Lords Sitting of 19 March 1946

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

MINISTRY OF AIRCRAFT PRODUCTION (DISSOLUTION) ORDER, 1946.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Viscount Stansgate I beg to move the Motion standing in his name.
Moved, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying' that the Ministry of Aircraft Production (Dissolution) Order, 1946, as reported from the Special Orders Committee on Tuesday last, be made in the form of the draft laid before Parliament.—(Lord Henderson.)
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, I hope your Lordships will think it fitting that someone should make just a few remarks on this matter, and perhaps I may be allowed to do it as I was one of those who had the honour to be called upon to take part in the foundation of the Ministry of Aircraft Production, and, at a later stage, to take charge of it. That Ministry was called into being at a time when the country's fortunes were at their lowest. Men came from all walks of life. Apart from my noble friend Lord Beaverbrook there were two other members of this House who joined us at the start, and in addition to myself, as Parliamentary Secretary, there were three members of another place. They came from all sections of industry to help in the vital task of providing those great young men in the Royal Air Force and in the Fleet Air Arm with the weapons they must have if we were to win the war. I speak with first-hand experience of what these men did at the Ministry. Most gave up the direction or management of a business of their own. All worked with initiative and drive, and they formed a first-class team which not only I but, I feel, every
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Minister of Aircraft Production must be proud to have had under him.
The Ministry, working with the aircraft industry and through it, succeeded in getting the extra fighters which were necessary to win the Battle of Britain. It succeeded in producing bombers that could carry the heaviest load of any bomber produced in the world. It saw the Spitfire through all its various transformations, the latest of which I rather doubt whether Mitchell, the inventor, had he still been alive, would have recognized as coming from his original great design. It was responsible for the Mosquitoes, the Lancasters, and the even more modern jet plane. I think the triumphant success of the Ministry and all aircraft and engine designers should be recorded. In the 1914–18 war, as many noble Lords will remember, the Germans had the better design at one moment, and then our Air Force had the better design at the next. Throughout this war, however, we always led the enemy in design, and that gave the chance to our young men of which they made such tremendous use. Now it is right not to continue this Ministry, and to end its life to-day after not quite six years of existence. It may be said of it that it will not grow old as the Ministries that are left grow old; but when history comes to be written, I am quite certain that the years will not condemn the way in which it carried through its great, important and indeed vital task.
LORD SHERWOOD: My Lords, I would like to say one word. I agree with what the noble Lord has said about the Ministry of Aircraft production, although I must differ from certain facts he gave because I think they are inaccurate and should always be contradicted. He said that the Spitfire won the Battle of Britain, and not the Hurricane, and he paid a tribute to Mr. Mitchell.
LORD LLEWELLIN: I did not say that.
LORD SHERWOOD: You implied it, and I think it should be made clear that it was the Hurricane and not the Spitfire which won the Battle of Britain. It is true that we are winding up this Department, of which the noble Lord was Parliamentary Secretary under Lord Beaverbrook. No praise can be too great for what Lord Beaverbrook did in those

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days when Lord Llewellin was the Parliamentary Secretary. I hope that what may come of the new Department will be development and research. That is what we are asking for.
On Question, Motion agreed to; the said Address to be presented to His Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.

DEPARTMENT OF OVERSEAS TRADE (DISSOLUTION) ORDER, 1946.
2.42 p.m.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Pakenham I beg to move the Motion standing in his name.
Moved, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying that the Department of Overseas Trade (Dissolution) Order, 1946, as reported from the Special Orders Committee on Tuesday last, be made in the form of the draft laid before Parliament.—(Lord Henderson.).
On Question, Motion agreed to; the said Address to be presented to His Majesty by the Lords with White, Staves.

MINISTRY OF WAR TRANSPORT (DISSOLUTION) ORDER, 1946.
THE MINISTER FOR CIVIL AVIATION (LORD WINSTER): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name.
Moved, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying that the Ministry of War Transport (Dissolution) Order, 1946, as reported from the Special Order Committee on Tuesday last, be made in the form of the draft laid before Parliament.—(Lord Winster.)
On Question, motion agreed to; the said Address to be presented to His Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENT ACT, 1932.
LORD WALKDEN: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name.
Moved, That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department under the Act, for extending Section 1 of the Act to the City of Wells, and laid before this House on Thursday last, be approved.—(Lord Walkden.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

MISCELLANEOUS FINANCIAL PROVISIONS BILL.
2.44 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House that the Bill had been endorsed with a Certificate from the Speaker that it is a Money Bill within the meaning of the Parliament Act, 1911.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, in the absence of both my noble friends, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, who leaves for India to-day, and Lord Pakenham, who has fallen a sudden victim to seasonal influenza, both of whom are responsible for the conduct of Treasury business in your Lordships' House, it has fallen to me this afternoon to propose the Second Readings of the two financial Bills which come before us to-day for consideration. Fortunately, I think I may claim that so far as this House is concerned these two Bills are largely non-controversial.
The first of these Bills is the one now before us, the Miscellaneous Financial Provisions Bill. No Bill that I have ever seen was more aptly named, for it covers a number of financial provisions varied in character and distinct in nature. To begin with, we take power under the Bill to continue and extend the present borrowing powers of the Government. During the war it was necessary annually to pass a National Loans Act to give the Treasury power to borrow whatever sums were needed to meet the supply granted them by another place. Under those powers the Budget deficit was annually made good by loan. Under Clause 1 (1) of this Bill, the Government are empowered to raise any money required for the service of the year ending March 31, 1947, together with an additional sum not exceeding £250,000,000. Of course your Lordships will recognize that what this clause actually means is that we take power to borrow the amount of the actual deficit on the forthcoming Budget. The additional power to borrow up to £250,000,000 is taken, as hitherto, in order to cover any gap that might occur between the end of the financial year 1946–47 and the next Bill empowering the Treasury to raise a loan for the purpose.
Clause 1 (2) empowers the Treasury to charge the Consolidated Fund with liabilities, including the payment of interest, accepted under agreements with other

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Governments concerning obligations arising out of or in connexion with the war. Clause 2 of the Bill provides that payments by the War Damage Commission under the War Damage Act, 1943, or by the Board of Trade under the same Act after March 31 next, shall be charged on the Consolidated Fund and raised by borrowing rather than met out of the annual votes. I should say that the amounts and conditions of payments under the War Damage Act are not affected by this clause; the only change is the source from which payments are to be made after March 31 of this year. It is provisionally estimated that payments by the War Damage Commission amount to some £400,000,000, and by the Board of Trade to some £100,000,000, but the actual issues each year will be disclosed in the accounts rendered to Parliament under subsections (2) and (3) of this clause.
Clause 3 of the Bill increases the Civil Contingencies Fund from £1,500,000 to a maximum of £250,000,000. A repayment must be made of all such issues to the Exchequer not later than the last day of 1950. The increase in the Civil Contingencies Fund is necessary owing to the extraordinary times and circumstances in which we are living following the catastrophe of the war. The purposes for which this Fund, when so increased, may be used, fall under three heads. First, to advance funds for urgent services in anticipation of Parliamentary provision being made available; secondly, to provide working capital for a trading department; thirdly, to provide working balances, as distinct from the trading departments' working capital, for the operations of overseas branches of departments. Every transaction will ultimately come before Parliament for approval, and the provision here only makes it possible to anticipate Parliamentary approval. It certainly does not absolve the departments concerned from obtaining Parliamentary approval for what they had spent.
Clause 4 relieves the Defence Votes of their liability to repay the relatively small sums borrowed under the Defence Loans Acts passed before the war. As my honourable friend the Financial Secretary said in another place, it would be rather illogical if now, having spent vast sums on the prosecution of the war,
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these relatively minor payments still had to be met out of the Annual Defence Votes. The last clause of the Bill, Clause 5, provides for an increase of £500 per annum in the salary of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, bringing it into line with that of the heads of other principal Government Departments. I hope I have made the purposes of this Bill sufficiently clear to your Lordships to enable me to ask the House to give this Bill a Second Reading.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Henderson.)
2.52 p.m.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, just as our good wishes go out to Lord Pethick-Lawrence on his journey, I think our sympathy goes out to the noble Lord who has had to move the Second Reading of this Bill at such short notice, as also it goes out to the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, whom we very much hope to see back in his place. The noble Lord has been a very adequate substitute. He said quite rightly that this was a Bill which he thought your Lordships would pass. He was also modest and almost deprecatory in his commendation of the particular provisions of the Bill. He said he had never known a Bill before which covered a multitude—I thought for a moment he was going to say a multitude of sins; but it certainly does cover a multitude of potential sins in the way it is drafted. Quite seriously, it seems to me and I think it will seem to those of your Lordships who have studied this Bill, that this is a typical example of doing the right thing in the wrong way.
Of course the Government must have borrowing powers. We cannot balance the Budget this year and certain contingencies have got to be provided for. But observe how vast and how vague are the powers which this Bill seeks to take. In Clause I (I) powers are taken to borrow the whole of the money required for the whole of the Estimates of all kinds for the coming financial year. The noble Lord has said, no doubt quite rightly, that of course the total amount of borrowing power will not be needed and will not be used. Why, then, come to Parliament and ask for power to borrow far in excess of what it is either the need or the intention to use? I know the argument about anticipating the Budget statement, and I was going to say I will deal with it in

