tribes, I understand, amount in the aggregate, although they are by no means homogeneous, to some 25,000,000 people. Then, of course, there is the very small but very important minority of Parsees, and a still smaller minority of Jews.
In considering this question of numbers, I would remark that there are four substantial countries in Western Europe which have populations under 10,000,000—Holland, Switzerland, Belgium and Portugal. So, when you come to bodies of 6,000,000 and 7,000,000, they are far more important than they look if you compare them with European standards. What I want to ask is does the declaration as to minorities still hold good? I do not ask for a moment by what methods the Government may think that they can secure their protection. Personally, I would say no more than that I do not see how any plan can give them adequate protection which does not provide for reserve powers and a completely independent Supreme Court. But I do not ask the Government to argue these matters at all. I do, however, ask two questions—first of all, whether the assurances of 1942 still hold good; and, secondly, whether they will not, before the Commissioners
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enter on their work, vouchsafe some clearer indication of the principles upon which they are to act.
6.46 p.m.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA AND BURMA (LORD PETHICK-LAWRENCE): My Lords, I propose to answer the questions as they appear on the Order Paper. My answer to the first question put by the noble Lord is this. The present policy of His Majesty's Government is to initiate discussions with the representatives of British India and of the Indian States with a view to securing the quickest and best method and procedure for framing a new constitutional structure for India. While therefore the principles underlying the 1942 Declaration relating to the Indian States and the protection of minorities remain, the precise application of them is necessarily subject to modification in the light of these discussions.
With regard to the second question asked by the noble Lord, it is not the intention of His Majesty's Government to make public the Cabinet's instructions nor indeed would this be in accordance with precedent. I would point out to the noble Lord that the Draft Declaration of 1942 was not published until after Sir Stafford Cripps had discussed it with the Indian leaders, and in any case it was not the Cabinet's instructions to him but the terms of the offer which he was authorized to make which were published.
6.48 p.m.
VISCOUNT TEMPLEWOOD: My Lords, I can fully appreciate the difficulties which the Secretary of State for India and Burma feels must restrain him from disclosing details of a negotiation that has not yet begun. Those of us here who wish to see his Mission, and the Mission of his colleagues succeed do not desire to say anything that is calculated to compromise them. At the same time, I do feel that, although Lord Pethick-Lawrence may be on strong ground in saying that the Cabinet instructions should not be disclosed, it would be wise to take the Opposition more into his confidence in matters of this kind than seems to be done at present. Let me remind him that at every recent stage in the constitutional development of India we have always tried to advance upon an all-Party front. The Mission presided over by the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, was composed of representatives of all three Parties.

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Round Table Conferences, in which I took part for several years, and the Joint Select Committee were also all-Party concerns. As one who is very anxious to see that this final chapter, as we believe it to be, in our relations with India, as they have hitherto obtained, should also be an all-Party settlement, I do not wish to embarrass him to-day or to press him for, specific details, but I would ask him to take these facts into consideration. I would also ask him to remember what happened at the end of the last war in the matter of the Irish settlement. I want to see this final Indian chapter as unlike the final Irish chapter as we can possible make it.
I feel it would be disastrous that here we should be kept in the dark until the last moment, and then suddenly wake up, as we woke up then, to find that a settlement had been signed, sealed and delivered in the middle of the night without anybody knowing anything about it at all. I say that not because I wish to put difficulties in the way of this last chapter, but because I wish to see this settlement of all Parties brought about. I also say it for this further reason. Having had many years of experience in dealing with these terribly difficult constitutional problems in India, I do want to see the detailed propositions before they are actually accepted. My experience in dealing with these questions is that the only way to confront them is to confront the details. These generalities, the protection of minorities, the rights of Princes, and so on, can mean everything or nothing. It is very important that we should see the precise proposals and judge them upon their merits. I have therefore risen for this sole purpose, to remind the noble Lord opposite that hitherto these Indian developments have always been, so far as we could make them, upon all-Party lines. I suggest it would be wise to follow that example in the present case.

