Lords Sitting of 12 May 1948

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

RAILWAY CLEARING SYSTEM SUPERANNUATION FUND BILL
Read 2ª, and committed.
CARDIFF CORPORATION (EXTENSION OF TIME) BILL.
Read 2ª, and committed.
WARWICK CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3ª, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

NEW CHAMBER: LAYING OF FOUNDATION STONE.
2.35 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT JOWITT): My Lords, before we deal with the business on the Order Paper I should like, if I may, to repeat to your Lordships an announcement made by Mr. Speaker in another place. I will use his own words. He said:
" The Ceremony of the Laying of the Foundation Stone of the New Chamber will take place on Wednesday, May 26, at 12 noon in Star Chamber Court. I am in some difficulty owing to the very limited space available, therefore I regret that it will not be possible to find accommodation for the wives of Members or guests. Some Members of the previous Parliament may wish to attend and they will be welcome as far as room permits."
I read Mr. Speaker's words because I feel that it is only too clear that the difficulty to which he referred will apply certainly in no less degree to members of your Lordships' House.

TRANSPORT OF NIGERIAN GROUND-NUTS.
2.37 p.m.
LORD HAILEY: My Lords, I beg to ask His Majesty's Government the question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
[The question was as follows:
To ask His Majesty's Government, whether in view of the very large amount of ground-nuts still awaiting transport in Northern Nigeria, they have taken steps to furnish additional engines and wagons for the Nigerian Railways.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR COLONIAL AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, His Majesty's Government are extremely anxious to facilitate the removal of existing stocks of ground-nuts in Nigeria, and an improvement in the delivery dates of certain orders has been secured. I am glad to be able to inform the noble Lord that twenty locomotives are being shipped from this country during this week, and that seventy wagons are scheduled for delivery during the course of the current year. Other locomotives and wagons are on order, and everything possible is being done to expedite the execution of the orders.
LORD HAILEY: My Lords, while thanking the noble Earl for his reply, I hope that I may be in order in saying that, when I left Nigeria about a month ago, there were estimated to be as much as 250,000 tons of ground-nuts awaiting removal, and it was calculated that at the existing rate of removal it would take nearly a year, or perhaps eighteen months, to get them down to the port.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, can the Minister say exactly what proportion of the 300,000 tons crop of ground-nuts have not been shifted, and whether he estimates that the whole of the existing overhang will have been shifted before the new crop has to be dealt with in the late autumn of this year?
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, before the Minister replies, I would like to ask this question: Are we to understand that these twenty locomotives are the first to be shipped to Nigeria after all this time? Has nothing yet reached there?
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, the answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, is: No; that is not the case. This is an instalment which is being sent out as a result of a special inquiry which was made at the end of last year during the visit to the Colony of Major-General Feilden, Vice-Quarter-Master-General, who was asked to inquire into the problem of the accumulation of ground-nuts. The noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, asked two questions to which I am afraid that I cannot reply, since I was not given Notice and they were not covered by the original question put down.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I beg leave to ask one more supplementary question, which does arise directly out of what the Minister has just said about Major-General Feilden having made a special inquiry. Is it not a fact that the Nigerian Government, even before the end of the war, had warned His Majesty's Government of the urgent need for replenishing the rolling stock, wagons and engines on that railway if this great ground-nut crop was to be shifted, and were not all the plans and needs before His Majesty's Government right back in 1945?
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I will gladly reply to the noble Viscount, giving him the details for which he has asked, as soon as I have been able to refer the matter to my advisers.
LORD HARLECH: May I ask whether, in view of this appalling position—only seventy wagons to go out now, when we want hundreds—it would be possible to reorganise the river services and use the short haul from Kano to Baro down the Niger, so that ships may be available to shift this vast quantity of oil seeds? If the nuts are not shifted, will it not have a most discouraging effect on native production for many years to come?
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: I can assure the noble Lord that we have carefully examined the possibility of river transport, but the result of this examination has not encouraged us to adopt the view that the method is practicable.

POLITICAL REFUGEES.
2.43 p.m.
LORD AILWYN: My Lords, I beg leave 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 consider that the publicity given to the arrival in this country of political refugees (as instanced recently in the case of the Soviet Army officer, Colonel J. D. Tassoev) is in the best interests of all concerned; whether this publicity is not liable to prejudice the asylum granted to such refugees; and whether they will consider taking steps to ensure a greater reticence in these matters in future.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am entirely in favour of reticence, both in these matters and generally. Indeed, I consider that the absence of due reticence is one of the most unfortunate tendencies of the present age. In particular, I agree that it is not normally desirable to give publicity to the arrival in this country of political refugees, and His Majesty's Government do not make a practice of it. In the case to which the noble Lord refers it was thought necessary to issue a statement to the Press, in view of the conflicting reports circulating in Germany and elsewhere and the assertion that this officer had been kidnapped by the Americans.
LORD AILWYN: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble and learned Viscount for his reply. Arising from that reply, I should like to ask whether it is not true that a general prerequisite of effective asylum in this country is a minimum of publicity concerning the individual concerned, and whether any failure by the Government to ensure reticence in the future will not, unwittingly and unwillingly, be one more burden placed on the shoulders of our splendid but overworked and understaffed police and security officers.

HOUSE OF LORDS OFFICES.
Order of the Day read for the consideration of the Third Report from the Select Committee.
The Committee reported as follows:
1.—PALACE OF WESTMINISTER.
The Committee approved the re-allocation of accommodation in the Palace of Westminster necessitated by alterations in the arrangements for the hearing of Appeals.
2.—CLOSING OF LIBRARY.
The Committee decided to limit the numbers of visitors to the library to six in any party, except by special permission.
3.—PROVISION OF UNIFORMS FOR DOOR-KEEPERS.
The Committee authorised the provision of a dress suit to Doorkeepers, in lieu of the existing allowance, on appointment; and the payment of half the cost of subsequent renewals, when necessary, after a minimum period of three years.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DROGHEDA): My Lords, there is nothing in this Report to which I need draw your Lordships' special attention, and I beg to move that the Report be considered and agreed to.
Moved, That the Report be considered and agreed to.—(The Earl of Drogheda.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
2.46 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (VISCOUNT ADDISON): My Lords, before we start on the Second Reading of the Motor Spirit (Regulation) Bill, may I intervene to indicate what we propose for the later stages, after consultation with noble Lords opposite? As your Lordships are aware, if the basic ration is to be restored on June 1 next, this Bill must be on the Statute Book before that date. With these limitations of time in front of us, we suggest that the House should deal with the Committee stage of this Bill as first Order when we reassemble after Whitsun on Tuesday, May 25. We shall postpone the Committee stage of the British Nationality Bill about which some of your Lordships expressed a desire for a little more time after the Second Reading yesterday until Monday, May 31. We shall leave where it is the other business now standing on the Order Paper for Tuesday, May 25 and shall hope to be able to deal with it after the Committee stage of the Motor Spirit (Regulation) Bill has been completed.
As it will be necessary to send the Bill back to another place as quickly as possible for consideration of any Amendments which we may have made we shall take the Report and Third Reading stages of the Motor Spirit Bill on the day after the Committee stage—namely, on Wednesday, May 26. I sincerely hope that,
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in the entirely exceptional circumstances, your Lordships will forgive this exceptional haste in dealing with the further stages of this Bill.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, I feel sure the whole House will fall in with the arrangements which the Leader of the House has proposed. It means taking the Bill very quickly, but the reasons for doing so are urgent. At the same time, as the noble Viscount the Leader of the House has indicated, the postponement of another important Bill will give us the ample time which we must have for the consideration in Committee of the Motor Spirit Bill. Not only are there Amendments which your Lordships will wish to put down, but I understand that the Government, very properly, are also utilising this House not for purposes in connection with the character of the Bill but for their own purposes. If we have a full debate, and full consideration in Committee, one result may be that the Report and Third Reading will be quite short. I appreciate how inconvenient it is to impinge upon the time of private members on a Wednesday, but in this particular case, if the Bill is to pass, I do not see what else we can do.
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, I quite agree. But does it mean that we shall have the Committee stage of the Education (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill on the same day as we are taking the Committee stage of this Bill? If so, I do not know how late we shall sit.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: I understood that the other matters on the Order Paper for that day were not likely to occupy any considerable time. However, in view of what the noble Earl has said, I will look into the position again and let him know.
VISCOUNT SIMON: Will the arrangements and dates now indicated and accepted interfere in any way with what I think was the arrangement, that the Committee stage of the Criminal Justice Bill should be taken on June 1?
VISCOUNT ADDISON: I have not the list of Bills before me but I think that that stands where it is. If it does not, I will certainly inform the noble and learned Viscount.
VISCOUNT SIMON: I think it is still on the Paper.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: For the convenience of the House, perhaps in view of the great interest taken in the British Nationality Bill, the noble Viscount, Lord Addison, will make a statement. I understand that the Committee stage of that Bill would have been taken on Tuesday. Can it now be taken on the following Monday, May 31? If we could have it on record, we would be prepared to agree to that.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: I think I have said that in order to allow ample time for that Bill, we shall adopt that course. Noble Lords wanted a little longer between Second Reading and Committee stage, and that is why the programme has been arranged in this way.

MOTOR SPIRIT (REGULATION) BILL.
2.53 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, this Bill is designed to promote the Government scheme for the restoration of private motoring by the grant of a modest ration of petrol to private motorists. Your Lordships will recollect that in a statement made on April 8 the Lord Chancellor explained to the House the general proposals of the Government in this respect. I do not think that it would be your Lordships' wish that I should again go over the whole of that ground in detail. I will merely indicate some of the points, in order to provide a background for consideration of the Bill of which I am moving the Second Reading.
Your Lordships will recollect that the basic petrol ration was removed last autumn owing to the difficulties which had arisen in connection with the balance of payments situation. The course which the Government took in connection with that has been amply justified, in that a saving of over 500,000 tons of petrol has already been effected. Unfortunately, although the production drive has been going ahead, the balance of payments situation does not yet make it possible to restore the basic petrol ration as it previously existed. The Government
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have felt great sympathy with the difficulties of the private motorist as a result of his being deprived of this basic petrol ration. Indeed, many of us, if not most of us, enjoy our motoring when we can get it. From the very time when the basic ration had to be removed in that way, the Minister of Fuel and Power has been casting abort for a method of restoring private motoring. There was one possible source of supply of petrol which, if it could be tapped, so to speak, would enable some restoration to take place without in any way being a drain on our foreign exchange. As your Lordships are no doubt already aware, that was the black market in petrol. It was obvious that a substantial amount of petrol was going into the black market. There were different estimates as to how much it was. An authoritative estimate, to which I shall refer again in a moment, was that even after the cuts of last autumn the amount going into the black market was at the rate of some 100,000 tons per annum. It is estimated that in 1947, before the cuts, while the basic ration was still in existence, the amount was as much as 160,000 tons—a vary substantial quantity.
The Minister of Fuel and Power estimated that if this black market petrol could be diverted into the tanks of the honest private motorist, and could be supplemented by economies which it was thought might be made, it would be possible to restore a modicum of petrol to the private motorist. The Minister appointed a Committee on the Evasion of Petrol Rationing Control, under the Chairmanship of Mr. Russell Vick, K.C. I am sure that your Lordships would wish to pay tribute to the rapid and industrious way in which that Committee handled their difficult problem, and made their recommendations to the Minister. The substance of the Russell Vick Report has been accepted by the Government and, as the noble and learned Viscount informed the House, it is proposed as from June 1 next to restore an amount of petrol to be private motorist which will enable him to do something like 90 miles per month. Small as that amount may be, I think it is, as your Lordships may agree, a distinct contribution to the general comfort of that important class of road users.
The continuance of the new ration depends upon the effectiveness of the Russell Vick recommendations. If they fail,

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then undoubtedly private motoring will again be in extreme jeopardy. It will rest largely with the motoring public itself as to whether in fact they are successful. The Russell Vick Committee make it quite clear that they regard as the most important element in this situation, so far as the general body of motorists is concerned, what one might call the moral aspect of it. Unfortunately, black marketeering has come to be regarded by large sections of the public as a venial offence, and nowhere is that more true than in connection with motoring. This impression, unfortunately, has a fairly lengthy history, because motoring offences under the Acts in existence before the Second World War—offences such as failing to light up at the right time, exceeding the speed limit and matters of that kind—have come to be regarded by motorists as rather venial. There has undoubtedly been an extension of this feeling into the field of the black market; and many motorists have been obtaining additional supplies in that way, without feeling any remorse of conscience but, indeed, thinking they were being rather clever in so doing. Unfortunately, that kind of attitude has been encouraged by the less responsible sections of the Press. Even reputable newspapers have suggested that there is something rather useful, so to speak, in challenging the Government's control policy in this regard—and, indeed, the speeches of some public men have rather supported that point of view. It will be seen, therefore, that there is a considerable resistance to be broken down if morale is to be re-established on the sort of basis that is necessary to get rid of this black market. Motorists must understand that if they do not adopt a different attitude in this regard they will bring the whole of this scheme into grave jeopardy. They must understand that for a motorist to go into the black market to increase his supplies in this way is definitely dishonest and, if he is not concerned about dishonesty, that it is not playing the game as regards his fellow motorists, because it will mean that they will not receive their supplies.
The Russell Vick Committee found that the black market is essentially due to the illicit demands of the motoring public; that the supplies of petrol which go into the black market are derived almost entirely from commercial users, to whom, as your Lordships are of course aware, the rationing
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system never applied. Owing to the essentiality—to use the rather curious word which appears in the Report—of commercial road haulage, petrol has always been allocated to the road haulage interests and not rationed under the ordinary scheme; so that the petrol comes from the commercial users. The Committee found that the main problem in connection with preventing this leakage of petrol from commercial users into the tanks of the private motorist was the inadequacy of the arrangements made for enforcing the rules which exist in order to prevent this and, in addition, the complete inadequacy of the penalties.
The substance of the analysis of the problem is set out in paragraph 46 of the Report at page 15, where the three points which I have just indicated are made. Paragraph 47 goes on to say:
"It follows that, short of introducing fundamentally different principles of rationing, the broad lines of solution must be

(a) to regain the respect and co-operation of the public in general and of road users in particular;

(b) to deprive the commercial coupons of their value to the motorist;

(c) to simplify enforcement and provide a penalty which fits the crime."