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a moment but let me deal with it now. Naturally the noble Lord cannot get up here and anticipate the Budget statement and tell us exactly how much is going to be met out of taxation and how much is going to be met out of borrowing, but we know that a large part is going to be met out of taxation, and surely without in the least anticipating the Budget—we have the whole of the Estimates for all the Departments before us; we have got away from the Vote of Credit now—it would be more regular and better, instead of taking this enormous and vague sum, to take some global figure which will cover what is estimated as likely to be required. I would say with great sincerity to the Government that appearances in these matters are very important when you are urging economy and efficiency upon everyone else. Not only is that power taken but another £250,000,000 is thrown in for luck apparently.
A NOBLE LORD: Good measure.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: Good measure. In case the whole of the Budget expenditure, £4,000,000,000 or whatever it is, is not enough, let us have another £250,000,000 in the kitty. That may be the way the noble Lord conducts his finances, but it is not the way to conduct the finances of this country and it is not the way finances of great undertakings ought to be conducted.
By Clause 3 a further £250,000,000 is added to the Civil Contingencies Fund. That is why I say, though borrowing powers are necessary, this is doing the right thing in the wrong way. Let me put two or three propositions to justify that, from which I do not believe for one moment the noble Lord will dissent. In the first place, we are committed to an absolutely vast expenditure in the various schemes which either have been passed or are being passed. There are tremendous commitments which are going to be a great tax upon this country. I think if we all pull together we can bear it, but surely when we are committed in that way that does impose on all of us, and particularly upon the Government, the duty of strict economy and careful estimating in other fields. I said a moment ago that it was very important not only to do this in reality, but to give the appearance of it. We have got away now from the Vote of Credit of war-time and everything is, or is supposed to be, in-
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cluded in Estimates. That is in order that there may be a careful assessment of what is needed, that Parliament may know as far as possible before it votes the money on what it is going to be spent, and whether the Estimates are wisely and economically framed. This broad power to borrow up to the whole amount of Budget expenditure with another £250,000,000 added for luck or good measure, whichever you like to call it, gives the impression of very loose finance.
LORD HENDERSON: I do not want to interrupt the noble Viscount unnecessarily, but the £250,000,000 is for the gap between the end of the coming financial year and the introduction of another Bill providing money for these purposes. It is not for the coming financial year. It is not something lying around to be used if wanted.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I quite appreciate that, but there is a very considerable argument for saying that you should come to Parliament if and when you need it. I know there is a precedent for this, but the noble Lord is not going to be hidebound by precedent—at least I hope not, or he will not occupy for long his very elevated position in his Party. But it surely is sounder, instead of taking these sums which perhaps sound trivial today but which are pretty considerable sums, to come forward with a Bill for the amount just as this Bill is before us now, when the Government know what they are going to require.
Let me put another argument to the noble Lord which I am sure he will accept. We hope we are going to progress towards balanced Budgets. We cannot do it this year and probably not next year, but we do hope some day and as soon as may be to come to a year of balanced Budgets, if not balanced every year at any rate balanced for a reasonably short cycle. You do not, I submit, help to achieve the aim of balanced Budgets if you take borrowing powers far in excess of what is necessary. Let me put another proposition, from which, I am sure, the noble Lord, and I think probably most of his colleagues, if not all, would not dissent. Government borrowing ought to be the minimum of what is needed. A great deal of capital has got to be raised for industry. A strong appeal and a very

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proper appeal has been made by the Government to everyone in industry to go forward and do all in their power to produce goods. That is going to require a great deal of capital expenditure. Surely at such a time Government borrowing should not only be but should appear clearly to be the minimum of what is required for Government purposes, and should not have large uncertain balances left over. I think that it was Sir Michael Hicks-Beach who once said that getting estimates that a Department did not really require was like asking to be given a biscuit and then going about to find a dog to which to give it.
This kind of legislation in this form would certainly have come under "Black Michael's" condemnation. And the Government themselves have really endorsed all that I have said, because they are saying to industry to-day: "There must be control of your borrowing powers, of your powers to raise money. There is not enough credit to go round and meet all purposes, and therefore credit must be rationed. If you want to make a capital issue of more than £50,000 you must come and justify it to the new committee or committees which are going to be set up and to the Treasury" If that is what the Government are saying to industry to-day, surely they ought themselves to set an example. What would they think of an industry which was desirous of raising capital if its representatives said: "We know that we want so much, but we think that we may want a million or two more—we do not know" Of course, they would not be allowed to do that. Surely it is rather unreasonable to be taking up the attitude to industry which I have outlined, to put restrictions upon industry in the matter of borrowing and raising new capital, while at the same time the Government bring forward a Bill which gives them power to raise a great deal more money than they will need. I have dealt with subsection (I) (a) and I think I have met sufficiently the argument, which indeed had no reality in it, that you could not anticipate the Budget statement.
Let me now refer to Clause 2, which relates to the power to raise money for war damage expenditure whether on buildings or on chattels. Perhaps the noble Lord, when he replies, would clear
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up one point that was not quite clear to me when he quoted the figure of, I think, £400,000,000 as the amount of war damage. Half the contributions were made by the Government—that is roughly, I know. There are special provisions up to £200,000,000, but for all practical purposes, half is provided by the Government and half by the premiums which are charged. Did the noble Lord mean that £400,000,000 was the amount which would fall on the Government, or that that was the total amount which would fall on the composite fund?
Before I leave that, though I appreciate that this Bill does not deal with how and when the money is to be distributed, I think that I should have the sympathy of the House if I put in a plea that payment might be speeded up. It really is rather hard on people that payments should be delayed. All of us were compelled, and quite rightly, to insure our premises—houses, shops, or whatever they may be—but we have to wait for payment in respect of war damage although the Government have collected the money. The Government have had the money in the form of premiums, but the payment does not come speedily to those entitled to it although damage has been done. When you come to the insurance of chattels, that was an offer made to people and they were strongly advised to take advantage of it. "Here," said the Government—we were all together in it, I agree—"is a great opportunity. We give you the opportunity of insuring your household goods, so that if you are bombed you will be able to get money and buy some more."
I, personally, have been one of the lucky ones. I have not had my possessions bombed. But, as I understand it, you do not get the money when you are so unfortunate as to be bombed. It is said: "Well, there are not so many goods in the shops" But that is really no reason for not paying up. If goods are in short supply, they can be put on ration, as indeed they are. You cannot buy sheets and things of that kind without a docket. So, if this were done, people would not be able to get more than their share. But what does the noble Lord think would be said to an insurance company which had collected its premiums, and when an accident happened to a policy-holder, that is to say,

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an event happened in respect of which they had received premiums from the assured, the insurance company said: "We do not think that we are going to pay you for two or three years, although we have collected your money" The company would find themselves in Court at once, and judgment would be given against them. There are many things to-day that we put up with willingly, but it does make it harder for everyone if what they think are little injustices—and in many cases they are not so little—are added. So, I would, if it is not out of order—certainly it is not out of time—make an appeal to the Government to see if they cannot speed up the payment of this money.
I come, finally, to Clause 3, which provides for £250,000,000 being used for increasing the Civil Contingencies Fund. That seems a very large sum. Again, I know that there is a post-war precedent—I think it was established after the last war—for increasing the Civil Contingencies Fund, which is a very necessary Fund. But the Civil Contingencies Fund never has been regarded, and never ought to be regarded, as a substitute for Estimates. As I understand it, the object of the Civil Contingencies Fund is that if something sudden, unexpected and unforeseen happens which demands a payment then there should be the opportunity to pay at once where the payment can do immediate good—as a general rule it will not be anything very large—and to justify afterwards. I know of a case arising out of a hurricane in a Colonial Dependency. There may be similar cases in this country. Something happens where obviously humanity requires that a quick payment should be made; that is the kind of thing which ought to be dealt with out of the Civil Contingencies Fund.
The noble Lord spoke, I think, of trading accounts, and said that extra capital would be required. With great respect, I do not think that is a proper use to make of the Civil Contingencies Fund. It seems to me, if the Government are going in for these great trading businesses, that it becomes all the more important that they should estimate correctly, and that what they desire to spend should be shown in the Estimates, and not, as the noble Lord says, after it has been done, it may be long afterwards. Supposing that a trad-
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ing department has made a wrong Estimate, and finds it cannot realize some of its assets as quickly as it had expected, or that world prices have moved and that a larger sum of working capital is needed, then I submit that now we have got back to Estimates we ought to follow the ordinary recognized peace-time practice of producing a Supplementary Estimate for that. We ought not to create a reserve fund of £250,000,000, which any department can draw on if it has estimated badly or finds it has expenditure which it has not foreseen, without any Estimates given to Parliament, and merely come to Parliament maybe long after the money has been spent.
I have dealt with this Bill at greater length than the noble Lord who introduced it, because while your Lordships no doubt will pass it, I do think it does involve really very important principles and very important practice. I am sure that the noble Lord will agree with me when I say that there is great importance (I dislike the word but it becomes a cliché) in the "atmosphere" which you create, the impression which is created in the country, the impression indeed which is created in your department or your own business. If the impression gets abroad that there can be a loose estimate, that there is a comfortable sum of £250,000,000 (or whatever it may be) on which you can draw, if you have been either extravagant, or improvident, or bad in your forecasting, whether in a Government Department or business, or your own ordinary housekeeping accounts, it is a thoroughly bad thing. The country cannot afford this at the present time either in the Government or in business. It is because this Bill is so loosely drawn and takes much wider powers than are required that I am very much afraid that kind of thing is going to give the wrong impression in the country. I must say I do profoundly regret that the Bill has not been drawn more straitly and more strictly to meet what are the legitimate needs of the Government.
3.15 p.m.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, I am sure that all of us will agree with the general principles, or at any rate with some of the general principles enunciated by the noble Viscount in his speech. I feel, however, that he was labouring somewhat under heavy weather when he tried

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to make out a case against the Government for seeking these borrowing powers in Clause I. During the war these borrowing powers have been given to the Government year by year. It is true that the war is over, but I would ask your Lordships to remember that we are not back to normal peace conditions yet. We are in what is usually called a "transitional" year, and because of the transitional conditions I think that the Government can make out its case for again asking for conferment of these powers. It is perfectly true, as the noble Viscount said, that the powers would in theory enable the Government to borrow up to the whole amount of its requirements in theory. In practice that would not be the case at all. The practice would be exactly the practice which has been adopted during the war. The borrowing is required to meet the deficit between revenue and expenditure as approved by Parliament, and the amount that will actually be raised under this authority will depend on the revenue deficit of the year.
There are hopes—at any rate, it was said in another place that the Chancellor of the Exchequer confidently expects—that during the next financial year, that is 1946 –7, the proportion of Budget expenditure to be met from borrowing will be appreciably less than it will be in the present financial year. Having said that, I do not think that your Lordships need have any fear that the powers which you are asked to confer upon the Government will be used in any other way than has been specifically declared, both in this House and in another place, and as is indicated in the terms of the Bill itself. The noble Viscount asked me about payments for war damage. The actual position I understand is that all contributions as they were paid were taken into revenue. There is no fund. The whole of the £400,000,000 must be raised and issued. It is with that in mind that the provision is included in this Bill. There was another point which the noble Viscount raised, and that was with regard to the advances made for trading departments.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: Before the noble Lord leaves that, I asked him if he could give us any hope of payment because he will hardly advance the fact that he or we spent the whole of the pay-
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ment as a reason for not paying anything out under the policy.
LORD HENDERSON: I apologize; I had overlooked that point the representations which the noble Viscount has made will be on the records of this House, and I will see they are brought to the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That is all I can undertake to do at this moment. With regard to the last point raised by the noble Viscount, namely, the question of trading—
VISCOUNT SWINTON: We ought to have a proper estimate.
LORD HENDERSON: The noble Viscount with his experience of the Board of Trade knows perfectly well that it is not possible in existing circumstances to indicate or to estimate precisely what trading departments may require. There is nothing new in what the Government are proposing. It is true that the amount is, £1,500,000 at the present moment. It is true that it is proposed to increase it to £250,000,000. But I would remind the noble Viscount that at the end of the last war similar action was taken and the amount on that occasion was £120,000,000. I am sure that all noble Lords in all parts of the House will agree with me when I say that the conditions in which we live at the present moment are infinitely more difficult than those which followed the last war and it is far more difficult in the present circumstances to estimate for the future than it was at that stage. The Government of that day thought it necessary to have £120,000,000. The Government of today for equally good reasons think it desirable that there should be a fund of £20,000,000. I hope your Lordships will accept the recommendation of the Government.
I would only add one point which I think may be of interest to the noble Viscount. The question was raised in another place, and I think it has a bearing on this matter of the moneys advanced in this way. The question was raised about publishing trading accounts year by year. It was indicated in another place that the Government hoped as soon as circumstances permit to restore the normal practice of submitting trading accounts as was the case before the war. I think I have covered all the points

