Lords Sitting of 30 May 1946

Preamble
The House met at four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers
The Earl of Onslow—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

GERMAN INTERNEES AND PRISONERS OF WAR.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER: My Lords, I beg to ask His Majesty's Government a question of which I have given private notice. The question is: Whether their attention has been called to statements made in the Press and elsewhere about conditions in certain camps under British control for German civilian internees and for German prisoners of war in Belgium and in the British Zone in Germany; whether investigations are being made as to the accuracy of such statements; and whether the results of such investigations will be made public as soon as possible.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (LORD NATHAN): My Lords, the attention of His Majesty's Government has been called to these statements. As far as prisoner-of-war camps in Belgium are concerned, inquiries were instituted immediately reports of irregularities had been brought to notice. A Court of Inquiry is now sitting in Belgium under the auspices of the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, British Army of the Rhine, and I understand that a report is likely to be rendered shortly.
The General Officer Commanding-in-Chief has also been asked to render a full report on the allegations made in an article in the Observer of May 26 regarding conditions in civil internee camps. If this report does not fully cover the ground such further steps will be taken as may appear necessary, including the convening of a Court of Inquiry. I shall be very willing to make a further statement as soon as the full facts are available.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER: I am much obliged to the noble Lord for his answer.

MARQUESS OF ABERGAVENNY'S ESTATE BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
ASTLEY AINSLIE HOSPITAL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.

LONDON MIDLAND AND SCOTTISH RAILWAY ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.
4.5 p.m.

HOUSING (FINANCIAL PROVISIONS) (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD WESTWOOD: My Lords, this Bill is the Scottish counterpart of the Housing (Financial and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill which received its Third Reading in this House, followed by the Royal Assent, before the Easter Recess. The main object of both measures is to provide for increased Exchequer and rate contributions to enable local authorities to carry out their post-war housing programmes at rents which those who now require homes can reasonably be expected to pay. It is also the object of these measures to adjust those contributions in such a way as to take into account the special financial problems raised by building on expensive urban sites and in rural areas.
It is the policy of the Government to concentrate for the present on the building of houses by public authorities for letting purposes. By way of supplementation, private enterprise may build houses within certain limits of size and price, corresponding roughly to standards of size and price in local authority housing; and, as I shall explain later, this Bill provides for increased lump sum grants in aid of private house building for agricultural workers. This Bill, however, is primarily a financial one to assist local authorities

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to build houses for the vast number of families who have at present no homes of their own or who are living in unsatisfactory conditions. May I say that I use the term public authorities deliberately, because I wish to include, not only the 228 local authorities in Scotland, but the Scottish Special Housing Association, for whom a large post-war housing programme is contemplated. I shall have something to say about the Association shortly.
As I have indicated, the main provisions of the Scottish Bill follow the lines of those in the Act recently passed for England and Wales. The provisions of that Act were described with admirable lucidity by my noble friend Lord Henderson in moving the Second Reading in this House on April 9. Accordingly, I shall not deal with the Scottish measure in detail. I propose rather—and I trust noble Lords will find it convenient for me to do so—to concentrate upon those features of the Scottish Bill which are of special significance to Scotland and have special relation to Scottish conditions.
The first provisions to which I wish to refer are the standard subsidies for houses erected by local authorities for the general working class population. In England and Wales, the standard subsidies, which will run for sixty years, consist of an annual contribution of £16 10S. from the Exchequer and an annual contribution of £5 10S. from the rates—a total of £22 applicable to all approved houses whatever the number of rooms. In Scotland the standard subsidies proposed in Clauses 1 and 2 of the Bill vary with the number of rooms in the house. For a typical four-roomed house for example a living room and three bedrooms, the figures are £23 from the Exchequer and £7 from the rates—a total of £30 In both Scotland and England, the new subsidies are based on an assumed average rent of 10s. a week exclusive of rates.
A word of explanation is probably desirable on the differential subsidy in Scotland for houses of different numbers of rooms. We have far too many houses of one, two and three rooms in Scotland, and the local authorities have themselves added an excessive proportion of small houses to the existing number. Between the wars, 73.7 per cent. of the houses built by local authorities in Scotland were of three rooms or less. In England and
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Wales 80.3 per cent. of such houses were of four rooms or more. We have asked local authorities in Scotland to concentrate primarily in the immediate future on houses of four rooms with an appropriate number of five-roomed dwellings. The higher Exchequer contribution for houses of larger sizes will furnish an inducement to local authorities to provide them. In making this recommendation, of course, we have not lost sight of the need for a limited number of new smaller houses for ageing people.
I shall not detain your Lordships with an account of the various proposals for additional subsidies contained in the Bill, which follow fairly closely those in the English measure. These additional subsidies are designed to assist local authorities who incur abnormal expenditure in their housing operations as the result of building in clearance or redevelopment areas, on expensive central sites, or in areas liable to mineral subsidence. There is also provision in Clause 1 for additional subsidy for the provision of lifts in blocks of flats of at least four storeys.
Further there is prevision in proviso (c) to Clause 1 of the Scottish Bill for additional Exchequer subsidies for remote areas. Under this provision, no additional rate contribution is payable; and there is no maximum fixed for the additional Exchequer contribution. It is proposed to leave it to the Secretary of State, with the sanction of the Treasury, to fix such annual amount for a period of 60 years as seems to him to be just and reasonable. This provision is intended to give the Secretary of State discretion to vary within a considerable range the amount of additional assistance which he feels should be given to low-rented housing schemes in areas where costs are substantially enhanced as a result of remoteness from centres of supply of labour and materials.
The additional subsidies to which I refer apply to houses erected by local authorities for the general working class population. I am sure your Lordships would wish me to say something of the special provisions in the Bill for houses built for the agricultural population. There are two provisions which deal with this matter. Clauses 3 and 4 cover houses provided by local authorities, and Clause 9 covers houses provided by private persons to replace unfit houses.

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If there is to be a revival of rural life, and if we are to get the number of workers on the land that we need for food production, we shall have to see that a great many more new houses are built for agricultural workers of all kinds. I am aware that there are some who regret the expiration of the Housing (Rural Workers) Acts at the end of last September. Under these Acts over 32,000 existing houses in Scotland had been reconditioned since 1926, when the first Housing (Rural Workers) Act was passed. Much of the work done under these Acts was, however, of a makeshift character and made the house little better than before. This was the conclusion reached by the Scottish Housing Advisory Committee who were opposed to the indefinite continuance of these Acts.
A reconditioned house is not so good as a new one, and rural workers must be treated on the same footing as their brothers in urban areas. Besides, reconditioning does not add to the total number of houses in a country district. We need large numbers of new houses, and for the present the limited amount of skilled labour available in rural areas can best be used in the building of new houses. The Secretary of State is expecting to receive shortly a report of the Scottish Housing Advisory Committee on the modernization of existing houses, including houses in rural areas. When he receives this report he will be in a position to consider how and when such a policy of modernization may be carried out.
The subsidies proposed in Clause 3 for houses for the agricultural population provided by local authorities are substantially greater than the standard subsidies. The Exchequer contribution may vary between £21 and £35 per annum for 60 years; and for remote areas, there is provision, as in the case of ordinary housing, for an additional Exchequer contribution beyond £35 of an unspecified amount. The annual rate contribution under Clause 4 is a fixed amount of £6 10s. per annum for 60 years. We intend to keep a close watch on housing progress in rural areas. The high cost of building at present puts a heavy burden on both the Exchequer and the local authority. An undertaking has been given in another place that, when the subsidy arrangements fall to be reviewed in December of this year, the
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most careful consideration will be given to agricultural housing.
I now come to the provisions in Clause 9 for increased lump sum grants for houses built by private persons in rural areas. Such grants are available from county councils with Exchequer assistance for replacing unsatisfactory houses occupied by agricultural workers and others in circumstances where they cannot easily be replaced by new houses provided by the county councils themselves. The existing amounts are £160 for a house of three rooms and £200 for a house of four rooms or more. The grant of £160 will be increased by the Bill to £240 and the grant of £200 to £300. If I may be permitted to remind your Lordships, these grants are available for new houses only, not for reconstruction work.
Now may I deal with the provisions in the Bill about the Scottish Special Housing Association. This Association is a non-profit-making public corporation, financed wholly from Government funds. It was originally set up in 1937 by the Commissioner for Special Areas in Scotland to build houses in these areas. From time to time since then, the activities of the Association have been expanded. The Association, for instance, rendered invaluable service during the war in providing five excellent camps for evacuated school children, and several hostels in Clydeside for bombed-out families and essential workers rendered homeless by enemy action. The Association has now been asked to make plans for a large post-war housing programme to supplement the housing operations of local authorities in areas of the greatest need. The Association is at present being reorganized under a full-time Chairman and is engaged on the preliminary stages of their first instalment of 10,000 houses in twenty-nine different areas which have exceptionally heavy housing burdens.
Under existing legislation, the Association receives from the Secretary of State not only the normal Exchequer contribution, but also the equivalent of the normal rate contribution. Houses erected by the Association are thus in the nature of a free gift to the district of the local authority where they are built. No rate contribution is payable by the local authority. Under Clause 12 the Association will receive the new subsidies to be made available for local authority housing.

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It is also proposed under Clause 13 that the Association shall develop a strong direct labour organization to build houses as contractors for any local authority in any part of Scotland where it is difficult for the local authority to make satisfactory progress through the ordinary system of tenders by contractors. These difficulties may arise from shortage of labour, or from high prices resulting from the remoteness of the site, or from transport difficulties. Houses erected in this way will be the property of the local authority. To carry out this work of contracting on behalf of local authorities, the Association will require working capital, and Clause 13 enables the Secretary of State to advance money, with appropriate safeguards, for this purpose. I should like to make it clear, as has been made clear in another place, that there is no question of the Association supplanting local authorities in their housing work. The Association will continue to work in the closest co-operation with local authorities. We expect it to play an important part in Scotland's post-war housing programme.
Clause 15 of the Bill deals with the important matter of permanent houses of non-traditional forms of construction. If we are to get all the houses we need in the next 10 to 12 years, we shall have to make use of methods of construction which make a diminished call upon traditional building labour and material. In addition to 1,500 Weir steel houses and 1,500 Atholl steel houses ordered last year, the Government have recently placed an order for Scotland for 5,000 steel houses to be manufactured by the British iron and Steel Federation. In addition, arrangements are now completed for the manufacture in Scotland of 3,000 Cruden houses of steel frame and concrete block construction for erection in small groups in small towns and rural areas. During the early stages of production, the cost of factory-made houses is apt to be high. It is desirable, however, that local authorities should not have to pay substantially more for such houses than for traditional houses of the same type and size. Provision to that end is made in Clause 15, to which I have referred.
Lastly, there are two miscellaneous provisions in the Bill, of a non-financial
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character and of purely Scottish significance, which I shall mention briefly. The first relates to the powers of County Councils to build houses. Under existing legislation all local authorities, with the exception of county councils, can build houses outside their own districts. No parallel exception is made in England and Wales, and it is proposed to remove this exception in Scotland through Clause 18 of the present Bill. It is particularly desirable, in the interests of planning, that county councils should be unfettered in this matter. It sometimes happens, for example, that a housing scheme has to be built astride a boundary between a county and a burgh, or between two counties; and it is desirable that either authority should have power, by arrangement with the other, to undertake the whole scheme.
The second provision deals with disposal of land for the erection of church buildings. When the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act, 1945, was before Parliament, a Government amendment was included, on the suggestion of the Churches, to the effect that where land was disposed of for the erection of a church or other building for religious purposes, the disposal should, unless the parties otherwise agreed, be by way of feu. The purpose of this was to enable the Churches to have reasonable security of tenure for the erection of worthy buildings. It is only right that a corresponding provision should be included in Clause 19 of the present Bill, to cover disposals of land under the Housing (Scotland) Acts. I feel that noble Lords will appreciate the importance of this provision.
May I add only a word or two in conclusion. The Government have taken powers under other legislation to deal with such matters as the supply of materials and the cost of house-building, and they are resolved to do everything that possibly can be done to ensure that houses are built in sufficient numbers, and as rapidly as possible, for ad who need them. There are many difficulties in the way to be overcome and the public are keenly interested in the progress which is being made from month to month. The Government have nothing to hide, and the monthly Progress Reports which are now being issued by the Secretary of State will enable noble Lords, together with the general public, to measure the success of

