HL Deb 10 December 1947 vol 153 cc153-85

5.18 p.m.

Debate resumed.

LORD HASTINGS

My Lords, I feel sure the House will realize that it is never quite easy to begin again, so to speak, and I think it will be best for me to leave that part of the subject with which I had been dealing and take a fresh one. We are all agreed on both sides of this House about the urgency of agricultural production. In East Anglia, and more particularly in my county of Norfolk, we have a really immense area sterilized by unused airfields. As a member of my county agricultural executive committee, I have, of course, figures in ray possession which it is not in order that I should publicly quote, and I will not do so. But we have been told often by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, both here and in another place, that practically all of this land, which was and still is in the occupation of the Air Ministry, has been handed over to the agricultural executive committees for cultivation. That is perfectly true, but it means nothing while all the security that can be given to the cultivator is limited to one year.

Let me explain why. Everybody who knows anything about agriculture—and how often have we been told this in connexion with the Agriculture Act—is aware that at least a certain degree of security of tenure is essential before any farmer can do anything with his land. The terms under which all the farmers are cultivating these airfields are for one year only. The land is handed over by the Air Ministry to the Ministry of Agriculture, and by the Ministry of Agriculture to the agricultural executive committees of the counties, and those committees are responsible for finding cultivating tenants on the basis of one year only. Now -what is the effect? It is that those airfield lands are being corned and corned and corned again because there is no other form of cultivation which can be applied to them under that class of tenure. It is impossible to put them into a root shift; it is impossible to get them clean, and it is impossible for any farmer to put upon them the necessary forms of fertilizers, of which lime is required more than anything else. He cannot do that because he is not assured that when Michaelmas comes he will still be there.

While it is a fact that these lands are in greater part, if not all, under cultvation now, it is a deteriorating and a progressively deteriorating agriculture which is being applied to them. That is an extremely serious matter, because these lands run to many thousands of acres. I am not speaking of contentious matters such as the retention of areas like the Stanford battle area which is, of course, a very sore subject in my county and which the War Office may or may not permanently require. I am talking of lands which are obviously not required, which are redundant to the requirements of the Air Ministry, which they will not derequisition but which they insist upon holding in order to hand over eventually, after purchase, to the Ministry of Agriculture, who in turn will unquestionably hand them over for management to the Agricultural Land Commission. That is the programme, and it is not an unreasonable programme.

But meantime things are catastrophic. These lands are urgently in need of drainage, because if there was one thing which the Air Ministry did better than another it was to scrap the drains. They knew nothing and cared less about drains. The drains they put in were no doubt adequate for taking the surplus water off the runways, but any drains they happened to come across they broke up and threw away. "Why not?" said the Air Ministry. The intervening lanes are for the most part waterlogged and they require draining all over again. If they had any surplus wire which they did not want they buried it. When it came to baths and basins which were also surplus they were buried as well. You never quite know what you are going to find. If you happen to want a basin, of course, you are very lucky, but if you are a farmer and do not care about a basin but do want a crop of corn you are not so lucky. That is the situation.

I would like, if I might, to impress upon the Ministry of Agriculture that their method of passing the baby or the buck, as the case may be, to the agricultural executive committees is all right on paper but it is not the slightest use in fact. All committees are doing their best, but it is a very poor best. These lands are let to whoever will take them, at whatever rent they will pay, to grow whatever they want; and when you say it is better than nothing you are speaking the truth, but that is about all you are doing. This land is deteriorating and the time is passing. Every year the matter is left undetermined is going to increase the cost of getting the land into proper cultivation, and delay is just the thing that nowadays we cannot afford. This land amounts to thousands of acres, and it is a very sore point with anybody who cares for agriculture. It is cruel to the evicted farmer to see land of which he was proud treated and neglected in the way it is now being neglected. When that land was wanted to enable this country to overcome the enemy any sacrifice was worth while. But that spirit has gone from us and we do not want it any more. We are faced with a different problem now, and we are not trying to deal with it because we are frustrated on every hand by the inability of Departments to make up their minds.

There perhaps I touch on the greatest difference between private enterprise and public control. Where you have a responsible landowner or farmer he is presumably responsible more or less to himself alone. He makes up his mind. He may have a bad mind, and it may be made up in the wrong way, but he does make it up. When you are dealing with a public Department they cannot make up their minds. You get an official who dare not make up his mind, not because he has not a mind to make up, but because somebody above him has a mind which works in a different way. You cannot get answers or decisions, and nothing is done. That is exactly what is going to happen in every way. You pride yourselves that these lands will be properly farmed by the Land Commission. If you have a centurion and can say "Come here" and he cometh or "Go there" and he goeth, the land will be properly farmed. If you make him like other civil servants, and make him incapable of coming to a decision, the dereliction into which your country will fall will be something terrifying—it will be something worse than it is already. But I trust that that will not be the case. It is all very well laughing—let us all laugh; thank God we can. I do not know how much longer we shall be able to but at any rate we seem capable of doing it at the moment.

This is a most serious matter and we want the production of every acre. Did I not say before the House adjourned for the Royal Commission that one of the gravest dangers of direction is that it induces the official mind to deal with agriculture in terms of acres—which mean nothing—instead of dealing with it in terms of production, which means everything? Production varies from year to year and varies in the quality of the land, and acres really mean nothing. Now these airfield questions are questions of acres. The acres run to thousands; their production is almost negligible and it should not be so. If there is on the Bench opposite any noble Lord with any influence in this matter he realty could not apply that influence better than in urging somebody to make up their minds what to do about these airfields. The Air Ministry must make up their mind. They cannot afford not to do so because—and I dare to repeat myself—this land which is occupied by the Air Ministry in acres by the thousand is getting worse and worse and its condition, from the agricultural standpoint, will be practically valueless. The agricultural executive committees are incapable of dealing with the matter.

The noble Lord, Lord Teviot, in the course of his speech asked how it was that this country was prepared to pay for agricultural produce bought from overseas so very much more than it was prepared to pay for what was grown at home. That is a very pertinent question. There are certain proved methods of increasing agricultural production in this or any other country, and the best of them is price incentive.. That is the very first. Now, we have many opinions as to what is the right price structure to fix, but whatever we determine we must always be wrong. We can never hope to be right, because the diversity of the English soil and climate is such that what is going to fill the pockets of one part of the country is going to empty the pockets of another, and you cannot strike a balance. It may be that in the year 1947 the West of England had an extremely prosperous year; I hope they did. It is quite certain that in the year 1947 the East of England had the leanest year it had ever known. Let us hope that the West has been able to make good the deficiencies of the East. So much the better if it has. Under the present conditions, the East Anglian farmer is as near bankrupt as makes no difference. The price structure is no use to him because he has nothing to sell, and some means should be found whereby an inequality of that kind could be made good.