The Government have accepted the main lines of the solution proposed by the Russell Vick Committee, and the recommendations which are contained in paragraph 4 of their Report. The Committee propose that commercial petrol should be coloured and should have chemicals dissolved in it, so that it would be possible to test and discover whether the petrol in use was or was not petrol which had been provided for commercial vehicles. The problem of preventing this coloured or chemically treated petrol finding its way into the tanks of the private motor car has to be dealt with by means of an enforcement system, buttressed by substantial penalties, and the Committee recommended that very stringent penalties should be enacted to enable this scheme to be carried through effectively.
They set out their recommendations in regard to these penalties in paragraph 49 of their Report. By and large they found that the only really effective penalty for the offending motorist is deprivation of petrol and of the use of the road. The Government agree with that view of the situation, and it is because its implementation requires the establishment of

821
new offences that the Bill which is before your Lordships' House this afternoon has been introduced. The arrangements for enforcement in the Bill are found at the beginning and, if your Lordships will turn to it, I will endeavour to deal with some of the more important points. Your Lordships will see that in Clauses 1, 2 and 3 a series of new offences are established, or are proposed, and they fall into three main groups, In Clause 1 there are the offences by the retailer of motor spirit, the garage proprietor, who will be required to keep his commercial petrol separate from his private petrol by marking his pumps in the prescribed manner with the word "Commercial" or the word "Private"; that is, as it were, a condition precedent to the following provisions. Then, that having been established, it becomes an offence for the retailer of motor spirit to have in any of his pumps the wrong sort of petrol. If he is found with private petrol in his commercial pump, or vice versa, that is an offence. Again, if he supplies commercial petrol into the tank of a private vehicle, that is an offence. Those are the two main offences—the one having the wrong petrol in the pump, and the other supplying it into the tank of the wrong type of motor vehicle. Of course, in the litter regard it is one-way petrol, because it is only commercial petrol which will get into the tank of the private car.
So far as the private motorist is concerned, there are two offences. They are established in Clause 2, and correspond with those to which I have already drawn your Lordships' attention. The one is having commercial petrol in the tank, and the other is acquiring commercial petrol in order to put it into the tank. In Clause 3, there are established what might be called consequential offences, aimed for example at covering an offence by a third party—the man who puts the wrong petrol into the pump; or the garage hand, perhaps, who puts the wrong petrol from the pump into the tank of the motor vehicle; or the very serious offence of tampering with the petrol in order to remove the colouring and to pass off as private spirit what was issued as commercial spirit. Those are the sort of consequential offences which are established in Clause 3. Your Lordships will therefore see that there are
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these three new heads of offences. You will appreciate—and considerable play has been made in regard to this matter—that the mere discovery of the wrong petrol in the tank of the motor vehicle, or in the pump of the garage proprietor, is prima facie an offence, and it is important that the man who is accused of such an offence should have the means of defending himself.
Your Lordships will see that under both heads, in Clause 1 and. Clause 2, it is a defence for the person concerned to show that the petrol got into the pump or into the tank, as the case may be, without his consent or connivance. In the case of the retailer, he also has to show that he did not know that it was in the pump, and that he exercised "all reasonable diligence," having regard to all the circumstances, to prevent the petrol being there. In the case of the private motorist, the defence is on the same sort of lines, though it is not quite so stringent. He has to show that the petrol did not get into the tank with his consent or connivance:
"that he did not afterwards discover that the petrol was commercial petrol or had no reasonably convenient opportunity after such discovery of removing the petrol from the tank; and
"that he did not neglect to take any step which in the circumstances he might reasonably have been expected to take to prevent the petrol being in the tank."
If he can satisfy the court on those heads he will have successfully defended himself against the charge.
The penalties, which are undoubtedly severe, were perhaps the most important element in the Russell Vick recommendations. Certain penalties are laid down in Clauses 4 and 5 of the Bill, and they consist substantially in disqualification provisions, disqualification being the only effective way, as I am sure your Lordships will agree, of implementing the policy by which a man who has broken the law is to be kept off the road. These disqualification provisions are automatic; they must be applied on conviction by the court. Let me refer first to the case of the guilty retailer: the disqualification there is in respect of retailing petrol at the premises where the offence occurred during the succeeding twelve months. In other words, the person concerned will not be allowed to carry on his business as a petrol retailer at those premises

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during the next twelve months. In the case of a more serious type of offence, such as tampering with the colour of the commercial petrol or with the chemicals which have been put into it, the disqualification is more complete, because it not only applies to the premises at which the offence was committed, but also disqualifies him from carrying on the business of petrol distribution anywhere.
The private motorist is dealt with in Clause 5. On conviction he is disqualified, in the first place, from driving for a period of twelve months, and in addition to that there is a new provision for disqualification of the car. This latter is a new type of sanction. The disqualification will go with the car, even if it passes into the hands of another person; and it will persist for the twelve months' period. In a sense it is, if one may use such a comparison, rather like a maritime lien—it clings to the ship.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: You can hardly say that it runs with the car.
LORD CHORLEY: The disqualification clings to the car during the period in question, but, of course, the position which will arise between the commission of the offence and the hearing of the charge by the court has to be considered. Obviously, during that time, the man who is guilty and who knows that he is guilty, and who feels that he is almost certain to be convicted, is likely to dispose of the car. In order to deal with that situation, the court which eventually hears the case, on finding that the car has been disposed of in that way, will impose a forfeit to the amount of half the value of the car. That will be a very considerable sanction against a man disposing of a car in that way. If he does so he will have to pay half the value of the car when he is convicted.
Clearly, again, it is essential that he should be prevented from using the car during the period, and if the disqualification is to attach to the car, notwithstanding the fact that it comes into the hands of a new owner, then obviously it is necessary that steps should be taken to enable the man who is proposing to purchase the car to discover whether it is subject to such disqualification. It is therefore provided that the court which imposes the sanction shall see that the road book is handed into court and is suitably endorsed in such a
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way that it will be impossible for the new purchaser to be oblivious of the imposition of a sentence of this kind. The man who is convicted will have to give up his licence and produce his road book to the court in order that it may be endorsed in that way.
Finally, I would remind your Lordships that the use of a car while disqualified is an offence under Section 13 of the Roads Act of 1920, which, I think, establishes a triple penalty in cases where motor vehicles are being used without a proper road licence. Those are the main disqualifications contained in these clauses of the Bill. In addition, there are penalties of the more usual kind provided in Clause 6, which your Lordships will see divides offences under the Bill into two main types. There is what I might perhaps call the rather less serious type of offences—though they are serious enough—which are dealt with in Clauses 1 and 2, such as, having wrong petrol in a pump or a tank. Offences such as tampering with the colouring or the chemicals in petrol, or being convicted on a second occasion, and matters of that kind, are classed as more serious offences. The first type of offence is subject to a penalty of a fine up to £500 or three months' imprisonment. The more serious type of offence, while it may be dealt with on those lines, may also be dealt with by indictment, in which case the amount of the fine may be up to £1,000 and the period of imprisonment may be up to two years.
I ought perhaps to draw the attention of your Lordships to the fact that in the case of limited companies and bodies corporate, which are dealt with in subsections (3) and (4) of Clause 6, a particularly onerous situation is brought into existence. It is clearly essential to have a very watertight system in respect of a body corporate, and so it is provided that:
"If the person convicted on indictment of any offence under this Act is a body corporate, the amount of the fine that may be imposed on that body corporate in respect of the offence shall not be limited …."
It is not limited to £1,000. Under the next subsection, where there is an offence, directors and officers will be under a pretty substantial obligation. In order to defend himself such a person has to show:
"that the offence was committed without his consent or connivance and that he exercised an such diligence to prevent the commission of

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the offence as he ought to have exercised having regard to the nature of his functions in that capacity and to all the circumstances."
So they are put in much the same position as retailers in connection with their defence under Clause 1.
The remaining clauses deal with a number of miscellaneous matters, such as the institution of proceedings, the necessary power of entry and taking samples, which the police must have, and the provision of regulations. There are a number of rather difficult points, such as the definition of private car, which will have to be dealt with by regulation, and the Bill gives power to the Minister to make regulations. How important and how difficult this may be is indicated by the discussion in another place on the position of a car carrying plates which can be used both for private and for commercial vehicles when changing hands—trade plates, as they are called. In answer to a question, the learned Attorney-General said that it would be sufficient, where a car was carrying trade plates, whether it was private or commercial, that it should contain commercial spirit in its tank. The Ministry wish it to be made clear that that is not quite so. If a car carrying trade plates is a private car, then it must contain private petrol; if a commercial car carries trade plates, it must contain commercial petrol.
There are a number of differences between the scheme set out in the Bill and the proposals made by the Russell Vick Committee. I need not go into these in any detail. The Committee did not propose that there should be this defence for garage proprietors, and in that respect I think your Lordships will agree that the rather more liberal attitude taken in the Bill is an improvement. The Committee recommended that no further petrol should be issued for a vehicle in respect of the driving of which an offence had been committed. The approach of the Bill here is rather different, but substantially it comes to the same thing. The Committee did not deal with the disposal of a car before conviction, and I think your Lordships will agree that this was perhaps a loophole. They recommended that the driver of a vehicle should keep a record sheet. That recommendation is more of an administrative question than a matter to be incorporated in the Bill. The Minister will discuss that with his
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advisory committee, and it may well be that the matter will be dealt with in regulations.
One problem which has given rise to a good deal of discussion is the single-pump garage, which obviously presents a difficulty, especially in isolated rural districts. If the Bill did not apply to single-pump garage, there would be a large gap through which a coach and pair—or rather, in this case, a Rolls Royce car—could be driven. A special permit is therefore to be issued to the proprietor of a single-pump garage enabling him to provide private petrol for commercial vehicles. In that way I think the difficulty can almost certainly be surmounted.
It only remains for me to try to deal with some of the more important criticisms which have been advanced against the Bill. It has been argued that the penalties should not be automatic. The Russell Vick Committee considered that they ought to be automatic. Of course, that is not an overwhelming argument, but it is important that this Committee, which gave so much careful consideration to the matter, felt that automatic disqualifications are advisable. Your Lordships will agree that it is important that a uniform policy should be followed in all the courts in regard to infractions of this important law. We all know that some magistrates take a more generous view than others, and if the courts in some parts of the country are more lenient than in other parts, it will lead to consider able heart-searching and difficulty. It seems advisable that these disqualifications should be automatic. Of course, the fine or imprisonment is always at the discretion of the Court.
There is the question of the onus of proof which is put on the defendant. It has been said, by a number of lawyers in particular, that that is a reversal of the ordinary course of English law, in which the onus of proof is on the prosecution. That is the ordinary rule in English law; but it has been English law for a very long time that in certain types of offence, where the offence is peculiarly in the knowledge of the defendant, the onus of proof is shifted on to him. Certainly for a hundred years it has been the rule that, where a man has been found in possession of goods which have been recently stolen, it is his duty to show that he came by them honestly. If he gives reasonable

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evidence that he received them honestly, then he discharges that burden of proof. I am sure that your Lordships, after thinking about this matter, will agree that there is no alternative. Suppose, for instance, that a policeman takes samples in the car park of a cinema and finds coloured petrol in a private car. If the burden of showing that that petrol was dishonestly obtained was on the policeman, surely there is no way of discharging the burden of proof, because clearly the policeman could not tell where the motorist got the petrol. Your Lordships will agree that it is only sensible and reasonable that the motorist should explain where the petrol came from; and if he can do that, obviously a court will find him not guilty of an offence. The shifting of the onus of proof is not peculiar to receiving; it applies also to cases where a person is found by night with implements of housebreaking in his possession, and where explosives are found in a man's house. Even under the Companies Act, which was before your Lordships' House not long ago, there is a number of instances where the burden of proof is put on the man who is particularly qualified to give evidence on how a certain state of affairs arose. In these circumstances, I think your Lordships will agree that there is here no infraction of the general principle of English law in regard to the onus of proof.
The disqualification of the vehicle has been criticised. It has been suggested, for example, that where a man dies and leaves a widow, it is very unfair that the widow, who is quite innocent, should be deprived of the use of the car for twelve months. This criticism, frankly, is one which appeals to me more than any of the others. It is possible that there may be hard cases, and in another place the Attorney-General gave an undertaking that he would consider the possibility of enabling an application to be made to the court for the removal of the disqualification, say at the end of six months. We hope it may be possible to do something on those lines, which would obviously reduce the burden of criticism which has been made.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: Do you mean by amendment here?
LORD CHORLEY: Yes, by amendment here.
VISCOUNT SIMON: The Attorney-General is not in the House of Lords.
LORD CHORLEY: The Attorney-General gave an undertaking that the Minister would consider this problem.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: Does that mean by amendment before the Bill leaves us, and not by regulation?
LORD CHORLEY: Yes, by amendment of the Bill. I am not in a position to give a definite promise to your Lordships in that respect this afternoon, or I would be very glad to do so.
The final criticism which has been made is that disqualification of the vehicle deprives a man for a period of twelve months of his occupation, may be as a driver of a car, or as the owner of a garage. Undoubtedly that is so. But this is a serious matter with which we are dealing, and if a man deliberately commits an offence of this kind I am sure your Lordships will agree that he ought to be dealt with severely. It does not prevent him from selling his garage, of course, if he is a garage owner. He may do that and go into some other walk of life, or possibly obtain a garage elsewhere, because if his offence is an offence under the first clause of the Bill he is disqualified only in respect of the particular garage. We do not pretend for a moment that the penalties in the Bill are not substantial penalties. This is a very serious situation which is being dealt with, and it can be dealt with only by substantial penalties. With the aid of this enforcement, and with these penalties, the Government have every hope that they will be able to crush out this black market. With the assistance of the general motoring public—which assistance they are so eminently qualified to give—we hope it will be possible to administer the petrol placed at the disposal of the private motorist over the next months in such a way as to make this scheme a success, and we hope it may not be necessary to have recourse to the grave penal provisions of the Bill. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª.—(Lord Chorley.)
3.34 p.m.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, whatever view may be taken in different quarters of the House about this Bill, there

829
is one thing upon which I think we can all agree—namely, that it is a very odd Bill. I do not think the oldest or the most learned member of this House has ever seen anything quite like it. I am sure even the most hard-hearted of your Lordships could not withhold a meed of sympathy from the noble Lord as he picked his way delicately, if somewhat nervously, through this minefield of pains and penalties. He said, in effect, that this is a now rule of law. Well, it is. I can think of only one parallel, not drawn from a jurist but from a poet. The noble Lord will possibly remember the passage from Browning, where he says, if I remember rightly:
"There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails."
That might be a good introduction to this Bill.
Why must we have this Bill? No one has the least sympathy with the black market, though the Government must take their share of blame for its creation—I do not mean by criminal intent, but by what is nearly as bad, mismanagement and negligence. We have this Bill as the price of an exiguous, unfairly distributed basic ration. I say it is an exiguous ration, and nobody can pretend that it is anything but a very small one. We have the Bill largely because of the muddle and neglect of the Government in handling the petrol situation. We have it as a result of the Government allowing sterling petrol to go in almost unlimited quantities to soft currency areas, where the rationing, if it exists at all, is a great deal more liberal than the 80 or 90 miles a month, or whatever it is, that some of us are to have here. We have it also because little progress is being made with refineries, and little foresight has been shown in the provision of tankers. The noble Lord mentioned that the great production programme for petroleum was getting under way. I am interested to hear that remark. As that subject has been introduced, perhaps the noble Lord who will reply on behalf of the Government will supply us with a little more definite information in regard to that matter. I understood that, owing to shortage of steel (that very odd shortage which seems to become greater as the output of steel goes up month after month) work on carrying out the great plans for
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the refineries had not started at all; that although the Shell Company, I think, raised £30,000,000 or more the other day, no start had been made. The noble Lord said that, in spite of the great progress in the production plans, we must still have this Bill. I would like to know what that progress is.
The ration, in addition to being exiguous, is unfair, and I do not believe that anybody on either side of the House will dispute that statement. I say it is unfair because those of us who have been given, a special allocation for proved needs are to get no benefit at all. As so often happens with this Government, people who have managed to get round the rules get away with it and receive a premium, and those of us who try to play the game are penalised. I am quite certain that all your Lordships when putting in applications for a petrol ration have been absolutely sincere and have cut down on what you previously had in order to meet the appeal. That not only applies to your Lordships; I believe it applies to the bulk of the people in this country, because, for all these pains and penalties, the bulk of the people are honest and want to play the game. Yet every one who has been given a ration because of proved need is to be penalised as a consequence of this Bill, and will receive no extra petrol to take his wife and family out on a summer evening. It is not even one law for the rich and another for the poor, which I know is one of the new rules of law. This Bill tits the rich and the poor equally.
We shall have to deal in Committee much more closely with some of the very odd provisions of this Bill and, what is even more important, to elucidate what the provisions in the Bill mean. I believe that everybody would be ready to put out of business and to put off the road the real offenders. What worries me about this Bill are two things. The first is that you are treating almost equally drastically the man who plans and carries out a racket, and the absent owner (who may be completely guiltless) unless he proves a whole series of negatives. I always understood that that was the hardest thing to do and was the thing, therefore, that wise lawyers and wise draftsmen always try to avoid.
The other point that worries me is that the maximum of inconvenience is being created for the unoffending public—and I am going to come to one or two instances