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which have been raised. My noble friend opposite may not be convinced, but I think I have given reasonable answers to all the points raised.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

PUBLIC WORKS LOANS BILL.
3.25 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, I think I may be a little more fortunate with the second Bill which it falls to my lot to recommend for a Second Reading this afternoon. It is a measure far simpler and more routine in character. We used to pass a Public Works Loans Bill annually before the war. During the war naturally, in the circumstances which existed these Bills were no longer an annual event but only occasional and sporadic in their appearances. With the return of peace, however, we may well expect that local authorities who are faced with large programmes of capital expenditure for reconstruction, housing, education, and other services open to them, may seek for considerable sums out of the fund provided under this Bill.
We are asking for £150,000,000, because we think that that will be adequate to meet the demand, but if this figure should prove to be an underestimate the Government will have no hesitation in asking Parliament for further capital for the fund. The present Bill provides for writing off loans which are judged irrecoverable, and we have taken this opportunity, as you will see from the Schedule of the Bill, to write off loans amounting to £50,000 under the Agricultural Credits Act, 1923. I should remind your Lordships that though these loans are written off so far as the Local Loans Fund is concerned, the Exchequer continues to press so far as is practicable for the liquidation of these debts.
There is one further point to which I would call your Lordships' attention, namely, that under Clause 1 we make a departure from precedent. We are reducing the number of the Commissioners of the loans to twelve and are no longer appointing them by name in the Act of Parliament, a procedure
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which we consider to be out of touch with present day requirements. Clause 1 accordingly proposes that the Commissioners will be appointed by His Majesty and hold office for a term of four years and retire in rotation year by year except during the initial period when they will retire three at a time during each of the first three years, and thereafter, according to their appointment, at the end of every fourth year.
I should not like to let this occasion pass without conveying our appreciation of the services of the Commissioners who receive no remuneration and who have given single-minded and devoted service to the public. As my honourable friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury said in another place, "they play a very valuable part in the financial relations between the Government and the local authorities" It is only right therefore that we should take this opportunity to acknowledge their disinterested and public-spirited service and pay tribute to their ability and to the devotion with which they have served the State. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Henderson.)
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

WATER (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Amendments reported (according to Order).

CONDITIONS IN MINING INDUSTRY.
3.29 p.m.
THE DUKE OF BEDFORD THE DUKE OF BEDFORD rose to call attention to the need for improved conditions in the mining industry; and to move for Papers. The noble Duke said: My Lords, in bringing to your Lordships' notice the Motion standing in my name, I am well aware that the Government have far-reaching plans for the improvement of conditions in the mining industry. It may well be that some of the proposals which I am about to make already form part of those plans. Indeed I hope that in some directions they are prepared to go even further than I suggest. Certain other suggestions which I have to make may not form part of the Government's programme at present, but I hope may

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perhaps receive more favourable consideration in the future.
On the vexed question of nationalization I intend to say very little as that will be a subject for debate in your Lordships' House at no very distant date. In the main I am not in favour of the bureaucracy of nationalization. If an alternative is wanted to what is generally known as the capitalist way of running industry, I would prefer—provided the interests of consumers are adequately safeguarded—to see an experiment by which the management of an industry is handed over to the workers in that industry. There is one other point that I would like to make, and that is that, in dealing with a controversial issue, I always like to hear both sides of the question. I must admit that in the present instance I have heard considerably more of the miners' side than of the mine-owners' side.
It is my settled conviction that no industry can show what it is really capable of under the existing financial system. Even making full allowance for this, I cannot get away from the conclusion that the mining industry under private ownership has put up a very poor show, either from the standpoint of production or from the standpoint of providing proper conditions for the workers. Therefore, while I may not be able to vote in favour of nationalization, I certainly shall not feel justified in voting against it. Members of the Government will, however, I think, agree with me when I say that mere nationalization will not of itself do anything to benefit the condition of the miners. It may be, and I hope will be, a means to a good end, but it is not necessarily an end in itself. I know of a mine in the south-west of Scotland which some time ago passed under Government control, but, apart from a certain improvement in the safety conditions, the miners find that they are worse off than they were under private ownership, by reason of the unimaginative and unsympathetic attitude of the present management.
The first point I should like to make in the matter of improved conditions for miners is with regard to housing. In some parts of the country, where the local authorities were engaged in a housing campaign shortly before the war, miners are quite well housed. I have stayed in
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some of these houses myself, and there is nothing to complain about; indeed, they reflect credit on those who were responsible for the building. But in other places—and indeed it may be even in the same district—I have seen miners living under conditions which are a disgrace to any civilized country, and particularly to those Governments which held office during the inter-war period. There was then ample labour and material to house adequately not only the miners but the entire working population of this country, but the work was not properly done, either from lack of interest or on the absurd plea that there was no money.
I have seen miners living under the most appalling slum conditions in tenement buildings, and I have seen them living under equally bad conditions in the so-called miners' rows—miserable little lines of one-roomed, one-storeyed cottages, joined on to one another, in which a family of about half a dozen people may be living in one room. The coal is kept under the bed, for the excellent reason that there is nowhere else to keep it. There is no indoor water supply, and no indoor sanitation. The only water supply consists of a single cold water tap which has to serve the needs of seven or eight families. The only sanitary accommodation for those seven or eight families is a single compartment lavatory in a primitive hut fifty or one hundred yards away from the buildings, and adjoining this lavatory, and divided only by a single compartment of wood, there is a primitive copper which is all the women have for their washing. You cannot expect a man to give of his best in the way of work and output if he toils for long hours in the pit and returns home to a pig-sty; and I would say that not even returning ex-Service men should receive in the matter of housing prior consideration over the really badly housed miners.
I will pass now to the difficult question of wages. In my opinion, men working underground at the coal face should receive at the very least £7 or £8 a week, and even that is far too little. I would remind your Lordships that, even making every allowance for the extraordinary adaptability of the human mind and the human body, mining is a beastly, filthy, laborious, dangerous and often unhealthy occupation. I have only met two miners in my life who said they liked

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mining, and neither of them worked at the coal face; they worked in the engineering department. I would also remind your Lordships that, whereas the necessaries of life for the most part have their prices fixed these days, the price of amenities has soared sky-high, and miners, more almost than any other section of the community, deserve a reasonable share of the amenities of life as well as the necessaries.
Then the hours which are at present being worked are far too long, especially bearing in mind the fact that miners often have to spend a great deal of time travelling to their place of work, either above ground or under ground before their day really begins. Some of your Lordships may perhaps say that, if wages are increased and hours shortened that will reduce the output of coal and make mining uneconomic. Taking the second point first, I think that the possible danger of reduction of coal output must be met in some other way than by refraining from improving the conditions of the miners. Enormous improvements are possible by better organization of the industry, and by putting in better plant and equipment, and I hope that under nationalization a very great deal will be done in that direction. Again, I think it is quite possible that the country will have to face the troublesome fact that, owing to the peculiar conditions prevailing in the mining industry, it is actually impossible not only to make the mining industry pay but to avoid it running at a certain loss, if you are going to give decent conditions to the workers. That would mean, of course, help from a subsidy of some kind, and, as far as I can see, it may well be that there is no way round and no way out. This may, of course, indicate—and I think it does indicate—that the Government should always keep its eyes open to the possibility of developing sources of heating power alternative to coal. Possibly something may be done by the development of atomic energy, or something may be done by the greater use of electric power, so that the mining industry, if it cannot be made obsolete, can at least be greatly reduced.
I do not know whether my information was reliable or not, but I remember being told some time ago that the scheme for harnessing the tides of the Severn
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Estuary was turned down, not because it was impracticable from an engineering point of view, but because of the injury it would do to the mining industry. No enlightened Government would consider such an objection for a moment. They should develop such a scheme for the benefit of the nation, including the miners, only in that case they would be miners no longer. They would be trained for work in other and, I hope, more congenial occupations, and during the period of training or enforced unemployment they should receive really adequate maintenance instead of miserable starvation dole.
Then again I say that miners should receive really adequate holidays with pay. The holiday should be at least three weeks in a year, and even that is too little. I think if your Lordships, including myself, had to work at the coal face, we should find three weeks' holiday a year a great deal too little. The miners should also receive really adequate old age pensions, and these in many cases should be payable at an earlier age than in other industries. Mining, in many of its aspects, is a young man's job, and if elderly men are forced to work alongside young men it sometimes places a very unfair strain upon them. Although it is true that during the first half of his life a man often has family responsibilities, and children to bring up, we should, I think, remember more than we do at present that the aged suffer more from illness and infirmity, and therefore often need more comfort than they do during the earlier period of their life. This should be taken into consideration when granting pensions, not only to miners but to other people as well. It is very unfair, too, to shift the burden of responsibility for elderly persons on to the grown-up children who themselves may have family responsibilities.
I hold very strongly that really adequate compensation should be paid to miners who are injured in the course of their occupation or suffer from occupational diseases. At present it seems to be customary that if a miner becomes sick or injured, because his capacity for output is reduced he is paid less than he was before. This, to my way of thinking, is entirely unfair. If he has lost that most precious possession, his health, he should be paid quite as much and, if possible more. I hold very strong views indeed on this question of occupational diseases,