Those of your Lordships who were in this House in the early days of the war will remember the first war-time Budget. It was a very necessary Budget and it brought in war-time taxation, including a provision that an extra Profits Tax should be levied on farmers. I was a voice crying in the wilderness when I said then that it was obvious that farmers should be treated like everybody else—meaning nothing of the kind, but of course I had to say that then. Then I went on to say what I did mean. I said that every pound taken out of the farmer's pocket for extra Profits Tax would cost the taxpayers of the country two pounds after the war—and so it will. It was the gravest mistake ever made when we took from the farmers the resources which wartime always enables them to accumulate. It was, of course, immoral that any class of the community should profit out of the war, but it was always done by agriculture, because farmers were always clown and out between wars, and war-time was the only opportunity they had to put a little in the way of resources into the bank. In my part of the world the farmer has been carrying on but he has nothing at all in the way of resources.

What are we going to do about it? The noble Earl made an appeal to your Lordships to urge farmers not to discharge their men. They will, of course, want the men, but how are they going to pay them in the meantime? This problem is confronting us on a very large scale. After Christmas, when the sugar beet crop has been lifted, what are the men going to do, and who is going to pay them until March or April? It is a very serious problem. It is no use going to a farmer and telling him not to discharge his labour. He will say: "That is the last thing I want to do, but how am I going to pay the men? How am I going to pay them £4 10s. a week for fifteen weeks? Where is the money coming from?" The farmer has no money. The situation in my part of the world on that account is extremely serious.

The price structure works most inequitably; it was bound to do so. I do not think I need labour the point any more. But, as I said when I first rose, the Government have no true conception of the problems they are up against. I do not see how they can have such a conception. If you are sitting in an office, being covered with sheaves of paper as the Babes in the Wood were covered with rose leaves (or whatever it was that covered them), you cannot get a proper idea of what is happening. You have to be on the spot. When you come, as I do, from a part of the world which is largely responsible for the foodstuffs of this country, and you know of the dreadful things which are happening, you become really worried. I should like the Government to be as worried as I am, and then perhaps they would evolve a good scheme of things they hoped to do, not two or three years hence but at Christmas, 1947; that is the important time.

There is one other small matter with which I should like to deal. While I was out of your Lordships' House I was rather anxious about what the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, said concerning direction—whether he was saying something of which his colleagues would heartily disapprove. He said, I believe, that a first condition was that the farmer should be given the tools for the job. That is a most important qualification, which alters to a large extent the interpretation which was attempted to be put on what he had said previously. I dislike direction orders for several reasons, the chief being that that system leaves the official mind to judge agriculture in terms of acres and not of production. I know that one volunteer is worth two pressed men, and that you want good will in agriculture; but if you impose direction you get the maximum of ill will.

I trust there will be no giving way at all in this matter of direction to those who do not really quite know their subject and who clamour for directions to be imposed. But if the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, said that he himself did not disbelieve in direction, he did say, and made it a qualification, that the farmer should be given the tools for the job. I should personally object to direction whether the farmer were given the tools for the job or not. But it is a vitally important qualification. And if you do fit out the farmer with everything he requires, including fertilizers (because those are equally tools) and machines, without which he cannot function, then naturally the farming mind would be more disposed to accept any instructions or orders that were given, because it would at least know that it could fulfil them, whereas to-day it knows that if direction orders were given it could not fulfil them. It is an important qualification, and I am obliged to your Lordships for allowing me to mention it.

I have not touched on housing although I should like very much to discuss that matter, but it would not be fair to other speakers. I will leave that and all the other topics I have not mentioned to be dealt with by others. I would only thank your Lordships for allowing me to speak for so long, and I trust that the serious underlying matters which I have ventured to raise will not be ignored. Because truly, we are in a very desperate position. There are certain directions in which the Government can help, and those are the directions upon which I would ask the Government to concentrate, and to act at once. I would ask them to give the agricultural industry in time the power to create in the year which is before us that degree of production without which this country cannot live and regarding which in so large a measure, in these days of controls, permits and priorities, agriculturists are dependent upon the good offices and the intelligent management of His Majesty's Government.

5.40 p.m.

LORD QUIBELL

My Lords, I feel that it is a very great privilege to be able to follow the noble Lord who has just resumed his seat. I am sure that every one of us will have enjoyed his speech immensely, not only for the little bit of humour and liveliness that it brought to the debate, but also because it contained a great deal of common sense and practical experience which are invaluable so far as this House is concerned.

I also come from a county in East Anglia, but it is a county that is a little larger than Norfolk. I am not able to state as a percentage the amount of food that we produce for the country, but I am able to say that, though we are not on the wolds or on the sands and are not on the hills, we have a large share of that mud flat that was reclaimed from the sea. That has made a magnificent contribution in meeting the agricultural and food problems of this country. Indeed, I have listening to this debate today a friend whose family farm 10,000 or 11,000 acres of land, mostly in Lincolnshire, in my area, and he has informed another noble Lord and myself that he is delivering twelve tons of potatoes to the acre from this mud that was reclaimed from the sea many years ago!

This is a very important part of the country. Very unfortunately, it was badly flooded to the extent of 8 to 10 feet during last winter. Strange to say, the Government, who can be blamed for many things, could not be blamed for the flooding, although some people would like to blame them even for that. Nor can we blame them for this dry season. This dry season, so far as the wolds and the uplands are concerned, has been chiefly responsible for the diminished yield in the potato crops of this country, for had we been fortunate enough in July to have had some good night and day rain, then the potato crop would have been good. These conditions of course have a profound bearing on planning which has been most particularly and strongly urged by the mover of the Motion to-day. I appreciate many of the things he said and I shall refer to one or two of them later. I must say that during the last two years, as the previous speaker has stated, we have had one of the most difficult periods that the agricultural industry has ever experienced. In such circumstances neither the Government nor the farmer can with any great degree of certainty either plan ahead or prophesy. That is a point that hinders agricultural production everywhere.