DEBTS OF EX-ENEMIES.
6.53 p.m.
LORD WOOLTON LORD WOOLTON rose to ask His Majesty's Government what steps they propose to take to recover debts owed to British subjects by countries with which we have recently been at war. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I put this question on the Paper because I want to
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draw the attention of the Government to the position of people who own sterling bonds issued or guaranteed by foreign Governments or States. I do not propose to deal at all with the ordinary commercial debts that may have been incurred between British nationals and people trading in ex-enemy countries. The size of the issue which is involved is one that I am told by the Society of Foreign Bond Holders, who have the information, amounts to the sum of no less than £750,000,000 worth of capital. I would occupy your Lordships' time just for a moment by drawing your attention to the way in which these loans came about. They were loans to foreign Powers, but to foreign Powers with whom we had, at the time at which the loan was made, alliances or, at any rate, with whom we were obviously on terms of friendly relations. There was no question here of speculative gambling. Often the loans received the encouragement of high authorities. Some of them you remember were encouraged by the League of Nations, and several of these loans were in fact made at the time when the Labour Government was in office. These loans gave great encouragement to international trade; they were of great value to us as a nation—they were issued here because London was the financial centre of the world—and they brought, of course, credit and profit to us. I hope that the Government, who are hearing much, I believe, of this story, will not think that this is just another instance of big business coming along and asking what the Government is going to do to protect it. I know the Government is most anxious to protect big business.
I am not going to try and make your Lordships' hearts bleed at five minutes to seven at night, but these loans are for the most part held in very small denominations, the average holding being only £500. So we are dealing with the population of the country quite widely and not with any particular class, although I must admit this, that the insurance companies have quite large holdings in these bonds. The reason for that is that they are now an essential part of their trade, because it has become quite common in recent years for foreign Governments to say to British insurance companies who are proposing to develop in foreign countries: "If you do that, then you must have a deposit in this country of our bonds," and

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that is the reason why the insurance companies are quite considerable holders of these loans.
I have not raised this question in the interests of the insurance companies, but because so many of the quite ordinary people of the country hold these bonds and they are wondering what is going to happen to them. They entered into these obligations with these foreign Governments and friendly Powers in all good faith that their interest would be paid, their good bond would be met, and in the long run their capital would be returned to them. I think it is not unusual that we should expect the Government to take every step which it is within their power to take to protect the rights of these citizens. Precisely what they can do I am not in a position to say, but I hope perhaps the noble Lord will be able to tell us.
There is one thing I am quite clear about and that is that this issue should be raised in the Peace Treaties that are subsequently to be negotiated. I will not detain your Lordships longer, but I think this is a matter of justice, and I think it is also very considerably a matter of expediency. We are a trading nation. International trade is of the greatest importance to us. Loans to foreign Powers from this country have been a great source of trade and wealth to us in the past, and they will be again in the future when once again we have restored our holdings and are in a position to export capital. Of course, every time you have default you reduce the tendency of people in this country, the willingness of people in this country, to invest their money abroad, and that in the end may prove to be of some detriment to our trade. I should be glad if the Government could give us some assurance that they are taking this matter seriously, and that they will take such steps as lie within their power to protect the people of this country from loss and to see that obligations by foreign Powers to British citizens are honoured.
6.59 p.m.
LORD PAKENHAM: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving me an opportunity of making a fairly full statement on this matter, which is undoubtedly one of considerable public interest. The noble Lord will forgive me
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if I confine myself in my reply to debts owed to British subjects by countries with whom we have recently been at war, because that is the only really proper issue dealt with in his speech to which his question actually refers. He has talked in a most interesting way about the £750,000,000 which is owed us by various countries, but it is reckoned that much smaller sums are due from the ex-enemy countries, some £90,000,000 owing from Germany, at a rough computation, and perhaps £14,000,000 from Egypt.
There were, of course, considerable claims by persons in the United Kingdom and in other United Nations against the enemy countries in respect of contractual obligations entered into before the war. They may be described broadly as contract debts (including trade debts), bank balances, dividends and interest, business profits, payments out of trusts and settlements, patents and copyright royalties, rents, and also the capital of securities, loans and mortgages which had matured before the war. The policy of His Majesty's Government will be to secure a settlement of these pre-war claims on such terms as circumstances permit; that is, with proper regard to other competing claims such as restitution, reparations, costs of occupation and relief; but there is little reason to hope that (except in the case of Finland and in the case of Siam) the foreign exchange earnings of the countries available for the purpose will be sufficient to warrant a belief that a settlement will be effected easily and rapidly. The deterioration in the economies of the enemy countries, let alone their past history, makes it obvious that few if any of the countries concerned will be in a position for some years to effect substantial transfers in satisfaction of United Nations pre-war claims.
After the last war the recovery of debts owing to British subjects or residents in the United Kingdom by ex-enemy countries was dealt with in the various Peace Treaties. Under the arrangements made in these Treaties, enemy property in the United Kingdom was liquidated and the proceeds of liquidation provided the principal means by which pre-war debts were recovered. The situation at present is different from what it was after the last war, since, in most cases, the enemy property under our control will amount to a great deal less than the debts due to us.