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the housing programme. The Bill which I now commend to your Lordships will provide the financial means by which this housing programme may be carried out. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Westwood.)
4.30 p.m.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, this Bill has been discussed in principle along with the English Bill, and, in many ways, does not vary a great deal from it. It provides certain advantages for Scottish housing more advantageous in some aspects than those being provided for England. But it cannot be too frequently or too strongly stated that the position of housing in Scotland is infinitely more serious than it is in England, and the provision which is made will only be in a small measure commensurate to the urgent requirements which now exist. I am bound to say, as the noble Lord has said, that there is very great regret that the Housing (Rural Workers) Act has been allowed to lapse. It is true that there was a report which in some measure was partially adverse, but as the noble Lord knows, the improvements in houses have to be approved by the local authorities, and if they were unsatisfactory in certain cases, as must inevitably happen, a measure of responsibility must rest on the local authorities who are now to bear such a very heavy burden in the whole housing programme.
We have in Scotland a large number of stone houses. We are not building in stone to-day, because it is too expensive, and we shall probably never be able to do so again. If we do not use the existing stone houses by making renovations and bringing them up to date, they will lapse forever into disuse. I very much hope that on further consideration it will be possible, particularly in agricultural properties, to allow improvements to be carried out with some form of assistance.
The Special Housing Association is an organization with which I have a very particular association. In a sense, it was my baby when it was first put into operation, but it has gone a long way since then. I am bound to say that its work is not giving the satisfaction to-day that it ought to give. It has been charged in very general terms with ten per cent. of
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Scottish requirements. Its product since last July is 200 finished houses, although more than 200 houses had been already begun last July. It is a most ridiculous output in the period, and must in some measure be due to bad administration. I would, therefore, ask the noble Lord to have that point very carefully examined. I would particularly ask him for an assurance that its accounts will be made public so that it can be seen whether it is running at loss or profit, and can be compared with other similar associations working elsewhere. The importance of this Association is primarily in the location of new areas, a subject with which I will deal in one minute. The main point with which it is concerned, is the redistribution of the population in areas where industry justifies it and requires it.
I am bound to say that I rather hope this is only a temporary Bill, because I do not think it goes to the root of the whole trouble. The burden of rates in Scotland is getting so heavy that the whole country is becoming completely immobilized. That has been said often before, but it cannot be said too often. The rates have roughly doubled in twenty-five years. They have gone up since the war started about 1s. 6d. to 2s. in most districts. This year they have risen again in most areas 2s. and in some areas 2s. 6d.
This Act imposes a heavier burden of rates per house than any Act has ever done before, with the exception, I think, of the 1919 Act. It puts a heavier burden on all Scottish local authorities per house than it does on comparable rich local authorities in England, such as St. Albans, or Staines, or other places of that character. £7 per house is a very heavy cost. If we are to build 500,000 houses, it means that an annual charge of £3,500,000 for sixty years would have to be paid by the Scottish ratepayers. This will further increase the rates to the extent of ten per cent., and the rates cannot stand it. The next step must be taken with the object of reducing the burden of rates, and enabling local authorities to carry on without being completely swamped by the rates which they have to levy. I think it is a great pity that we should speak of subsidies in this matter of housing. These grants which are to be made are not really subsidies. They are drawbacks or rebates, because in effect

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all they do is to replace the burden on rates by payments from the central Exchequer.
If that were not the case, the houses would be run on very nearly an economic basis, and I hope the time may come when we will be able to regain an economic basis for houses. Western civilization has lost the ability to build houses for itself. To-day in Scotland we cannot even afford to pay other people to build houses for us. That is not because of the rate of wages, but because we are taxing houses to-day at the rate of 100 per cent. We have drifted into this position over many years. If someone proposed to-day that clothes or food were to be taxed 100 per cent. there would be an outcry in the country, and yet this primary commodity remains with the heavy burden of nearly 100 per cent, taxation of its annual value. I look forward to the time when that may be removed, and it will not then be necessary to pay subsidies from the central Exchequer.
I want to add one further word on the question of location. I am not clear how under this Act location is to be operated. It is a complex problem, and one which will cause great difficulty. But I cannot think that with the heavy burden of rates the county of Fife for instance will be willing to build houses for Lanarkshire men. One of the main problems facing the coal industry in Scotland to-day is the transference of miners from one area to the other. There will be very considerable reluctance on the part of the receiving authority to pay a heavy rate contribution for houses which will be used by men coming from a different area. It is hardly proper to deal with that at present, but I hope this point will be borne in mind, because it is on the re-allocation of population and redistribution of houses that in the main the new housing programme will succeed or fail.
I would add one word with regard to what we are seeing in the way of results. The noble Lord referred to the monthly reports which are published. It is true that one is beginning to see signs of temporary housing appearing, but there are still very grave and unsatisfactory signs of slow development. For instance, half the houses under construction in July, 1945, have still not been completed. Of the houses under construction in July, less than half are now finished—a rate of progress that is quite ridiculously slow.
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What I think is even more important is that this Act throws the whole burden of new houses on the local authority. Nearly one-third of these local authorities have not yet got a single tender approved. A burden imposed on local authorities which in many cases they are ill-equipped to carry. The burden of local work is becoming so great that the elected members rind it difficult to find the time to carry out their duties in the efficient manner in which they like to do. When one-third of the local authorities have not yet got tenders, there must be great slowness in developing in certain areas. This Bill is a step forward in the sense that we now know how we stand, but I do not think that it goes to the root of the problem. I think the noble Lord himself recognizes that it can and will be only an interim measure.
4.39 p.m.
THE DUKE OF MONTROSE: My Lords, I would like to say one word from the rural aspect in respect of this Bill. We were greatly interested in the figures which the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading gave us as regards the progress of housing. We are glad to hear of progress of any kind in housing. I can assure your Lordships however, that in Scotland there is very grave disquietude about the progress of housing. We are very short of houses indeed. Most of the figures to which the noble Lord, Lord Westwood, referred are, I think, connected with urban buildings. I have seen signs of houses being built round about the municipalities and towns, but there is very little sign at present of houses actually going up in the country. If there is an urgent need anywhere for houses, it is in the rural areas. The lack of houses there is holding back food production to an enormous degree. Many times you may want to put a key man of agriculture or forestry into a house in order that he may carry on your work. Under the Rent Restrictions Acts, however, you cannot get out the people who are already occupying that house, and because of the lack of houses you cannot find a place into which to put your key man. Until we have more houses on the land we cannot make the progress in agriculture that we would wish to do.
It was lamentable that the operation of the Housing (Rural Workers) Amendment

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Act, 1938, was discontinued. I know that landed proprietors were taking advantage of that Act before the war, and had we been allowed more time to turn over from war conditions to peace conditions I am sure many more landed proprietors would have been building houses than in 1938. The rapidity and progress of building by private estate management would far exceed anything done by local authorities. I think it is also lamentable that there is no provision in this Bill for treating more generously expenditure on improvements in existing houses. There are financial restrictions, and expenditure is limited in some cases to £10 and in others to £100. What we want in the country are financial facilities to put in a bathroom or bring in an internal water supply. How can we do that when we are restricted to-day to an expenditure of under £100, or something like that? You cannot buy baths and kitchen ranges and piping and instal them for a small sum like that. Yet making an improvement of that kind means all the difference in the world to a man living in a cottage; it represents the difference between living comfortably and living uncomfortably. Some provision ought to be made to allow more generous expenditure on improvements or on extensive repairs to existing houses. However, the Bill, imperfect as it is, is welcome, because anything connected with housing progress must be welcomed in the shortage that exists. The best thing we can do is to support the passing of the Bill.
4.44 p.m.
THE EARL OF ELGIN AND KINCARDINE: My Lords, I had not intended to take part in the debate, but in view of the importance of the subject perhaps I may be allowed to say a few words, first of all with regard to a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Westwood, and taken up by the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk. The position in those areas where houses have to be provided for miners because of the development of a mining field in the County of Fife was mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk. I understood Lord Westwood to say that some special provision was being made to assist local authorities in dealing with sites where there might be mining subsidence, and I should be very glad if he could give a little further explanation. It is a subject
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which is agitating authorities like those of the County of Fife where developments are required and where it is exceedingly difficult to find a site which is reported as being absolutely safe. If under this Bill some further help can be given it will be very welcome.
The second point I should like to mention has already been stressed, both by the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, and by the noble Duke—that is, that the tendency of this Bill, unfortunately, will be to give the whole weight of development to urban areas rather than to agricultural ones. A point which has not been fully emphasized so far, although it was mentioned, is the enormous programme which is to the credit of Scotland under the Housing (Rural Workers) Act. Such a large amount of work was done that I feel it should be the duty of the Government to see now whether it could not be further developed, and whether further encouragement can be given to it.
As the noble Lord, Lord Westwood, said in introducing the Bill, the tendency will be to concentrate on housing schemes. He indicated that it might be possible under a later clause of the Bill to provide grants for the building of houses in agricultural areas. But will that really operate, in view of the lack of labour and the difficulty of putting up a single house? The whole weight will go in favour of the larger scheme. We are left with the prospect that we cannot improve those houses in agricultural areas which could be improved and brought up to date, because the Act has been killed; and we cannot build new houses, because the whole tendency of this Bill will be in favour of housing schemes in large areas. Therefore I would urge, with the two noble Lords who have already spoken, that further consideration should be given by the Government to the provision of further help for rural areas, either by means of the resuscitation of the Housing (Rural Workers) Act, or by some other means.
Finally, there is the point which was raised by the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, that the whole burden is being placed upon local authorities who, in many cases, are ill-equipped. That is only half the question. The local authority of the County of Fife—and I say this with some humility—is well-equipped. The difficulty we are experiencing at this moment

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is that although we have an architect, although we have a planning officer, although we have a medical officer and everybody qualified to deal with those plans, although we have contracts before us, at every stage we are held up by further supervision from headquarters. Therefore I would plead that in the carrying out of this Bill, latitude may be given to those authorities who are fully equipped to get on with the job, and that they should not be eternally held up by further survey of the plan by another authority, be it a good one or be it a bad one. It is delaying the work and therefore I plead that those authorities which are equipped to do so may have an opportunity of getting on with the job.
4.50 p.m.
THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: My Lords, I had not intended to intervene in this debate because I spoke two or three months ago at considerable length on this exact topic. The noble Lord, Lord Westwood, did not happen to be in the House then and, if the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, remembers, he replied by saying that he knew nothing whatever about Scotland and was therefore unable to give any answer to my question. That, of course, rather disconcerted me, and I hoped that my noble friend, the Earl of Selkirk, would be able to get a better reply from the Government. I would like to reinforce what he has said, what the noble Duke has said and what the noble Earl opposite has said. This Bill is very largely an urban Bill and is not going to help us very much in the agricultural districts. It is all very well for the noble Lord, Lord Westwood, to say that under the Housing (Rural Workers) Act, there were certain houses that were not reconditioned in the way in which they should have been, but, as my noble friend, the Earl of Selkirk, has pointed out the blame for that does not lie on those who reconditioned those houses but on the local authorities which passed the plans.
If we are not to have the help we used to have under the 1938 Act, we shall not be able to deal with any of these remote villages in Scotland. That Act was very largely used in Scotland because our villages lie in remote areas, but it was very little used in England because the villages in England are very easily accessible and houses can be built in them with much greater ease than they can be reconditioned.
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We in Scotland have been sacrificed to bring ourselves into line with England. If we do not get something of this kind, then, as the noble Duke said, agriculture is bound to suffer. We cannot possibly at the present time build houses in the remote districts—which I have no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Westwood, has never visited. It would be a matter of very great difficulty to build houses there, whereas the reconditioning of houses, subject to the approval of the local authority, would be a comparatively easy matter. We want more people to work on the land and we want those people who are on the land now to remain there. The noble Duke said that if only you put bathrooms and other amenities into these cottages, not only would you get men to come there but you would also get those who are there to stay there instead of going off into the towns.
In his remarks to-day the noble Lord, Lord Westwood, has killed most of our hopes in that regard. It is all very well for him to laugh, but this is no laughing matter. We are talking about agriculture and not about the towns. The noble Lord is much more interested in the towns, and of course more people live in the towns than in the agricultural districts. Agriculture is going to be a vital thing, and is now a vital thing, for Scotland. If we are not to be able to build house for our people, then we are not going to have our fields properly cultivated and we will go back to ranching. The only way in which we can keep our farm labourers there is to recondition these cottages. It is quite out of the question to think you will be able to build a large number of houses in the country districts of Scotland; you could not get the material there at the present time.
In some localities which I know, and which are not far from Edinburgh, not one sod has yet been turned in places where permission has been given to build houses. In a place not far from me men are building busily for the Navy, which I understand is shortly going to vacate this place, but no effort is to be made to build cottages for the rural people. It is not so necessary at the moment to build cottages if you can recondition others. To blame the people who have reconditioned these cottages, and whose reconditioning plans were passed by the County Council, and not to blame the County