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not only in the case of mining but in the case of other industries as well. In an age which is scientific enough and ingenious enough to invent the atomic bomb, I do not believe that, if the will existed, it would ever prove an insuperable difficulty to find some means of preventing occupational diseases, some alternative method of working which does not give rise to them, or even, in extreme cases, some alternative to the actual product of those industries. None of your Lordships—and here again I would include myself—would like to be forced by economic necessity or by order of the Government to work at a job which was likely to condemn him to premature incurable illness or premature death; and what we should not like for ourselves we should regard as intolerable for our fellow men.
Although at first sight, seeing that the need to increase the output of coal is so great, there might seem a strong case for piece-work in the mines, I cannot help feeling, after hearing the question discussed fairly fully, that, on balance, it is undesirable. When men are working on piece work and have the lure of extra money, it often tends to make them careless of their own safety and their comrades' safety. Moreover, it can operate very unfairly. All mines are not equally productive, and the miner working very hard in the poorer and nearly worked-out mine may turn out less coal and receive less money than another miner who is fortunate enough to work in a rich mine.
If it does not appear too irrelevant, I should like to say something very briefly about the treatment of German miners. Indirectly it affects our coal industry, for if the output of coal can be increased on the Continent there will be a less desperate need to export coal which we badly need in our own country. The position in Germany seems to me to be very plain. If we want to increase the output of coal there—and I understand the very small output is causing anxiety—we have to look after the miners' minds and bodies. We have to feed them properly and we have to see that they are not discouraged by the oppression and division of their country and by its continual overcrowding. The Allied Nations can choose between a vindictive policy and little coal,
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and a generous and enlightened policy and more coal, but they cannot have both.
Then, although here I know there is a real difficulty, I think that the Labour Party especially should always bear in mind the fact that industrial conscription, while it might keep miners tied to their job, would have a very bad effect on the mentality of the more spirited men among them. They will have a feeling, and a very understandable feeling, of something very like slavery, that they are tied to a job from which they cannot get away. Industrial conscription, in my opinion, is a form of slavery, and the sooner we can see the last of it the better for the spirit of the workers, and especially for those people who naturally have that kind of spirit which can respond to freedom but dislikes servitude.
I should like now to say something about the financial side of the proposals which I have just made, and I am afraid that I shall appear to be returning to what is generally regarded in this House as my pet subject. I make no apology for doing so, however, because it is quite impossible for the Government to do their full duty by the mining industry or any other industry unless served by a financial system which not only provides enough money but has that flexibility and adaptability in the placing and withdrawal of money which are so essential.
A little while ago the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, who I am sorry to hear is indisposed, said that my advocacy of monetary reform was really out-of-date, because the need for it had been accepted by the Labour Party nearly thirty years ago. I am afraid his words rather reminded me of a description I once read of the evolution through which an attack on a new idea is likely to pass. At first it is declared to be ridiculous because no experts agree with it; at the end—and this is a more deadly form of attack—it is declared to be superfluous because everybody agrees with it. I am afraid, however, I shall remain doubtful of the adequacy of the Labour Government's conversion to monetary reform until I see the Chancellor of the Exchequer advocating the creation and issue of money not in the form of debt, and until I also do not see him and the Government he represents handing over the control of the foreign trade of this country to the

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financiers of Wall Street administering the Bretton Woods fund. I would therefore once more briefly remind your Lordships of the essentials of the scheme which is necessary to enable the mining industry to be developed to the maximum.
The money supply should be related to the country's maximum import and export of goods, not by a mere priming of the pump by more bank loans when a money shortage is suspected but by a more businesslike arrangement. Money should be created and issued not in the form of debt; the creation and issue of money should be a public service unrelated to a moneylender's profit-making business, not only in so far as the Central Bank is concerned but in so far as all the banks are concerned. The State should ear-mark for its own use whatever percentage of an adequate annual debt-free creation of money it is in the public interest that it should spend, and it should use taxation only for the purpose of collecting for cancellation the surplus money in order to prevent inflation. Finally, in an age of labour-destroying inventions, people out of work through no fault of their own should be given money to buy their fair share of the output of the machinery which displaces them, but this money should not be taken out of the pockets of their fellow-citizens by taxation. Notwithstanding certain Socialist opinions to the contrary, the fairer division of an inadequate money supply is not a substitute for a money supply which is adequate.
Against the background of such a system as that which I have described may I try to show how some of the reforms I have suggested can be put into operation? There are two sensible ways of dealing with the finance involved in the housing problem. One is to finance the building of houses with newly created non-debt money, skimming off by anti-inflation taxation any surplus which would cause inflation if it were not removed. The other plan is by an interest-free bank loan to create new money so that the houses may be built and let at a moderate rent, and then as the money comes in to cancel it out of existence and destroy it. By either of those methods a house costing £900 need have only £900 paid in the process of its erection and it can be rented accordingly, but under the present plan of putting up houses with money borrowed
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at interest, with subsidies and goodness knows what else, if you work out all the complicated details and get underneath the very thick camouflage, you are likely to discover that a house nominally costing £900 costs at the finish somewhere between £2,000 and £3,000, which is an absurd position.
In dealing with miners' wages—or perhaps I should say with miners' incomes—if you increase wages in an industry, other things being equal you increase prices by the same amount, and that may mean that you will have to give would-be consumers of the product enough money to pay those increased prices. In the export trade, if it is undesirable to increase prices to your foreign customer, you may have to subsidize the export trade with non-debt money, again skimming off the surplus with anti-inflation taxation. I shall have occasion more than once to refer to anti-inflation taxation, so perhaps I should remind your Lordships that it is a substitute for revenue taxation and not an additional burden. Moreover, unless the incidence were very unfairly arranged as between one class and another, it could never become so burdensome as the present revenue taxation, because only surplus money would be removed. Some people say that the collection of anti-inflation taxation would be difficult. There would no doubt be certain difficulties, but any solicitor or chartered accountant will tell you that in certain of its aspects the present burdensome revenue taxation is excessively complicated.
Those who turn down anti-inflation taxation on the grounds of difficulty have the mentality of the old lady who, when she saw the first railway engine, said; "It won't go; it won't go," and who, when it did go, said, "It won't stop; it won't stop" When speaking just now of the effect of increases in wages I used the words "other things being equal." But in modern industry other things very often are not equal. What I mean is that improvements in process are constantly tending to make the production of an article cheaper. Therefore if the price of an article is increased by ten per cent. because of an increase in wages and lowered by ten per cent. because of improvement in process, the net result is that the price remains unaltered. That, of course, is the answer to the objection

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that some might raise that if over the whole field of industry you raised wages and raised prices by the same amount you would not have achieved your end in improving the standard of living of the workers. In so far as improvements in process make possible the lowering of prices you do achieve that end.
Another possible alternative would be to leave wages where they are at present and to pay to miners, in recognition of their services, a grant of new non-debt money. This money would not enter into prices and therefore would cause no complications at all. It might, of course, again involve the need for some anti-inflation taxation. It is very important that miners' wages should not be subject to all manner of compulsory deductions, particularly for insurance purposes. Insurance schemes are very often excellent in intention but extremely faulty in technique. They may be unfair to the workers who, when they are bringing up families, may need the whole of their wages for the support of those families. They may be unfair to employers. For example, a man working in the city and employing only a few clerks will have a very small amount to pay under an insurance scheme, but a big industrialist, employing thousands of workers and perhaps making less profit, may have a great deal to pay. They may be very faulty also from the point of view of economic technique.
It is very important to remember that, whatever compulsory deductions you make, the whole of the wages and the whole of the employer's profits will figure as an item in costs and prices. If, however, you order large compulsory deductions over a long period and those who receive the money deducted do not immediately spend it on consumer goods, which in many cases they would not do, you are quite likely to create a shortage of consumer purchasing-power, bad trade and unemployment. It is no use saying that eventually this money will be released, because it may be that by the time it is released the mischief will already have been done. It is therefore far better financial technique to let the wage-earner spend the whole of his wages and then, if some years later he needs money because of old age, sickness or unemployment, to give him money again out of a fund of non-debt money. In that way you do not
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run any risk of slumping your industry for a period.
One final point with regard to Income Tax, including even the anti-inflation taxation which I have recommended. I think it would not be at all a bad plan, even if it meant giving miners preferential treatment over other classes of workers receiving the same pay, if the charge made upon them were very small indeed or nothing at all. Miners have had very little preference in the past and I think a little preferential treatment now would do them no harm. In any case, of course, anywhere in industry a heavy Income Tax imposed on workers has a very bad effect on output. That is one of the reasons why it is so extremely important not to export more goods than is absolutely necessary for the purpose of obtaining imports or paying foreign debts.
I do not think I need trouble your Lordships with any other financial details, but I should like to conclude, if I may, by reading von two short extracts from a letter which I received only this morning from a miner who has worked 25 years in the pits. The first is this:
"I will support and testify to the goodwill and effort of the miners in general. Although the work is hard and strenuous, the miners will not let the community suffer—given better conditions the effort will be to satisfy demand and the nation's need"
The second extract is brief, but also, I think, to the point: "At present we are a damned tired sect of the community" I beg to move for Papers.
4.1 p.m.
LORD LINDSAY OF BIRKER: My Lords, I think we are all very grateful to the noble Duke for bringing this question forward. The time will soon come when we shall be discussing in this House questions of organization of the mining industry. We may then be spending a good deal of our time in dispute over that word, "nationalization," which arouses such fervour in some breasts and such hate in others. We might forget that the mining industry depends upon the miners, their hearts, their skill, their contentment, their willingness and their courage, and we ought to be very grateful, I think, to the noble Duke for being so sensitive on that point and having such a concern for the miners, and also for having brought forward this account of the conditions under which they suffer.