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of that. The noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor is to reply, and I would like to ask for one or two explanations. The noble Lord who introduced the Bill very fairly drew attention to subsection (4) of Clause 6, which imposes drastic penalties on every person who is a director or officer of a body corporate convicted of an offence. I am glad to know that the Government—at least, I understand that this is so—are going to propose in this House an Amendment to make it plain that a nationalised corporation, its officers and directors, or whatever they are called, will be treated in exactly the same way as any other public company. That is obviously right and necessary, but I would like to ask the Lord Chancellor this question: What is the diligence which a director of a company, nationalised or free, has to exercise in order to avoid these enormous and automatic penalties? He is
"deemed to be guilty of that offence unless he proves that the offence was committed without his consent or connivance and that he exercised all such diligence to prevent the commission of the offence as he ought to have exercised having regard to the nature of his functions in that capacity and to all the circumstances."
Let me take one of the national enterprises, the Transport Commission, who are now, I suppose, by far the largest owners of vehicles in this country. They must have tens of thousands of vehicles. If one of the drivers of those vehicles commits an offence, every member of the Transport Commission will be liable unless he proves those negatives. I thought those gentlemen had a good deal to do, but if whenever one of their employees has committed an indiscretion or taken part in a private racket anywhere from Land's End to John o'Groats, the whole Board—Sir Cyril Hurcomb and all his other band of knights—have to attend any police court where that individual is being prosecuted, they will have even more to do than I thought. I am in favour of prosecuting the guilty party, but one ought to have some sense of proportion in these matters. If it is necessary to do that—and it has never been done before in this kind of case—I ask the Lord Chancellor how Sir Cyril Hurcomb and his colleagues can prove, not only that they did not know about it (which is, of course, what every director would say, and in 999 cases out of every 1,000 in perfect truth,
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because he would not know what was being done by someone at the other end of the country) but also that they have exercised all such diligence to prevent the commission of the offence in all the circumstances?
The noble Lord who introduced the Bill said, in effect, "Of course we have to lay down these penalties and give no discretion to magistrates, because you could not trust the magistrates to give the right kind of penalty, and it must be equal all round." But surely the magistrates have to exercise a discretion in this, and have to make up their minds as to what, in all the circumstances, is the particular discretion a particular individual ought to have exercised. We ought to know all about this and where we stand, because it is a serious matter to impose these penalties without making it quite clear what the offence is. I should have thought that that was an elementary rule of law.
I now come to the more modest persons, like myself. What has the owner of a private car to prove, if he has lent his car to a friend? The first thing, I suppose, is that he does not know anything about it; but that is not enough. The noble Lord spoke, in introducing the Bill, as if that were enough. If your Lordships look at Clause 2 the man has to prove three sets of things. The only thing he can say, presumably, is: "I really know nothing about this"; but that is not enough- If your Lordships look at Clause 2 (1) (a), (b) and (c), you will see that he has to prove three things, which seems to me to be very hard. These are the kind of things—and I have no doubt there are many others—which will have to be considered in Committee; and, fortunately, as the Lord Chancellor said yesterday, there is in this House a unique and unbiased legal talent which can be brought to bear.
May I now turn for one moment to Clause 5, which of all the odd clauses seems to me perhaps the oddest? This is the clause which says that if a man commits an offence, not only is he to be put off the road—which is quite right—fined, and all the rest of it, but that his motor car has to be attainted. The motor car has not committed an offence. Why on earth should the motor car be attainted—and for a year? I think in this matter there is some slight glimmering of sympathy

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from the Government, because I am sure—although it was more than the noble Lord's place was worth to give a promise, to use his own expression—he hoped that by the time we re-assembled he might be in a position to propose to us some modification of this proposal. What is the sense in saying that the motor car has to suffer this ban and penalty? The noble Lord said that the object was to deny the road to the offending person. Nobody objects to that. But why should you deny the road to the unoffending motor car, in the hands of some perfectly honest person? All your Lordships know that to-day, thanks to the export drive—and it is very necessary that we should have that export drive—it is almost impossible to buy a motor car. People in this House and outside are told they will have to wait four or five years before they can get a chance to buy a motor car, unless they give some tremendous price for a second-hand car, which may fall to pieces. I should have thought, with that shortage of cars, that the sensible thing was to say that although the offending motorist shall not drive the car for a year, the motor car may be sold and some decent person who is looking for a car may drive it.
Take the case of a much more serious offence, that of manslaughter by a motorist who is drunk when driving a car. He is, very properly, sent to prison; but the car is not sent to prison with him. I suggest that we might do something about this. I am not making an appeal in the interests of the criminal; I am making these appeals in the interests of the great bulk of the non-offending public. Take the case of the farmer or the commercial traveller, for instance, who uses his car for a dual purpose. In future, he is to be allowed, to the extent of 80 or 90 miles a month, to take his family out for a few treats. The farmer, perhaps, uses the trailer behind his car six days a week for conveying pigs or other livestock; and on the seventh day, after he has been to church or chapel, he takes his wife in the car and perhaps some of his family, if it is a large one, in the trailer. Similarly, of course, the commercial traveller, uses his car for both business and private purposes. What kind of petrol are these men to get—red or white? There is undoubtedly much misunderstanding about this.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: Red petrol will be issued to every vehicle licensed as a goods vehicle for the carrying of goods. That is different from a private motor car which is used for business or commercial purposes.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I thought I understood—until the noble Lord added his last few remarks to his statement. I really do not know how we are to adjust this difficulty. The farmer's or commercial traveller's car is surely licensed as a commercial vehicle.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: No.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: Well, I really do not know how it will operate. There is surely a distinction between going on a joy-ride and going on what might be called one's lawful occasions. As I understand it, to-day we may go only on our lawful occasions; after June 1 we shall be able to go for 90 miles on a joy-ride. If a man is using his car for both purposes, business and pleasure, how can anybody decide whether the whole of his time is spent on pleasure or on business?
Now I come to what puzzles me still more, and that is the single-pump garage. I am perfectly certain that whoever drafted this Bill does not get to the country very often, or at any rate does not know how the countryman lives. Suppose there is only one pump in a village: is it to be a red pump or a white pump? And if you cannot buy the kind of petrol you want, presumably you will have to go somewhere else, where there is a pump of the right colour. That is going to be extremely inconvenient. Those of us who will be lucky enough to have this basic ration to go 80 or 90 miles will not want to go twenty miles out of our way in order to get the right-coloured petrol. I hope we shall have this point made clear in the Bill. If we have to wait for regulations, we may have to wait more than nine months. I hope we shall be given a little clearer information about this single pump. So far as I can see, if it contains the kind of petrol which I am not allowed to use, either I must fill up with the kind of petrol which renders me liable to imprisonment and the loss of what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has left me of my modest fortune, or I shall have to go twenty or thirty miles to find a pump of the colour corresponding, not to my

835
political badge, but to my classification. It is a most extraordinary business.
Then I come to another point. If the owner of a pump commits one of these offences he goes out of business, and the pump shuts down. It is quite true that someone else may come along and buy that pump, though he may not buy the car. That seems to me an extremely odd arrangement. No innocent person may buy the car, but he may buy the pump—although the car and the pump have been equally guilty. The noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor, who is as just as he is ingenious, will perhaps explain to us when he replies why the pump is saleable and the car is not. But there are not people waiting round the corner to buy pumps; at least, not to buy pumps for a year or for less than a year. Incidentally, I was shocked by one of the noble Lord's explanations in connection with penalties. He said that although a man convicted of a pump offence may not operate that pump again for a year, he may go next door and acquire another pump. Such a man might go on committing a series of pump offences. He might roll down from pump to pump, and enjoy what might be called a revolving credit. I have heard of pub crawling: we look like having another peripatetic exercise, pump crawling, in the future.
Suppose that you put such pumps out of action in a country district. I am sure that I need not explain to your Lordships—although apparently this was not quite so clear to the Members of another place—what would happen. There are a great many country districts in England, Scotland and Wales where this may be more serious. There are quite a number of places with only one pump. If a particular man commits an offence, the pump is shut unless somebody else comes to take it over. I am not complaining of putting that particular man out of business, as a suitable penalty for his offence; I am thinking about all the innocent people in the country districts who can obtain their petrol only from that one pump, unless they go miles to some other place. In the public interest, that is a very wrong state of affairs. Surely, in these exceptional cases where there is a single pump, there ought to be a discretion permitting an alternative penalty. In the one-pump case, instead of automatically
836
putting that man out of business and thus causing, possibly, tremendous inconvenience to all the people in that neighbourhood, we should be able, when we deal with this in Committee, to provide for an alternative penalty: for instance, fining the man twice as much, but allowing him to carry on in business, if that is in the public interest.
There are many such examples I could quote, but I have cited only some, and they show how fantastic this Bill is. But not only is it fantastic; it looks as if it will do a tremendous amount of harm if we leave it as it is. It will create a maximum of inconvenience at a time when we are all sufficiently inconvenienced. It seems to proceed on the assumption that the only things possible are control, control and more control, and the more passive resistance which comes when people do not regard control as necessary. One of the dangers of excessive control is that it brings all control into disrepute. Everybody knows how in the United States, when nine people out of ten thought that Prohibition was utterly wrong, it was entirely disregarded. The United States, great country though it is, has never recovered from the shock to general morality that Prohibition brought about.
If we go on at this rate, assuming everybody to be a criminal, making controls more complicated and making offences all the time more complicated to meet the more complicated controls, we shall not only cause the maximum of inconvenience to the people of this country but we shall be going counter to the spirit and the good sense of a very law-abiding country—in fact, the most law-abiding country in the whole world. We are a law abiding country because we believe our laws are just, and we have an enormous respect for our Judiciary. We may now be bringing law into disrepute, and I hope that we can simplify this. No one has the least sympathy with the racketeer. I am all out to suppress black markets and to suppress racketeers, but is all this really necessary? May the indirect result not be worse than what we are trying to stop? It has been said:
"Woe unto the world because of offences."
But that condemnation goes on to condemn him
"by whom the offence cometh."

837
I am bound to say that, by what they have done and by what they have left undone in this petrol muddle, and by this extraordinary Bill, the Government cannot escape their share of condemnation.
4.6 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF WILLINGDON: My Lords, I think I might perhaps clear up one point as regards the use of commercial vehicles, by reference to a semi-official document which I have here. The present practice, which does not appear to be generally appreciated, is that petrol coupons for goods vehicles are issued by the Minister of Transport and not by the Minister of Fuel and Power. If this procedure is followed, part of the difficulty will disappear; in fact I think that a great deal of the difficulty will disappear if this is understood. I must say that I listened to the debate on this Bill in Committee in another place, and the more I listened the more puzzled I became and the more I admired the gallant fight put up by a Back Bencher on the Government side in favour of the most radical alteration of the Bill. Instructions were apparently issued to the effect that if the Bill was not passed and did not come to this House within a certain time, nobody would receive his small ration of petrol for his summer holiday this year. One person who appears not to be receiving it is the strictly honest user of three to five supplementary coupons. I pray your Lordships to right that intolerable injustice. The man who has filled in his application with deadly honesty has done all he can to save petrol, but he will not enjoy a single mile of private motoring during this holiday season.
The second point, which I think has already been sufficiently mentioned, both here and in another place, is, of course, the onus of proof. This House surely cannot accept that the onus of proof should be placed on the motorist. Frankly, I cannot believe that if any member of your Lordships' House were stopped and had his tank examined, and it were found that pink petrol was inside it, he would dream of giving away the person who supplied it. The majority of people never see petrol enter their tanks at all. The majority of people put their car into a public garage—if they are lucky enough to find one. Private garages are seldom used. Public garages served us during
838
the blitz, through good times and tad times. When we hand in our coupons we say, "please have my tank filed up for Monday morning." I am perfectly certain that if we were asked to do so, none of us would consider exposing the name of the garage that supplied the petrol. I cannot tolerate this practice of being asked to snoop on other people, and I do not believe that the public, as a whole, are going to give away, possibly a relation to whom they have lent the car or the garage which has, in all innocence, supplied the petrol. Possibly a practical joker has put something into the tank after a late party. Those two points should be seriously considered, even at the risk of delaying the Bill. The real sufferer is the man holding three to five supplementary coupons, who will get no pleasure motoring at all this year.
There are two or three more technical points which I should like to mention. Possibly the answer to them may be available to-day. The first is in regard to a car which we are endeavouring to popularise for the export trade in this country, and which has already been popularised in the United States, the newest model there being known as the "Town and Country." In England it is called the "utility van" or the "station wagon" and there are one or two other trade names. Could we be told to-day what coloured petrol is going into that type of vehicle? It is certainly a dual purpose car, and is recognised as such. It is commercial in the sense that it is not allowed to travel beyond thirty miles an hour; it is non-commercial in the sense that three extra seats can be put down and it can be used as a pleasure vehicle, or what is known as a shooting-brake or station wagon. There is no ruling whatsoever in the Bill about that particular vehicle, which is becoming more and more popular and is progressively helping our export trade. The second point on which, so far as I can see, there is no ruling at all, and in regard to which a ruling is even more essential, is what might be called the "manufacturers' pump." The tank of every motor vehicle which is dual purpose, with one engine—that is, the utility van or the ten, fifteen or twenty horse power motor car—is filled with petrol as the vehicle comes off the production lines. Will that petrol be commercial petrol, or will it be private? No regard at all seems to be taken of those

839
questions in relation to cars which are being produced in hundreds.
My third point is this. I noticed from the Attorney-General's remarks in another place that he still seems to think we pay 1s. 2d. tax on petrol. We do not; we are paying 9d. tax. As was so ably asked by Mr. Schwartz in the Sunday Times, what is to prevent petrol rationing taking its place in taxation? Every man pays, if he likes, a certain amount of indirect taxation. A man may prefer motoring to greyhound racing or the theatre or to going overseas. Why cannot he purchase his coupons, thereby paying an additional tax? There are certain people who prefer motoring to other forms of pleasure.
I would like to support as strongly as I can what the noble Viscount has said about the responsibility for propaganda in the saving of petrol when rationing first came before your Lordships' House. A few of us knew about the facts, and a few of us asked questions. If we are told it was not so much the dollar position but the actual shortage of petrol which made rationing necessary, I do not believe that the black market could have been so effective. Many of us knew that the price of crude oil was rising; the majority of us knew of the shortage of tankers and of the statistics of consumption in the United States, which was certainly underestimated; but the British public, as a whole, did not know. I believe that if that point had been put more forcibly before the British public, the black market would have been discouraged to a great extent. There is no better fellow than the British transport driver and if he had appreciated that we had to save petrol, and if some help in that saving had been given us by the Government and their officials, I believe that the black market would not have reached the tremendous proportions it now has reached.
I have been away for three or four months and I have come back alarmed at the encouragement in the use of petrol which seems to be given by the Government and various Departments. There are the men in motor cars who call on you in the country and ask whether you or your elderly relatives will help by filling in the month's ration cards; or they offer to slaughter rooks or advise you as to the patch of chalk land to plough up. Then we were told that the parking of cars was
840
to be simplified. I think that after one day's experience your Lordships would find that that is not so. Four months ago a man engaged on legitimate business could park his car in Finsbury Circus. Now 25 per cent. of Finsbury Circus is an open space reserved entirely for the use of the Taxi-drivers' Association. No taxi has been seen in Finsbury Circus since 1938. The City Police Commissioner has done all he can, but there is still a parking space for only fifty cars. During the last three months your Lordships have not been able to park your car outside Westminster Abbey; and you are moved away if you go to Church House. If your residence faces on to one of the Royal Parks you are not allowed to park a car outside, even in daylight and in the luncheon interval, unless it is accompanied or unless the car is one belonging to the Board of Trade.
If the parking in this and other great cities were organised as promised, by the proper use of blitzed sites, petrol consumption in this city alone could, I believe, be decreased by 5 to 10 per cent. We all know that it is the starting and stopping, the changing gear and going round to parking places which wastes a good deal of petrol. Finally, I beg the Government to give this very unfair Bill further thought, and to yield to the pleas of the members of their own Party both here and in another place. I beg them also to make of this Bill a more national effort to save petrol and not to bully the man who is only too willing to help his country.
4.17 p.m.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, I cannot pretend that this Bill excites within me the slightest enthusiasm. I deplore the reasons which have prompted its introduction. I must confess that I find it difficult to escape the conclusion that wiser administration would have made it unnecessary for the Bill ever to have been brought before your Lordships' House. But while the basic source of the black market is perpetuated, this Bill is necessary. This Bill does nothing whatsoever to eradicate the source of the black market, and I would address myself to the problem of eradicating the cause, rather than to building up a structure which, without the use of extravagant language, must result in