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Council seems to me to be utterly wrong. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Westwood, will pay some attention to noble Lords on these Benches who have spoken on this subject. They know the facts; they are deeply interested in and concerned with the welfare of the agricultural labourer. I hope something will be done to help, and nothing will help so much as giving back to us the 1938 Act.
4.57 p.m.
LORD WESTWOOD: My Lords, I have listened with considerable interest to what has been said by the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, the noble Earl, Lord Elgin, and the noble Earl, Lord Rosebery. In my statement I have said very definitely that reconstructed houses do not add to the number of houses, but nothing I have said means that we are not going to continue to reconstruct or to recondition houses. What I have said is that we are going to build new houses as well as to recondition houses. A reconditioned house is not quite as satisfactory as a new house.
THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: It is better than no house.
LORD WESTWOOD: I quite agree. I would like to say to the noble Lords that I am quite prepared to accept their criticism and to pass it on to the right quarter, but I feel quite confident that in this case a little patience (I am quite sure that some will say they have been quite patient enough so far as housing goes, but that does not only apply to Scotland) is a virtue. I am quite confident that the near future will shatter all doubts and undue pessimism.
On Question, Bill read 2a and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) BILL. [H.L.]
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Amendments proposed by the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills made.
BURMA LEGISLATURE BILL. [H.L.]
Amendment reported (according to Order).

RAISING OF FOOD STANDARD.
LORD LLEWELLIN LORD LLEWELLIN rose to call attention to the food situation, and to move to resolve, That, in the opinion of this House, the standard of feeding of the people of this country should not be further reduced, but on the contrary should be improved as speedily as possible. The noble Lord said: My Lords, throughout the last six years the people of this country have been consistently and continuously more strictly rationed than those of any other country, and despite that fact they have shown as great courage, as great staying power, as great fortitude and as great energy as any other people in the world. The womenfolk of these islands have shown the greatest ingenuity and the greatest patience (which the noble Lord who has just addressed us extolled as a great virtue) in making a little go a long way. These facts, because they are facts, are sufficient excuse, if indeed excuse be needed by an ex-Minister of Food, to raise in your Lordships' House the topic with which my Motion deals.
Before I come to the terms of that Motion, there are one or two matters relevant to it and leading up to it with which I must deal. The first of these is the Combined Food Board on which I should like to make just a few observations. I am perhaps in a better position than anyone else in this country to do this, except perhaps my old colleague at the Ministry of Aircraft Production, Sir Ben Smith. In passing, may I say on personal grounds that I am sorry he has had to give up the job which I handed over to him, and, if I may say so, despite the then pending Election, handed over to him with a field all clear, at any rate to the end of last year. But his resignation I think goes to show that the job of Minister of Food is no sinecure. You have to be watching your sources of supply all the time; you have to be taking the housewives of this country into your complete confidence all the time, because they are not mere marionettes. What the Minister of Food may do, or fail to do, affects in the main mothers of families and the means they have of feeding their children, their husbands, and the people in the homes up and down this country. If the Minister of Food cannot provide the bread—and I use the word "bread" in the generic sense in which it is used in the Lord's Prayer—the breadwinner may

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work in vain to provide his wife and children with the sustenance they need.
As I was saying, I am perhaps as well qualified as anyone from my twelve months in Washington as Minister Resident for Supply, and my twenty-one months as Minister of Food, to make a few observations on the working of the Combined Food Board, for during those three years of war I had direct and almost daily contact with this Board. The Board was set up by those two wise men in planning for victory, Roosevelt and Churchill, as part of the close working partnership of the United States of America and ourselves. It was not long before Canada, the greatest exporter of food in the world, was brought in. Not many people know that working alongside and in full touch with that Board has been the London Food Council over which I presided when I was Minister of Food, and of which the High Commissioners for Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and a representative for India were members, as well as the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Minister of War Transport and the Minister of Agriculture in Great Britain. A complete link between these two bodies was made in the person of the Minister of Food and his Department working under the Combined Food Board and, just to complete the picture, there were a number of commodity committees dealing with all the main commodities in short supply.
Let me in passing try to remove one misconception which seems to have arisen in certain quarters—I am not saying in the minds of the Government, but in certain quarters. This misconception seems to be that the Combined Food Board is some extraneous creation whose members can make decisions of their own and without: reference to the Governments who appoint them, and that it is some kind of super-State. It is, of course, nothing of the sort, and I do not intend to say anything against members of that Board who have been doing this difficult task. In fact, I should like, if I may, to pay a tribute to Mr. Maurice Hutton who has been our representative on that Board, whom I appointed to that job, and who continues to this day doing it conscientiously and well. His decisions were really my decisions, sometimes directly mine, and sometimes made within the discretion properly allowed to him. But whichever way it was, the Minister of Food must be
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responsible to Parliament and to the country for the decisions made in his, name by his representative on that Board. That is why this idea which I see has been adumbrated in recent weeks of a world food Tsar seems to me quite an impossible one. I see that very shortly afterwards the members of the existing Combined Food Board, the United States member, our own and the Canadian member, put forward different proposals—proposals to enlarge the scope of the Combined Food Board. Well, I recognize that it could not forever remain just representative of three countries, but I do think—and I ask the Government to think this over—that the proposal to bring in no less than twenty nations is going to make that rather a cumbrous body which is liable merely to wait for formal agreement instead of being a close-working day-to-day partnership which the Combined Food Board has been, and which has made it such an advantageous instrument in the distribution of food since it was set up.
This brings me to the underlying reason for my Motion to-day. Many of the countries it is proposed to put on that Board, many of those who are now members of the United Nations, have done—and let us be frank about it—very little to help in this world food situation, and on present form seem not very likely to do much more. We had great help from the Argentine in our meat supplies during the war, but I am told that in that country at the present time there is considerable waste of food which would be valuable if exported elsewhere in the world. We had great help from Brazil, but the consumption there has gone up considerably during past years. We have had valuable sugar from Cuba, but at the same time the amount of sugar which is being made into gin has noticeably increased. In no case—and let us be frank about it because I think we should be frank—have any of the South American countries done any cutting down of their own consumption at all. They have not been rationed for six long years, as have our people at home. They have only sent the surplus after they have provided all that their people could buy, and wanted to buy. They joined the United Nations and practically all of them came to the first meeting of U.N.R.R.A. I am not saying anything now in their absence that I did not say to their faces at

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Atlantic City. They were in such a position that they could not play any effective part in securing the victory.
I am not saying that they should have done much more about that. But now they have all joined the United Nations and they can take steps to help towards the winning of the peace by making available much larger supplies than they have been doing in the past and by cutting down their own consumption. It would not be much of a hardship on their peoples to submit to this so as to enable more of their food to be sent overseas. I would ask, as they were not in a position to help towards the actual winning of the war, are they not going to make some sacrifice to help to win the peace at the end of the war, for a firm and lasting peace cannot be built up on conditions of starvation in the world?
I next come to the position of our own British Dominions. No others have ever done so well by the mother country and the world as those main British Dominions have done during these years of war. We only had to ask and they sent more, and they are still playing their part to-day. But the fact remains that none of them is, or has been, so strictly rationed, or rationed so long, as the people of the home country. Then there is that great friendly country the United States of America which has done much to help this country over the past difficult years. The people of that great conglomeration of States are animated by a feeling of deep benevolence towards mankind, they have great human sympathies, and much food has been sent from there to this country and to other parts of the world. But it is to be noted that all the time they have had ample food for an increased number of hogs—as they call them, or pigs as we call them—and of poultry to be bred and reared. There has never been occasion when anyone needed to go short of an egg or a chicken on their table in the United States of America. That is a state of affairs which is to be contrasted with the position here at the present day, when the feeding stuffs that we had hoped to provide—that the then Minister of Agriculture and myself had started to provide—for feeding our pig and poultry populations, have had to be cut down.
This brings me to a comment that I think should be made. I believe it is
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time that all other countries in the United Nations Organization came down to something like our level of consumption before our people are asked to restrict themselves still more. It is, after all, the duty of the Government of this country to stand up for our people, who have borne the greatest brunt and burden of this war, and that is what, in my view, Mr. Herbert Morrison did not wholly do in the United States of America. Of course, he was faced when he got over there with a criticism about the extent of our stocks. That started in the autumn and winter of 1944, when I consented to a stock level inquiry. The Americans had all the facilities they wanted for this, and they produced what we agreed was a reasonable report on what our stock levels should be. It was thought then—I am speaking of about January, 1945—that that had been settled. When I got to Washington at Easter last year it was the first thing with which I was faced, and I again had to settle it as I hoped once and for all, so that when Mr. Morrison comes back and says that that is one of his achievements, all I have to say is that it was once one of mine. But it was not, perhaps, so final as one had thought.
I would like to know, and I think the country ought to be told, how far after these differences (which I hope are now resolved) the statement stands that
"The United States Government have now felt able to associate themselves unreservedly with the task of supplying India and the British zone of Germany to the full extent that available resources allow, and they have instructed their representatives on the Combined Food Board Board accordingly."
I am, of course, reading from Mr. Morrison's original answer in the House of Commons.
"So far as Germany is concerned they have accepted the proposition that there should not be a starving or a more under-fed British zone in Germany side by side with an American zone which is getting assured food supplies, but that both zones shall work to the same standard of rationing and shall have the same degree of assurance that their supplies will not suddenly come to an end."
I should like whoever is to reply for the Government to tell me whether that statement still stands. I do not know myself what is meant by the words "to the full extent that available resources allow." They are obviously meant by somebody to be limiting words. I hope they are not too limiting, and that they do not mean that only what is surplus when