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I do not propose to follow the noble Duke in what he discoursed on at the end of his speech, which I am afraid is his King Charles's head. The noble Duke in the past has striven for, perhaps I might call it my monetary soul in this matter, and tried to convince me of the obvious rightness and sense of what he holds. I am afraid, if I may just put it rudely and brusquely and like the worst kind of Don, I cannot help saying that a person who can believe in the noble Duke's monetary principles can believe anything, just anything. Thinking of King Charles's head reminded me of a pleasant passage in David Copperfield. Your Lordships may remember what Mr. Dick did when confronted with David Copperfield, ragged, tired and hungry. He forgot all about King Charles's head, and said, "I shall give the boy a bath," and then went on to say. "I shall give the boy a new suit of clothes." That is what the noble Duke has been saying. As you forgive Mr. Dick his King Charles's head when you read David Copperfield, so when I hear the noble Duke I wish to forget his King Charles's head, and thank him for his humanity and kindness.
I have no claim to speak about the mining industry, but I have some small claim to speak about miners, because I have had the fortune in the last twenty years to know well the miners of one coal valley in South Wales, namely, Rhondda. It is just twenty years since my wife and I, who were walking in the Black Mountain during the coal strike, turned aside to visit Rhondda, to see some miners giving their time and skill for nothing in cobbling the boots of children. From that effort of these miners sprang an educational settlement of which I have the honour to be chairman, and I have had friends in Rhondda ever since. From my acquainanceship and friendship with the men in Rhondda I think I know—I was going to say what is wrong with the miners, but that is the wrong expression—what ails the miners, if I may talk Scottish.
LORD CALVERLEY: Yorkshire.
LORD LINDSAY OF BIRKER: No doubt the people in Yorkshire may have imitated the more noble speech, but I am glad to know it is Yorkshire too. Anybody who comes across a mining community as a stranger for the first time, as I did twenty years ago, is bound, I think, to be struck with three things
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about the mining population. First, they must be struck with the extraordinarily high qualities of the mining population; secondly, they must be struck with their isolation; and thirdly, with the fearful bitterness which exists between them and their employers. Let me take those things separately. No one who knows anything about the mining population—and I know men in Rhondda, in North Staffordshire, and in West Cumberland—can help being struck with that very remarkable quality of the mining population, the standard of education, the standard of leadership, and the standard of things concerned with the mind, which is higher in the mining population than any other section of the community.
I remember in the first world war hearing the then Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, explain that in 1916 he got a strange request from a miners' lodge in Northumberland explaining that they had been trying to discover what sort of people the Germans were. They had heard that they were great theologists, and they asked him to come and give them an address on German theology. He went up during the winter on a snowy day, thinking nobody would be there, and he found 1,200 miners ready to listen to a discourse on German theology and to continue a Discussion far into the night. That sort of thing is typical of a mining population; they have an extraordinarily high quality. Where do you think that came from? I think I know, if I may speak boldly. It came from men who have the finest and most honourable pride in the world, pride in their craft and in their skill, to which something interesting is added, that is, that they exercise their skill in varying conditions of danger. They have something of the quality which sailors have of being proud of their skill, and of having to deal with the unseen vicissitudes of nature in regard to the roof, the roadway and so on. I think that made the milling population what it was. They have a sense of frightful isolation.
I always remember my feelings when I first saw Rhondda. When you come to it over the hill you look down and see that long snake, the river, the railway, the road, and pit heaps and then the miners' cottages sprawled up the side of the hill, and you feel you are shut off from the rest of the world. The whole of that population in my recollection is

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about 240,000, and there is about one middle-class house. The people who make their money out of mines do not live there. That is especially true of the mining communities in South Wales, but it is true of other mining communities. They are isolated and therefore they have a feeling of hatred and a frightful distrust. I still remember having one of the most sad interviews I ever had. It was with thirty miners' leaders who explained that in the last coal dispute—which occurred in 1912, 1 think—the mines had been flooded, and they had never got right again. They felt that nothing would make the people of England listen to the miners' case unless they did something desperate. Fortunately, they did not. But I got the impression of a deep community feeling on the part of the miners that no one cared, for them, no one knew anything about them, and that they had to do something dramatic in order to make people listen. I think that that is a feeling natural to people who live under those isolated conditions.
That is the second thing. The third goes with it. I have never known in any industry such distrust between employers and employed as there is at any rate in the South Wales mining industry. If you are a miner you just take it for granted that the managements are opposed to you—which means that neither side knows anything of the other. Since Mr. Butler discovered that Keir Hardie once—no doubt in a fit of vexation with the Liberal Party—threw a nice bouquet to the Conservatives, it has been a custom, I know, to play down that particular prophet. I remember a man in Rhondda telling me that the people in South Wales trusted Keir Hardie because he would never go to have tea with the managements. He would not betray his class, and the men, feeling that, trusted him. That was my first impression.
Now I want to sketch briefly what has happened to Rhondda, in my experience. Rhondda, an isolated mining community, had gone on from generation to generation sending its children into the mines. By 1926, wages had already gone down a good deal and the mining industry was, for all its danger and all its skill, eighty-first in the scale of pay of all the major industries. In 1941 it was fifty-ninth. Now, owing to recent awards it is fourteenth. But, as I say, it used to be
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as low as eighty-first. What happened between, in the vital years after the coal dispute, was that unemployment got worse and worse. The general figures show that in the years between 1927 and 1939 there was an average unemployment of 25 per cent. In the mining industry, but in the exporting parts of the mining industry—which include South Wales—in 1934 and 1935 there was unemployment of 75 per cent. That was Rhondda.
I have known Rhondda at a period when practically everybody you knew was out of work—and very often had been for years and years. I used to go down there once a year to meetings of unemployment clubs, and towards the end there was a large proportion of these men who had been out of work for from ten to twelve years. There seemed to be no prospect of the recovery of that industry. And so what happened? These years of unemployment broke the tradition that miners' children went into the mines. When I first knew Rhondda the children used to play at being miners. When they had a sand heap to play on, instead of doing the things that ordinary children would do they did the sort of things that they conceived the miners did, and they plainly showed how excited they were about the various conditions of mining. But that sort of thing disappeared. You took generation after generation of the most adventurous young men, or perhaps I should rather say of the young men who were sons of the most adventurous fathers and mothers, and sent them—and it was quite right to do so at the time—into live industries in Coventry, Leicester and the Midlands. And so you broke the tradition. What is happening to the industry now is that it cannot supply itself any longer. The juvenile labour that is needed cannot be obtained. I cannot get exact figures for the number of young men and lads who used to go into the mining industry, but experts I have consulted think that in 1938 the annual recruitment of boys was between 15,000 and 20,000. In 1944 it was 10,000, in 1943 12,000, and in 1942 it was nearly 13,000.
The mining industry is doomed unless you can make it an industry that young men will want to go into; an industry into which their mothers will send them. Rhondda, in my experience, has a very largely matriarchal tradition. It is the

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mothers who keep the money, and the mothers who determine what is done in the family. You have got to make the mothers want their boys to go into the mining industry; you have got to make the boys want to go, and, when they have got there, to stay there. These are quite different things. What the mothers are going to think about is security. They are going to think about wages, about conditions in which there shall not be unemployment. That can be brought about, I hope, in the new proposals about full employment which both sides have now in mind. The proposals, I understand, will deal largely with that. The mothers also are going to think about disease. In South Wales, especially, they are going to think about silicosis. As the noble Duke has said, in South Wales you find that silicosis is worse than elsewhere. The odds are that in twenty years a miner will have to come out of the industry and will be unable to mine again. Silicosis is not a deadly disease if it is detected early, and a man does not go down the mines again, but in order to deal with silicosis there must be an organization which is prepared to face it—quite apart from merely remedial proposals. To stop it there must be a sufficient supply of doctors to give early diagnosis, and there must be alternative industries available. A man who is discovered to have silicosis is not debarred from doing quite a lot of things. He is not an invalid, but he cannot go down the mines again. The cases of such men can only be properly dealt with by having an organization looking after the mines which thinks first of people and secondly of anything else. That is all from the point of view of the mothers.
Speaking from the point of view of the boys I want to say something quite different. I think that the mining population at the present time is suffering, and suffering terribly, from mechanization done in the wrong way. You can bring about the mechanization of industry in two ways. You can do it in the way that the Army was mechanized. You can think first of the men and their possibilities, and give them the tools to use, or you can think in terms of machines that throw unskilled people out of work. It is twenty years since I met a young man in Glasgow who was apprenticed to a firm that makes mining machinery. He was a silly young man, and I do not say
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that his views represented the views of his firm. But he said that their ideal was to bring about such a state of affairs that nothing was done underground which required more than unskilled labour. I said that I thought that was a perfectly ghastly idea. He was shocked and surprised. But that is, largely, what has happened.
Mechanization has been done from the point of view of machines and not from the point of view of the people who use them. I had a curious confirmation of that only yesterday. I was examining a boy who hoped to go on to a University. He was a Bevin boy, and I asked him what he had been doing. He said that for the last twelve months underground he had been doing nothing but push tubs. Everything he had done had been purely manual, unskilled labour underground. What boy is going to stay in any industry where there is nothing to do but unskilled labour? What happens now very largely, I am told, is that boys go into the mining industry and for their first year or eighteen months on the surface do nothing but screen coal, which can perfectly well be done by machinery. For the next twelve months they do little else but push tubs. It is notorious that what is wrong with the mechanization, of our mines, as compared with the mines on the Continent, is that haulage is still not mechanized, or very little mechanized. The miners still have to walk great distances and push tubs, at the coal face.
The real point I want to make is that when a boy goes into the industry, he is, as they say in the Army, "browned off," and persistently and terribly "browned off" Who wants to stay in that sort of industry where one's skill is not called for? This is not an argument against mechanization. I am told by people who know that even in a fully mechanized coal-mine there is lots of room for skill. There is great scope for skill when you consider the varying conditions of roof and roadway. I read the other day an account by an ex-miner of his apprenticeship in the business in a mine in Lanarkshire some forty years ago. He described how he was a lad working under two miners. It was one of the most educational experiences that I have ever had, to read how he was taught to do things just right, to put his hand just right and his foot just right and everything. I, as a teacher, just loved reading it. When I read that I said: "That