841
British justice not receiving the respect which we desire that it should receive.
This Bill is based upon the recommendations of the Russell Vick Committee. So far as your Lordships' House is concerned, it was never necessary to have a Russell Vick Committee to tell your Lordships the facts. In the debate on November 5 of last year, initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, the facts of the position were put before your Lordships' House by people who were fortunate enough to find themselves in the position of knowing the facts. May I ask your Lordships' indulgence while I repeat, from the OFFICIAL REPORT, what I said upon that occasion:
"Comment has been made upon, and great publicity given to, the black market. I am not going to waste your Lordships' time by saying whether in my opinion it has been exaggerated or not; but I am satisfied that it is substantially of such a figure as to be alarming, and I would invite your Lordships to consider where it comes from. Bear in mind that, unlike a lot of other rationed commodities seeping into a black market, not one gallon of petrol leaves the distributing company without the surrender of a coupon, so if there is a black market in either coupons or petrol, it is proof that there is an over-generous allocation of coupons to users. And the amount of that black market is the measure of the surplus which is given to users over and above their requirements."
The Russell Vick Committee found out nothing different from that. They merely dotted the i's and crossed the t's and gave some figures.
I would like to quote those figures to your Lordships' House, because they are the basis of my contention that, with wiser administration, this Bill would never have been necessary. In 1947, the period covered by this Report, 118,000,000 gallons of petrol (or coupons equivalent to 118,000,000 gallons) more than the total consumption, including the black market, were issued. Some 165,000,000 gallons (or 550,000 tons) more than was used in legitimate consumption were issued. The black market could, therefore, have had 148,000,000 gallons. That was the potential black market, offered to anyone who wished to exploit it, by the number of coupons issued over the requirements. Instead, the Russell Vick Committee state that their estimate of the black market was 47,000,000 gallons. I think we were fortunate that the black market was not more than that, when its total potential could have been 148,000,000 gallons. The Report states
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that only 17,000,000 gallons were returned as surplus to the users' requirements, and that brings the figure that could have been sold in the black market to about 148,000,000 gallons. There is not a sprit-up as to how these coupons were issued as between the various types of users. It would have been an impossibility for the Russell Vick Committee to find out, with regard to the 165,000,000 gallons issued surplus to requirement, how many were issued surplus to commercial users and how many to private motorists. But there were 17,000,000 gallons returned, and it would have been possible to say where they came from.
But the Committee came to the very definite conclusion, which some members of your Lordships' House reached in November last, that by far the main source of leakage into the black market was the over-generous allowance to commercial users. It is safe to assume that approximately 165,000,000 gallons was about the amount issued to commercial users of this country, over and above what they could reasonably require and reasonably use. That makes it difficult for me to appreciate the statement made in paragraph 36 of the Russell Vick Committee's Report which says:
"For the reasons already noted earlier, namely, the importance of ensuring that essential services are not seriously hampered by shortage of petrol, coupled with the impossibility of assessing precise requirements in advance, it seems to us that over-issues of coupons to these users … cannot be prevented."
I find it difficult to accept that statement when, on their own showing in this Report, of the 583,000,000 gallons of petrol, or 42 per cent. of the total usage of this country, that goes to commercial users, you cannot estimate potential usage more accurately than with a margin of error of over 25 per cent. As a commercial man with some industrial experience, I cannot accept that statement.
I would suggest that it would have been better if, in his wisdom, the Minister, instead of setting up a Committee to find out the leakages into the black market, and how to punish those who made use of it, had set up a committee of commercial experts to overhaul the rationing system, to devise a system that did marry up nearer to commercial practice and to find and devise means to ensure that a black market was not brought into

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existence. For whatever polite and kind language one uses, it is clear that the noble Viscount opposite must have been right when he said that it was the over-allowance of coupons that brought the black market into existence. I would suggest that it should not be beyond the wit of man to find a better allocation system, a system whereby petrol does not have to be allocated in such an extravagant manner, because, as my noble friend who presented this Bill for the Second Reading has said, the commercial user in this country is not rationed for petrol; he is allocated petrol upon the basis of his own estimation of his requirements. Does not common sense, or at least elementary knowledge of human nature, suggest that if you are asked to estimate your requirements for anything, knowing that you are not going to get all you ask for, you ask for more than you want, realising that you may get a little less than you ask for? That, I suggest, is precisely what is happening.
It is only right for me to say that there is also a source of black market petrol in existence to-day, in spite of the 10 per cent. cut, because of fluctuations of trade. People with practical experience of these matters know that in large parts of this country haulage fleets, or some proportion of them, are lying idle. The amount of petrol issued to those fleets is exactly the same as if full use is made of them. I suggest that if it were possible, even at this late hour, to set up a committee, a committee of, say, three commercial experts would be sufficient. After all there is a precedent, for this Government have set up many committees to find out how controls can be simplified. A committee of astute business brains and, with great respect to noble and learned Lords, not lawyers, might have made the need for the Bill non-existent.
I have another comment to make on the reason why the Russell Vick Committee consider it necessary to have this system of over-allowance. It had "to keep the wheels of industry turning." It is also advisable to keep in good heart and good humour the human individuals, who are just as important in industry as the mechanical wheels. I do not know any section of the community which has had such a raw deal over the last two or three years as the man who has found
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himself to be the possessor of a piece of individual transport. It must be brought home to those in authority that the whole fabric of this country, our whole social life, has been built around the individual unit of transport over the last thirty years; and when the basic ration was withdrawn, the economic and social life of many rural districts came to a standstill. I would seriously ask the Government to address themselves to the question whether all this huge penal machine is really necessary. I do not wish to go into the arguments that have been raised regarding whether or not dollar saving will accrue in the end. That might be outside even the indulgence which your Lordships usually allow in debates in this House.
On the economic argument, if the scheme is 100 per cent. successful, and we make this mythical dollar saving, will it in the end really result in a net saving? There are sound arguments, which have been argued by some sound brains, that after people have been put to the inconvenience imposed upon them by a measure like this (which I am sure must shake to his foundations a man like the noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack, who has such a regard for the dignity of the law) it is doubtful whether we shall really save anything in the end. Even the Russell Vick Committee say that one of the prerequisites is "to regain the respect and co-operation of the public in general and road users in particular." I may be mistaken, but I suggest that the imposition of some of the penalties in this Bill is the wrong way to do that. I suggest that the way in which the petrol scheme is being administered to-day is the wrong way to do it. I will give your Lordships one instance to illustrate what I mean. When the basic ration was stopped and a gallonage was allowed for essential purposes, it only required some outcry from the medical profession and all doctors were allowed to use their motor cars for pleasure. The car parks of golf courses were full of doctors' cars. Can you imagine anything more calculated to infuriate the man who was not a doctor and who had to walk or cycle to his sport and pleasure? That is not the way to get the co-operation of the ordinary man in the street. If a great effort were made to eradicate the source of the black market, I think we would be able to find a way of giving everybody an allowance of petrol and letting him use it for the purposes which he thinks best.

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Can we afford to police a scheme like this at the present time? I have listened in your Lordships' House to debates on the police force, and heard it strongly argued that one of the reasons why we could not do away with capital punishment was the inadequacy of the police force. How are we going to police a system which—and I do not think I am being guilty of extravagant language—puts on the roads two million potential criminals? I have no sympathy with the black marketeer, but I have every sympathy with the ordinary man who tries to be a law-abiding citizen. The noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack will forgive me if I repeat something I said in the debate to which I referred. According to the dictum of a great man in his profession, justice will hold good in this country only when the rule is that not only must justice be done, but it must always be apparent that justice is being done.
There are one or two points I want to make on the Bill itself. The noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, dealt with the question of the burden of proof in a most charming and humorous way, to the amusement of us all. I do not think my noble friend, Lord Chorley, was quite right when he cited the Companies Act. The noble Viscount, who had so much to do with that Act, will remember that the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Maugham, argued about the liability of a director who had gone to Australia. I think I am right in saying that the Companies Act limits a director's liability to this: that he must prove an offence was committed "without his knowledge or consent." That is a very different thing from having to prove that he took all reasonable steps to see that it was not committed. Let us take the case of the widow of the proprietor of a petrol filling station who goes to live in the country. Knowing nothing about business, she forms the concern into a limited liability company, engages two men and leaves them to run it. As soon as an offence is committed she is guilty, under subsection (4) of Clause 6. How is she to take reasonable precautions? If, on the day after the passing of this Bill into law, a board meeting is called and it is laid down that no employee of that firm must dc anything, or cause anything to be done to contravene any section of this Act, and that is put on a notice board, is that taking reasonable precautions?
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Has she to come up from the country and appear in a police court to say that that is what she did, and that that is what she thought was a reasonable precaution? I do not know. Perhaps at some later stage I shall be told.
I have to support this Bill because it is the only way of stopping a black market that exists. But I suggest to His Majesty's Government, with great respect, that steps should be taken, on the lines I have already indicated, to eradicate the source of the black market, or to bring it down to such infinitesimal proportions that once again the motorists of this country will be able to use their cars for pleasure as well as for business purposes. After all, there is no crime in pleasure, yet. If everyone can be given an allowance of petrol, with freedom to use it for the purpose for which he thinks it most essential, and that if he uses it for pleasure he will have to deny himself the efficiency of his business, this country is likely to be a far happier place than it will be with this unfortunate instrument hanging over our heads.
4.42 p.m.
LORD SELSDON: My Lords, I would like to welcome this Bill, because it as going to give a little pleasure to a great many people. But I do not find myself in a position to welcome anything that starts its life by accusing a vast section of the people of being potential criminals. I am going to speak, first of all, on a rather different line, about the single pump owner. A garage owner does not get his living from selling petrol; that is a very small part of his income. Let us take the case (I think I am right here) that in fairly remote areas the single pump owner is one in two; and in not-so-remote areas, perhaps, one in four. His Majesty's Government have promised that in remote areas there will be the possibility of a permit to sell red petrol without coupons. What about the not-so-remote areas? Take the man who goes to his pet garage, finds that his single pump now has red petrol in it, and is told to go up the road. He then goes up the road. When he is there the new proprietor says to him: "Can I sell you any oil? Can I sell you a sponge? Can I sell you a leather? Can I sell you some Bluebell? "If he receives good service there, he will go back to that garage for his

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repairs. The pump owner where he used to go before will lose that business, and it is doubtful whether he will get it back again. That is a great hardship, and I do not see how it is to be overcome.
Next we have this question of onus of proof of innocence. The type of person who is going to commit an offence is the man who is cunning; and he will have a good lawyer in court if he is caught. He will lie very convincingly. He will say: "It all happened when I was in the cinema; I knew nothing about it." And ten to one he will get away with it! The poor, innocent, meek and mild person lives in the country. If he has read this Bill, he will not have understood it; and probably he does not read a newspaper. He goes along and finds he has run out of petrol. He says: "Joe, give me a gallon to get home." Then out from behind the hedge pops the representative of the law, and says: "George, what have you got in your tank?" He says: "I have got some petrol." Then says the policeman: "Ah, it is the wrong colour." George is then pulled up before the local magistrate. He is petrified at being in a police court; he does not know what to say, and stutters and stammers, and immediately a bad impression is created.
Similarly, the police are now empowered to take samples from a motor car. I am intrigued with this. You have a car park—say, Wembley Stadium on Cup Final day, where next year we hope there will be hundreds of private cars. A policeman going round finds a petrol tank is locked. That is not an offence. What does he do? He hangs around and waits for the owner to come back. Perhaps the owner does not come back for a very long time. Is that policeman to be forced to waste his time, wondering whether somebody is going to appear, leap into the car and drive off? Or are we to have the sight of the entire police force rushing round Wembley Stadium looking for these potential criminals, and when they find them, find them with white petrol? Suppose that the officer does find a car where the petrol tank is not locked. He puts in his little syringe and takes out some petrol. Does he put it into three different bottles, seal them up, and put a label on them, keeping one for himself, giving one to the
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owner and one to somebody else? Or what?
What I am frightened of is the fact that even the arm of the law can err sometimes. He has taken his sample, and he has gone off. Two or three weeks later, or two or three days later—I do not know how long it will be—the police will have to trace the owner of that motor car, presumably through the registration. A little bottle arrives which, it is said, contains petrol "taken from your car on such and such a date." It is conceivable that the label could have fallen off; the police-man could have put on the wrong label; or he could have mixed up his samples. What proof has such a driver, three weeks later, when a little bottle of red petrol arrives? Then he is "for it." He cannot do anything. All he can say is that he does not know anything about it. But he is told that that is not enough. It is rather ridiculous, but apparently it is quite true.
Noble Lords have already said that you can go and kill somebody, or be drunk in charge and knock over a lamp-post, and it can cost you only £100. But if you have half a pint of red petrol in your tank (and the Minister said in another place that a very weak solution was detectable) that half pint can cost you £500. By all means let us stamp out the black market. I notice, however, that many people who voted for these heavy penalties on this Bill, for something which is not so very serious, took great pleasure in voting against the death penalty. If you take away the licence from somebody, that is an excellent idea; it stops him from getting on the road. The motor car, as noble Lords have already said, is a poor unfortunate thing; it has to stay idle. And in the case of somebody selling it between committing the offence and the prosecution, then he has to forfeit half the price. What I would like to know is how the court is going to arrive at the price of that motor car. To-day the price of a second-hand motor car is utterly fictitious. You can take two 1939 Morris motor cars, both delivered in August. One has been carefully looked after and carefully laid up during the war, while the other has covered a great deal of mileage. They are both the same year and month, but there can be a difference in price of £250. Take the case of somebody who might have a new Rolls Royce. That car to-day, if the

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covenant was off, might fetch £8,000. How is a court to arrive at a car's value.
There is one further point I would like to put. We have heard something about trade plates. As a car manufacturer in a small way, if I deliver a brand new car to London on general trade plates, which are commercial plates, I am told that I can put white petrol in that car. Am I contravening the law by using my commercial plates for so-called private purposes? Have I to use red petrol when I use those trade plates? While we are on the question of trade plates, there is one use being made of them which I would like to point out, and I do not know how the Government could stop it. One sees, during week-ends, a remarkable number of motor cars running round on trade plates. If they are stopped, they say: "We are giving a demonstration run," but everybody knows that probably they have the entire family in the car, and are just out for a spin. I do not say that it is done regularly, but it is done by the type of person who has no works but who has a little second-hand car sales place tucked away somewhere and therefore has his trade plates. He is the person who is largely responsible for this black market, because he is deliberately wasting petrol. I do not know whether something can be done about that, but I feel that that is the type of person who gets the motorist a bad name. After all, the motorist is not a bad fellow, and we all like to have a drive around. I think that if instead of this—what shall I say?—monstrosity of a Bill, the Government had appealed to the British public, as they used to appeal during the war, to play the game, a great deal of this trouble and a great deal of time could have been saved. I should think the black marketeers must be laughing, because never have so few caused so much trouble and wasted so much time of such a distinguished House of Parliament.
4.54 p.m.
LORD WALERAN: My Lords, like all your Lordships who have so far spoken—apart from the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading of this Bill—I dislike it intensely. But there is no doubt that we have to pass this Bill through all its stages, and see that it receives the Royal Assent before the end of the month; otherwise 1,250,000 people will not be able to get on the roads for their holidays. I would like to say here that I find myself
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entirely in agreement with all that my noble friend Lord Lucas said. I hope the Government will take particular notice of what he said, because I feel that he is approaching the problem from the right angle. If we remove the potentiality of the black market, it will not exist.
I would like now to say a little about what the motoring organisations did in connection with this plan, because judging from reports in the Press and from the speeches in another place that I have read, I feel that they have been misunderstood. The Minister said that he had adopted this plan in consultation with the motoring organisations, or that they had concurred in it. That leads one to think that they are entirely in agreement with the Bill and with the system of rationing. I believe that that is a travesty of the facts. Your Lordships know that the joint secretaries of the standing joint committee of the motoring organisations—in other words, the Royal Automobile Club, the Royal Scottish Automobile Club and the Automobile Association—had audiences and consultations with the Minister. They produced a plan, and they produced figures. Eventually the Minister released his plan. Up to the time of the release of the plan they did rot know that "E" and "S" coupon holders were not to receive an extra private allowance. Although they had given evidence before the Russell Vick Committee, they did not know what were to be the recommendations of the Committee until those recommendations were published. Therefore, I think—and I hope the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack will bear me out on this point when he replies—the public in general are misled if they think that the motoring organisations were fully aware of what the plan was or how it was to be operated.
I do not wish to go in detail through all the clauses of the Bill, but with regard to Clause 5 I am reminded of a story of the 1914–18 war. A certain dog in Belgium had been trained by its master to show at a word of command how the Germans were going to leave the country. It went flat down on its tummy and crawled out of the room ventre à terre. The Germans court martialled the dog and put it in prison! That was an animate object. Under Clause 5 we are arresting and putting