The mover of this Motion went on to appeal to the Minister to tell us the whole truth about the position. I have no doubt that the Minister would be quite willing to oblige if the Minister knew the whole truth. What is the truth of the matter? The truth of the matter is this. The previous speaker has said that he has been preaching that something should be done by successive Governments as far back as 1904. So have I. It has taken him longer to convert his Party than it has taken me to convert mine to the necessity! Indeed, the first speech which I delivered in another place was one which urged something contrary to the Party's policy—namely, that until you put a balanced price level to agricultural commodities, you would never solve the agricultural problem of this country, because the landlord could not afford to put his premises into a proper condition. I consider that a barn and a shippon and what we call a piggery and the rest of it are as much essential implements for successful farming as a plough in a field. So they are. The more efficient and the better equipped a farm is with buildings, the more comfortable are the beasts housed in those buildings, and the better it is for food. Everybody knows that to have a beast comfortably housed is part and parcel of making the beast ready for the market in a much shorter time.

Farmers, of course, could not pay the wages at that time, but I did not hear many protests from other quarters. Indeed, unemployment in agriculture, as the previous speaker said, was then large enough. That was so in 1929 and ever since I can remember. I was brought up in a village and was working on a farm for a shilling a day, so I know, too, how wages were in those cays. All employment; on farms was employment of a casual character then. In 1929, 1931 and 1932, unemployment was so rife in agriculture that we could not actually afford to include men in the unemployment insurance scheme. We had to turn it down, and did deliberately turn it down, because there were so many out of work in the countryside.

The real truth—and my noble friend has asked for it—is that all Parties have funked the responsibility of putting agriculture on its feet. They have been afraid to do it, every one of them. I remember when there was no loaf of any size. You could not see it. It was a case of Tweedledum and Tweedledee in those times, as a previous speaker has said. The noble Earl says that he has preached consistently on this text, and yet to-day we have had to listen to a speech telling us the shortcomings of the policy being pursued by the Government of the present time. Let me say this. The mover of this Motion perhaps did not intend to say this, but I understood him and this House understood him to say that if all agricultural executive committees and local authorities did not do what the Minister thought they ought to do, then he should direct them to do this, that and the other. I know that the noble Lord denies it. Many of us heard what was said, and I do not want to pin it on him because I do not want to make any capital out of it.

EARL DE LA WARR

If the noble Lord does not want to pin it on me and make any capital out of it, perhaps we had better see what was said. With regard to the local authorities, I said quite clearly that ninety per cent. of the local authorities would, I believe, allocate agricultural houses to workers, if the case was really put to them. I made it quite clear, and I stand by what I said, that if there is a remaining ten per cent., or whatever the percentage may be, who do not carry out the request of His Majesty's Government, then it is for His Majesty's Government to govern and to make it clear. That is what I said, and I stand by it.

There is another point, which I think is not really very important but it is just as well that it should be cleared up for the future: that is that the noble Earl said that I used the words "I would welcome." From the official report your Lordships will see that I said nothing of the kind. I said that we all hated it, but that if the Minister of Agriculture came to Parliament and said that, in order to save this country from the perils that face it, he felt it was necessary once again to adopt compulsory cropping powers, then, speaking for myself, I would support him. If a Minister of the Crown said that in order to save the country from a dire peril he must have those powers, whatever we felt about it I think we should find it very difficult to refuse him. That is what I said, and I hope that will settle the matter.

LORD QUIBELL

The noble Earl has given a rather lengthy explanation, but I took the words down at the time. I do not regard it as over-important—

EARL DE LA WARR

Those are the words I said.

LORD QUIBELL

I know all about these written speeches, but it is the spoken word I was listening to.

EARL DE LA WARR

That is the Hansard report.

LORD QUIBELL

So far as directions are concerned with regard to local authorities and the housing programme, I am not so certain that you will find that the local authorities are willing to allocate all these houses to the agricultural community. We must all remember that rural district councils are representative of others besides agricultural labourers, and housing is a difficult problem. The whole question of allocating housing priorities is a very difficult one. Some of the problems of men in rural areas who are not agricultural labourers are equally as bad as those of men who are. My noble friend who preceded me said in the course of his speech that not only was there no shortage of agricultural labourers, but indeed the services of agricultural labourers were being dispensed with, and he did not know what was going to happen with regard to those discharged workers. This is the first time in recent years that I have heard anyone say that there is any degree of unemployment in rural districts. So far as my county is concerned, we need more agricultural labourers rather than less.

The noble Lord also referred to airfields and the amount of agricultural land that was not being properly cultivated. I agree with him wholeheartedly on that point. I want to say something else, however, and that is that in many of the rural areas of this country fine accommodation is available. I know of forty families who are requiring housing accommodation in two of the little villages of my county, while in a neighbouring village there is a camp that could house forty families. It has every convenience such as water supply, sanitary and washing conveniences, and so on. No use whatever is being made of that camp. Attempts have been made to induce one Government Department after another to release it so that it can be used for housing purposes. It is there doing nothing, deteriorating, with not a single soul in it, except a caretaker whose job is to look after it and see that nobody runs away with it during the night. Some camps were disappearing during the course of the night! I know of one or two cases where half the camps have been taken away in successive nights. I suppose they are more thorough in the rural districts than they are in the neighbourhoods where these camps are adjacent to big districts! I maintain that the Government could make a very great contribution in this respect towards housing difficulties.

We may all deplore, and myself especially, the necessity for reducing or limiting the housing programme and the provision of money for housing. It is not many months since we combed the steel works to compel certain former workers in the building trade to return to it. It will not be long before, in the same towns, some of those men will be unemployed because their contracts are finishing—people engaged on foundations, concreting and the like. What is to be done with them? They will go back into the iron ring, as it has been called, and then when we want them we shall have difficulty in getting them back again into building.

If it is at ail possible to reconsider this matter, I think it should be done. The housing problem is as urgent in urban districts as in rural. It is as urgent for the steel worker as it is for the agricultural labourer. Something like 1,500 houses are required in this instance, and they are equally important for urban as for rural workers. What we want are houses in all the parts where houses are needed, and we want every effort made to supply that need. I think something could be done to assist so far as the dollar situation is concerned. I am not at all critical of the Civil Service, but I think they are very stupid in some departments. It is over twelve months ago since I submitted a scheme for building houses without any timber whatever in the roofs. In consequence I received approval for thirty-four of them, and I returned a licence to the authorities for twenty standards of timber less than is required for building the traditional type of house. I should have thought that was a contribution. Yet I understand that consideration is being given to and committees are thinking out these problems.