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everybody has bought all they need will be available for the purposes indicated. Where I chiefly differ from the line that the Lord President of the Council took is in reference to some words that he used in his second reply in the House of Commons. He said:
"One passage in particular was interpreted in some quarters as implying that the United States Government had assumed specific commitments to export American wheat to particular areas, thus by-passing the established procedure by which these questions are settled through the Combined Food Board."
There are precedents for breaking that established procedure. When the then Minister of Production and I went to Washington last Easter we got direct commitments from the American Administration. We signed them as representatives of the Government, not going back through the Combined Food Board at all.
We signed agreements by which the Americans consented to come down to the same level of sugar consumption for the whole of the rest of last year as ourselves, to have the same fats consumption up to June of this current year (I think that it has got another month to go, but I really forget whether it expires tomorrow or on June 30), and by which we had an assured supply of 240,000 tons of meat from America itself in the last quarter of last year. Those were all firm commitments, not waiting for any future sanction from the Combined Food Board. I believe that that is a better way of doing business than giving away the 200,000 toils which were ear-marked for us, and which was counted on by the Ministry of Food, without getting any firm commitment in return. That is where I think he made a mistake, and that is why I think that in future, for the sake of the people of this country, he had better be kept at home. I am not sure he does a great deal of good at home, but at any rate his excursions abroad do not seem to have done us very much good:
I come to another matter—the source of the demand for extra food for Germany. I do not intend to occupy the time of the House by going into the size of those demands because my noble friend Lord Cherwell, who is to speak later in this debate, has made a study of that problem. Suffice it for me to say that the figures which I have seen quoted seem to me to be excessive in the extreme, as do some of the demands that U.N.R.R.A.
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is making. I hope that all those demands will be carefully scrutinized and compared with what the countries were exporting in the days before the war, and that consideration will also be given to all the other relevant factors that are available to the Government. I hope that those demands will be most severely pruned before we start giving away what little we have to give. Our demands have been carefully scrutinized and pruned all these years. Our stock levels have been inquired into three times, within my own personal knowledge, and it is just as well that that kind of procedure should be adopted with other demands, whether they are put forward by Mr. La Guard or anybody else.
From all reports I have been able to get, it seems that it is only the people in the large towns of Germany who are in any way suffering from the shortage of food. The rural districts get as much as they need. I am not sure, too, that a great number of the people in the towns are not in actual fact adequately fed, although statistically they may not have enough. I say that not merely because of what has appeared in the Press. I have been talking recently to two people who have been living in Germany, and they tell me—I only pass it on for what it is worth, because I have no means of checking it—that many people in Germany have taken a leaf out of the book of the Dutch and the Belgians during the time when the Germans were in occupation of those countries.
There is a very nice little system, which in those days we applauded, by which a large number of residents of those countries have more than one ration book. There is quite a considerable amount of evidence to support a prima facie case for an inquiry as to whether the ration book issue is checked with the numbers of the population. It is being done by the Germans themselves, and I saw it when I was over in Germany looking into these matters last July. We ourselves have not enough staff, but I do think that the time has come for an overall check to see whether the number of ration books issued corresponds with the numbers in the population of different areas. The noble Lord nods his head. I take that to mean that it has already been done. If so, that is one good thing. If it is not so, I throw it out as a suggestion of what should be done to cure

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this evil, if it does exist. If the evil does not exist the check will alleviate the suspicions that are growing in the minds of our people that what I have described is happening.
But the main reason for the huge demands for food from Germany, and from the West, arises from the fact that the curtain has come down on all those areas which are in the Russian zone. The Potsdam Agreement made it abundantly clear that we were going to treat Germany as a whole; if reparations were to come they were to come (in the main in machinery) from the zones in the occupation of the Americans and ourselves. To that there was a countervailing corollary that the food should still flow from the areas from which the great industrial centres of Germany had been supplied in the past. There is another matter which is accentuating this difficulty. Noble Lords may not be aware as I happen to be, because I led the British Delegation at the first meeting in Atlantic City of U.N.R.R.A., how U.N.R.R.A. came to be the supplying agency for the areas which it does supply. Those who were going to provide large sums for U.N.R.R.A.—and I per cent. of a country's annual income is a goodish sum—found on looking round, that a number of countries had gold and dollar balances which were far bigger than anything we in this country possess. It was suggested that the countries which had these balances should pay. They agreed to pay, but said, "If we pay we are going to procure the food, and we are going to distribute it."
Thus it came about that U.N.R.R.A. started by looking after only Greece, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Poland; it is quite true that Italy was later added. But three of those countries, Yugoslavia, Czechoslavia and Poland are the wrong side of the curtain to which I have referred, and if because of this we are to continue sending food supplies from the west, through U.N.R.R.A., to those countries, a state of affairs has arisen which we could not have contemplated when we were in Atlantic City in 1943. But it has arisen. I see that in some answer given by the Government to the Deputy Prime Minister of Poland the Government gave an assurance that another 17,000 tons—of wheat, I think—was just going to arrive in Gdynia. It is time, I think, that that should be looked into. Areas in the highly
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fertile valleys of the Danube, great food-producing areas, should produce a great deal more than is necessary to provide the people of those countries with all they need, and there ought to be a surplus available to help other parts of Germany which used to get their supplies from that neighbourhood.
I do not know how far we can conduct negotiations on this with the Russians, but I think we should point that out to them pretty forcibly. And I think we should go slow on letting anything go out of the other parts of Germany until the Russians agree that food should flow through from east to west as it formerly did. I think it might be time to give instructions to our representative on the Combined Food Board to question very strongly any supplies going from west to east which are going to be delivered by U.N.R.R.A. to countries on the other side of that unfortunate curtain, because it is having another effect. It is so easy to show that under the present system the Germans are better fed, under Communist auspices, than they are under the auspices of the United States or ourselves, and that ought not to be allowed to continue.
I come now to another area, that of India. Normally, India imported what she needed to import from the east and not from the west at all, and she imported rice rather than wheat. The problem there has two aspects, not always fully realized. The first is that in the last ten years the population of India has grown by more than the whole population of the British Isles, and, at the same time, they have not taken steps to see that they produce enough food for the extra 50,000,000 people. The second aspect is this, that, before Burma was occupied by the Japanese, some millions of tons of rice went each year that short haul to India from Rangoon, I think mostly to Calcutta, and I concluded arrangements with the then Secretary of State for War on the day that Rangoon fell, to have a party immediately sent into Burma. The War Office released the appropriate people, who mainly were on the Civil Affairs side, to see that all possible rice was exported from that country. I would like to know how much has been received, and whether supplies are really now beginning to flow from Burma to help to solve this Indian problem.
It was also arranged in the armistice terms with Siam, which, after all, was

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at war with us, although not at war with the United States, that by way of reparations she should deliver quite considerable amounts of rice to us. I would like to know how much was promised, how much of it has been delivered, and, if it has not arrived, I would like to ask, "Why not?" And what steps are we going to take to see that these armistice conditions are fulfilled? An ex-enemy country with a surplus of food should be made to carry out its obligations before the people of this country are asked to make more sacrifices.
In conclusion, I would like to turn to the actual terms of my Motion. They are: "That, in the opinion of this House, the standard of feeding of the people of this country should not be further reduced, but on the contrary should be improved as speedily as possible" It is so worded because it is intended to be of help in strengthening the hands of the Government. The procedure of this House is fortunately elastic enough for a Motion like this to be tabled at the appropriate time, and I believe that this is an appropriate time. Other people in the world talk about the difficulties they have with Houses of Congress, and with similar bodies, and it is well to remind the world that we have a Mother of Parliaments which has some voice in affairs. It would be a good thing if our representative on the Combined Food Board could say: "This is an opinion which has the authority of one of our Houses of Parliament." I have not the slightest doubt that if the procedure in another place allowed a Motion like this to be brought forward it would be passed unanimously there.
I worked hard and continuously for twenty-one months to ensure that the people of this country were as adequately fed as possible. I know what the advice was that was then being given to me by those very able nutritional advisers who were at the Ministry of Food, and I can well imagine what advice they are giving to the Minister to-day. We cannot afford, if we want the full energy and effort from our people, to lower our standard any more. I would like to quote a reply given by Sir Ben Smith in the House of Commons on May 15. He said:
"We have now reached the position when we have no reserve surplus to our own processing and distribution requirements, and I am not, therefore, prepared to deplete our
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stocks further in the way suggested by my honourable friend"
—who happened to be Mr. Stokes—
"since this would mean more cuts in consumption which would seriously imperil the efficiency and health of our nation."
Those are strong words from a man who was at that time in the responsible position of Minister of Food. Unfortunately, since he said that we have learned that there is to be a cut of 200,000 tons. It is quite true that the 200,000 tons is not coming out of stock, but it is corning out of what the Ministry of Food was looking to to replenish these stocks. If you have a reservoir of water, and want to get 200,000.gallons of water out of it, and water is running in only at the rate of 20,000 gallons a day it does not very much matter to you if you are the person who has to look after the water supply of the town, which depends for its water on that reservoir, whether the inlet pipe is cut for ten days, or whether you lose 200,000 gallons out of the reservoir.
I believe what has been done in Washington will bring our reserve down below the level set by the then Minister of Food. I hope it will not, but it is quite clear that the situation is serious. It is time that this House should pass a resolution such as that which I have put on the Paper to-day. I beg to move.
Moved to resolve, That, in the opinion of this House, the standard of feeding of the people of this country should not be further reduced, but on the contrary should be improved as speedily as possible.—[Lord Llewellin.]
5.39 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: My Lords, the occasion which the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, has chosen for bringing this Motion before your Lordships is certainly a propitious one, if only for the reason that we have at this moment a new Minister of Food appointed, whose future work we shall all both hopefully and hungrily observe.
The Motion which has been put down is, I am sure, intended by the noble Lord responsible for it to be in no way a hindrance but indeed a help to the new Minister in giving him indications as to the direction to which he might usefully turn his mind. The noble Lord brings to the task of speaking on this subject the dual qualification of his former positions

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as Minister Resident in Washington and as Minister of Food. To that informed and informative speech, if I may say so, to which we have just listened, it is to be hoped that not only the Minister but those outside the Legislature who read that speech will pay the attention which it deserves. It is difficult for one who has none of that invaluable experience behind him to speak on this subject, except for one reason: that this, unfortunately, is a subject that touches every individual member of the public, and we are all, therefore, in a greater or lesser degree, concerned. We have all come to the conclusion, in the course of our more recent experience, with increasing fervour, that food is a desirable, an elusive but, even under present conditions, occasionally a palatable substance, and that we do not get enough of it; also that such amount as we do get has to be obtained in circumstances of extreme difficulty by those who have to do the actual procuring of it from the shops.
But one of the great difficulties of this subject and of any discussion upon it does lie in that personal application of it, because it is fundamentally a technical question which, at the same time, makes a very personal appeal to every individual. The difficulty of anybody occupying the position of Minister of Food, and of any Government behind him, is, to a very large extent, to tell the public what is going on, why further sacrifices are necessary (as they have been in the past, and I hope will not be in the future) in terms which the public can understand. I think the country as a whole has been, during recent months, increasingly bewildered that it is now, from the point of view of food, distinctly in a worse condition than it was when the war came to an end. It was prepared for no considerable improvement for some period of time, but I think the number of people—however probable the situation may have been to the informed—who faced up in their minds to a situation in which they were going to be worse off after the conclusion of fighting than they had been during the actual hostilities, was very few; and any explanation in intelligible terms which can be given to them of that situation will be of extreme use.
I say "intelligible terms," not in criticism of the form in which any communiqués
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are issued or speeches made, except with one reservation. I do suggest, being entirely non-technical and inexpert in these matters, that from the point of view of public instruction and information we have got too much into the habit of talking in calories. Calories make a great impression upon the minds of such extremely learned persons as the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell, for instance, who is an expert in these matters; but I am bound to say that if I am told that a person in Germany is living on a certain number of calories, a person in the Argentine on another number, and I myself on yet another, I may take those facts into consideration and look at the figures, but in really tangible, solid, material terms it means completely nothing to me, and I believe it means equally little to the great bulk of the people of this country. If you could tell people in solid facts, in quantities of food and types of food, what people are living on in other countries as compared with what they are living on here, I believe you would get a great deal more understanding of the conditions here and a great deal more appreciation of the immense danger, which I believe does threaten some countries, of really serious conditions.
We turn for light and leading to the Press in this matter, and we are apt to get only light and leading articles in return. But the trouble about those articles, whether they be light or leading, is that they are generally in conflict, and it is almost impossible, with the best will in the world, and even if one had unlimited time at one's disposal for the perusal of the Press, to paint for oneself any solid and convincing picture of what the position is throughout Europe. You read one day of starving Europe; you see the next day photographs of shops fully stocked with what look to us the most desirable types of foodstuffs, and on the third day you read another article pathetically stressing the condition of the people in a third country. It is, I think, the most difficult question upon which the public is called to make up its mind, and an additional difficulty is that it is one upon which it is extremely hard to look except from a somewhat personal angle.
There is this also to be said. There is some doubt in people's minds, I think, as to whether this is really a question of essential shortage of food or whether it is a question of the failure of distribution