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explains why miners are of that quality; they have had the most beautiful education in the world" The most beautiful education is to be taught to do things in just exactly the right way.
Before the introduction of machinery the miner had that most wonderful training. This man goes on to describe how, as machinery came in and was used in the wrong way, much slovenliness and many casualties crept into the industry. I do not think we are going to recruit miners and save the spirit of people who go into the industry unless we entirely revolutionize our habits of training. What happened was that there was an industry which had natural and automatic training. A boy went into a little group and was taught beautifully, and he had a responsibility. All that was changed by bringing in the machines in a wrong way. Unless we can get that back, I think our position is hopeless; and if we think, as I am sure we ought to think, that it is miners that matter, and we have got to get back their skill, then we do not just want to improve conditions. We do want to improve conditions, but merely giving miners greater comfort and more money, if they get little comfort and little money, does not really satisfy people's minds. We have got somehow to give them back pride in their skill. You can have pride in skill in using machines as you can with hands with little tools behind them. It is encouraging that the present Minister of Fuel and Power has got elaborate schemes of training and is insisting that all mines should adopt this system of training, that they should have a training-face and have that sort of training. That is what the mining industry wants far more than these other things, necessary as they may be.
4.18 p.m.
LORD TEYNHAM: My Lords, the noble Duke who moved this Motion has made a number of suggestions with which I am very much in sympathy, but I am afraid I cannot follow him in his financial suggestions. The noble Duke implied that very little had been done towards the welfare of the miners, or towards improvement of the working conditions in the industry. There is one body which has carried out very great work in the general working conditions and welfare of the miners. I refer to the Miners'
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Welfare Commission. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships that this Commission was established in 1920 and is composed of men, drawn mainly from the industry itself, who are responsible for administering the Miners' Welfare Fund. The members of this Miners' Welfare Commission act in the capacity of trustees for this fund and their work is entirely voluntary. In fact, both on the Commission and on the various district committees the owners and the men sit side by side working for the goodwill and the improvement of the industry generally. I believe under this new nationalization scheme for the coal industry the members of the Commission will have to resign and will be reappointed by the Minister, and will in future receive remuneration. I do not, however, propose to speak further on nationalization because we shall hear a good deal in your Lordships' House about coal.
The Miners' Welfare Fund was established by a levy on the amount of coal raised, and at the end of 1943, when the Fund had been in operation for twenty-three years, a sum amounting to over £22,000,000 had been allocated to various welfare organizations. These organizations included such matters as pithead welfare, recreation, health, education, and so on. Under the heading of pithead welfare is included the provision of canteens. I do not propose to weary your Lordships with a lot of figures about these canteens, but I think some of the information may be interesting. The latest progress summary of the Miners' Welfare Commission, at October 31, 1945, showed that 98 per cent of the total number of men in the industry had canteens available for them, and that 75 per cent of these canteens gave full hot meals for miners. Of course we have had complaints from the miners that they are undernourished and so on. I think that is probably true, bearing in mind the heavy work they have to carry out, and I think it should be possible to devise some scheme for improving the ration to the miners. In saying that, however, I would make the remark that in these canteens it has been found that only about 48 per cent of the miners make use of the hot meals. I think the real reason is that they prefer to go home. The remedy would be not to provide meals in canteens but to provide them with additional rations to take home and eat with their families.

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Many other amenities have been provided for the miners. Holidays with pay have now been introduced, and, in addition to the six Bank Holidays, six days leave with pay have now been added. Pithead baths are now available at 366 collieries, which is approximately 63 per cent, of the total. Proposals are now in hand to supply pithead baths at all the remaining collieries, but the work is being held up owing to the difficulty of getting supplies under present condition. The miners also have other benefits. If they are householders, they receive free coal, or coal at special rates, which forms part of their remuneration. In 1943 when a census was taken it was found, for instance, that 30,000 miners in Northumberland were receiving free coal amounting to an average annual quantity of fourteen and a half tons per head, and 70,000 miners were receiving twelve tons per head. These are certainly benefits, and I do not think that they should be entirely forgotten. Then, of course, many facilities have been provided for recreation and leisure time. In fact, I believe that approximately £5,000,000 has been provided for recreation centres, libraries, games, arts and crafts, and all kinds of, other amenities. A start is also being made in the organization of boys' clubs, which I think are very important in the mining industry. Mixed clubs have also been started, especially in South Wales, where I believe they have been very effective for quite a number of years.
Then we have rehabilitation centres where miners recovering from injuries may receive proper treatment after they come out of hospital. It does not matter whether the injury has been received at their work, at home or in the football field, they still get these advantages in the rehabilitation homes. There are many other health services, such as convalescent homes, hospitals, ambulances, nursing services, special medical treatment and so on. Experiments are now being carried out to establish the value of artificial sunlight treatment. Education has not been forgotten, and many scholarships are available. In addition, in the last year or two, we have had the colliery training centres, which have been providing a great fund of experience on which future development can be based.
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Last, but not least, I mention a matter which has been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay. The South Wales Coal Owners' Association have been carrying out very exhaustive experiments on the reduction of dust in coal mines, which frequently causes this disease of silicosis. I have covered very briefly welfare organization in the coalfields, which is, of course, always open to improvement, but I do maintain that welfare at present in the coalfields is of a very high order, and no industry is in a better position or has so much time and money spent on amenities and general welfare as the coal mining industry.
The Motion moved by the noble Duke calls attention to the need for improved conditions in the coal mining industry. He also referred to wages, which, of course, are conditions of the industry, and I think it would not be out of place to mention one or two figures. The average weekly earnings of workers in the coal industry, including adults and boys working above and below ground, in the first quarter of 1945 were £5 13s. 10d. as compared with £2 18s. 3d. in 1939. That is an increase of approximately 95 per cent. Lord Lindsay mentioned that the pay of miners was eighty-first on the list before the war. That is quite true, but it is considerably higher now than the fourteenth place which I understood him to mention. It is now, I believe, fourth on the list. But the industry cannot continue to pay high wages for low output. I am sure we are all in favour of the miner receiving a very high rate of wages compared with any other industry, but the output must be stepped up.
There is no doubt the industry is suffering from a shortage of labour, and every endeavour must be made to attract new recruits to the industry. I think it is absolutely essential that the new Coal Board should have a complete publicity campaign or they will not get the recruits. I feel sure that His Majesty's Government will do all that is possible to assist not only with regard to welfare but to improve generally the conditions of the miners, and to make the industry as attractive as possible for the young men so that they may feel, when they enter the industry, that they have a really worth-while career before them. We shall, no doubt, hear a great deal more about coal and nationalization. I want

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to keep clear of that for the moment, but with the industry in its present state, with rising wages and falling output, whether it is nationalized or not, it will mean a dwindling industry; a declining export trade; and finally inability to pay for imports means a bankrupt country. All the hopes and plans of reconstruction in this country depend upon an efficient coal industry, and I hope the Government will take every possible step to increase supplies of coal before it is too late.
4.35 p.m.
LORD CALVERLEY: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, has almost persuaded us that everything in the garden with regard to mining and miners' welfare is absolutely grand. Although personally I am grateful to him for mentioning it, I am rather surprised that the noble Duke did not stress the positive side a little more, because the Miners' Welfare Fund, which was instituted at a penny a ton (I think that was the figure) has worked wonders in many of the coalfields, especially in the district I know best. But here comes the rub. You have got your pit-baths. You have got all your other things. You have got your canteens, which the men do not altogether like, although incidentally you can have a jolly good meal there. I have partaken of their hospitality many times at a very low cost. But here we are up against the prejudices of the miners themselves. I come of a mining family. I did not graduate in the mines, because owing to the fact that I had a father who died from silicosis the day after I was born, my mother said, "You are not going to go down the mines" But this is my point. We have been so grudging in our treatment of the miners, even going back, in my own mind, to the time when Mr. Asquith introduced what in the coalfields we called the "Mini" Bill, where the miner was guaranteed the magnificent sum of five shillings a day, and a boy under eighteen two shillings a day.
The noble Lord has emphasized the welfare aspect. I wish, however, he had mentioned the mean way in which the miners were treated when the slump came along, when the Welfare Fund was cut down from a penny to a halfpenny. It was a very mean thing to do. Then, again, it has to be remembered that it is only within this last year that silicosis has been recognized as a disease in respect of
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which a man could get compensation. My dad got no compensation. He simply died. So there is this heritage of bitterness, almost of hatred, which one finds. It is a psychological problem which we are up against, and which we have to tackle if we want increased production of coal. I have been with "Bevin boys" Mr. Bevin does not like them called "Bevin boys" He calls them coal-workers! I have visited them without any notification of my coming, I have simply gone and talked to them, and they have said, "Let's get cracking!" Some of them thought they could go to the coal face in three weeks, because they had not got any real conception of the nature of the work. They were thinking it was an unskilled job. It is a very highly skilled job. But I like the spirit of those "Bevin Boys" Then I went to Pontefract, and talked to some middle-aged warriors—and they are warriors, because absenteeism today does not come from the middle-aged men. I regret to say it is from the underthirties. I should like a mission from this House to go to them, although not to preach to them. If I could get some of the younger Peers to come with me, we would hold a mission. This, I admit, is a digression, but I have found in these last few weeks we are getting more and more young Peers who have been fighting, who have been in the trenches, and who have known the comradeship of the Forces. I wish they could share their experiences once more in some of the coalfields; I think they would do a lot of good. But that is a digression, and I must resist that.
I am glad my noble friend Lord Lindsay mentioned the mother. You know, passing the buck to the mother is not confined to miners. We introduced "Pay as you earn" for the miner largely, and he detests it. He does not mind paying a shilling a pint for beer, especially if he can get the wife to subsidize it. He certainly allows his wife to buy his tobacco. This, I am sorry to say, will displease the academic but very human mind of my noble friend: these miners like indirect taxation better than direct taxation, especially if they can put it on to somebody else. I would remind the noble Duke that the cottages he has been talking about are again the heritage of previous generations, and it needs a national effort to change things, not mere syndicalism, which appeared to be the dreadful doctrine the noble Duke was