Various types of houses have been built and are still being built with roofs composed of concrete and containing not an ounce of timber. That in itself would save dollars and would make a contribution towards solving the housing problem. We have the cement, and a house of that-type requires no more steel than any one of your Lordships could carry through that door. Only a small piece of wire runs through the concrete. Why cannot we do something like that? I can show you photographs of thirty-four houses that my firm has built up to specification. There is the example. The authorities approved of at and nothing has been done. If housing is urgent—and we all maintain it is urgent—why do we not save the timber and build twice the number of houses in this way than we can do in the ordinary way? There is an example to be seen. People have been housed in that way.

The right reverend Primate, I believe, touched on a matter which I have myself dealt with previously—perhaps not in this House but in another place. In a certain little village in Lincolnshire the rural district council decided to build some houses of the type to which the right reverend Primate referred. They are little bungalows with only one bedroom, a living room, a scullery, a bath and other conveniences. There is also what I believe in some parts of the country is described as a coal-house. Now, people, who cannot get up ordinary stairs with ease, particularly old people, naturally appreciate houses of this sort. About a dozen of those houses in that village are let at a rent of two shillings a week each to aged people. In some cases, those people have come from houses having three or four bedrooms which can now be occupied by quite large families. I know that a considerable amount of prejudice has been expressed against these little dwellings because they have only one bedroom, but you may take it from me that if this council, of which I am speaking, could do so, they would repeat their enterprize in a large number of other villages. Those small houses cost only about a half or a quarter as much as an ordinary house to build. I have been into them myself and I have seen that the old people by whom they are occupied are comfortable and happy. As I have said, they have one bedroom, a living room, a scullery, a pantry and usual accommodation. Believe me, I am very proud of the fact that the rural district council built those horses in the little village in which I was born.

I have known of a number of cases of couples having occupied houses with as many as four bedrooms, and of other cases in which people with families numbering seven or eight have been obliged to live in houses with only two bedrooms. These are matters which, I think, ought to be remedied in some way. I agree with the right reverend Primate that you cannot put those people out. In my belief it would be a great advantage if we could build more houses of the small type. We could build larger numbers of them at less cost, and people would move into them from more elaborate houses, leaving more adequate accommodation which could be occupied by families who are now living in over-crowded conditions. Many people would be glad to go into these little houses because they entail less work, the consumption of fuel is less, and they are, from the point of view of a couple, more economical and better in even; way. I think we ought to have a larger number of such dwellings not only in urban districts but particularly in the villages.

Now I turn to the question of reconditioning. I am never going back on what my own experience has taught me to be essential in regard to the reconditioning of houses. I know it is unpopular to say: "You should have a tied house." I do not care whether it is unpopular or not. I know that in my youth I walked two miles to a farm and two miles back, daily throughout a long winter. My grandfather used to walk to one which was two miles away in the opposite direction. If it had been possible for him to get a place near his work, how much easier life would have been for him! It is essential to have some houses near the places where the occupiers work, whatever the degree of freedom attaching to them may be. Farm workers need houses near the farms. This is most necessary in remote villages from more points of view than one. Not long ago I visited a farm on the Isle of Axholme. I found the farmer, a man of between sixty and seventy years of age, and his wife, in tears. Their daughter, who was the only other occupant of the farmhouse, was being called up. There was no other house on the farm or adjacent to it, except their own. "What am I to do," the farmer asked me, "if the horse wants attention at certain times? What am I to do if something goes wrong with a beast at night? How am I to carry on if my wife falls ill? How could I, in such circumstances, leave her here and go right away to the village for assistance?"

Situations of that sort are to be found at many little farmhouses which are occupied by just the farmer and such family as he has and where the labour which he employs lives a considerable distance away. In my own mind, I am certain, whatever may be the conditions on which they are to be let, that cottages are needed near the homesteads in almost every case in the sparsely populated rural areas of this country. So far as the policy relating to this matter is concerned, I hope we shall bear in mind that if assistance were given to the landlords they would themselves recondition some of these houses. It would pay us, I consider, to make a grant to them to enable them to do so. I have seen many houses going derelict which could be reconditioned if such help were given. At the risk of repeating myself, I would like to say this. One of the farmers in the constituency which I represented has reconditioned no fewer than 134 such houses, and they are now preferable in many respects to houses which councils are building in some of our urban districts. That was all done by one farmer, and he is prepared to do more reconditioning in the villages in the district around his farm. He says: "I want my labourers to be comfortable and happy. I have workers who have been with me for as long as twenty or thirty years. If I give them good wages and houses, and generally make them comfortable, I know that I shall never need to advertise for employees. I know that I shall never be short of good workers."

What this man has been short of in the past is houses in which to put his workers. He has never been short of men. I say that this enterprise which he has carried through does him great credit. Everyone, I believe, should make what contribution he can to the solution of this vital problem, and help should be given to those who have the means of making substantial contributions. So far as the future of agriculture is concerned, I am certain that we can rely on the farmer pulling his full weight. We can rely on the agricultural industry as a whole making its contribution. I would, however, stress, that while I do not accept it as being generally true that unemployment its being created by the farmers during these months, it is to be hoped that the farmer will use his men to put his ditches in order, to plash and scotch his hedges and generally to tend his farm so as to put it in first class order. In such ways he can now find full employment for his labour, bearing in mind that he will once more need it very badly in the spring of next year. Workers ought not to be thrown aside, as once they were thrown aside, during what are slack seasons so far as production is concerned. I think it is true to say that in these days, in a general way, the farmer does try to regularize his employment and keep all his men in work. He realizes that a good servant who is looked after and not stood off in slack times, is one of the greatest assets to successful farming in this country.

6.9 p.m.

THE EARL OFRADNOR

My Lords, I do not propose to follow the noble Lord, Lord Quibell, and discuss the question of housing, not because it has not a very important bearing on the problem of increasing our agricultural production but because I think it has already been very well covered by previous speakers. Before I come to the one problem on which I wish to say a few words, I would ask your Lordships' indulgence while I say something on the general situation. I agree entirely with the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, when he sees the future food situation in this country as very grave indeed. I beg the Government to listen to him when he says: "Do tell us the truth. We can stand the truth, and we want the truth as soon as the Government know the truth—not at the last possible moment." This problem of food shortage is not a dollar problem. It is far more serious than a shortage of dollars. It is a definite and genuine world shortage of essential foods. We know the world is short of meat and fats, and of oil, and we ought to realize that we are short of breadstuffs. Those of us who read our newspapers will see that at intervals in the last few weeks or months wheat prices in Chicago have risen to astronomical prices. The Chicago wheat market is a free market, and those who buy there do not buy at higher prices than they need. High prices in a free market generally means a shortage of commodities which people are purchasing and I regard the high prices paid for wheat as a sure indication that there is a shortage of wheat available for sale.