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in prison an inanimate object. I do not know whether that would be considered to be a shining light of British jurisprudence to-day. I have one further word to say in conclusion, and a suggestion to make. I think all your Lordships agree that this Bill is not at all what we desire, but that we have no time in which to go thoroughly into it in order to produce something better. My suggestion is that a clause be inserted at the end of the Bill to limit the time it shall operate to a year, and then let it be re-enacted or a new Bill produced. The advantages would appear to me to be twofold. First, in eight months' time the Minister of Fuel and Power will have a far better knowledge of the future petrol position, not only in the United States but as to whether production from new refineries is taking place. Secondly, we will have seen how the provisions work, and we can make recommendations and have time to think them out. I think that would be a safeguard and a reasonable thing to do, and it would show good faith on the part of all concerned.
4.58 p.m.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I am very glad to say that I shall not have to detain your Lordships long, because a great deal of what I would have liked to say has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, much better than I could say it, much more forcibly and with greater knowledge, and I am not less grateful to him for that fact than are your Lordships. As it is customary to declare an interest, I am afraid that on similar and parallel reasoning I must declare an offence, because I have learnt from the Attorney-General's speech in another place that for a long time I have been committing an offence against what I think, in some cases, are absurd regulations. As my car has not a secondary tank, I have always kept a tin of petrol in the back in order to get home in an emergency. Until I read his speech I never knew that that was an offence. I think the fact that the Attorney-General differs quite clearly from the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor shows how difficult these questions are.
I want to read three extracts from the Russell Vick Report which will, as it were, lay out my canvas and paint the situation. On page 6 it says:
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"We have learnt of one garage which was prepared to supply petrol to a private motorist against coupons issued to goods vehicles, but of another garage in the same city which refused to do so; of one garage in a country town which refused to buy commercial coupons from lorry drivers under threat of losing their custom although another garage in the same town was apparently prepared to buy them. The Motor Agents' Association have told us that other garages, which tried to hold out against this pressure but finally gave in, have expressed their earnest desire to see the whole business cleaned up throughout the trade."
Then again, on page 13, paragraph 34, the Report says:
"Although much of the information which we have received and reviewed above has necessarily been hearsay, the conclusion is inescapable that the petrol allowances for goods vehicles provide the main source of black market supplies."
Then in paragraph 40 it says:
"… factual evidence on a sufficient scale is lacking, but we have heard no suggestions that the belief is incorrect and we accept it."
Here you have a racket, to which there are three parties: there are the commercial drivers, the motor dealers who buy their coupons, and the private motor users who eventually get this petrol.
Clause 1 of the Bill deals very heavily with the pump owners, the middle men in this transaction; Clause 2 deals extremely heavily with the private motor users. But I see in the Bill absolutely no word at all which touches the source of black market petrol or makes it an offence to sell commercial coupons. If the Bill is to be fair, and if this is a racket, it certainly should be the case that the primary party in the transaction should be condemned in the Bill: but the Bill is absolutely silent; it leaves him out. The people who may be innocent and who most likely are innocent are the private motor users. A very heavy burden has been put by this Bill upon the private user, in that he has to account for the whole of his time for the whole twenty-four hours; and he has to be in a position to prove that the wrong petrol did not get into his car at any time with his consent. The same thing applies to the middleman in this transaction. Thousands of citizens are exposed to mischief or malice. A man may get his petrol from a pump marked "Private Motor Spirit" but he does not see the petrol; the nozzle is thrust right into his tank—as a safeguard, of course, against

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contamination by rain or otherwise. For my own part, it is many years since I last saw the petrol that went into my tank. There may well be a small portion of commercial petrol intermixed, perhaps by an error already reported by the boy in charge of the petrol; but the motorist is none the less liable to prosecution.
I would rather not see this Bill at all and have no petrol, I would rather walk, than see the principle introduced that is being introduced in Clauses 2 and 3. Moreover, the Russell Vick report gives the impression that the traders of this country are in favour of the measure now under discussion. But I can tell your Lordships that a short time ago the Metropolitan Division of the Motor Agents' Association met and received a report from their officers as to the measures proposed by the Government, which had been agreed to by those officers, very reluctantly. That Association promptly passed a resolution condemning the action of their officers and saying that it by no means had their support; and adding exactly what I say myself: that it would be better for the country not to have the petrol than to have it at the price of a Bill of this nature, which makes such a tremendous and terrible precedent in the legal practices of this country. After all, it is not the case that a receiver has the burden of proof of innocence on him. Until the last moment in the trial of an accused person, every possibility of the case not having been proved against him is kept before the jury. That practice is reversed in this Bill.
There is another portion of the Bill which I think deserves close attention from your Lordships, and that is the proviso to Clause 3, which says:
"Provided that anything done by a person authorised by the Minister of Fuel and Power or the Petroleum Board or done for the purposes of enforcement of this Act or in connection with any proceedings in respect of an offence under this Act shall not constitute any such offence as is mentioned in paragraph (c), paragraph (d), or paragraph (e) hereof."
What does that mean? I think it needs a good deal of explanation. Are the Government going one better than the Borough of Holborn, and is this going to cover the introduction of the agent provocateur? I hope not. There is one offence which will certainly be facilitated and that is a very old offence: the stealing of petrol from tanks of private cars by people who may pose as officials of
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the Ministry of Fuel and Power locking for offences. Such people will have a good chance of getting away with a considerable amount of petrol from private cars. In ordinary circumstances I should have felt I could not but register a vote against this Bill, but I realise the pressure of the times and that some Bill of the kind must necessarily be passed. I sincerely hope that by the time the Bill reaches the Committee stage we shall get some Amendment to Clauses 1 and 2, and also, I hope, to the proviso to Clause 3.
5.9 p.m.
LORD CLYDESMUIR: My Lords, I want to make a plea for Scotland, a part of the Kingdom for which at one time I held a certain measure of responsibility. The remote parts of that country have felt great anxiety about the question of the single-pump garage. The Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and the Lowlands, are very sparsely populated and have always presented a great problem to successive Secretaries of State. A great part of that problem relates to transport, which is a vital consideration in those parts. I do not say how it is to be done, but what I do say is that it is quite essential—and I use the word deliberately, in its fullest sense—that in those areas the garages should be able to supply the two kinds of petrol; otherwise, there will be administrative chaos. I trust that the Ministry responsible for this Bill are keeping in touch with the Secretary of State for Scotland in framing their measure. I strongly urge that there should be the two kinds of petrol available in those garages, either in tins or in some other form. That it should be so is essential.
The other plea I have to make is that, if an offence is committed and a garage proprietor is put out of business, the special circumstances of these remote areas should be seriously considered. I need not stress to your Lordships what I mean by a remote area. In the Highlands and Islands, extremely long distances are involved. If a garage proprietor should be the only purveyor of petrol in one of those remote areas, and should happen to be put out of business, a chaotic condition will ensue. In the interests of the saving of petrol alone, it would be desirable to see that petrol was again brought quickly to that point and that motor cars did not have to be run 15, 20, 30, or 40

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miles to these remote areas on a return journey to obtain petrol. Those are two of my points relating to Scotland. My third point is that I hope the Government will not sterilise or immobilise the guilty motor cars.
5.13 p.m.
LORD AMMON: My Lords, we have had an interesting, not to say at times amusing, debate. The vision that the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, summed up, of a pump dancing from village to village, and the vision of the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, of police lurking behind hedges and pouncing out upon people, and all the other ideas that have been advanced, while adding to the gaiety of the discussion do not go far towards dealing with the problem itself. The real point of the Bill seems largely to have escaped observation, or at any rate has not evoked much comment. I, like my noble friend, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, have no great enthusiasm for the Bill, but, nevertheless, I realise that it is essential. A check has to be made. It imposes a disagreeable duty which arises out of economic stress and also, unfortunately, out of the dishonesty of many people. That is really the problem with which this Bill is concerned. Much else that has been said concerns matters of detail, which will be considered when we come to the Committee stage.
It is unfortunate that the dishonest use of petrol makes it necessary to resort to the methods that this Bill brings forward. One must remember, also, that we are to a large extent following the Report of the Russell Vick Committee who have gone into this problem. I know a little of Mr. Russell Vick, and that he is a very able and competent lawyer. The Committee have gone into this problem with a great deal of care, having before them many of the problems that we now have firmly in mind. Until the moral standard improves and there is a respect for the law, I am afraid that we have to resort to this sort of measure. While some of your Lordships have talked about its application bringing the law into disrepute, I venture to say that the law cannot be brought into greater disrespect than it is by the constant violation of it by what is neither more nor less than plain thieving on the part of people who ought to know better. In that respect,
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I was shocked when the noble Marquess, Lord Willingdon, indicated that if he had had the advantage of service from one of those garages, he would not think it his duty to disclose who they were. Of course, that is not the general view of the House itself with regard to these matters.
The noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, in his interesting, vigorous, and sometimes amusing speech, asked for certain information regarding some points in the Bill. To some of his questions I hope I shall be able to give him an answer, if not wholly satisfactory, at least going some way in that direction. I think I am right in saying that his first question was what was being done with regard to refineries, and their production. I can tell the noble Viscount that all the plans submitted by the oil companies for expanding the refining capacity of the United Kingdom have been approved by the Government. I am able to say that work has started on schemes equivalent to at least one-quarter of the total programme. A war-time plant has also been adapted to produce petrol and other fuels at a rate of 1,500,000 tons a year. It has to be remembered that the British oil companies also have very large refinery projects abroad; and they are considerably larger in total than the companies' building programme at home. Production depends largely on the steel that can be made available, but refinery schemes are proceeding as rapidly as the companies can achieve them.
Then there was a point raised about the dual purpose car. The dual purpose car may have coupons for private or commercial petrol according to the use to which it is put. But, for the purposes of the Bill, it would not be an offence to put red petrol into it, since it is not a vehicle constructed solely for the carriage of passengers. With regard to the farmers, there was also a point raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton. Farmers will receive the red petrol for their tractors and for other vehicles concerned for use on the farm itself. For the rest, they are like other people, who will have to get the white petrol for their private car. With regard to the question of the one pump, all that one can say really at this stage—as the noble Lord said, in the main these small garages are in the country—is that the motorists using

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them are often within a fair distance of a town, and can find other sources of supply. Turning from that to the sale of the car—a point raised by a noble Lord who has just spoken and, earlier, by the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton—I would remind the House that that is following a distinct recommendation of the Russell Vick Report. It seems to me obvious, as it may seem to your Lordships, that the only means whereby they can make a disqualification effective is that the car itself shall not be used and the people escape the penalties by some other means.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I am sure that the noble Lord is right, but would he kindly refer me to the passage in the Russell Vick Report which says that the car cannot be sold? I cannot find it in the summary of Recommendations.
LORD AMMON: I will endeavour to find that out for the noble Viscount. There is another point of which I have been reminded. The noble Lord raised a question concerning the position of directors, and so on, under Clause 6. I am glad to tell him that in another place a definite promise was given by the Attorney-General that a clause would be drafted to cover that particular case. When the matter was raised by the Opposition his exact words were that he thought the point was eminently reasonable. In the Vick Report the paragraph is on page 18. Sub-paragraph (12) reads:
" That the owner of a motor-car (whether or not its driver) convicted of having ' commercial ' petrol in the tank should be required to surrender all unused coupons to the Court, and that no further petrol should be allowed for that car for 12 months notwithstanding any change of ownership during that period."
Is that the point?
VISCOUNT SWINTON: Yes.
LORD AMMON: The Attorney-General has given a promise that Clause 6 will be re-drafted. On another point which I believe concerned the words "reasonable diligence" he also gave a promise that he would look into the matter again. Further than that I am unable to go on those particular points, but I think I have answered all the main points that the noble Viscount raised.
I have already touched on the one outstanding point which Lord Willingdon
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raised. He raised the question of the station car and a variety of other vehicles. They were, of course, dealt with by my noble friend Lord Chorley, and they are commercial vehicles. The noble Marquess said he cannot believe that the black market is so large. Unfortunately, we have evidence that it is. He also raised the question of parking, which is not a matter for the Ministry of Fuel and Power, but which belongs to a number of other Departments. I can assure him, however, that the opportunity will be taken to consult with them as to whether or not any improvements can be made in that direction. My noble friend, Lord Lucas, in a very helpful and informative speech, drew attention to a number of points which he thought required some consideration. His main point was that he thought the black market largely draws its supply from the excess issue of commercial petrol. I put it to him: What does he think should happen in these cases? Were we to limit the supply to farmers? What would lave been said in this House if we had had the vehicle associations rising up in wrath because we were restricting the allowance of petrol to commercial vehicles and preventing their carrying on their road haulage work? After all, we had to trust to the honesty and co-operation of the persons concerned. As the noble Lord said, it was better some time ago; but let us look at what happened. Under the Ministry of War Transport there were no fewer than 5,000 voluntary workers, largely recruited by the trade themselves, who inspected and saw that the right amount was supplied. It is absolutely impossible, in the present circumstances, to continue that system. If there is any-thing in this matter it is sheer dishonesty, and this Bill is brought forward to meet that. On the other hand, where it is possible to keep a proper check on it—say in the omnibuses and public service vehicles—supplies are based strictly according to needs.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: Does my noble friend accept my point that, if an independent committee of business men could devise a system whereby allowance usage could be kept within a narrower margin than a 25 per cent. error, which is the cause of the black market, it would be more satisfactory? At least let us be satisfied that the present system