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of such foods as actually exist. I am not saying—I have not the knowledge or the information behind me—whether there is any substance in that view, but I think it is a view which is present in the minds of a number of people. Each one of us could give, probably from his own experience or the experience of people who have recently been travelling abroad, the sort of information that comes back. I have talked only recently to a responsible observer who has lately returned from the Far East and whose view was that there was shipping at Singapore, there was labour in Malaya and there was food in Burma, and if the three could be got together you would solve your problem of distribution and its fundamentals, and would then be in a position to put food upon the market. I cannot test that type of information, but it is a feeling which is very prevalent in people's minds, and one cannot help wondering sometimes whether there may not be some substance in it, more especially as in a country like France there has been some substantial improvement, I believe, in the food position over what it was in the original days, increasing in 'proportion as communications were put into action, more bridges built, railway lines renewed and the flow of food towards the urban centres which required it from the country districts once more re-established. I hope that the Government will see their way to accept this Resolution. For my own part, I fully share the view which it enshrines, namely, that this country should be asked to make no further sacrifices in the way of food.
I want to refer to one more point only, the point which the noble Lord raised at an early stage in his speech when he was talking about the Combined Food Board. He spoke of the undesirability of having a food Tsar, and with that expression of opinion I entirely associate myself. But he went on to express some doubt as to the feasibility or desirability of the kind of body which was being discussed to exercise overall control over the food situation. There he touched upon ground which I had ventured to cover on former occasions in talking to your Lordships and suggesting that what was required was something over and above the Combined Food Board, something not strictly upon the lines but on the same sort of model as the Supreme Economic Council which was established at the end of the
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last war, which could co-ordinate the work of the Combined Food Board and the food agencies in the various countries concerned and give them a direction into the most necessary channels by diverting those channels as priorities required. In spite of the noble Lord's instructive criticism of that proposal, I still believe that it merits the very closest attention of the Government and of the Governments associated with it. Net only is it, I think, necessary to establish priorities on an overall basis, but at the same time it is necessary to enlist not merely the detached interest but the active co-operation of far more countries than are represented on the Combined Food Board in order to secure their co-operation in the whole work of the pooling of the resources of the world for the benefit of those parts of the world which are, in the best opinion, those most in need of them at any particular time.
5.53 p.m.
LORD AMMON: My Lords, I want to express my thanks to be noble Lord who initiated this debate for a very helpful speech and also to express my gratitude to him for the generous reference he has made to my old colleague and friend, Sir Ben Smith, in his retirement. It looks to me as though this may be one of the cases, which are not unknown, where one may sow and others may reap. Anyway, we appreciate very much the noble Lord's tribute to him. Let me assure the noble Lord that His Majesty's Government have the very greatest sympathy with the objects put forward in the Resolution he has submitted and we fully appreciate the hardships and suffering of our people at the present time. We are conscious too —and I want to pay tribute to it—of the very great loyalty with which they have obeyed and supported he regulations. The fact that there is no considerable Black Market in this country is about the highest tribute which can possibly be paid to people under such conditions. It is the hope of His Majesty' Government that as soon as possible something may be done to relieve the growing weariness of austerity and the eternal queues.
I might say, too, with reference to some points raised by the noble Lord—and he will understand me—that it is better to leave them as he has said them, with his weight of authority and experience, rather than that I should further comment

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upon them. Some of the points that he raised will be answered probably more fully by my noble friend the Leader of the House who will close the debate. My main purpose is to give your Lordships some idea of the food stocks which we have in hand so that the public may be re-assured that there is no slackness in endeavouring to see that everything possible is done to meet the needs of the situation.
With regard to the point he raised about the statements made by the Lord President of the Council, the only answer one can give is that the Lord President has made another statement in another place reaffirming his previous statement. I do not think one can comment on that; one must let it speak for itself and accept it, as I am sure we shall, in that manner. As to the other points which he raised, such as the ration books and the position in the Russian Zone, if that information can be got, it will be given to him before the close of the debate.
I would be very willing to accept the Motion submitted by the noble Lord subject to the clear understanding that it expresses the view of your Lordships' House as to the desirability of maintaining and improving the standard of feeding of the people of this country and that it does not in any way convey the understanding that there will be no further restrictions or limitations of our present food supplies. In face of the world food situation which now confronts us, that is an undertaking which no Government could possibly give. No one could possibly guarantee that all the items of food supply for which we depend upon other countries and upon the unpredictable chances of weather and harvest yields will in fact be available. Nor can we commit ourselves to a declaration that no further reductions of our supplies will take place, if that carries the implication that in no circumstances could we share even the smallest fraction of our food supplies with anyone else, even if he were starving. That has never been, and I trust will never be, the attitude of the British nation. Besides, we have to bear in mind that we carry a large measure of responsibility for the procurement of food for people outside this island—for countries in our Empire and Commonwealth such as India and South-East Asia, and for the population in our zone of Germany,
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who are subsisting on rations far lower than our own. Weary though we be of austerity, we cannot ignore these responsibilities.
With those understandings, all of which are I think quite reasonable, there will be no difficulty in accepting the Resolution put forward by the noble Lord. As the noble Lord knows—and nobody knows better than he does—the world is passing through a period of acute food shortage. Hundreds of millions are going hungry and not a few are in danger of starvation. In such a situation we cannot demand any large expansion of the food supply to this country.
I will now, with your Lordships' permission, give an indication of how we stand with regard to the commodities at present in this country. I am afraid the statement will be dull because the matters I now propose to bring before the House are like a provision dealer's stock-taking. Your Lordships know for instance, the position in regard to butter and cheese. The ration of the former commodity has been raised and the ration of the second has been kept up for a month longer than in former years. It is good news to know that at least one queue has disappeared, the fish queue, and that there is now a plentiful supply of fish. In fact in the first four months of this year fish supplies were seventy-five per cent. higher than in 1945. It is estimated that the fish supplies during 1946 will provide twenty-six pounds of edible fish per head of the whole population. I have been told that since queues have disappeared and supplies have been plentiful there has been quite a remarkable improvement in the manners and courtesy of fishmongers! I perhaps should say in that connexion that the Ministry of Food has recently taken advantage of this situation to licence an increased number of retail fishmongers' shops and hawkers' vehicles.
Now I take a long jump from fish to sugar. Sugar is one of the foods of which there is at present a world shortage. But we are continuing to maintain this year with Canada the Tripartite Agreement which operated last year between the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States of America, under which sugar was shared out equally. As a result of the reduction in Service demands and in supplies to brewers and bakers and flour

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confectioners, we have been able to give the public a little extra sweetening in other directions. More sugar is also being allocated for ice-cream and soft drinks, and for commercial jam manufacture.
During the present four-week period the public are being granted two pounds of jam per head instead of one pound, and it is expected that the extra sugar allowed to jam manufacturers will enable this concession to be repeated later on in the year. Manufacture is about to commence in this country of some 12,000 tons of grapefruit marmalade. I should say that there is an arrangement for a shipment of ginger in syrup from China and of crystallised fruits and glace cherries from France.
LORD LLEWELLIN: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, and I do not expect an answer now, but would he make representations to the Minister of Food that the sugar for jam be issued as soon as possible? I am told it is being issued rather too late. Some of the soft fruit is ready now, and a lot of people would like the sugar now.
LORD AMMON: I will certainly do that. I think it will be agreed there is not so much complaint on the quantity or even the quality of the food, and some of these things will help to relieve the dullness of the diet.
The tea ration has been maintained at 2¢ ounces every week since it was raised to this figure at the end of July last. We expect tea production to show an increase next spring, with a revival of output by the Dutch East Indies. We have good stocks of coffee, especially of the good qualities, and distribution is 140 per cent. of the pre-war level. As regards cocoa, the whole world supply for the next few years is none too good.
Next I will deal with potatoes. There are ample supplies, and there will be enough to meet all food requirements until the new crop comes in. Indeed, we have been able to spare 80,000 tons for the British zone of Germany, to help them out in their present grave food shortage. During the first six months of this year, up to the end of June, the total quantity of shell eggs will be over 100,000 tons, enough to provide thirty-five allocations to the ordinary consumer, in addition to supplying priorities at the rate of three eggs a week, and meeting the demands of
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the Services, ships' stores, etc. From the middle of June, it is proposed to increase the allocation of manufacturing meat by 1,250 tons a week. This is equal to increasing the sausage supply by 2,500 tons a week. Further varieties of canned meats, both home and imported, are also becoming available on points.
As regards drinks, it will no doubt be of interest to mention that supplies of soft drinks are being maintained at above the pre-war level. Cider is being produced at the pre-war rate. The consumption of liquid milk has been steadily on the increase ever since the introduction of the national milk scheme. This year we were able to increase the allowance to non-priority consumers from two to two-and-a-half pints weekly a full month earlier than was done last year, and the rise to three pints was again a fortnight earlier. With the continued rise in the birth-rate, and the demobilization of the Forces, it is expected that by September the demand for liquid milk will be 5,000,000 gallons a month bigger than in September of last year. I am told there are other beverages than lemonade and milk in which some people may be interested.
In the interests of grain economy, we have had to cut down brewing to ninety per cent. of the pre-war standard barrel-age, though at present densities this gives more than the pre-war bulk barrelage. I think they used to call that arms and legs. During this year it is expected to bring in, from the Continent and the Dominions, some 1,500 tons of brandy, compared with pre-war imports of 2,000 tons, and 37,755 tons of wine, a little more than half the pre-war average; also some well-matured rum, enough to provide two years' consumption at the prewar rate. Everybody seems to be catered for and a good many satisfied.
Turning to the question of cereals, that is not so good a story. One does not want to go over the whole history of it again, because the record was set out recently in the White Paper on the world food shortage, Command Paper 6785, which was published last month. I might say that even countries that are normally granaries and exporters of cereals, such as Poland and the Ukraine, have become supplicants for supplies. China, devastated by nearly fifteen years of war, seeks rice. Burma's rice fields had gone to