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There is the further complication that there is not any early prospects of a Treaty with Germany or with Japan. Treaties with Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and Rumania are being discussed at the present time by the Deputy Foreign Ministers, with a view to a Peace Conference in Paris in May. The discussions have not, however, yet reached the stage at which it is possible to forecast what provision (if any) will be made in regard to recovery of pre-war debts.
In the case of Germany a Reparations Agreement was signed at Paris on December 21 last by the eighteen countries entitled to reparation from the Western Zones of Germany under the Potsdam Agreement. Article 6A of this Repara-Agreement provides that each Signatory Government shall liquidate German assets within its control and shall charge such assets against its reparation share. It remains, however, to be decided how the question of recovery of pre-war debts owed by Germany is to be dealt with. The Government have received representations from representatives of the bondholders on the question of ex-enemy bonds, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated, as your Lordships will recall, on March 6 that he intended to meet representatives of the interested parties shortly. The Govern also, of course, have fully in mind the question of pre-war trade debts from enemy countries. But at the present stage, for the reasons explained in the case of Germany and Japan, Italy, Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria, it is not at present possible to say more than that this important question is under consideration.
Steps have been taken in two cases, namely, that of Finland and that of Siam, with which I will conclude by troubling your Lordships. Finland is in a special position among the countries with which we are still at war, by reason of her ability and willingness to enter into contracts to supply us with large quantities of timber and other valuable materials. A Memorandum of Agreement was entered into between the United Kingdom and Finland on August 2, 1945, providing for a resumption of trade and financial transactions and the liquidation of indebtedness between the two countries. Under this Agreement Finland agreed among other things that 12½ per cent.
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of all moneys due from United Kingdom Government Departments in respect of purchases made in Finland (together with certain moneys collected by the Custodians of Enemy Property in the United Kingdom as being due to persons in Finland) should be paid into a special account at the Bank of England. This special account will exist for the purpose of meeting sums, due and payable (at the date of the coming into force of the Memorandum of Agreement) from the Government of Finland or persons in Finland to the Government of the United Kingdom, or to persons resident or carrying on business in the United Kingdom or in any of the British Colonial Dependencies. That arrangement, therefore, has been made. These sums include interest accrued and bonds due for redemption of certain Finnish loans and other agreed claims.
With regard to Siam, Article 5 of the Agreement of January r, 1946, terminating the state of war between the United Kingdom and Siam, provides:
"The Siamese Government agree to accept liability, with the addition of interest, at an appropriate percentage, in respect of payments in arrears, for the service of loans and for payment of pensions in full since the date when regular payment ceased."
The method of settlement of other claims against Siam is under consideration. I hope that this recital will convince the noble Lord that we are certainly taking the matter seriously.
LORD WOOLTON: I am very much obliged to the noble Lord.