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enunciating. I thought: "Shades of Benito Mussolini!" But then I looked at his face and I thought, "This is the kindest looking pirate that ever scuttled a ship" That again is a digression.
But syndicalism is not going to save the industry. There has got to be a partnership, and we must get these miners to realize that they are part not of a machine but of a great industry. And then we must get the management to realize (and I think that they do now realize) that it is only common sense to get to know the point of view of the other chaps. The old Evan Williams spirit, I believe, is dead and damned, and it is a pity that it was not damned a long time ago; but we are reaping the harvest of this outlook now, and it is going to take almost a great miracle to undo it. On the credit side we have the great loyalty of the miner. They really are a loyal body to each other, and there is something good in them. Lord Lindsay has told us about the S.O.S. that went out from Oxford; they wanted a Professor to go to Durham in order to tell the miners about some German theology. The miners are great theologians; in fact, the Primitive Methodist Church helped to keep the miners together in the county of Durham; but that, I am afraid, is another digression. We have to realize that five days a week are quite sufficient for these miners to work. We have got to break down the barriers; they have lived a segregated sort of existence in those miserable cottages of theirs. I lived in a "one up and one down" for thirty-two years. Certainly it was cheap—3s. 6d. a week—but I would rather live where I do now.
We must approach this problem in a sympathetic spirit, and there are to-day more and more people who are trying to understand the point of view of the miner and his son. One old miner said to me, "I wish you would not pamper these 'Bevin boys' and make a difference between them and my lad over there" There was a difference between them in the pit I was visiting. The "Bevin boy" was getting threepence more, and threepence is a lot if you have not got it. This old miner's point was that the "Bevin boys" were getting more privileges. This is where I differ from the noble Duke. You are not going to build an industry on privileges and subsidies. Pay these men liberally. Pay them the wage to which they are justly
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entitled. Give them the best conditions it is possible for them to have. Reduce the hours—because I should not like to go and work at the coal face even for seven hours—and reduce the working week to five days. In any case, if you do not give them Saturday off, if there is any coursing to be done they are going to take the day off; if there is any racing at Pontefract they are going to go to the races. We might as well realize that the miners are sportsmen. Again I am digressing, but my parson felt disgusted one day about this matter and he put up what we call a Wayside Pulpit, and there on the Wayside Pulpit these miners, as they passed, saw the words, "Your whippet has got a coat—has your wife?" That is by the way. Noble Lords with large estates could make a contribution. The average miner is a born poacher, and if noble Lords would encourage poaching as a national industry—
VISCOUNT SWINTON: It needs very little encouragement.
LORD CALVERLEY: My noble friend knows something about this, as well as other things. Digressing once more, I took a Ministry of Information official to the coal face and he said to one of the miners, "Now then, my man, I want to know how you are getting on, and what I can do to help you" The miner replied, "Mister, we want 'owt to eat". My noble friend knows what that means. He went on to say, "If you can get us a rabbit or two, that will be all right". But it is no good disparaging what has been done in the canteens. They get a very good meal there, and I wish they were not so dreadfully conservative and would partake of this very good food. It took almost a mission to persuade them to have a bath at the pithead, to get rid of their dirty clothes at the pithead and come away spotlessly clean, wearing their Saturday clothes. It took five to ten years to do that. I wish we could send a mission, say, to Yorkshire and Lancashire, to tell these fellows that they are not men apart but that they are our brothers and our comrades, that we think a lot about them, and try in that way to get rid of the spirit of bitterness. I believe if we could do that it would be one of the greatest measures we could take to make the coal industry prosperous.
4.47 p.m.
LORD AMMON: My Lords, at least the noble Duke has been responsible for initiating a very interesting discussion, even if his own speech had very little to do with the subject on the Paper. He started quite well, dealing with the humanitarian spirit, but he could not resist the lure of his particular financial hobby for very long, and I am afraid that I am not prepared to follow him very far, or at all, from that point of view. He will probably get another opportunity to deal with that side of the question when the Bill for nationalization comes forward. I am bound to say that it has very little to do with the case, as far as I can see.
Nobody has made any mention of the very good news that appeared in the Press this morning—that there has been a distinct rise in production. I think it should be mentioned because a word of encouragement and appreciation is always worth while, particularly from this House. My noble friend Lord Lindsay paid a tribute, which I can support, as to the standard of education and interest of the miners in things far outside their own immediate life and standards of life. Some years ago I spent a good deal of time in the mining valleys in South Wales. I stayed in miners' homes and spoke in their churches and chapels, and I viewed the very substantial libraries that many of those men had built up—libraries that would be a credit, if I may say so, even to a University professor, and which indicated the real intelligence possessed by that very fine body of men.
The noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, did, however, indicate the distrust—the very great distrust—that exists between employers and employed. When we think about mining problems we sometimes forget the long history behind them, which has to be overcome and lived down. For instance, I observed in Professor Trevelyan's book on social history that, quoting an author of the time, he said that as long ago as the seventeenth century these people were segregated from the rest of the community in which they very seldom moved and it was remarkable what great bitterness existed between the employers and the employed. That has come right down to this very day—there has been much evidence of it in the years from 1926 onwards—and it is a factor that we must take into consideration as and
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when we are dealing with this problem. You cannot expect to solve it by passing welfare legislation or Nationalization Acts, or that sort of thing. It will take a very long while to live down the suspicion and distrust that has been inherited over these many years.
Nevertheless, there is, I am glad to say, some indication of an improvement. I gather, for instance, that more young men are returning to the industry and that actually now the wastage is being overtaken by the increase in those employed. That, I think, is a good thing. I made inquiries as to what was responsible for that improvement. So far as I can gather—and this is not strictly official information—it is accounted for, of course, in part by demobilization; but young men are also coming from other sources because the wages are now approximating more nearly to the wages in other industries. That must be borne in mind as an indication of what has to be done in the future. I believe that tomorrow some figures will be issued which will indicate that there is at any rate some improvement in the number of people now employed in the industry itself, and this I trust, will be reflected in the output which is so badly needed.
My right honourable friend the Minister of Fuel and Power is very much concerned in the point that the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, raised as to the desire to revive a certain pride in craftsmanship and industry. That is one of the things to which he is giving very special attention, and I trust we shall find we have gone a good way towards it in the Bill that will come before us at a later date. These things are not overcome in a few weeks, but what I have told your Lordships is at least rather indicative that an attempt is being made to deal with them. The noble Lord, Lord Teynham, catalogued the large amount of welfare work that is being done, all of which one admits, but it is rather, shall we say, a late repentance. We are glad, however, to know it is on the increase. It is always difficult to institute, and that difficulty is not confined to the mining industry. Anybody who has had any touch whatever with industry will tell you that there is nobody more conservative—using the word not in the political sense—than the ordinary working-man in regard to his working conditions. You

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can introduce the best scheme ever heard of, but it will take a very long while before he will take advantage of it. There occurs to my mind at the moment a case in point. All of us now see the drivers of our tramcars and buses protected from the weather, but it took a long time before they even accepted that protection. There was a suspicion that there was "something in it", and when screens were first put in front of these people to protect them they preferred the open, where they were subject to wet and cold.
You find that everywhere you go. Any industry will tell you that when they first instituted canteens, men preferred to go to some dirty little pub round the corner, or something like that, until gradually they got used to the idea. We have to accept these matters philosophically. Education is playing its part and the younger generation appreciates the new facilities and opportunities given to them, just as we are finding in our housing schemes in various parts of the country. It is true we may have been grudging in our assistance, but I believe there is a change of heart just now, and the Government are going to see if they can do something in that direction. It is true, as my noble friend Lord Calverley said, that to a large extent absenteeism has not been among the middle-aged men and the older men. We have to remember, however, that these young men now in the industry came into it during the years when there was no employment. From 1926 onwards there was little inducement for them to stay in the industry, and they began to drift away to other industries and callings. The mining industry had no particular attraction for them.
I think I have dealt with the questions that were raised in the debate, and I propose to deal with the larger questions in greater detail. It is quite admitted that there is need for better housing conditions in the mining industry, but that applies to the country as a whole and particularly since the war. It is a national need, involving not only the factor of undesirable dwellings but also a universal shortage of houses. In the earlier days the industry used to provide, owing to indifferent transport and the isolated conditions of the pitheads, a certain amount of housing accommodation in the colliery districts. But with the growth and development of transport and the appreciation which I
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have mentioned of better conditions miners have more and more tended to go to local authority housing estates where they can enter the communal life with people in industries other than their own and take an interest in outside affairs. Therefore it is not proposed to look at this problem in isolation. It is part of the big national problem.
There have been surveys made within the past year of the coalfields by a representative committee on behalf of the Ministry of Fuel and Power, and reports show that the old colliery-built houses still in occupation range from those which have been renovated and are reasonably satisfactory to the obsolete and dilapidated ones which, but for the general housing shortage, would have been demolished. This state of affairs is more or less common to all regions except the comparatively new Kent coalfields where colliery-sponsored houses, being only about thirty years old, are in good condition and are provided with more or less adequate domestic services. With the development of improved transport, many miners have ceased to live near the pit; they prefer to travel in order to enjoy the amenities of local authorities' housing estates or their purchased homes. As to the colliery-owned houses, in which the remaining mine workers live, the regional reports to which I have referred are in agreement upon these main heads—the necessity for the demolition of many of them when new house-building has reached the point when that action will not create further over-crowding; the expediency of renovating and adding to certain of the better houses to bring them up to modern standards of comfort; and the building of new houses, to replace the old ones, far enough from the pit to escape pollution and with an eye to wider communal interests than the residents have hitherto enjoyed in the colliery houses.
The reports are unanimous in advising that building in the future should be a function of the local authorities and not one to be left to colliery companies. The problem is, therefore, an integral part of the post-war housing problem. Under war conditions, however, the Ministry of Fuel and Power made two ventures into alleviating the housing situation in Scotland. Owing to the declining nature of the Lanarkshire coalfield, it has been, and