I want to take that a little further. There probably will not be enough wheat to go round, and that will mean inroads into coarse grains. They will have to be used to some extent for direct human consumption. That, in turn, will reduce the amount of available animal feeding stuffs. The noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, filled almost all of us with a considerable measure of gloom when he said that there was an assured ration of feeding stuffs up to April, but that we should not be told what we are to get for the ensuing three or six months, until some time in January. Farmers cannot work a policy of increased livestock on three-monthly, six-monthly, or even yearly decisions as to what food they are to receive. The farmer will have no confidence; he will be holding back all the time. What will happen?

I do not know much about poultry but I would be prepared to bet a good deal that many poultry men are considering whether or not they will set eggs for hatching in January. The pigs we want so badly will never be born, and the calves we want will not be born, because of this fear of what the ration will be when these animals want the food. The farmer cannot see far enough ahead. I hope that we may have something more definite on the feeding stuff problem, because it is vital to the livestock side of the Government's programme.

My purpose in intervening is to say a few words about the machinery problem which, as the noble Earl quite rightly said, is extremely difficult and complicated. I do not know that I understand it much better, even after his speech, but there is no doubt that machinery is absolutely necessary for increased production. Not only that, but adequate supplies of suitable machinery will go some considerable way towards easing the labour problem on our farms. It is a difficult problem to understand, because this country, as the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, said, has a very highly mechanized agricultural industry. It is not unfair to say that we are more highly mechanized than any country in the world, not excepting America. I have looked through a number of figures showing the implements on our farms in 1946, and so far as I can see there should be ample tractors. There is one tractor to every sixty acres of tillage area—that is not taking into account nearly 500,000 agricultural horses—so that we ought to have ample traction and plenty of ploughs.

There also seem to be plenty of mowers, one to every 22-23 acres of land mown for hay. Yet, when I look through the lists of production figures showing the existing demand. I find that in all the ordinary standard implements there are delays in delivery because the demand is still much greater than production. The demand is there, in spite of this high degree of mechanization, and it is considerably greater than is justified by the necessity of replacing worn-out machines. I have come to the conclusion that the reason for this demand, which has a considerable bearing on increased efficiency and production, is that farmers are new discarding their old implements and buying the newer and more efficient types.

LORD OUIBELL

Because they can afford it.

THE EARL OFRADNOR

Take a simple case. The farmer who gives up horses and buys a tractor has to buy a tractor plough. The farmer who buys a Fordson tractor has to buy a unit-principle three-furrow plough, replacing his old two-furrow trailer plough. It is progress towards greater efficiency, the saving of labour and an improved agriculture; but knowing that does not make the noble Earl's problem of supplying machinery any easier. With the greater number of machines on the farm the wastage is proportionately greater, and the number required for replacement increases accordingly. Given six years' life for a tractor, something like 30,000 to 33,000 tractors are required to replace worn-out tractors alone—a very considerable number. But that is not an unfair figure.

Another class of implement, not so great in number, but even more important, is some of the newer and more complicated machines. Practically all of them are harvesting machines, a good many of trans-Atlantic origin, since very few are being made in quantity in this country. I am thinking of the combined harvester, the pick-up binder, and the sugar beet harvester. They are potential labour-savers.

Viscount ADDISON

Is the noble Earl saying that combined harvesters are not being made in this country?

THE EARL OFRADNOR

Not in quantity.

Viscount ADDISON

I will deal with that to-morrow.

THE EARL OFRADNOR

Later I will give your Lordships a figure which I was given. I am saying at the moment that these important implements are potentially great labour-savers. They will not increase the yield, but by greater efficiency in harvesting will secure a better yield from the land. So far as combined harvesters are concerned, as the noble Viscount, Lord Addison, seems obviously to know, a very large number—or a comparatively large number—are likely to be made in this country in this coming year. But I would sound a note of warning to the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon. He should realize that if we are to have a large number of combined harvesters—and the figure which I have, not from official sources, is that one firm alone are to put 3,000 on the market next year—we must have drying plant and storage space for the grain harvested; otherwise we shall have complete chaos and a great deal of waste. There are other machines, though, and one hopes that some steps may be taken to ensure their increased production. Although, as I say, the numbers are not great, the demand for them proportionately is far greater than for the standard implements which I mentioned just now.

Before I leave the general review, I would say one word on grass conservation machinery. I know that the Ministry are very anxious to get going in a big way with grass drying, but I do not think it will be possible to do that to any substantial extent in time to deal with the existing crisis. I beg them to consider a really big silage campaign. Do not listen too much to the experts, who expect the farmer to buy either a cut lift or a cutter grower and to put in a concrete silo; the small man—and most of the farmers in this country are small men—cannot afford that sort of thing. It may be the best way of making silage, but there is another good way of making silage—by sweeping it up with an ordinary hay sweep, which most farmers have, or a hay rake, which those who have not the sweeps certainly have, and putting it in a rick in the corner of the field. Possibly more is wasted in that way than if the hay is blown into the concrete silo, but it makes silage with the machines which the man has on the farm; and it does it cheaply. One hopes that something like that can be done, because it is suitable to the small man, whereas the other methods are not so suitable.

The noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, told us in his speech what was proposed so far as machinery is concerned. He said at one point that he had no use for paper plans, but I could find very little in his speech other than what might be generically termed "paper plans." He talked about allocations, and various matters of that sort, but I saw no concrete putting of the material into the agricultural machinery manufacturer's factory, so enabling him to make the machines which we want. The noble Earl talked about having a "selective priority," and qualified that by saying that it would deal only with small things in small quantities, and not with priorities in a large way. I would like to draw the noble Earl's attention to the fact that even the bigger things (I have a list here) need something in the nature of this selective priority. The list I have covers various castings, springs, tubes, non-ferrous products, chains, nuts, bolts, and so on. In one column I have written down the normal time that it takes to fulfil an order once it has been accepted; it varies from six months up to twenty-four months. These are the substantial quantities of the material required by the agricultural machinery manufacturer to make the machines which we want. Even for the nuts and bolts the periods set down here are anything from four to fourteen months before delivery can be obtained. Therefore I do not think the noble Earl's selective priority scheme is going to take the machinery manufacturers very far, or very fast.