APPOINTMENTS TO COMMITTEES.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DROGHEDA): My Lords, you will see on the Order Paper six Motions standing in my name, in which I ask your Lordships to add the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stanmore, to six Committees of this House, and the name of Lord Henderson to the House of Lords Offices Committee. I am sure your Lordships will allow me to express our appreciation of Lord Stanmore's willing-. ness to continue to serve on these Committees, where his great knowledge and experience will be invaluable. Perhaps at this late hour you will allow me to move the adoption of the Motions standing in my name.

COMMITTEE OF SELECTION.
Moved, That the Lord Stanmore be added to the Committee.—(The Earl of Drogheda).
On Question, Motion agreed to.

STANDING ORDERS COMMITTEE.
Moved, That the Lord Stanmore be added to the Committee.—(The Earl of Drogheda).
On Question, Motion agreed to.

SPECIAL ORDERS COMMITTEE.
Moved, That the Lord Stanmore be added to the Committee.—(The Earl of Drogheda).
On Question, Motion agreed to.

HOUSE OF LORDS OFFICES.
Moved, That the Lord Stanmore and the Lord Henderson be added to the Committee.—(The Earl of Drogheda).
On Question, Motion agreed to.

PROCEDURE OF THE HOUSE.
Moved, That the Lord Stanmore be added to the Committee.—(The Earl of Drogheda.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

PERSONAL BILLS COMMITTEE.
Moved, That the Lord Stanmore be added to the Committee.—(The Earl of Drogheda.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

BUILDING RESTRICTIONS (WARTIME CONTRAVENTIONS) BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments agreed to.
FURNISHED HOUSES (RENT CONTROL) BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments agreed to.
STATUORY INSTRUMENTS BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments agreed to.
NEWPORT (ISLE OF WIGHT) CORPORATION BILL.
Brought from the Commons, read 1a and referred to the Examiners.

SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE.
The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House that His Majesty had (by Comission) revoked certain Letters Patent and had appointed the Chairman of Committees for the time being and Viscount Hutchinson (Earl Donoughmore), the Lord Stanmore, the Earl of Drogheda, any person who shall have been Chairman of Committees, the Lord Denman, the Earl of Granard, the Earl of Clarendon, the Viscount Hailsham, the Earl of Lucan, the Viscount Mersey, the Viscount Sankey, the Viscount Maugham, the Viscount Caldecote, the Lord Temple-more, the Viscount Simon, the Viscount Addison, the Lord Hare (Earl Listower), the Viscount Southwood, the Lord Jowitt, the Earl Fortescue, and the Lord Ammon to be Speaker of the House in the absence of the Lord Chancellor. The said Commission was read.
DEPARTMENT OF OVERSEAS TRADE (DISSOLUTION) ORDER, 1946.
MINISTRY OF AIRCRAFT PRODUCTION (DISSOLUTION) ORDER, 1946.
MINISTRY OF WAR TRANSPORT (DISSOLUTION) ORDER, 1946.
Report from the Special Orders Committee: That they examined the Special Orders as required by the Standing Orders of the House; that in their opinion the Orders raise questions of policy and principle which have been already accepted by the House when passing the Ministers of the Crown (Transfer of Functions) Act, 1946, under which the Orders are submitted for approval; that the Orders are not founded on precedent inasmuch as they are the first Orders which have been presented to Parliament under that Act;

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that in the opinion of the Committee the Orders can be passed by the House without special attention, and that no further inquiry is necessary before the House proceeds to a decision on the Resolution to present an Address to His Majesty praying that the Orders be made.
Read and ordered to lie on the Table.