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waste under Japanese occupation. There were droughts in Africa and the Argentine, and finally the failure of the monsoon in India, created a vast new demand for grain. So far as the United Kingdom is concerned, the effect of this has been that with demands for cereals vastly exceeding supplies, we have not been able to ensure that we should maintain our stocks at the level we consider desirable. We have to take our place in the queue with regard to many of these things, but the suppliers can look past our shoulder at the pinched and hungry faces of those coming behind and limit their allotments to us accordingly. That is in fact what has been happening.
We are further handicapped because we have been responsible for pressing on America, not only our own claims, but the claims of famine-stricken India and of the British zone of Germany. Her retort has been to insist that we should contribute to the needs of those countries out of our own residual stocks. Faced with this demand, we have taken drastic measures to meet the situation. We have successively raised our extraction rate from eighty per cent. to ninety per cent. We have cut down the standard loaf from 2 pounds to 1¾ pounds. We have cut biscuits and cakes by twenty-five per cent. We have made big cuts in the barley used for brewing and distilling. We have taken measures to increase our domestic wheat production. We have undertaken a great publicity campaign to urge economy and avoidance of waste of bread. We are prepared, if need be, to take even more drastic measures to eke out our bread supply. I think it worth while that that statement should go out to critics in other countries, in order that they may realize the efforts being made at home here.
With regard to the British zone of Germany one of the factors in this situation, though by no means the only one, is our responsibility for seeing that the population in our zone of Germany is fed. Normally its bread supply would be drawn from the corn lands of Eastern Germany, but at present nothing is coming from that source, and it is not certain whether there is anything that could come. Our zone includes the most highly industrialized part of Germany, the Ruhr Basin, and the bulk of the population are living under urban conditions, wholly dependent on their food rations.
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Those rations are extremely meagre—so meagre that among Germans held by us in prisoner-of-war camps and fed only on them, hunger œdema appeared to an alarming extent. If we failed to maintain even this meagre level of rations, we should be turning the Ruhr into another Belsen. I doubt if there is anyone in this country, however strongly he condemns the Germans, who would wish to imitate the Beast of Belsen. Not only are we morally bound to keep these Germans fed: there is also the legal obligation resting on us under international law to ensure the feeding of people whose countries we are occupying as an act of war. We condemned the Germans for their breach of that law when they were occupying Greece, and left the Greeks to starve. We cannot be guilty of a similar illegality.
Self-interest also compels us to keep the Germans from starving. If their food supply falls to a level that leads to not and disorder, we shall need to increase very considerably our occupying Forces, with a corresponding setback to our own industry. And the collapse of coal production in the Ruhr will be a disaster to the reviving industries of France and the Low Countries. In so far, therefore, as our sacrifices of wheat supplies have been brought about by the necessity to preserve a minimum food standard in our zone in Germany, they are much the lesser of two evils. They are the only possible course of wise statesmanship.
May I say in conclusion that during the six years of austerity in this country, the health of the nation has improved, its mortality rates, especially those relating to infants and mothers, have declined to new low records, and the health of children and their weight and height have given encouraging returns. We shall all be glad to see the end of austerity. His Majesty's Government will do everything possible to hasten that end. But if in face of the present world famine we have to continue to endure some measure of it for a period, or even to face some added hardship, we can console ourselves with the knowledge that, as a nation, we have not suffered physical damage from our privations, and could indeed endure worse without disaster.
6.14 p.m.
LORD GRENFELL: My Lords, in rising to support the Motion of my noble

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friend Lord Llewellin, I should like first of all to give your Lordships the impression of one coming back to this country after being abroad for a good many years. I think one gets impressions of one's own people rather more acutely when one has been out of the country and then returns to it, than if one has been here all the time. The outstanding impression I got on my return was definitely one of tiredness. There may have been a good deal of what we call "war-weariness," but I am convinced that a certain degree of that was connected with the food problem. There can be no doubt, I think, that this country gave through the war, and is still giving, in proportion to its size and its population, as regards food, more than any other country in the world. If we look back to the period between the two wars we recall how we supported the League of Nations and the principle of disarmament to a great degree, in fact to such a degree that, as a consequence, we very nearly lost this last war. I am rather nervous lest we may lead in this giving up of food now to much the same degree as we led in supporting the principle of disarmament after the 1914–18 war, and that we may give away those most essential things, the health and the future recovery of our nation.
I do not say that we are starving to-day in any way, but I do feel that in order to get that recovery, that is to say, to get the coal out of the pits, to get the workmen in all the heavy industries and in the factories to produce what we want, it is not exhortation that is needed—it is more food. Those workers are working hard, so are the housewives, and I feel absolutely convinced that the more we can do to increase the amount of food that is made available, the quicker will be our recovery. The recovery of England, I hold, is one of the essential factors to the peace of the world. That is really the important side of the matter. We must not give up too much, for I think that a good many nations are rather sitting back now and saying: "Oh, we needn't worry, the British Empire will keep us going." The moment must come when we must say: "Thus far and no further," and in my own mind I feel that that moment has come to-day.
6.17 p.m.
LORD CHERWELL: My Lords, I agree in very many ways with what has
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been said by my noble friend Lord Grenfell. When I intervened in the debate which we had on this subject on February 20, I expressed surprise at the suddenness with which the food crisis had overwhelmed the Government, and asked how it was possible to reconcile the figures which had been displayed in the White Paper (to which Lord Ammon has referred), for the needs of the various regions with the numbers of inhabitants of those regions. I rise to-day to reiterate broadly the questions which I put then. We are told that we are suffering from a world food shortage, that demands exceed supply, that the position is most grave. But our statistics are bully, as I believe them to be, those conclusions are completely invalid. On this occasion, it is true, we have not got a White Paper. But authoritative figures have been given for the supposed minimum needs of various parts of the world.
To show why I doubt the statistics that have been put before us, I propose to examine one particular figure, namely the tonnage of wheat which it is alleged that Europe requires between now and the harvest. It is easy to show that this quantity would suffice to feed completely more than half the total population of Continental Europe on this side of the iron curtain. And surely nobody thinks that anything like this number of persons in Europe are totally devoid of home-grown food or reserves of any sort or description. May it not be possible that many of the demands on which the requirements are based have been exaggerated, and that the position really is not so black as it is painted?
I hope that to-day the Government will be a little more generous with their information. Surely it is only fair that this country, which has been subjected to so many privations all through the war and disappointed in its hope of easement now that victory has been won, should be told not only which countries are giving food, but which countries are getting it. We are indeed anxious to help others in urgent need, even at great personal sacrifice. But surely we are entitled to know who is in urgent need, and to whom help is to be given? The snippets of news given in the Press, which may or may not be exact, do not suffice to build up a coherent picture of what is happening. Let me turn to the specific instance—Mr. Hoover's estimate, widely quoted in the

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Press on May 14, that Europe's minimum needs for wheat between that date and the end of September are 839,000,000 tons. I do not say this figure is wrong, but I do say that it needs a great deal of explanation. I know that the quantitative approach is not very popular. Broad, sweeping generalizations, usually based upon ill-observed single instances have far greater emotional appeal. But I hope your Lordships will bear with me while I rehearse a little elementary arithmetic.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DOMINION AFFAIRS (VISCOUNT ADDISON): Not 800,000,000 tons surely?
LORD CHERWELL: 8.39 million tons. I apologize.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: That is better.
LORD CHERWELL: I do not know whether the rules of arithmetic have been nationalized, or whether perhaps some studies of dialectic materialism have transformed the multiplication table. Only some such explanation can possibly account for the incongruity of the figures which I propose to examine! To avoid the possibility of question I will display the very simple calculation step by step. I am afraid that I shall have to fail in courtesy to the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, and work in calories.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: I shall admire it the more.
LORD CHERWELL: It is extremely difficult to compare food values of different types of food unless one has some common measure on which to compare, for instance, the nourishment which can be derived from an apple or a bunch of grapes with that of a lobster or a pound of caviare. I am selecting foodstuffs which I hope will be familiar to the noble Lord. The activities of all living creatures are derived from chemical energy which is produced by the digestion of their food. Warm-blooded creatures—and human beings are no exception to the rule—require extra heat, in order to maintain their body temperature above that of their surroundings. It is commonly stated that about 2,000 calories a day are sufficient for the average adult. Anything below 1,500 calories is probably inadequate. The ration at Belsen, I believe, was equivalent to about 800 calories a day. Let us assume that 1,600 calories a day is sufficient for
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minimum needs. One pound of wheat produces about 1,600 calories. With one pound of wheat a day, therefore—that is 1,600 calories a day—we may take it that nobody need starve.
Now the point which I hope the Government spokesman will be able to elucidate is as follows. Mr. Hoover gave estimates for the minimum needs of various countries between May 15 and September 30. Between those dates there are 138 days. If one pound a day is sufficient for the minimum needs of one person we must reckon 138 lb. per person during that interval. And since there are 2,240 lb. to the ton each ton of wheat supplied should suffice for the minimum needs between May 15 and September 30 of just over sixteen people. But Mr. Hoover says that the minimum requirements of Europe for this period are 8,390,000 tons. Since each ton will suffice for just over sixteen people, these so-called minimum demands will feed sixteen times 8.39 million people, that is 136,000,000 people who have nothing else whatsoever to live upon. Is it contended that there are really 136,000,000 people in Europe to-day entirely without any sort of food? This is what the statement that Europe's minimum needs are 8.39 million tons, implies. The total population of Europe this side of the iron curtain is only 200,000,000, allowing half for Germany and Austria. It is not clear whether any supplies to the United Kingdom are included in the 8.39 million. I sincerely hope there may be some; but even if we were allowed 7 million tons the remaining 7,700,000 would be sufficient to feed completely 124,000,000 people for the four and a half months in question.
This result is sufficiently curious as it stands, but there are other factors which make it even more incongruous. The first arises from the fact, stressed during our debate in February by the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay. He intervened to say that the rural population of Europe was not badly off, and that he was concerned mainly for the townspeople who were in danger of starvation. That was the point which my noble friend Lord Llewellin made just now. And that the rural population has plenty of food seems to be confirmed by all the evidence. I have spoken to natives of many of the countries of Western Europe, and to travellers returning from those parts, and they all confirm that the countryside is

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well off and that it is in the large towns where there are food shortages.
It is admittedly rather arbitrary to say what is a large town. Suppose we take as a basis towns of half a million inhabitants. In England there are many towns with a population of over half a million. In England 12,500,000 people live in towns which have a population of over 500,000; 8.2 million live in London alone. But on the Continent, apart from Russia, only 35,000,000 people, in peacetime, live in cities of this size. Of these 22,000,000 are in Western Europe and 13,000,000 are behind the iron curtain. We must remember, however, that these numbers have been reduced considerably, since the 11,000,000 Germans in large cities have already dispersed themselves to a great extent owing to the destruction of their homes by bombardment. But even if we take the whole of this 35,000,000 and assume that they have not one single pound of food apart from the wheat which Mr. Hoover is anxious to give them, 2.15 million tons would suffice to give them all one pound of wheat per day, which is equivalent to 1,600 calories. Why then do we require 8.39 million tons?
It may be said that I ought to have included people in towns with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants. Even if we go down to 50,000, and assume that there is no food whatsoever for people in towns of over 50,000, less than 3,000,000 tons would be required to feed all the people in those towns on this side of the iron curtain—as opposed to the 8.39 million which are said to be the minimum needs. But as the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin said, the assumption that the people in these towns have no food is wide of the facts.
I do not want to go into the question of the Black Market, although from all accounts this flourishes exceedingly in all parts of the Continent. In one country, I am told, it is cheaper to buy in the Black Market than to buy on the ration. Apart from that, town dwellers are, quite legitimately, getting a certain amount of food over and above their rations from friends and relatives in the country. Most of them have some sort of connexions in the districts around the towns, and it would be very strange and shocking if they received no help from them. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin said, there is considerable doubt whether there
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are not many multiple ration cards in circulation. I read a report the other day that in one province, Schleswig-Holstein, more than one and a half times as many ration cards had been issued as the total pre-war population of the province. There is more evidence that people get more than the 1,050 calories a day with which they are credited. This emerges when we consider the conditions in some of the internment camps. There was one such camp for Nazis whore, owing to shortages, we reduced the ration to 1,250 calories. That was really all they had. We were told that they instantly began to show signs of starvation, whereas people outside who were ostensibly getting only 1,050 calories a day appeared to be perfectly healthy and happy. Obviously, if the townspeople are getting extra food off the ration, then the minimum requirements for extra food required from outside might be reduced below 1,600 calories a day, and Mr. Hoover's figures would be more mystifying than ever.
In any event, as the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, said, I think the people of this country are entitled to be given some detailed explanation. Surely we should be told where all this food is going. Russia, we hear, has abolished bread rationing, and reduced the price. She, at any rate, cannot be on the list. With regard to all the countries under her ægis, Poland, Finland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and those parts which used to be great exporting countries, surely Russia ought to look after them, instead of asking us to supply food to those regions? I should have thought that they had a prior claim on Russia to the French to whom she gave large amounts of wheat—admittedly just before the referendum.
Where, then, are the 136,000,000 with no food whatsoever, whose needs are stated to be 8.39 million tons? Quite frankly I am not impressed by the statistics which have been published in the Press. A figure like 8.39 million tons—not 8.4 million—gives an impression of great accuracy, as though everything had been worked out to the nearest 10,000 tons. I believe this to be spurious, and indeed, it makes me extremely suspicious. Figures exact to one-eighth of 1 per cent. cannot be derived from any calculations; they can only be obtained by adding up demands from all sorts of sources. How do we know that: we can trust those demands, when we know that they come from all sorts of foreign