I would also like to ask whether the Ministry of Agriculture will have any say with the Ministry of Supply when they take over the supply of machines, which, as I understand it, they are to do. After all, the Ministry of Agriculture are agriculture's Ministry. The Ministry of Supply will merely put us in the rut with all the other various industries with which they have to deal. Unless the Ministry of Agriculture are represented on the spot to keep the Ministry of Supply up to the mark I do not think the Ministry of Supply are likely to look after us any better than they will look after any other industry. Beyond that the noble Earl suggested that there would be a measure of co-ordination. He used that blessed word "co-ordination" twice. I am suspicious of "co-ordination." He also told us, if I understood him aright, that Sir Allan Gordon Smith was to look into the general organization of the agricultural machinery industry, with a view to seeing whether they are doing their job properly, and whether things can be improved. I do not know that it will help, but if he only looks it certainly will not hinder. If it keeps the noble Earl happy, perhaps no harm will be done.

I do not want to keep your Lordships too long, but I want to add just this. The manufacturers—to whom the noble Earl paid a tribute, and I think a well- justified tribute—are anxious to do what they can to help agriculture. They feel, I think, that they are not being consulted sufficiently, and that they are not being allowed to help in the industry of which they know more than anybody else. A suggestion which originally emanated from my own mind, and which was confirmed from somebody in the manufacturing industry as being, in their view, a sound scheme, is: Why not have a Standing Committee of Agricultural Machinery Manufacturers? It' might be in more or less constant session, able to deal with the problems day by day as they came up. With this Committee would be working the Ministry of Supply and the Ministry of Agriculture, who would have the right, when a shortage was revealed—they would see it very quickly—to demand that that shortage should be made good.

I think you will get much more by calling in the industry to help than by any number of Sir Allan Gordon Smiths, or other people, who will look into matters. From the very nature of their past experience they have got to learn a great deal about the agricultural machinery industry before they can give any considered opinion as to what can foe done to improve it. Even then I doubt whether they would have had time to know the real difficulties underlying that extremely difficult and complicated industry. There is a good deal more I could say, but I will finish on this note. We must have the machines. I urge the Government: Take the industry into your confidence; they are willing to do everything they can to help. And do take us in general fully into your confidence. Tell us the worst. And we shall be very grateful to you if you are able to come back later and say: "Well, things are not quite as bad as we thought they were going to be."

6.29 p.m.

Earl BEATTY

My Lords, in venturing to address your Lordships in this debate I do so with great diffidence, because I am well aware that the great majority of noble Lords who have spoken to-day have had a lifelong experience in agriculture, whereas my own experience, from force of circumstances, has been very limited. However, in the short time I have been connected with the industry I have learned that the more one looks at agriculture the more one appreciates its complexities and the enormous varieties of problems with which we in an island such as ours are faced. It is because of these variations that I feel that the more we put forward our views from the areas in which we live the more helpful it will be in obtaining a broad picture, and thereby contributing constructively towards the increase of food production.

First and foremost, I had hoped that we should keep this debate on non-Party lines. The noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, who opened the debate, opened in that tone, but I am bound to say that after listening to the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, I can only describe his speech as being rather woolly. It was full of pious hopes; the steel allocation was still on some new list or system which was still in the process of examination, and such like. I could find very little concrete in it, and for my part it certainly made me feel partisan. After all, the question of living or starving should be no Party matter, and whether we like it or not events are moving so swiftly that whatever optimism there may be in the minds of the Ministers of his Majesty's Government for the future—and by that I mean the next twelve months—the supply of sufficient food stuffs for our population must be one of extreme anxiety to them and to us. If that is the accepted case then this question should be above Party, always remembering that it is the duty of the Opposition to criticize if they consider it necessary. As I have said, after the noble Earl's speech this afternoon I am quite sure that in the future we shall feel it necessary on our part to be critical.

In some respects the target in the next twelve months may cut across the four-year programme, but in view of the currency question—or if noble Lords opposite would prefer to call it so, the world shortage of dollars—I feel that our immediate programme is paramount. Because of the bad harvests of the last two years, which were dealt with by my noble friend Lord Hastings—and I feel his remarks apply equally to my district in the Midlands—the main difficulty we are up against in asking for a sudden increase of production is that at the moment the small farmer is faced with lack of money and, of course, machinery. In fact, to ask a great number of the smaller farmers today to increase their production and to expand before they have had a good harvest is, I feel, almost useless. Since 1945 there has no doubt been a slacking off in the intensive drive and in the sense of urgency amongst farmers and county agricultural executive committees, and for that the Government must take a large proportion of the blame. That is past history, and it is now up to the Government to provide that leadership and drive to all those who work on the land, and to impart to them the supreme urgency of the task if we are not to starve.

I am going to say again that since August of this year, when the programme was announced, that drive and initiative has not yet been imparted to the countryside. The most effective way to increase our yield and to secure early results would be to increase greatly the fertilizers on the land—chiefly phosphates and lime. I should like to ask His Majesty's Government whether it would not be possible to cheapen those fertilizers or, alternatively, to increase the subsidy on them with a view to getting quick results off the land. Certainly in the part of the country from which I come, the Midlands area, there is an enormous amount of acreage of old turf and pastureland which still remains to be ploughed up and which could produce crops this year. I am perfectly certain that if we are looking for a 20 per cent. increase in our production we must look to a large extent to that old grass land. There are just under 10,000,000 acres, not including Scotland, which should be dealt with.

If we were to take only a proportion of that land and were to tackle, say, 2,000,000 or 2,500,000 acres, which could be ploughed up and sown for corn, and another 2,000,000 acres to be ploughed up and put down to leys, I am sure that within the year those leys could produce sufficient grass to make up for the loss of the old grass acreage. And the first 2,000,000 acres would be growing corn for our own consumption this next harvest and for several years to come. The difficulty, of course, is that it is the easiest pastures which have been ploughed up, and only the old pastures remain to be dealt with. To deal with those requires heavy machinery. That machinery is lacking, and is at any rate far beyond the reach of the smaller farmer upon whose land the majority of this old turf exists.