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is the only possible one. Frankly, I am not so satisfied.
LORD AMMON: That is the noble Lord's own opinion. I have already indicated that where it was possible to get the requisite number of people to help in this, it was possible to see that the supply of commercial petrol was based only on actual needs. Where it is possible, even now, so far as service vehicles are concerned, that system is being adopted. What one might do in other and different circumstances I do not know. I am concerned only with this Bill, which deals with the circumstances as they are, and as we have to meet them at present. The noble Lord went on to say that he was very much concerned about the ordinary man—that he should not be victimised, and so forth. We, too, are concerned about the ordinary man, and while there is a lot of dishonesty, the ordinary man is always under suspicion. Anybody who has had anything to do with any large industry, and knows where there is a certain amount of thieving, knows that there is a feeling of discomfort everywhere: everybody is more or less under suspicion. This Bill does something to protect the ordinary man; it brings about a greater equality of distribution, and helps us somewhat in these matters. All reasonable steps are being taken, and this Bill has been introduced in an endeavour to bring these reasonable steps more into line, in order that we may eradicate the source of the black market.
There is another point. I for one rejoice in this Bill, if only for the fact that it allows me to come to this House now without fear that I may be pulled up because I have come over Westminster Bridge instead of over Vauxhall Bridge; and it enables us to use whatever amount of petrol we have as and when we like, without being directed. Surely that is something worth having and is an advantage to more people.
THE MARQUESS OF WILLINGDON: Would the noble Lord point out how the Westminster Bridge problem affects a man with only three supplementary coupons a month?
LORD AMMON: It may affect him a good deal. He has the right to use his
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petrol as he likes, and as the three supplementary coupons will be given according to the power of the particular motorcar he has equal rations with other people.
There is one other point, to which Lord Clydesmuir and also other noble Lords referred—namely, that this Bill did not receive the approval of, or there was no discussion with, the motoring associations. I have a copy of a brief statement issued jointly by the Minister and the Chairmen of the Royal Automobile Club, the Automobile Association and the Royal Scottish Automobile Club, in which they say this:
"While the motoring associations consider that the measures taken will achieve a saving greater than the 120,000 tons of petrol envisaged by the Minister, given that the saving is found to be no greater, they accept the present arrangement as being, in all the circumstances, the fairest possible one."
I ask your Lordships to give this Bill a Second Reading—
LORD WALERAN: I do not think I said, or I did not intend to say, that there had been no consultation; I intended merely to say that they did not know, after their consultation with the Minister, the exact provisions that were coming out, at the time when they came out. They had the Minister's statement only about five minutes earlier and the Russell Vick Committee Report a few months before. They were put into the position of saying, "Well, presumably this is the best that we can get."
LORD AMMON: I do not know whether the noble Lord is saying that the people to whom he refers were incompetent, and that they did not know to what it was they were parties. I am resting on what I have here—this statement, signed by representatives of those organisations, which admits that the steps suggested are the fairest that can be taken in the circumstances. I leave the noble Lord to work out with his friends the question whether or not they knew exactly what it was to which they were putting their signatures.
Many points have been made in today's discussion, and many more will, no doubt, be made in Committee. But, looking at this Bill honestly, as one who is not wholly in love with it, as one who has to suffer and submit to the same privations as other motorists, I say that this is a genuine attempt to stamp out

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something which is a disgrace to our community. Particularly, is the black market a disgrace to those people who resort to it. But one of the tragedies that we have to recognise is that since the war there has been an almost utter collapse of moral standards and ordinary honesty. This is one of the clear examples of what can result from that collapse. A great industry, and, indeed, the whole community at large, has suffered under it. If this Bill fails in its purpose, it will fail in an honest endeavour to deal with a most difficult problem. I ask your Lordships not merely to acknowledge the work done by Mr. Russell Vick and his colleagues, but to help to give effect to it. They had no interest whatever except to use their brains with a view to recommending some means to ensure that such petrol as is available should be fairly shared out. This is just another illustration of the rationing system, the system which we have with regard to our food supplies and so many other things. The principle of rationing is to ensure that, so far as possible, people will have fair shares, and I think that this Bill is going to help to ensure that that happens with regard to petrol, I therefore ask your Lordships to give this Bill a Second Reading.
5.32 p.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, I do not think that even the most enthusiastic supporter of the Government can feel that this Bill has had any great welcome from any side of this House—including the Government side. Indeed, a most forceful and critical speech was made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, and I was interested to hear Lord Amman's description of it—rather a new description of a critical speech—as being "helpful and informative." The only real measure of welcome accorded to the Bill was that given by the noble Lord, Lord Ammon, himself when, I think, he spoke under a complete misapprehension. He said that he welcomed this Bill in that it would allow him now to use his petrol where and how he liked. Then he mentioned coming to this House. Presumably, he was referring to the supplementary "E" coupons which are given to noble Lords to enable them to carry out their Parliamentary duties, when he spoke of using his petrol where and how he liked. Let me assure him that if he is going to do that he may
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find himself in considerable trouble. Let us assume that the noble Lord gets twelve gallons of petrol a month. He is not entitled to use it how and when he likes; he is entitled to use the margin of that twelve gallons which represents the basic ration he would have had for that particular car according to its appropriate horse power, had he not been entitled to supplementary coupons. Therefore the noble Lord will find himself in great trouble if he is not careful. I point that out, because we would not like to see him get into trouble.
To return to the Bill, I repeat that the only measure of praise which it has received has come from the noble Lord, speaking under a misapprehension as to its contents. I think I hat the proper title for the Bill should realty be, not a Bill "to create certain offences," but a Bill "for the creation of new offences and for mitigating errors of His Majesty's Government." We, on this side of the House, have never admitted that the petrol rationing system was necessary, and have always maintained that the necessary dollar saving could have been obtained by other means; that there could have been savings in other directions and that the cost to the community and the dislocation caused by this experiment in maladministration could have been avoided. I think that the Bill is objectionable to most citizens of this country because, fundamentally, we are a law-abiding people, not excepting motorists. As a class, motorists feel that under the Bill they are being pilloried and treated as if they were actual or, alternatively, potential black marketeers.
We say that if the black market had been tackled eighteen months ago instead of at this late hour, it would not have grown to the dimensions that the Russell Vick Committee have described, and the whole motoring community would not have to be put, as it were, in the corner, and told that they are a wicked and anti-social section of me population. I think people resent this Bill because of the provocation it offers, and because of the sense of unfairness to which it gives rise. They feel that there is a lack of necessity for the Bill and that if he Government had administered their affairs better at an earlier date it would not be needed. There is also a feeling that he new conditions laid clown in this Bill do

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not in any way remove the many anomalies and unfair circumstances in the rationing system from which the motoring public has suffered during recent years.
Speaking in another place, the Minister called the black market "an unfortunate moral lapse." But, finally, compliance with the law must depend on the good will and the confidence in the law of the citizens who have to live under it and who are affected by particular Statutes. If feelings of resentment and frustration such as exist to-day are in the minds of motorists, while one must not condone in any way and can only condemn black marketing offences, it is to be said in mitigation of such offences that the Government are partly responsible for the creation of a state of mind that has encouraged citizens to go morally wrong. This Bill seems to me to be likely to add to our bureaucracy. Either it will add to the bureaucracy by the creation of new officials to carry out the work of inspection necessary under the Bill, or, alternatively, we shall have to divert a certain proportion of our police and put them to that task. There are certain new duties imposed by the Bill upon the Executive, and those duties must be fulfilled. Later on we hope that we shall hear who is to fulfil them. Is there to be augmentation of Government staffs, or diversion of our already overworked police? It is possible, indeed, that some members of the police force would rather welcome being taken away from the work of hunting murderers if the Bill which provides for the abolition of capital punishment passes, and being put on the duty of hunting black marketeers. Indeed, I think they would be the only section of the community who might possibly welcome such a diversion, and one could hardly blame them. But how is the work going to be carried out—by diversion or increase of staff?
We have had this measure before us for a very short time. We admit that we have been forced into a position in which the Bill must become law by June 1. Therefore, it is just as well that we should mention now some of the points with which we propose to deal in Committee. The noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, has already said that we are going to tackle such questions as to why the poor dumb servant of mankind, the
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inanimate motor-car, should be penalised and prevented from going on the road when it is in such demand to-day by the community.
We are going to put down an Amendment ourselves, in case the Amendment does not cover the point, or the Government are forgetful, to see that directors of nationalised corporations come within the scope of the Bill. I hope that later on we can have some assurance that subsection (2) of Clause 10, whereby the Minister may make regulations to define what are private cars, will not be used so that the Minister can provide that all the cars used by the national corporations are not recognised as private cars.
LORD AMMON: Perhaps I did not make it quite clear. The learned Attorney-General said:
"The Clause as drafted covers not only directors but other similar officers. I have no doubt that it is sufficiently wide to embrace the members of these statutory corporations … I think the principle underlying this Amendment is reasonable."
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: I am grateful to the noble Lord. I am sure the Amendment will be sufficiently wide, but we would like to make sure that the regulations are not to be sufficiently wide to offset the provision in the Bill. If the noble Lord will look at subsection (2), he will see that it says:
"Regulations made for the purpose of defining the vehicles which are to be private motor vehicles for the purposes of this Act may provide for excluding therefrom any vehicles of a prescribed class or description."
I think we need some safeguard that those regulatory powers are not to be used to offset concessions given in another part of the Bill. I do not think it unreasonable for us to ask the Government to give some assurance on that point.
The noble Lord, Lord Clydesmuir, raised a point regarding the introduction of words to prevent rural communities from suffering when the one man who provides their petrol goes wrong, falls within the law, and is forced to close his petrol selling business. It is manifestly unfair that the whole community should suffer for the crime of one man, and I am sure the Government do not want that to happen. Finally, I hope that the discretion of the courts to suspend the penalty of prohibiting the sale of petrol, if they think fit, pending an appeal, will

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be turned into a provision whereby the court shall suspend it if an appeal is made; because if the court do not exercise that discretion the man may be suspended from his livelihood until the appeal comes up, and he will suffer, and the community in which he lives will suffer also. I thought it better that I should refer briefly to the main points, so that the Minister and his advisers can start thinking about them. We do not like the Bill, but though we think the Bill is unnecessary, when we do part with it we want it to be a better Bill than when it first came before us.
5.55 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, having listened to this debate, I have come to the conclusion that a good time has been had by all. Everybody has thoroughly enjoyed himself and the only point on which everybody is agreed is that this Bill should get a Second Reading. I am sure that all the arguments will be most carefully attended to on Committee stage. Though I regard to-day as a day off for me, it looks as if there will not be a day off when the Committee stage comes along. The noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, admits that he has been guilty of some horrible crimes, and the noble Lord, Lord Ammon, was warned to watch his step. It seems that both noble Lords are relying on the fact that the Criminal Justice Bill may be passed shortly.
I believe that everybody, with the exception of the noble Lord who spoke last, thinks that in view of our circumstances we must limit the amount of petrol which we consume in this country.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: I can assure the noble and learned Viscount that I never intended to give, and I hope I did not give, the impression, either to-day or during the debate last October, that I did not realise that dollar saving was essential, but I said that there might be other ways.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: It is just that phrase, "there might be other ways "which is dangerous. We must save dollars in other ways as well as in this way. It is no good denying that we are living in a fool's paradise if we do not realise that we are in a grim situation. If there are other ways in which we can make a saving in dollars, and you will tell me what they are, I will convey them
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at once to my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and if we can use those other dollar savings without doing hardship to the people of this country such as by further cuts in foods or raw materials, we shall most certainly use them. But I think we shall find that we shall not hear further from the noble Lord on that topic. Even though we have other dollar savings, we must having savings on petrol too. We cannot afford the luxury of using as much petrol as we should like.
Therefore, we must have some ratio ling system, and the only question is, what rationing system? Any rationing system brings in hardship. It is no answer, to my mind, to say that the Government have been foolish to allow too much petrol to go to soft currency areas. Perhaps we have. The need to sell every gallon we can for dollars or dollar equivalents is no reason why we should leave out altogether the soft currency areas. I would earnestly suggest to your Lordships that in deciding what to do in this particular matter, we must have some regard to the wishes of the petrol companies who have certain connections they desire to keep up. For myself, I would be exceedingly reluctant to do anything at the present time that would be severe towards, for instance, France. We may be right or we may be wrong with regard to that matter.
If somebody on Committee stage suggests a better rationing system, then I will gladly consider it. So far as the genuine commercial users, are concerned—the users of farm implements and the carriers of goods on the roads—we must allow them to have enough petrol. If you cut them down you will do more harm than good. It is difficult to say what is enough for them. If we set a rigid quantity, their requirements may quite well outstrip that amount. Having carefully considered the question, we have come to the conclusion that the only thing to do is, to speak broadly, to differentiate between two classes of petrol—red petrol and white. From this it follows that if we get people utilising red petrol for certain purposes we must have most severe punishment. That is the basis of this scheme. When we reach Committee stage, I am prepared to see whether we can mitigate or modify some of the provisions, without disturbing the real sanction that lies behind the scheme. I think that the

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shortage of petrol and a rationing system produces great hardship. It is not the first time I have said that. But I think that a reduction in food would produce still greater hardship. We must watch our step in this country and so organise things that when the time comes when American aid is no longer forthcoming, we do not have to suffer from a lack of food.
On Question, Bill read 2ª, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

CONDITIONS IN COLONIAL SERVICE.
5.50 p.m.
LORD TWEEDSMUIR LORD TWEEDSMUIR rose to call attention to conditions in His Majesty's Colonial Service; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, although I consider the Motion which I have down on the Paper to be of pressing importance I can still make my points very briefly. I am glad to see that the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, is down to speak. Fourteen years ago, in very different capacities and very different parts of the world, we were colleagues in the Colonial Service, at a time when the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, and later the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, presided over the Colonial Office. We are spending millions, and tens of millions, of pounds in the Colonial Empire, but unless we make a wise and judicious investment of our human capital those millions will count for nothing.
These are days of considerable uncertainty. He would be a very brave man who would foretell exactly what the shape of the Colonial Empire will be in the year 1960. But at this moment we have 60,000,000 people who are entirely dependent upon us for their good guidance, for, their protection and for their future well being. If you count all the employees, in all the territories, who come within the sphere of the Secretary of State, they number 300,000. But the administrative service, to which I shall principally address myself, numbers about 1,700. It is a shrinking service, and we always intended that it should be. We have just speeded Ceylon, with all our good wishes, past the milestone, from a Colonial territory to Dominion status. There will be more Ceylons as time goes on, and more
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British-born officials will-be replaced by those born in the territories themselves. We can maintain what we have built up, and can discharge our responsibility to the people of those territories, only if we attract the best personnel into the Colonial Service. It is the best or nothing. I think that a young man on the threshold of his career to-day, looking at the picture in front of him, might well feel that perhaps he was investing the capital of his career in a gold mine which he knew was largely worked out. We must have the best people. How can we continue to get them? That is why I am asking His Majesty's Government (and this is the purpose of the Motion) what plans they have made to ensure that we shall continue to attract the type of people who have built up the Colonial Empire to its present strength.
I would like to let drop one thought. At the present moment, I believe, the Secretary of State for the Colonies is overworked to the point when he cannot possibly do his job. If you do a short division sum, you will find that he can devote less than a week of his time in any one year to the affairs of any one territory. He has so much to do that he cannot travel about the Colonial Empire, as he should. I believe that if we had a Secretary of State for Africa, or perhaps an Under-Secretary of State, it would do a great deal of good to remedy that particular point.
Fourteen years ago, when I was a colonial servant, the prospects were indeed inviting. The reputation of the Colonial Service was built up, not entirely by men like Lord Lugard, who earned such great distinction, but also by many thousands whose names will never reach the history books, but who did a splendid job. If we are to continue to attract the best, we must be able to offer three things—prospects, reasonable security of employment and reasonable terms of service. As short a time as fourteen years ago, if one served in the Colonial Service, one was, in most territories, serving in a kind of enclave which was to a great extent insulated from the rest of the world. But now most of these Colonies and territories are so coupled with world politics and world economy that a knowledge of these subjects is necessary to attain the highest positions. The district officer, who bears the heat and burden of the day, is the