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countries, each one anxious to prove that it should obtain the biggest possible allocation? I have the best of reasons for knowing how difficult it is to get accurate figures, even when dealing with highly trained, absolutely disinterested honest British civil servants. It is very difficult for me to believe that figures can be trusted which allege that 136,000,000 people in Europe are utterly without home-grown food or reserves for the next four and a half months. It may be said that these are not the Government's figures, but are figures produced in America. But it seems to me that they are the figures on which the Combined Food Board is working. If that is so, I do think we are entitled, before we are asked to give up more food, to press the Combined Food Board to give us the exact figures and to justify the exact figures.
I personally cannot see that there should be any difficulty or objection to stating country by country, what amounts have been asked for and what amounts have been allocated. The figures must have been produced, otherwise the Combined Food Board cannot come to any conclusion. If they are right, nobody has anything to be ashamed of. Why not tell us what they are? The Lord President said the other day that it would not be convenient to state how much was being sent from the various exporting countries. I confess I find this rather difficult to understand. The figures must be known. Why should there be any secrecy about a perfectly normal transaction of this nature? At any rate, let us know where the food is going, if we cannot be told whence it is coming. Anyone who has been through the war will recall innumerable heartrending pleas from all sorts of quarters for men or munitions, vehicles or food, supported usually by most convincing arguments, and terrifying predictions and warnings of the dire results which would follow if these minimum requirements were not met. Of course, in total these so-called minimum requirements far exceeded the capacity of the country, and it was no pleasant task to have to scale them down. But it had to be done, and at the end of a process of searching, and what was often regarded as hostile criticism, all the demands were in the end brought within the limits of what was possible. And although they were enormously reduced,
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I cannot recall one case in which the dire results which had been threatened materialized.
I am irresistibly reminded of these experiences by these claims now made upon the food supplies of the world. Even the superficial examination of this one instance, which was feasible, in the absence of details about the others, seems to reveal, to put it mildly, considerable room for doubt as to their accuracy and validity. If I am right, and they are exaggerated, then the situation is not so black as it is painted, and we can all rejoice together. If I am wrong, then, at any rate, the Government might explain the apparent discrepancies, and set at rest the minds of all those who, like myself, find it difficult to form a coherent picture from the inadequate and scrappy bits of information which reach us at intervals through the Press.
The British people do not like to be driven in blinkers. They will face difficulties and hardships with a good heart if they understand what it is all about. There are plenty of people in this country who have themselves done the elementary sums which I have brought to your Lordships' attention this afternoon, and I am sure that many of them find it extremely difficult to understand how and why these constantly recurring crises in the food situation arise. Surely it would be in the Government's interest to set out the facts of the case simply and straightforwardly without any beating about the bush. Broad generalizations and talk about bad harvests and acts of God are not enough. Let us have the exact facts and figures. Once they are convinced that the need is real, and that the quantities demanded are really essential, the people of this country will, I am sure, not shrink from any sacrifice that may be necessary.
6.36 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I am afraid my intervention in this debate to-day, following the speech which we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell, is really in the nature of descending from the sublime to the ridiculous, because I have no intention of making a speech. I only want to ask His Majesty's Government a question. On March 6 we had a debate in this House on reciprocal economic aid in the British Commonwealth. On that occasion I made what I may call an extremely good

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speech! I am not sure that anybody else thought so. But I did try in that speech to stress the contribution which the Colonies, and more especially the East African Colonies, could make to this question of world food supplies. I pointed out that the production in these Colonies was extremely low compared with what it could be with a certain amount of encouragement and organization on the part of the Colonial Office and the Government. The only reason I again raise this question is that somebody else must have read that speech, because I have had confirmation from East Africa that what I said was, to a great extent, true. I am not going to repeat that speech now.
There is an enormous amount of food which can be procured from East Africa, and I have had confirmation of that from various people in the territories of East Africa, who have taken the trouble to write and say, "You are perfectly right." In particular, with regard to meat, by taking a lot of the surplus cattle away from the country, you would very greatly improve the general agricultural position of those countries. All I want to do is to ask the Government if they have had any confirmation. It would be too much to ask if they had considered the suggestions that I. made, because, frankly, I do not see why they should. But they were good ones. I want to know if they have had any confirmation that the possible food supplies from East Africa could be very greatly increased, and whether they are going to do anything about it. Because the whole point of what I said in March and what I say now is that what is required is very speedy action on the part of the Government. I am afraid, after the marvellous speech we have heard from Lord Cherwell, that this is "a bit of a come down"; but I have given notice of this question and I hope I may be able to get some answer.
6.42 p.m.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: My Lords, I am sure that all of us must feel glad that we have had this discussion, and that we are greatly indebted to the noble Lord for initiating it. May I refer first to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell, which warmed my heart. I am afraid the scepticism towards figures which he has displayed more than once in your Lordships' House is fully shared by myself. What has struck me so often and so
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painfully in the large number of examinations we have had to make of his question has been that one could rarely get the same group of figures on the same subject a week in succession. The variations in the figures that have been supplied are as remarkable as the analysis of the statistics which the noble Lord himself made, and it is extremely difficult to assess them fairly. Nevertheless, I assure him, I was exceedingly interested in his analysis of the figures, and I hope that that analysis, which I am sure is arithmetically correct, although I did not check it, will be widely studied both at home and abroad, because I am certain it would have a most wholesome effect.
It is true, too, that the demands which have been made as from one country to another have varied extraordinarily, and one has wondered sometimes whether the claims that have been put forward have not been the result of an admixture of political with economic motives. It is exceedingly difficult, as the noble Lord very rightly says, to lave firm knowledge in these matters. But at all events, we are not responsible for the figures to which he referred, and, quite frankly, I myself hope very sincerely that they will be subject to searching re-examination. If they are, it may be helpful to the world. And that does not apply only to that group of figures, by any means.
We are told—and nobody knows it better than the noble Lord sitting opposite me—that there are commercial and other objections to the publication of figures. Not being a commercial man myself, but rather, shall I say, endowed with a professional prejudice, I invariably approach those arguments with the same scepticism as the noble Lord who has just spoken. I do hope that it will be possible very soon—I will not put it any earlier than that—to give some more reliable guiding figures. I quite agree with the noble Lord that it would be altogether an advantage if they could first be obtained and then published provided they are reliable. But always the difficulty which makes one hesitate about publishing them is that they seem to vary so much. One is afraid to commit oneself to publication of figures until one is sure they are correct.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: Have we not these figures, at any rate? Before the war every country published figures of

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its exports of staple commodities—not only the aggregate exports per month, but the countries of destination to which they were going. That, at least, we could have.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: My noble friend Lord Nathan reminds me that it has been pointed out in our White Papers that many of those figures were not accurate, and, as a matter of fact, very few countries, so far as I know, have yet recovered enough from the miseries and disorders of the war to have accumulated figures with any degree of accuracy. Quite honestly, and without in the least trying to evade the point, the figures have varied so remarkably that the hesitation in putting out any particular body of them is justified. At the same time, of course, we do know our own requirements, and also we know the destinations of the various cargoes which have been dealt with by the Combined Food Board. For the present I am afraid I am not in a position to reveal them. I can say this, however: that the figures of food allotted to the different countries of Europe and outside it by the Combined Food Board have been very much less than the total demand. I consider that that is justified, because I am sure that from some countries the total demand was greatly exaggerated. Anyhow, the figures for the Combined Food Board have been very much cut clown. And we ourselves are suffering in the process—it is no good blinking our eyes to that fact.
But it is not simply the figures of the allocations which are perplexing; it is what is actually shipped. As a matter of fact, taking transatlantic shippings, some of the present difficulties arise out of the fact that the actual movements of supplies have been very much less than anticipations—far less. That has given rise very largely to the stringency at the present time. It is through no fault of ours—I do not say it is anybody's fault—but that is the fact. It is also true—and I was very glad indeed that Lord Llewellin spoke with the frankness he did on this subject—that there have been countries, some of which he mentioned, whose deprivations appear to have been trivial or non-existent, and where the amount of food fed, for example, not only to human beings but to animals, has been, I believe, even larger
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than it was in pre-war days. That means, of course, that there is less to export. He spoke with that degree of freedom which he is happily able to exercise, but which I am afraid I am not quite able to imitate. However, I welcomed what he said and I hope it will be pondered in different parts of the world across the seas.
It is a fact, as we all know—it is no good pretending it is not—that whilst the British people have been depriving themselves, standing in queues and suffering all manner of inconveniences for years and years, a good many of these people have suffered hardly any inconveniences at all. That is the simple truth, and it is not unnatural that we should feel that we should like to see others make a more substantial contribution to meeting the world shortage. Anyhow, I was rather comforted when I heard the noble Lord speaking and I do not wish in any way to detract from the force of his observations. I can say that we are making now very substantial efforts to get increased supplies from the South American continent. There is a strong mission in the Argentine at the present moment and I hope we shall very soon get considerable supplies from that country, because at the moment the supplies of cereals from across the Atlantic are mainly derived from the United States and Canada. I hope that we shall find increased supplies coming at all events from the Argentine before long.
I should like to associate myself with what the noble Lord said about the Dominions. He said, "You ask for something and they send you more." As to that, one of the Dominion Ministers, in a friendly conversation with me the other day, was telling me how he had explained the British Commonwealth method of working to an enquirer. He put it in terms of the late Prime Minister and said, "If Winston had told me to do something, I should have told him to go away, but if he had asked me to do something I should have said 'Yes, I will do it, and I will do more'." I think it is true to say that in no case have we asked the Dominions for help but that they have done all we have asked and more besides. They are at present rationing themselves in order to help us.
In this connexion perhaps I might say a word about the inquiry which the noble

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Lord, Lord Llewellin, addressed to me with regard to rice supplies in India and adjoining countries. He referred to the arrangement which was made with Siam for what was called "free rice." That was one of those arrangements which looked very well on paper, but which did not actually work. The arrangement was that, as a war reparation, Siam was to supply so many thousands of tons of rice free of cost. But the rice was in the interior of Siam and the people who had it did not want to give it up for nothing. The Government of Siam could only get it from them by giving them pieces of paper which the people did not want, because they could not buy goods with them—in other words they had no faith in the currency. The result was that the rice remained in the interior of Siam and we have had to abandon the "free rice" dream, for it was a dream, because it is not forthcoming on that basis and it has got to be paid for. How has it to be paid for? Unfortunately, the writ of the Siamese Government, just like its currency, does not seem to run very far from the capital.
We have had a very strong Committee working for many months past, under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Nathan and, largely by the efforts of himself and his colleagues here, combined with those of Lord Killearn out there, I am glad to tell the House that the organization has been put on a much better basis. What the Siamese people want is something they can buy; in other words, they want consumer goods which they can get in exchange for the pieces of paper offered to them by their Government. Therefore we have had to organize the sending out of large supplies of consumer goods to Siam in order to get the rice. I am glad to say that, thanks to the combined efforts of this organization, the rice is now coming along. The exports from Siam in the last four months were—leaving out the odd figures—32,000 tons, 31,000 tons, 14,000 tons and 36,000 tons—that is up to the end of April. So that we got out 114,000 tons in those four months and I am glad to say that supplies are coming along much better now. In Burma supplies are coming forward much better. The total amount of rice which has been obtained from there in the last four months is 107,000 tons and supplies are gradually improving. That organization is now, I am glad to say,
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beginning to work very efficiently. That affords an excellent illustration of the difference between paper arrangements and realities. It is only by the export of consumer goods, the provision of shipping facilities, transport facilities from the interior to the coast and a hundred other realities that supplies are gradually being obtained.
With regard to East Africa, I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, made a good speech. I remember listening to it and admiring it very much. One result was that when I went back to my office I examined the map of Tanganyika more carefully than I had done before. So far as the meat position there is concerned, I understand that certain difficulties arose, which have not yet been overcome, owing to the termination of the war. Apparently the demobilized troops, on going back to their villages and settlements, use their war gratuities to purchase cattle, and they thereby take them off the market. There is another thing which has happened. During the war the natives were required to make deliveries according to certain specified requirements, and since the War those requirements have, of course, had to be suspended. However, alternative means of securing supplies are now being developed rapidly and I understand they are coming forward but it will take some considerable time to get the supplies forward through the former channels. I understand the difficulties are largely due to these habits of the people which are associated with their return to their native places.
The noble Marquess, Lord Reading, raised a point which I am sure is in everybody's mind—it has been in mine. How is it that a year after the war is theoretically over, we are still suffering these deprivations? That is a question which a good many of us have asked ourselves, and other people too. There are certain obvious reasons for it. It must be remembered that during the war the shipping and the supplies were deliberately and properly diverted to these shores for our own supply, many of which have now had to go elsewhere. For instance, there is now considerable shipping to various parts of the Continent, even to Japan, Italy and other places, which were not, of course, the case during the war. And there has been a great diversion of shipping and of supplies of food to many other