The problem, therefore, comes down to the availability of the heavy type of caterpillar tractor and, when that is there, the inducement to plough. If these machines could be made available to county agricultural committees and private contractors I am quite certain that a great deal more even than the proposed wheat acreage could be obtained from this land, provided that after these tractors had been produced farmers were approached and persuaded of our necessities in view of the urgency of the crisis. Surely we should save dollars, in a short space of time, by increasing the amount of food that we produce, even if these tractors were obtained at the cost of dollars from the United States. We cannot cat money, but we can eat wheat. I am quite certain, as other noble Lords have said this afternoon, that we shall need all that we can possibly grow in this country within the. next year.

As the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, said, it looks as if there might well be a shortage of wheat on the American Continent. One must remember that they have had a succession of seven or eight years of bumper harvests, and that cannot always go on. I believe that so far indications from the corn belts in the West are not good. I am sure, therefore, that in the next few months—and they are running out rapidly—everything must be done, and done quickly, to obtain the necessary equipment to tackle this land about which I have spoken.

In view of the shortage of money among farmers—to which the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, has referred in a much better way—could not the payment of subsidies be speeded up? For instance, the acreage subsidy, I believe, is not due to be paid until August or September of the following year; certainly it does not reach the farmer until then. If we aim for an immediate increase in our production I am sure it would greatly ease the man of smaller means to obtain this subsidy earlier. One cannot regard the number of sheep in recent years in this country with equanimity. The statistics of sheep population show that in June, 1939, there were 26,800,000, whereas in June of this year their numbers had been decreased to 16,700,000. They have dropped by 10,000,000 in nine years. I am quite aware that a large portion of that drop was due to turning over to arable land, and to the bad winter. But I do feel that there are other factors as well which are the cause of this. The first one I believe is that when the price for mutton for this year was increased, an increase which came into force in April, it applied equally to female sheep as to male sheep, with the result that many ewe lambs were sold to take advantage of that price. Had the increased price been given for meat stock rather than for breeding, I am sure that this backward step could have been remedied.

Then, fifthly, we have heard a great deal about the requirements of housing for rural workers. Of course, without housing we cannot expect to achieve anything like the programme. I feel that housing as a whole is one item of a long-term project for getting people back on the land this coming year, and it is priority No. 1. I fed that much could be done towards the rehabilitation of a number of the cottages in outlying districts almost immediately. As your Lordships know, there is a limit of ten pounds for maintenance and repairs of cottages, carried out without obtaining any licences. If we do really mean business and want to get the rural cottages rehabilitated, and if the limit were considerably increased for agricultural cottages, I have no doubt that materials and labour could be found locally in many districts by the small builders and contractors alone. Anyway, the law of supply and demand would level itself out. I am sure that stored away here and there are small supplies of materials, and that if this control were removed and the amount raised to £75 or £100 an enormous amount of work might almost immediately be undertaken on a number of rural cottages which are really a disgrace to-day and which could be improved. That would tend to draw people back. This is surely one of those controls whose reduction would be both popular and at the same time very advantageous.

I would end as I began. In consequence of the slack-off of the past two years—two years of bad harvests—leadership, advice, inducement and encouragement are the essentials of farming to-day. We had leadership from the top down during the war. We certainly have not had it for the last two and a half years. It is only by getting the very best people in the National Agricultural Advisory Service, and as county technical advisers, that the Government can possibly expect to enthuse and guide farmers in the future and gain their confidence. I am told that the pay offered in the new Agricultural Advisory Service is shockingly low. I hope that something can be done in that matter because, without the best men throughout the country, the immediate and long-term targets will not be reached. But with the best men and with the right sort of leadership, I am sure that the farmers and farm labourers will respond again as they did twice in war time in the past thirty years.

6.45 p.m.

THE EARL OFSTAIR

My Lords, I do not want to intervene for more than two minutes. I wish to reinforce one of the points which the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, brought up. None of us likes direction. I have been chairman of an agricultural executive committee during the whole time it has been in existence. Our committee, composed entirely of farmers, never attempted to direct in any way except to meet the actual necessity of producing more food. They never asked anybody to do anything that was not possible. They never tried to enforce any direction whatsoever.

I wish the Government would try directing some of their own Ministries. For fully two years my committee have been trying to get some use made of land which is not being used at the present time by the Air Ministry or the War Office. There are camps and an aerodrome in my county of Wigtown. The Ministries seem quite unable to make up their minds which of the three aerodromes they wish to retain. One of these is on really valuable agricultural land. The point I wish to emphasize is that it is not only a matter of the actual land that they are keeping out of cultivation, but all round these aerodromes and camps fences are entirely destroyed, the aerodromes themselves are smothered with weeds, and all the surrounding drainage is destroyed. A great deal of surrounding country is being completely destroyed by these weeds. The Government should make up their minds what they want to do with this land. In the case of one aerodrome on my own property they have allowed various people to take and cultivate little bits of it— people whom I would not have had in any circumstances as tenants on my own property, especially if they had cultivated in the way they have, merely scratching the land, making a mess and producing practically nil. I beg the Government to keep this matter in mind.

6.48 p.m.

THE EARL OFPORTSMOUTH

My Lords, the subject of housing has already been stressed by the noble Earl, Lord Beatty, and other noble Lords, and I do not want to pursue that subject; but I should like to make complete my endorsement of everything that the most reverend Primate said on housing in his intervention earlier on. I know a little about housing conditions in his present diocese and a good deal about rural housing conditions in his old diocese, and I know that every word he said was absolutely vital and absolutely true. Obviously, housing is one of the most urgent and immediate problems in food production. The only reason why I am going to say anything more about it is that I wish to draw His Majesty's Government's attention to a particular type of prefabricated house—namely, the Maycrete house, which can be built at very short notice with practically no materials that are licensed, is considerably cheaper than a great many prefabricated houses at present in use, and can be used very soon. I have gone very carefully into this subject. From all that I know, I can find no technical reason why this should not be encouraged instead of discouraged, as at present.

I yield to nobody in this House in realizing the urgency of the present situation, but my noble friend who opened this debate said that this is not a crisis in the sense that it is temporary. This is going to be with us in 1950; the dangers will probably be there in 1955. Therefore, I am going to confine my remarks at this rather late hour to the long-term side of the agricultural problems which must be solved if we are going to be in a position to save ourselves later on from starvation, just as things have got to be solved now if we are going to save ourselves this winter and next summer.