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front-line soldier of the Colonial Service. We cannot attract the best people unless they feel, if they go in at the bottom, that they have a reasonable chance one day of rising to the top. On the question of ordinary promotion (on this I would like to question His Majesty's Government) so often in a single territory there is a local bottleneck in promotion. The principle of inter-territorial grouping is gaining ground. It was contemplated in the East African territories that inter-territorial posting should take place. The Montego Bay Conference in the West Indies proposed it. It has been adopted to a limited extent in the South Pacific Health Service, between New Zealand, Fiji and one or two territories in the West Pacific. I understand that it is also in force between certain departments in Gambia and Sierra Leone. I would like the noble Earl to give us what information he can as to the development of this trend.
I do not know how many of your Lordships have studied a publication known as the Devonshire Report which came out in 1946. In that it was suggested that Colonial servants should undertake three courses, the first before they took up their position in their particular territory. I imagine that that is not dissimilar to the one which I myself took in 1934. The second course was to be for officers of all branches of the Colonial Service, after an early tour of duty. Those of us who have been in the Army know how often in big formations the General Staff become insulated from the other services, with whom they are completely inter-dependent. The same thing is rather apt to happen in the Colonial Service. An administrative officer is often not quite sure what the members of other services do, and he is rather apt to discount them. This second course was to be for officers of all branches, where they could meet in the light of some experience and talk over common problems.
The third course, later on, at a suitable time, was to be for selected officers, who could study specialist subjects and broaden their knowledge to the point where they could take up the highest posts. I would ask His Majesty's Government whether they can tell us to what extent effect has been given to that Report. Such courses, if they were effective in the Service as a whole, would
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mean a rather larger staff. To have three officers active there would probably have to be four on the establishment; conditions are now changing so fast. The future of nearly all the Colonial territories lies in the sphere of secondary industry; and, what never existed in my day, trade unions are growing up all over the Colonial Empire. A knowledge of industry and of trade unions is now a vital necessity for a senior Colonial officer. Those courses which I have mentioned—particularly that third selective course—will give an official marked for promotion some chance to master them.
My second point is security. If an officer has spent much of his life in a territory, and that territory passes from the sphere of the Colonial Office, what is to happen to him? Ceylon and Palestine, I believe, will be the touchstone for many people now considering making this Service their career. In Ceylon, I understand, the British-born members of the Administration were reduced progressively, and when the changeover came some were pensioned and some were taken on by the Ceylon Government. The noble Earl will be able to correct me if I am wrong about that I would like to know from him what prevision is being made for the Colonial servants in Palestine, where years of effort on our part have finally ended in blood and bitterness.
My third point is reasonable terms; and this is my last big point. A great deal of cant is talked, and much more written, about white man's countries. A white man's country may be so, for a young and strong man, but not so much for his wife or his family. A Colonial servant badly needs his leave. In most cases he has a paid leave passage home to England at certain stated periods, but I regard it as a scandal that officers serving in the notably unhealthy climate of British Guiana, should not be able to return home on leave unless they pay their own passage. There is another matter. Those officers whose homes and domicile lie outside the United Kingdom have their passage paid home only every alternate leave. It may be argued that that affects only a small number of people. It is not surprising. With that poor inducement few people who were domiciled outside this country would be attracted to the Service.
The next point is education. An overwhelming number of British-born officials will want their children educated in this country. There is no provision that I know of for giving them any assistance to that end; and if their children are sent home to be educated it means maintaining two establishments—a costly course to adopt. I have heard it said that allowance is made for that in their salaries. If you remove from their salaries everything which is supposed to be a hidden allowance, there is a pretty "skinny" remainder left. Then I would say a word with regard to pensions. They are paid, as contributory amounts from the officials' salaries. In most territories, salaries are rising, or will rise in the near future, and pensions will rise with them. That gets the man who is now enjoying a pension exactly nowhere. If salaries are rising—and the pensions are part of salary—then those who are pensioned at this moment are entitled to some rise in their pension, because those pensions are paid from the funds of the Colony, whose ability to pay larger salaries is in part due to the pensioner himself.
I am now coming to an end. I have made these points, and I would be grateful to the noble Earl if he would address himself to them in his reply. We built this Colonial Empire up by quality. Quality is the only measure of value; quantity is a mere measure of volume. I believe that we have come to a turning point, and unless we can offer to the Colonial Service of the future some prospects, some security and some really reasonable terms of service, we shall not get the people who built the Colonial Empire to what it is, and who maintained it to this day. And the millions we have spent, are spending, and intend to spend in the Colonies will be as nothing, if we cannot make a prudent and reasonable investment of our human capital. I beg to move for Papers.
6.4 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, I wish to make a very brief intervention in this debate, because I think that perhaps out of my personal experience I may be able to supplement one or two of the points which the noble Lord has just made. May I say that I shall not attempt in any way to answer some of the questions which he has asked, because Obviously that
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would not be the function of a Back Bencher; it is the function of the noble Lord who will reply on behalf of the Government at the end of this debate. The fact that I do not mention certain things for which the noble Lord has asked does not mean that I have any doubts about the desirability that the best that this country can give should be given for the Colonial Civil Service. As we all know to-day, much depends in the future upon the way in which the Colonial Empire is administered and is led along the path which has been marked out for it by our policy, and therefore it is necessary to secure the best.
I should like to say one or two things about the quality of the Colonial Service. It is my experience—and I can say this safely, without fear of contradiction from anybody who knows the subject—that we are to-day, for whatever the reasons may be (and it would be easy to give the reasons) attracting to the Colonial Service a better type of man than we have ever attracted before. The new recruits to the Colonial Service give great cause for hope for the future to anybody who has the welfare of that Service at heart. Heaven knows that the task which they have to face is a far more difficult one than, say, the task I had to face when I entered the Service many years ago, or the noble Lord who moved this Motion had to face when he entered it at a much later date. There never has been a time like the present when we need, and must have, the best, and for the moment we are getting the best. May I say, too, that the method of training which has been instituted by the Colonial Office is now of a far higher grade, far more carefully thought out, more carefully prepared and followed up than has ever been the case before. The Colonial civil servant of to-day goes to meet the difficulties of his task a far better trained man. In the past we were rather thrown out to our job. We went there and had to make the best we could of it and hope that we could find a senior officer who would take enough personal interest to assist in teaching us. I remember saying in days gone by that it was rather like taking a medical student of a year or two's standing, throwing him out and telling him to learn to be a doctor. Those days have gone, and there is a systemised series of arrangements for fitting our officers for the jobs which they have to face.

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The noble Lord referred to the Colonial Administrative Service as a diminishing body. In point of fact, at the present moment it probably is not a diminishing body. There were appalling wastages and arrears to be made up through all the war years, during which a diminishing body of men bore incredible burdens, and from which they emerged very tired and much in need of a rest. Those wastages are now being made good, but it is true, on a broad outlook, that the natural corollary of our policy is that the Colonial Administrative Service, recruited from this country, should be a diminishing body, because as they train the people of those countries to administer their own affairs it is obvious that the need for so many will slowly diminish.
I would like to correct any impression there may be that this is—to use the noble Lord's expression—" putting one's capital into a gold mine which is largely worked out." Personally, I regard the future of the Colonial Empire as likely to be an even more brilliant one than it has ever been in the past. Anyone who has known it—as so many of your Lordships have, all over the world—will realise the immense possibilities which are still left, and the great work which there is to be done in increasing collaboration with the various inhabitants of those countries. May I say, too, that that collaboration is being freely given. One is apt to get too coloured an impression by the stress which is laid upon occasional difficulties and troubles which occur in the Colonies, but the moment the Colonial civil servant goes out to a Colony, wherever it may be, the first thing that he learns—if he ever had any doubt about it before—is that his presence there is welcome and that he belongs to a body of men who are deeply respected by ninety-nine out of every hundred of the community in which he works. I hope that the day will never come when he will cease to be regarded as their friend.
I remember—if I may indulge in a personal reminiscence for a moment—taking an American Consul General across the middle of Nigeria on one occasion. Even he, representing a type of man who was well informed in every respect, was amazed at what he saw. He turned to me at the end of a fortnight of this journeying and said: "Do you know, it has occurred to me that if your presence
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was not welcomed in this country, it would be quite impossible for a handful of Englishmen to carry on this work as they do." That is the impression on every honest observer who goes about our Colonies. I stress these points because I want to encourage the recruit to the Colonial Service, in every way I can, to realise that he has a great prospect before him. One has, of course, to realise that the aim in the distant future is that has presence will not be required; but that is not at present. No person who knows anything of the subject can believe that in the life-time of anybody joining the service to-day that service will not provide an ample career; there is a long way to go before these Colonies will be able to do without the advice, help, and support of the British services.
I made one or two notes as the noble Lord proceeded, but I do not propose to make any comment; obviously, it is net for me to do so. He made some remarks about Ceylon and Palestine, but they do not provide much of a parallel to many of the other Colonies with which we are dealing at the moment. I should like, however, to say a word about his remarks on the subject of promotion and the methods of promotion. It is quite true to say that the district officer is, and always has been, the backbone of the Colonial Service. And, if I may say so, I think it is desirable, if possible, that people who rise to the high position of Governor should in their earlier days have been a district officer. I spent the first ten years of my career doing that sort of work and it is an experience which I am sure is necessary before one rises to the highest position, in order to be able to put oneself in the position of the man who is doing that kind of work. But it is also true to say that many of the best district officers are men whose capacity is limited to that type of work. Under out system to-day those who have responsibility for promotion to higher posts are constantly reviewing the list of the younger district officers, and if they see a man who might obviously rise to a higher position, where he has to deal with policy he is given every opportunity and is tried out for those positions. Every prudent Administration know for many years ahead who are the prospective leaders of that service—always provided, of course that they continue to show the promise which they have exhibited at the time.

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That is all I wish to contribute to this debate, except to say that there never was a time when the young man had to realise more clearly that, whatever he does, he cannot find to-day what used to be called the security of the Home Civil Service. No man can hope to live to-day, just as no nation can hope to live, other than dangerously. We live in a present and look to a future where risks have to be taken. But I can think of no finer career, and no better way of spending one's ability, than in taking the risks and the great promise which are to be found in the work of the Colonial Civil Service.
6.15 p.m.
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord who introduced this Motion will agree that it has been amply justified by its having given rise to the speech to which we have just listened. Lord Milverton comes among us after a remarkably varied career in different parts of the Colonial Empire, and what he has said to us this afternoon is the fruit of his most wise and successful experience. I rise this afternon merely to dot the i's and cross the t's of some of the things he has said. I am quite sure we ought not to appeal to the young man of to-day for either the administrative or any other of the Colonial services on the ground that he is going to a safe or an easy job. The people who have built up the Colonial Empire have been people with a sense of adventure, and it is essential that that idea of adventure should always be kept in mind.
The pace of the development of all the peoples of the Colonial Empire, both economically and educationally, is of course increasing year by year, because we are spreading education; we are giving to these people access to university education, either in their own country or here; and it is quite right and indeed inevitable that in the future in all the Colonial Services men from universities in this country, who may never before have been out of this country, will find themselves having to work alongside Africans, Malays, Chinese, and all sorts of people, on terms of absolute equality, social and otherwise.
Now let me say something about training. The Government have done a good deal to put into force the recommendations of the first part of the Devonshire
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Committee Report; and, as Chairman of the governing body of the London School of Oriental and African Languages, I have seen something of the new post-war entry that has recently been trained. I am quite satisfied that there has never been an entry better in quality than I saw last year at that school. Moreover, the quality of their training before they go out has also been immensely improved compared to what it was when I entered the Colonial Office and we started the courses at Oxford and Cambridge. I still attach the utmost importance to language. I am quite sure that any officer, not only an administrative officer but an agricultural or educational officer, even if he does not have to use the native vernacular nearly so much in the future as in the past, must know something of that vernacular.
Remember, my Lords, the basic fact about Africa and the African. Until his contact with us, the African had never invented or known a written language. His whole means of communication was phonetic, being entirely by ear. Everything was handed on from generation to generation orally, and not by written tradition and communication. I am quite sure that we can never begin to understand the African mind unless we have a knowledge of the form of thought by which the African thinks. I do not attach great importance to one being an expert linguist, grammatically and orthographically correct in a number of local vernaculars, but I do say that anybody going to Bantu Africa who cannot understand the Bantu language and speaks it only a little will not really get into touch with the great mass of the people. If one does know one Bantu language, one at least has a key to the form of thought of other peoples speaking another form of Bantu. It is the same with the Sudanic language in West Africa. Therefore, language is very important.
Looking back on the story of Britain in India, we can see that we overdid the attempt to Anglicise everything. I have said before in this House that Lord Macaulay's ideas of education and of imposing English traditions of education upon another people and another culture have not been wholly successful. It is true that it gave them something immensely valuable which they had not before, but it had its bad side; we cannot get away from it. We do not go to these Colonies to de-nationalise them and to impose our ideas of culture

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and civilisation upon them, but merely to facilitate those people developing their own characteristics according to their own traditions in a very difficult world, often possessing only primitive standards and primitive narrow ideas, to a level where they can live and hold their own among the other peoples of mankind.
Preliminary training is all-important, and I hope that the further recommendations—I do not say in every detail but in broad outline—for refresher courses, or whatever you like to call them, will later on also be carried forward, if only to bring together for a long period young Colonial officers of all services, and not only the administrative service, to interchange their own experiences over their first years of life and provide them with a higher staff education. In fact, what we need is a staff college for the Colonial services just as we have staff colleges at Camberley for the Army and at Greenwich for the Navy. I am quite convinced that that is absolutely essential. I have seen most of the Colonial Empire in the course of the last thirty years and from my experience I am not unduly worried about the administrative service. I am much more worried about the other services being up to the necessary standards, or even to the standard of the administrative service. It is no use having a brilliant engineer, a brilliant agriculturist or a good "vet," and certainly a good schoolmaster, unless he has the same approach in adapting his science as the administrative officer has in applying the fundamentals of the law and order of politics and the basis and structure of government among the people whom he is serving. Too often the technical services have lagged behind the administrative service in their contacts with the people. Also, they have tended more than the administrative service to get into a groove. If one goes to single crop countries, or to places where there is one particular type of agriculture, it is perhaps inevitable that the tendency seems to be in this direction.
That brings me to another point, and that is that, apart from staff courses later in their career, there should be interchange. It was often said to me when at the Colonial Office I used to harp on the importance of more interchange at all stages: "Oh, but you are a great advocate of knowledge of the vernacular, and surely that is contradictory to what you are now advocating." There I think that the
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language question can be overstressed and one can attach too much importance to it, particularly among the technical officers and the middle and certainly the higher ranks of the administrative service. Once they know one vernacular they need not necessarily learn another; but at least they know that there is a problem in the fact that we are dealing with a people who do not naturally speak our language, and they have some idea of their processes of thought. I am convinced that, in the interests of all officers, but particularly in the interests of technical officers, more interchange of experience is necessary for their efficiency and their growth, and fiat more movement about the Colonial Empire is desirable in the interests of each and every part of it.
I come now to the question of the Promotions Committee. There is the problem of selecting people who are to be trained to be the leaders. There again we have to be very careful. The original selection is, quite rightly, based on collecting men of character with a good standard of education, but not all of an equally high standard of mere intellectual education. Obviously, for the people who are going to be Colonial Secretaries and Chief Secretaries, the people who are to run the Secretariats, we must have those who can hold their own with the home civil servants and write the despatches and deal with the paper work of government. Those people are, of course, necessary but they are not always the most successful administrative officers or technical officers in the field in contact with the indigenous populations. We want to give both kinds a chance of promotion.
The truth about promotion, of course, is that at the Colonial Office we are dependent for interchange from one Colonial administration to another almost entirely on the confidential reports sent in by various Governors. When I was in the Colonial Office and I had a confidential report on an officer sent up to me, I used to ask, "Who wrote that report?" Frankly, there are some people whose reports are worth a great deal more than others. It is the same in the Army and in nearly every other Service. Some people can tell you fearlessly and objectively the whole truth, the good, the bad, and the indifferent about an individual, without any offence; and others cannot do that. On the whole, just as there is in the Army, I think there is a