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destinations which was not the case during the war.
It is a fact, notwithstanding the versions which the noble Lord suggested, that there really have been droughts; there really have been bad spells of weather in very extensive districts; there really have been floods in various parts of India as opposed to droughts. In fact there really have been these calamities which have greatly reduced world supplies coming forward. There is no doubt about the truth of that. The changeover in shipping destination, and a series of entirely unforeseen large-scale calamities which have diminished supplies, have all contributed to this unhappy result.
With regard to the supplies in Western Europe, I am afraid that what the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, said about the iron curtain is unhappily true, that supplies are not coming from the Danube Valley for the supply of Western Germany and other parts, as they did normally in prewar times. I agree with him too that Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland could quite properly look to those districts for their feeding stuffs, and I think too that we must continue to hope that we shall get some across the border into our area, because Western Germany, of course, was not the main producing area.
As to the statements made with respect to the visit to the U.S.A. of the Lord President of the Council, the noble Lord has read the statements. They are correct statements, and I have nothing to say with regard to them except that I do not agree, if I may say so, with the suggestion which I think came from the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, that it might have been better if he had not gone, or words to that effect.
LORD LLEWELLIN: It was I who made the suggestion.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: I beg the noble Marquess's pardon, and I say to the noble Lord, that on the contrary—very much on the contrary—the Lord President of the Council has rendered an immense service to this country by going there. So far as the feeding of the western zones in Germany is concerned, the statement the noble Lord made is perfectly correct. There have been inequalities, and it is agreed that they should be supplied on a
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similar and equal basis, which is exceedingly valuable so far as we are concerned. Let me say this, that whilst I think it is true that the country people in our zone seem mostly well fed, so far as people who have been there and have seen them tell us, yet it is of first-rate importance that the state of affairs in the parts of Germany occupied by ourselves, the United States of America and France, should not deteriorate, and that they should be economically self-supporting as far as possible. We do not want it to be the fact that the parts of Germany for which we are responsible are the most unhappy parts of Germany. There are all sorts of far-reaching international difficulties which might arise out of that circumstance.
I am afraid I have been a little longer than I intended, but I think I have made, if not a full, at all events a discursive answer to the different points which have been raised. I have myself no hesitation at all, knowing the facts of the case, and knowing that we are not expected to do the impossible, in accepting the noble Lord's Resolution, and I think the debate initiated by him in his valuable speech on this subject will be altogether useful.
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, I am very much obliged to the noble Viscount who has just sat down for his reference to me in his speech. I did not completely follow the large number of reservations read out by the noble Lord, Lord Ammon. They seemed to cover every point which might possibly arise in any circumstances, and I thought I almost recognized the hand of the draughtsman. As the noble Lord has just said, and as we are all agreed, I do not expect the Government to do the impossible. Those are the terms on which I am glad to think my Motion has been accepted. I am obliged to the whole House for the way they have received it, and I am glad that we are now going to put it on the records of this House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

TRANSITIONAL TERMS OF SERVICE.
7.8 p.m.
VISCOUNT BRIDGEMAN: My Lords, I beg to ask the question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
[The question was as follows:
To ask His Majesty's Government, whether they can now make a statement on the terms of service in His Majesty's Forces during the present transitional period.
LORD NATHAN: My Lords, the Government have given very careful consideration to this important matter. Many of the factors are still uncertain, especially the extent of our future responsibilities in the field of Foreign Affairs, but the Government consider that young men reaching the age of 18 can no longer be kept in suspense regarding their call-up. They have accordingly decided that as a transitional measure young men called up during 1947 and 1948 shall serve for a fixed period. Those called up during 1947 will serve for two years, and if no unforeseen circumstances arise this period will be progressively reduced for those called up during 1948. Thus men whose service begins in January, 1948, will serve for two years and those whose service begins in December, 1948, will serve for eighteen months.
As by the end of 1946 all fit men between 18 and 30 years of age still in civil life will be in work from which they cannot be spared if essential production and services are to be maintained, the call-up to the Forces in 1947 and 1948 will, with certain exceptions, be confined to men reaching the age of 18 in those years. It is possible that a few men over the age of 18 whose call-up has been deferred may cease to be employed on the work for which they were deferred. In such cases they will be found equally important work. The number will in any case be negligible and to call them up could not have any effect on the rate of release of those already serving in the Forces.
Deferments on industrial grounds will cease to be granted after the end of 1946, except that in 1947, and later if necessary, call-up may be deferred as at present in the case of men employed in coalmining, agriculture, building and the production of certain building materials. The Government have been concerned to ensure that apprentices and learners receive a proper and thorough training. With this end in view they have decided that deferment may be 'granted to young men to complete their training where the
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Ministry of Labour and National Service, through the machinery of the man-power boards, is satisfied that a genuine and satisfactory apprenticeship exists. Others in a similar position of apprentices will be treated in the same way. Men already serving in the Forces at December 31 1946, will be released according to the existing are and length of service scheme. All such men will be released before the end of 1948, that is before any of the men called up in 1947 are released. Moreover, the Government will aim at releasing during 1947 all men called up before January 1, 1944.
In order to lessen the needs of the Services for men, it has been decided to call for recruits for the Women's Auxiliary Services to volunteer for a period of not less than two years. It has also been decided to continue the Women's Royal Naval Service, the Auxiliary Territorial Service and the Women's Auxiliary Air Force on a voluntary basis as permanent features of the Forces of the Crown.
The Government have endeavoured to make the scheme as flexible as possible in order to allow for the many uncertain factors and to enable adjustments to be made in either direction if unforeseen developments should arise. A White Paper setting out the proposals more fully is now available in the Printed Paper Office.
VISCOUNT BRIDGEMAN: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his reply, and may I say that some of the points that he has raised will certainly need our consideration on this side of the House. I hope that there will be opportunity for a debate at the proper state.

FLYING BOAT MARINE BASES.
7.12 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF CIVIL AVIATION (LORD WINSTER): My Lords, before the House adjourns, I venture to ask if I may be allowed to detain your Lordships for one or two moments in order to make a statement on flying boat bases. That is a course with which, I believe, the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, is in agreement. I should like to apologize to the noble Viscount for not: being in my place earlier this afternoon when he wished to put a question, but the circumstances were beyond my control,

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and the noble Viscount has most kindly and courteously accepted my explanation. The statement which I have to make is as follows:—
On taking office one of the questions which I had to consider was that of the future of the flying boat. There were some, I do not include the noble Viscount amongst them, who were of opinion that the day of the flying boat was over, or at any rate, passing. I gave the matter most careful consideration, and in doing so was influenced by what seemed to me three important factors, namely, the geography of our Commonwealth and its water spaces, the application of gas turbine propulsion to flying boats, which would reduce their handicap of lack of speed, and the great comfort which can be provided. I used a flying boat for my visit to Australia and New Zealand in order that I might have practical experience.
I came to the conclusion that it is too early to say there is no place for the flying boat in the future of civil aviation. We have placed an order with Saunders Roe for three large flying boats powered with gas turbines, and we are supplementing the Lancastrian service to Australia by a flying boat service.
As these steps have been taken it is necessary to consider a permanent marine base for flying boats to take the place of the present interim arrangements. Several proposals have been put forward advocating the merits of particular sites. Only one can be chosen, and there will naturally be disappointment amongst the rejected, as local interests will be considerably involved. It therefore seems to me desirable that the matter should be decided by a completely impartial committee. There are three main aspects of the question; namely:—the characteristics of our future aircraft, on which the makers are the experts, the requirements of the operators (which, of course, include giving the public the service which it desires) and the considerations of defence. I am happy to say that my noble friend Viscount Stansgate has most kindly consented to Air Marshal Slatter, the Commander-in-Chief of Coastal Command, servingon the Committee, and I have also been fortunate in securing the assistance of Mr. Gouge, of Saunders-Roe, and of Major Thornton, as representative of B.O.A.C., who are
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the sole operators of flying boats in this country. These names having been settled, my next task was to find a chairman. For this purpose I considered that the work of the committee could be best helped by a chairman with the particular abilities of being able to get at the facts, to marshal the evidence, and to ensure that all appearing before the committee should have a full opportunity of stating their case. My noble friend, Lord Pakenham, has very kindly consented to serve as chairman, and I am sure your Lordships who have listened to his speeches with obvious appreciation of their quality will agree that I could not have made a better choice.
All the facts concerning the various sites proposed, are now available in my Ministry. There will therefore be no need for the Committee to occupy time in collecting data and I see no reason why the report should not be in my hands within a comparatively short time. The terms of reference of the Committee will be as follows:
"To review the proposals received for the establishment of a permanent base for civil flying boat services in the United Kingdom, and, before June 30, 1946, to make recommendations to the Minister of Civil Aviation as to the site offering the best advantages in the light of all available operational, civil engineering, cost, and other relevant data."
7.18 p.m.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, I am sure that the House will be glad that the Minister has now had the opportunity of making this full statement. We all fully realize that he was unable to be here earlier, and let me hasten to say his absence was not due to his having to fulfil a long-standing luncheon engagement. I am very glad that he has been able to make the announcement that he has made on this matter. I shall certainly give him my support for what my support is worth in maintaining an interest in flying boats. I do not in the least believe that the day of the flying boat is over. It is extremely comfortable to travel in and it gives one a satisfactory feeling of safety. Such is the accommodation it provides that you can almost have a bath in it, and at the end of your journey you can appear looking spruce or beautiful—spruce if you are a man, beautiful if you are a woman. The flying boat may have a great future for freight as well as for passengers. We

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do not know what the competition may be for, after all, nobody has yet operated one of these vast land planes.
We in this country are fortunate in being the possessors of great knowledge of the building of flying boats. You could not have a better person than Mr. Gouge on this Committee, of which the Minister has spoken. In addition to having great knowledge of building flying boats, we have great experience in operating them, and it would be a very great mistake if we let this type of craft drop out prematurely or, many people will probably think, ever to drop out. I believe it is a very wise move to appoint a Committee. I think it is a very good Committee, not excluding the Chairman. He will have a very invidious task. He will be rather in the position of an M.P. who is asked to judge a baby competition in his own constituency. No wise M.P. ever does that or allows his wife to do it. But, joking apart, the noble Lord is all right, he has no need to be troubled. Certainly, he has every qualification for taking the chair on such a body.

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENTS ACT, 1932.
Orders made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department extending Section 1 of the Act to the
Borough of Tiverton;
Urban District of Llandrindod Wells:
Laid before the House (pursuant to Act) for affirmative Resolution and ordered to lie on the Table.