In the past it has always been a question of either nothing at all or too little and too late on the solution of our agricultural problems. If the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, goes back to 1904, I at least can go back to 1923 on the same lines. The noble Earl, Lord Radnor, said that one of our problems is going to be that of dealing with our waste grass and our waste fodder, silage or dried grass. There is a short-term side to that, but I should like to stress that it is going to be even more important as the years go on that we should have the very best methods of using our dried grass and our silage in the most economical way. Last year, for instance, in that wet summer I could not begin to keep pace on my own land with my grazing. The grass was knee-high when it should have been four inches high. This year, with exactly the same head of stock and approximately the same acreage of grass, I was feeding hay in August. The problem of preserving for one year against another is of the most vital importance. The whole question of long-term research needs to be dealt with now. It is not only a question of trying things out; it is large-scale field trials that are needed by working farmers in various parts of the country under various climatic conditions. The practical solution of these problems is going to have a very great effect on the owners' problems as to what buildings in the years to come they are going to put up. The whole thing marries together because, if we do not get an early solution, we shall make wasteful mistakes in building, and so forth.

Then there is this question of crops that are urgently heeded. This year, had there been a normal harvest, we know that there would probably have been no shortage of potatoes and therefore no rationing would have been necessary, but, as the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, said, you cannot farm for good weather; you must always farm anticipating the worst and deploying your strategy on those lines. If you are going to grow potatoes to feed the people of this country, you must grow too many in an ordinary year. I should like to suggest again that that problem of growing too many is one which could be solved if gluts were properly dealt with by a system of drying and storage, especially the drying of potatoes. I think that is something which should be pursued much more strongly because potatoes are either a standby as food for human beings or can be fed to animals.

Again, in connexion with this same problem, I think that sugar beet factories should be more widely spread than they are to-day. There has been a demand for years now in my own part of the world for a sugar beet factory. It may be that the cutting down of expenditure on capital development will block that for the time being, but I believe it to be an unwise policy because sugar beet has this inestimable advantage, that it gives you a cleaning crop which is a paying crop. It produces food in the shape of sugar for human beings; it produces pulp, which is equally valuable for stock; and it produces a very high protein food in the tops of the beet itself. Whatever may be said against it, for that reason in these days and for many years to come, we should steadily go forward with a sugar beet policy.

Another point. With the machines which we are getting now, the temptation is far too often to use them to get crops out of the land without thinking enough of what should return to it. There is the question of the development of proper humus-making machinery—in other words, machinery for picking up dung and spreading and stacking it; such machines are urgently needed. That is one of the ways of saving waste and of improving our system of non-artificial manuring which, as we practise it to-day, is not efficient, on the whole.

Further, I think we are going to have to encourage sheep. I have again and again in this House suggested that a really good price for wool is the soundest way of getting your sheep bred.; I do not think that our present methods, in such matters as calf-rearing subsidies, are touching the problem. If you got a good enough price for milk, your calves would be reared provided you could see how you were going to feed them, and you would be saved also the big problem of inspections and regulations connected with the calf-rearing subsidy. We must look to all those things in the future. It is not only for feeding ourselves that livestock is necessary. We must also do everything we can to see that, on a long-term basis, livestock is developed, come what may, because tire cow, when she has finished giving her milk, produces your glue and your bone-meal and hides, as do the pig and the sheep. They produce those things which are all factory by-products for which we are paying very heavily in dollars to-day.

That is one side of the problem. The other side is, I think, that we are going to have to turn more and more to the maximum production that we can get, wasting nothing. In other words, we have got to have much more in our minds the idea of a peasant economy than we have had before. We cannot afford to waste, as we do to-day, all the beech mast, and all the acorns in our woods when the pigs could be eating them. We cannot afford to waste odd corners by not cultivating them, and we shall have to look to the small man to play his part just as we look to the large man using big machines and getting a high production, though not necessarily the most intensive cultivation, per acre. That side, I think, we should develop more and more with machines for the little man, especially with regard to the silage problems, by having machines which can be used on contract on the small farms to a greater extent than was ever done before. The small man is capable of a high production rate per acre, but he needs education. The best small farmers to-day are producing so much on their land that, were it taken as an average for this country, we should be exporting food. But without intensive education I do not think that we shall secure our fullest results. We need the young entrants into agriculture knowing why they do the job and knowing all the processes connected with it. It is to-day, alas, far too much an industry which is employing old, tried labour without enough young people coming in.

There is one aspect of that point which I should like to stress. That is that during the war I had a certain amount of personal experience with a hostel of boys in part of my own house. We had a scheme where we had twenty-five boys, aged from sixteen to eighteen, who did a year before they were called up for the Army. They were working about thirty-five hours a week on necessary gang farm labour. The other hours of the week were used in practical instruction and theoretical lectures. On the spot they could see what they were doing, and on the spot they were learning how to do it. They were doing work which was useful to the country, and were learning something themselves for the future. In spite of all our wartime difficulties, I am quite certain that that small scheme had a real germ of success, and if we are going to have labour of the best type, smallholders of the best type, it is that avenue which should be opened to recruit the best blood, both from town and country.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, that we cannot in the future consider keeping 48,000,000 people in this country with safety. It is not only a question of food, it is a question of clothes and of timber for houses; and it is even a question of there being enough fresh water for them. So, coupled with an intensive agricultural drive, should be a well thought out continuous drive for voluntary emigration of all age groups to our Common wealth and to the Colonies where it is suitable, because for every 100,000 people taken cut of this country well over 100,000 acres are saved. Moreover we shall be ensuring that there will be very much more food—enough to save us again in time of crisis.

In all the agricultural debates that we have had since 1945, I have had a feeling that one was taking part in a child's nightmare; that one was fighting a feather bolster for all one was worth. One seemed surrounded by feathers, yet nothing happened! There was no rebound; there was no action. I am bound to confess, having listened to the reply from the Government Front Bench to-day, that I still feel something of that feather-bolster nightmare. But, my Lords, let us hope that at last, even if we wake up to a grim grey dawn, which it will be, at least we shall have enough daylight to see where we are going and to plan our actions with care and forethought.

LORD NUNBURNHOLME

May I ask the noble Earl one question? He mentioned, I believe, twenty-five boys who were educated in his own house during the war. How many of those have returned to the land since the war?

THE EARL OFPORTSMOUTH

It is rather difficult to keep track of them, but several have. Only the other day I was lecturing at Reading College and one of my boys was there. I met him again.

EARL DE LA WARR

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend, Lord Cran-worth, I beg to move the adjournment of the debate.

Moved, That the debate be now adjourned.—(EARL DE LA WARR.)

On Question, Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned accordingly.

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