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will be in future, necessary to transfer miners from that county to the more productive areas of West Lothian, Fifeshire, and Ayrshire. Treasury sanction was accordingly obtained in 1942–43 for the building by the Ministry of Works of seven hundred emergency houses. The houses are now occupied and are under the management of the Scottish Special Housing Association. Towards the end of 1944 it was proposed to build a thousand more houses for transferred mine workers. It was decided, however, that the time for emergency building by the Ministry of Works was past, and that any further house building in Scotland must be part of the general programme of the Scottish Health Department. Accordingly, the Scottish special Housing Association undertook to provide a thousand houses on sites selected by the coal industry as being suitable for the housing of transferred men, subject to 25 per cent of them being used, if necessary, for the needs of local mine workers in order to alleviate the overcrowding already being experienced. The building of these houses is now under way.
Turning to safety measures, to which reference had already been made by the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, I need only deal with one or two points. The rapid technical development in mining practice that took place both at home and abroad in the quarter of a century following the passing of the Coal Mines Act, 1911, led to the appointment of the Royal Commission on Safety in Coal Mines towards the end of 1935. That Commission reported in 1938. Its proposals were dependent basically on a new Act of Parliament, and during 1939 much preliminary work was done in preparation for a new Coal Mines Bill. At the outbreak of war this, unfortunately, had of necessity to be set aside owing to the more urgent demands for the drafting of legislation for the carrying on of the war. With the return to more normal conditions, the whole field has been reviewed afresh and discussions have been opened with the national representative bodies in the industry with a view to giving effect to some further instalments of the proposals by means of general regulations or administrative action. For the time being, however, it is considered that new requirements should avoid any substantial call on the depleted man-power of the
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industry. I will mention some of the principal subjects that are now under examination with a view to action on this basis, but unless your Lordships require it I do not propose to go into them in detail. They include such things as underground lighting, ventilation, support of workings and locomotive traction underground. All those matters are now under consideration and are being worked upon.
The questions of wages, holidays with pay, piece work, etc., will be in a large measure dealt with in the forthcoming Bill. There is, however, one point that should be emphasized, particularly as it is important with regard to a good deal of irregular action by certain sections of the industry which seems to be mainly directed against their trade unions. Lord Greene's board of investigation into machinery for determining wages and conditions of employment in the coal mining industry was appointed in 1942. In its report of March, 1943, the board recommended the establishment of comprehensive conciliation machinery to provide for the expeditious consideration of all questions arising as to wages and conditions of employment. The industry acted on this recommendation, and the comprehensive machinery outlined by the board in the appendix to its third report was embodied in its entirety in the National Conciliation Agreement of May, 1943. The Government thus took the initiative in 1042 which led to the establishment of the comprehensive machinery which the industry now has at its disposal, and which represents the achievement of one of the workers' main aspirations which they had pursued unremittingly for many decades. It resulted in the minimum wage and holidays-with-pay awards of the National Reference Tribunal and the National Wage Agreement of April, 1944 the stability of which has been guaranteed by the Government until June, 1948.
The Government are not disposed to countenance any step which might weaken the authority of such machinery, or lead 'to the setting aside of agreements reached or awards given in accordance with the National Conciliation Agreement, which was freely concluded by the responsible organizations representative of employers and employed in the industry. Consequently, any changes in the amounts or methods of wage payments, or in the present holidays-with-pay arrangements,

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are regarded as matters for the industry, to be dealt with through the established channels, which are fully adequate for the purpose. Nor will the Government's policy in this respect be affected in any way by the transfer of the mines to national ownership. That is in effect the line which the Government are taking with regard to most of the problems that were raised in the debate this afternoon.
The rest of the discussion turned on such matters as pensions, finance, conditions of employment, working conditions, and so forth. All those will be dealt with in the forthcoming Bill, and it would be simply a waste of your Lordships' time to endeavour to traverse all that ground now. The question of industrial injuries insurance was dealt with in a Bill which came before your Lordships' House a short time ago. This Motion has been on the Paper for some considerable time and a good deal that the noble Duke had in mind then has since been caught up with and embodied in legislation. That, in short, is the position as we see it in the industry at the present time, but much that has been brought out in the discussion indicates the need for some measures over and above those which have been tried again and again in the industry and have failed. As and when the larger measure comes to be considered, there is one thing I do hope your Lordships and others who have to consider the Bill, will keep in mind, and that is that a good deal has been tried which has been common to other industries, but no other industry has the history behind it that this industry has. This industry is practically where other industries were at the time of the industrial revolution, and owing to its isolation and segregation from the main stream of life in the rest of the country these things have continued in a way which has not endured elsewhere. It is this long isolation in the industry which largely accounts for that. There is, above all, the possibility of carrying on and continuing these conditions which would never have been allowed in other industries which are more in the light of day.
An opportunity is now offered, and will be offered to your Lordships and to the country in a very short time, to undo the wrongs, not of a few years, but the wrongs of centuries, because, as I have already quoted from Trevelyan's Social History,
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he calls attention to conditions which obtained in the 17th century and which had been handed down from even before that—conditions which to some extent obtain even to this day. While the noble Duke has given an opportunity, as it were, for a preliminary examination prior to the larger assize that will come when the main Bill comes before your Lordships' House, I am sure that your Lordships will not feel that the time has been wasted.
5.12 p.m.
THE DUKE OF BEDFORD: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord opposite for reminding us of the work which has been done by the Miners' Welfare Commission. When one is talking of abuses which have not been remedied, one is liable to overlook what has been done, and it introduces more balance into a debate if one is reminded of what has actually been accomplished. I am afraid the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay's reference to my monetary reform ideas was a dodging of the issue characteristic of nearly all critics of monetary reform I have come across. He compared my attitude of mind to an interest in King Charles's head, but I am afraid it rather gave me the impression that his own head was like King Charles's, that it was wondering about where it ought not to be, separated from his heart. I was, however, delighted to find, as I already suspected, that where the miners' interests are concerned his heart is very much in the right place. Only in one matter did I feel that he was perhaps just a trifle callous, and that was when he was referring to the disease of silicosis. I may have misunderstood him—and I am sorry he is not here now—but I rather got the impression that because, if taken early, silicosis was not a very fatal disease, all that needed to be done was to have it diagnosed at an early stage. If I am not under a misapprehension, although silicosis, taken at an early stage, may be more or less arrested, the man who gets it is never completely cured and is never the same man afterwards; and that, I think, is a very unsatisfactory position.
Another noble Lord, dealing with the question of indirect taxation of workers' incomes, suggested, I think, that if workers' incomes have to be taxed, it is very much better to do it by indirect taxation than by direct taxation. With that view, as a student of human psychology,

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I entirely agree. I nearly put that view, but frankly I was so afraid of what the Daily Herald or Daily Worker might say if I put that forward, that I was very glad it was introduced by a miner's son instead of by me. A noble Lord also quarrelled with me for introducing the financial issue; he thought it was rather irrelevant. He may know how it is possible to build houses without money; to pay increased wages without money; to provide adequate pensions without money; adequate compensation for accidents without money; and to give adequate holidays with pay without money; but as I suffer from a King Charles's head complex I cannot see how it is to be done. I ask leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

SOUTHERN IRISHMEN IN THE FORCES.
5.17 p.m.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY had given Notice that he would ask His Majesty's Government what is the number of men and women who joined His Majesty's Military Forces from Southern Ireland between September 3, 1939, and August 31, 1945, under the headings R.N., Army, and R.A.F.; and from what sources the figures given are obtained. The noble Earl said: My Lords, the question I am about to put is to ask His Majesty's Government for the number of men and women who joined His Majesty's Imperial Forces from Southern Ireland from September 3, 1939, to August, 1945, under the headings of the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force, and from what source the figures are obtained. I should like, before putting the question, to disclaim any ulterior object. I want to. get these figures for the information of those who are interested in the subject, because many estimates have been made and they vary from tens of hundreds to hundreds of thousands. It would be a very good thing to get the truth, because there are many who are interested in distorting it. The remark that I want to know from which source the figures come seems to suggest I am suspicious of the Government's answer. It is not that, but if they come from ordinary recruiting sources through
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lawful offices it must be remembered that there were no recruiting offices in Southern Ireland, and the men had to find their own way across the border into Northern Ireland. A great number of them would undoubtedly have given false names and addresses, particularly those who were deserters from the Irish Army, and others would give accommodation addresses, and they would appear to be recruited from Northern Ireland instead of from the South. Again, there were many hundreds and thousands of Irish labourers over here getting in the harvest, and I am sure they were not the last to go to the recruiting offices. The only real test, I venture to suggest, would be the addresses which they gave for their next of kin in case they fell or were disabled. Those would probably be quite genuine, because they would hardly give false addresses when they would want their own people to benefit. Whatever the figures may be, I am sure all your Lordships will agree that this country owes those men and women a great debt which must be honourably discharged, and I have not the least doubt that the Government intend to discharge it honourably, because their views on that point were given only last month in another place, where it was said that His Majesty's Government took the view that when men had fought with us and stood by us it was against our religion to let them down. I beg to ask the question which stands in my name.
5.19 p.m.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DOMINION AFFAIRS (VISCOUNT ADDISON): My Lords, I have been to a great deal of trouble to obtain the figures asked for by the noble Earl, but as the Prime Minister said in another place, figures in the form precisely asked for in the noble Earl's question are not readily available and some of them could only be obtained by a disproportionate amount of time and labour.
The only figures which can be given in the case of the Navy are based on information supplied as to the address at the time of entry into the Service. Those for the Army and the Royal Air Force are based on information supplied as to place of birth, and in the case of the Army some of the men and women may have enlisted before the war. On these bases the figures are as follows:
Royal Navy and Royal Marines.

Men entered and enlisted between September 3, 1939, and December 31, 1944

483

Women enlisted between December 15, 1943, and August 31, 1945

34

Army.
Total numbers serving at December 31, 1944: Men—28,645; Women—4,133.
R.A.F.
Total numbers enlisted at Belfast between January, 1943, and August 31, 1945: Men—9,426; Women—528.
As regards such enlistments before January, 1, 1943, no distinction was drawn in the records between Northern Ireland and Eire. These statistics also do not include enlistments in Great Britain of men and women of Eire origin as to which no figures are available.
The bases on which the above information is given I agree are not satisfactory, but I am afraid it is not possible to give more accurate figures.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, I am very much obliged to the noble Viscount for the information which he has just given.

POLISH STOWAWAYS.
THE EARL OF CRAVEN: My Lords, I beg to ask the question standing in my name.
[The question was as follows:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether four Poles who were stowaways from the "Empire Arquebus" from Danzig and landed at Leith, have been asked to give an explanation as to the cause of their flight, and whether the Polish Government has been asked for a memorandum on any action taken by them since the repatriation of the said stowaways.]
LORD AMMON: My Lords, no explanation has been asked for and no approach has been made to the Polish authorities in this matter as it is the concern of the Polish Government alone.

THE POLISH ELECTIONS.
THE EARL OF CRAVEN: I beg to ask the second question standing in my name.
[The question was as follows:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether it is their intention to make arrangements to send a small commission of foreign diplomats to observe the forthcoming elections in Poland as has been arranged in Greece, and to ask whether, if this is not their intention, they will state their reasons.]
LORD AMMON: My Lords, the Polish Provisional Government have pledged themselves to His Majesty's Government and the Governments of the United States and the U.S.S.R. in the terms of the Crimea Agreement on Poland to hold "free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot," in which "all democratic and anti-Nazi parties shall have the right to take part and to put forward candidates" The Polish President further assured the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at Potsdam that the elections would be held on the basis of the 1921 Polish Constitution. If these pledges are strictly fulfilled! in the arrangements made for the elections, an international Corn-mission would not appear necessary.

STRAITS SETTLEMENTS (REPEAL) BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to.