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little danger lest Governors and Colonial Secretaries who draw up these reports are frightened of telling the whole truth. They always say: "Well, this confidential report will get out, and if I say this, that and the other about a man, it may not be absolutely fair to him. I will give him another chance." But it is in the interests of the man himself, as well as of the Service and of the Empire as a whole, that those confidential reports should be as objective and truthful as possible. I feel that great importance should be attached to that.
I cannot talk on this subject without paying my tribute to one outstanding man in the history of the Colonial Empire in the last thirty years; I refer to Sir Ralph Furse. The Colonial Empire owes more to him—and I say this frankly, as an ex-Colonial Secretary—than to any Colonial Secretary, and to many another person whose name is known in connection with him. The amount of work that he and his staff have done, quietly and unostentatiously, in the recruiting, the training and the follow-up of the Service is tremendous. Only one who has seen it, and knows of it, can realise the great debt of gratitude that we owe to that man and his staff. It has been a quite outstanding service; to that I can testify.
I have only one small point of my own to make. It has been my lot, in addition to spending a lot of time in the Colonial Empire and in the Colonial Office, to be High Commissioner in South Africa, and I had under me three territories where one is virtually in the position of a Colonial Governor. They are not under the Colonial Office, but under the Dominions Office—the only territories that are under what is now the Commonwealth Relations Office; and, of course, they are dependent upon borrowing the necessary staff from the Colonial Service. I am quite sure that the interests of the officers whom we send out from this country to those three territories in South Africa under the Commonwealth Relations Office, demand that they be given equal chances of promotion and interchange with those who are under the Colonial Office in the rest of the Colonial Service. For one reason or another, it has been inevitable recently that the senior officer there, the Resident Commissioner, should almost invariably be taken from the senior ranks of the administrative
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side of the Colonial Service. Consequently, there is an impression in those three territories that the members of the service can never get ahead; that they are in a blind alley, and are "nobody's child." That is unfortunate, though I would remind the House that I think Sir Robert Correndon started there and eventually earned distinction as Governor of Uganda and Kenya. There are several others who have climbed the ladder, but more by good luck than good management.
The complete integration of the staff and policy, not only in the administrative, but in the medical and other services, with the three High Commission territories in South Africa is, to my mind, vital both in the interests of the officers concerned and in the interests of those three territories and of our future relations with the Union of South Africa. For in the Union of South Africa they judge our Colonial policy, and our work in the rest of Africa, by what they see in the three territories in their midst. Unless our standard of personnel, our standard of achievement and our policy in those three territories is kept up to the best standards that we have in East or West Africa we are not doing what we should do vis-à-vis the Union and our future relations with the Union in Africa. I want to make that very special point because, certainly from my experience, it stood out as a most essential factor in the whole business.
I would like to express regret that Lord Hailey has not been able to stay, as he has just returned from Africa. Apart from the change in political and educational standards, we are now living in entirely new economic circumstances, and of course inevitably the administrative officer, dealing with the indigenous peoples there, now has to face not only private corporations, but these great Government organisations like the Food Commission and those responsible for schemes such as the ground-nuts scheme in Tanganyika. I want to see the Colonial Office supporting the local Governor, the local native Commissioner, and the local officers who know the people of that country; I want to see them protecting those people against exploitation by the large capitalist undertakings, whether they belong to or are managed by the State or by an individual corporation. I regard that as absolutely vital. It is no use we in this country saying that every step will be taken to prevent any exploitation

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of the native. Unless the local native has the administrative officer to keep his end up when he has a grievance vis-à-vis a powerful, mechanised, highly organised body—a sort of separate entity of the British Government, sent out to develop his country—I know that under the whole circumstances of the set-up injustice will be done to the native—not intentionally, but inevitably.
For that reason, I would like to see these men in other experiments, such as the ground-nuts scheme, which the Government may have in mind (it may be oil palms in Nigeria, or another crop somewhere else) for which, with the economic stresses of the world, there is much to be said, effectively placed under the local Chief Native Commissioner, or whatever he may be called (perhaps the Secretary for Native Affairs), and under the local Governor, who is an experienced Colonial administrator; they should not be run from London by the orders of a board. That is absolutely vital, if we are not to have, with disastrous results for native progress and relations, a dichotomy and a diarchy in the midst of every one of those Colonies where that kind of scheme is in force. I hope the noble Earl who is to reply will assure us that some further instalments of the Devonshire proposals are in store, and that the Government are sympathetic to the views that have been expressed by all three speakers so far this afternoon.
6.39 p.m.
LORD RENNELL: My Lords, I hope it will not be thought that I am in any way striking a discordant note after the speeches that have been made, which must leave the impression that in the Colonial Service (especially the Colonial Service in so far as it has been recruited since the war) everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. The noble Lord, Lord Tweedsmuir, spoke of the terms of service, and I think he meant to draw particular attention to the material terms of service—namely, pay, pensions, leave passages and matters of that kind. I would like to address myself not to the material side of the terms of the Colonial Service, but to their morale or spirit. By a curious coincidence, not knowing that this Motion was going to be tabled, I happen in the course of the last two months to have had a number
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of communications from, and to have seen, a number of people from both Last African and West African Colonies. From five separate persons I have, unfortunately, heard the same story, which leads me to a feeling of rather considerable anxiety about the frame of mind in which many of our Colonial civil servants in Africa are at the present time.
I had, during the war, a large number of Colonial civil servants serving under me, both in Africa and elsewhere. I have no partisan view about any one Colony or any one service, nor are the cases to which I refer—except in two instances—cases of officers who served under ma. What I say is quite unprejudiced; I am in no way personally concerned. These men have all brought back the same story. One can see how the situation has arisen, and I would like to draw the attention of noble Lords opposite to it, in the hope that some remedy may be found. The complaint which is made is not by any means, or in the first place, in regard to terms of service. There are, it is true, difficulties about salaries, allowances, pay, pension rights, and so on, which are, doubtless, being looked into. Indeed, I know that they are being looked into, and I have no doubt that they will be remedied. The difficulty which I see is engendered by a feeling about their work on the part of the best of these men. How good they are has been told by the noble Lord who has just sat down, and I should be the first to agree with everything that both he and the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, have said about the quality of the men involved. They are, however, not happy in many cases, not on account of pay and conditions, but because of the work they are called upon to do.
The men of whom I speak are each unknown to the others. Two administrative officers, and one officer in departmental or specialised service in West Africa have all complained about being unable to do the work that they feel they were sent to Africa to do. Administrative officers are finding themselves tied, up in their offices with not enough time to get around their districts and with no time at all to get into contact with the people whose affairs they are supposed to be administering. They are inundated with paper. They are inundated with calls for returns from the Secretariat. They find themselves

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exasperated by having questions addressed to them not once but twice or three times in a slightly different form from offices the occupants of which, they feel, ought to be able to answer the questions themselves, instead of just passing paper and files along to the unfortunate district officer. In one particular case of which I have heard—and I shall be glad to furnish an appropriate extract from a long letter which I have had on precisely these lines from a fairly senior officer in West Africa, provided his identity can be concealed—the officer concerned has gone so far as to hand in his resignation from the administrative service owing to his feeling that he cannot get on and do the job for which he is paid. It is not for the purpose of getting out of the Colonial Service that he has handed in his resignation. He is an unmarried man with sufficient money of his own and property in England to enable him to return at any time he washes, but he is asking to be transferred out of the administrative service into another department, because he feels that he cannot do the job which he is paid to do. He has had to rely, in the last three or four years, in the Province to which he has been posted, on departmental officers, on officers who are sent out on temporary contracts—I believe for development purposes and in connection with special plans—for the contact with the people which he ought to be having and which he is unable to obtain on account of the office work and the table work that he has to do.
Here in the case of this officer and two others, we have examples of men who are not complaining about the material terms of their service. They are devoted to their work, and rather than return here they would prefer to stay in another capacity out in Africa. They desire to take up appointments in which they feel they can be useful rather than to continue in the administrative service where they are exasperated and obstructed by the amount of paper work which they are called upon to do. This information has come to me from both West Africa and East Africa and from men whose quality is quite beyond a per-adventure—it is undoubtedly of the highest. It has also come from men who do not wish to resign, men who are not, as the common saying has it, disgruntled
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but who feel there is something wrong in their particular service and wish to show by their own departure where things have gone wrong. If we are to continue to have the best men, as we have now—and may I say here how profoundly I agree with Lord Harlech in what he said about the work Sir Ralph Furse has done for recruiting for the Colonial Services—and if we are to use those men to the best advantage, they must be happy in their work. They must be happy not only with regard to pay but in the spirit in which they perform their work.
The situation is one which I believe to be somewhat serious. I know of young men who have been sent out to the Colonies since the war, through Sir Ralph Furse's organisation, and who have come home and have resigned. I asked the noble Earl who is going to reply on behalf of the Government, when I spoke to him about this matter yesterday, whether he has any data and whether he has been able to ascertain how many young men who have gone out since the war have already resigned and come back for reasons of the sort which I have mentioned—namely, that they are not happy about the work they have been called upon to do. I know two particular cases of men who have come back and who say they have done so because they consider they were taken into the Colonial Service under false pretences. When they told me this I said to them: "What do you mean by false pretences? Are the terms not what you expected?" They replied: "Yes, the material terms are all that we expected. But we thought we were sent out to administer and govern Colonies, and not to be underpaid and overworked accountants, doing accounting work in offices for seven days a week." One can see how such a situation has arisen, but one of the remedies is fairly clear. It is that the district officer should not be condemned to doing accountant's work; he should be allowed to administer, and an accountant should be provided for him. I think that, in many instances, accountants could be recruited from among Africans to a greater extent than has been the practice up to date.
It is a waste of man-power to take a man from England, send him out there, pay his passage, pay his leave, and put him to keeping native administration

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treasury records. That is what has been going on. One man found himself exasperated to such an extent that he left, because the Secretariat in the Colony in which he was situated called for three revisions and three redrafts on small points of a native administration budget. There was no one else there to do it. He ought to have been doing his own job, but instead of that he was condemned to sitting, metaphorically speaking, with wet towels round his head, in an office, in a not very salubrious climate, trying to work out budget after budget and having them sent back. Finally he was asked his opinion about something, knowing that the decision relevant to that matter had already been given in the Secretariat. That sort of thing does not promote a high morale even among this very high quality human material.
Why that has arisen is fairly clear. It has arisen from the great development schemes in the Colonies. Colonial Governments are now being called upon to do a great deal more than was ever conceived before the war. Moreover, with the facility of communication and the greater contact that exists between many African Colonies and people in this country, there are many more people interested in asking questions; more work is thrown on local Governments, and all the way down the line to the administrative officer, in the need for providing data in case somebody asks a question. That is not a criticism of this or any other Government, but it is a criticism that it should affect the morale of Colonial civil servants. Between the people who ask for informal ion in Westminster and the unfortunate administrative officer there must be placed a screen, to protect him and allow him to get on with his job. At present, he suffers from being used for purposes outside the terms of his contract.
I should like to deal with another point which arises out of what the noble Lords, Lord Tweedsmuir and Lord Harlech, have said about training, refresher courses and interchange between Colonies and between Services. In spite of having the largest Colonial Empire in the world, we in this country, curiously enough, have little in the way of institutional organisation for the study of the Colonies. The schools in France and Belgium are both of longer standing and far more elaborate than anything we have in England. A scheme for training and refresher courses is long
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overdue, and I hope very much that that will be instituted as soon as possible, even if it requires additional personnel. I would go one stage farther. In the course of some experience of the African territories, not only of British territories, but of French and Belgian and other territories, the thing that struck me forcibly was that every major Colonial territory have their foreign relations, their local domestic foreign relations, which require consider-able co-ordination between contiguous territories—between the four British territories in West Africa and the intervening French Colonies, for example; and between Uganda, Tanganyika and he Portuguese Colonies.
The noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, knows this far better than I do, because he was mainly responsible for instituting this in West Africa. In the major centres of the foreign Colonial territories we have a British representation, in the form of Consulates and Consulates General, staffed, in the main, by personnel from the Foreign Office. I have found—and I think the noble Viscount and those who have some direct personal experience of this will agree with me—that there is a great deal lacking in the knowledge possessed by the Foreign Service of administrative and Colonial matters. Possibly a certain amount can be said on the other side as well. Has the time not come to institute, within a limited number of people, an interchange of personnel between our Foreign Service and the Colonial Service? I believe some proposal of this sort has been under discussion. Would it not be desirable in certain British Colonies—for their own foreign problems, say of labour, subversive activities and so on—to attach to the headquarters of the Government one or more officers from the Foreign Service? Even in the highest ranks of both the Foreign and Colonial Services I found a very great degree of ignorance. Frankly, our ambassadors know little about our Colonies; in many cases, they know virtually nothing. Perhaps some of our Colonial Governors do not know very much of how our Foreign Service run the Embassies.
In Africa, with this hotchpotch of territories which has happened, instead of being carefully devised, we cannot afford to have our Colonial and Foreign Services working in watertight compartments. I regret to say that I have sometimes seen them look at one another sideways. I

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urge that the training and refresher courses and interchange should now be extended to include inter-Service exchanges without loss of seniority, even if only on an experimental basis. I believe the new ideas that will be brought in by this interchange will go some way to provide that broader attitude of mind to which the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, referred as being one of the consequences which he hoped would follow the refresher courses. That interchange could be extended within limits to our home Civil Service on technical and departmental problems, again in both directions. To summarise my remarks: I hope that the morale in the African Service is better than the evidence I have lately had leads me to believe. If we are to conserve the best men it is important to have them right in mind as well as solvent in pocket. Without both these things, we shall not get the best. We can get one by giving good pay and pensions, but we cannot get the other without looking into the secretarial and paper work which the officers are condemned to do. My second point is on interchange, but I have spoken on that so recently that I will not repeat it. I should like to ask the noble Earl who is to reply whether a scheme of that sort is possible.
6.59 p.m.
LORD ALTRINCHAM: My Lords, I assure you at once that I shall not commit the enormity of addressing you for many minutes. But as one who spent five years in the Colonial Service in Africa, I am most anxious to make one or two points in this discussion and to support my noble friend behind me who introduced this Motion. Let me speak exclusively on the welfare of the Colonial Service. As warmly as any of those who have already spoken, I would wish to pay my tribute to the work of Sir Ralph Furse. Over a long period his success, his judgment and his dignity have been of inestimable value to the Government, to all Colonial territories and to the whole Commonwealth. I am glad his name has been mentioned. Secondly, I should like to register my agreement with the noble Lord who has just spoken as to the state, I will not say of discontent, but of malaise in the Colonial Service at the present time. Of course, there are material grievances in regard to which improvements can be made. If I speak for a moment about
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this matter it is to mention only one point—namely, the education of children. I feel that we might do more to assist our officers overseas to get their children well educated in this country, and to help them in the great difficulty they have in finding places for them in the holidays. It is a desperate affair for those who have not relations in this country who are practically prepared to undertake the work of parents on their behalf. That, I think, is one of the most important of the material considerations.
But it is not on the material side that I feel the situation to be serious at the present moment; it is on the moral and spiriual side. Like the noble Lord, Lord Rennell, I have had letters from both East Africa and West Africa. I have had one from each territory, from officers of whom I have never heard, who, I suppose, have written to me because they believe I am interested in these things. It is obvious from their letters that they are officers whose hearts are absolutely in their work. Nobody could call them grousers. They are officers who are all out to serve the people in whose countries they are posted. They tell me that they feel inhibited from doing the work they ought to be doing, and they are losing touch with the people they ought to be serving. That is a terrible position to which to reduce an officer who is heart and soul desiring to do his best for the native peoples. It is little use our saying in this House and elsewhere that in setting up these great schemes of development in the Colonial Empire we count upon the co-operation of the Colonial peoples, if, in fact, we are moving into a method of administration which prevents the district officers from keeping touch as they should.
There are two difficulties for the district officer. The first is that described by the noble Lord, Lord Rennell. It is that there is too much paper work—the everlasting answering of questions, and all the rest of it. While that can be remedied to some extent by more staff, I think the only real remedy is more decentralisation. Yet there is a growing desire for centralisation, a growing refusal to give the district officer his head. I am sure that is a fatal mistake if you are going to have good men in this work. There is another aspect which we must bear in mind. It is that many of these officers are most anxious

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about the schemes of development. My noble friend Lord Harlech spoke about that subject. They think we are losing touch; that we are getting divided in our purpose as to these countries; and that while we say that we intend to develop the Colonial Empire entirely in the interests of their own peoples, there is a growing note in all our argument as to the tremendous advantage it is going to be to ourselves. They are very much afraid, as administrative officers, as my noble friend Lord Harlech said, that they will find themselves up against powerful organisations with the whole weight of Government behind them, and unable to give adequate protection to the African peoples. Those are two matters which I hope the noble Earl will agree are of very great importance and which ought to be investigated. If we are to take our responsibility for the Colonial peoples seriously, we should not neglect impressions of this kind, which are derived by people who certainly have no desire to appear merely as malcontents and bad officers. One of these letters, as a matter of fact, came from an officer I know very well. He was in the Kenya Government when I was there, and he has now retired and settled in Kenya. But, with all his experience, he said the same thing. It does want watching.
One other point which I would like to make may sound partly in conflict with the great desire I have for the advancement of the interests of the Colonial Service. I believe that the recruits the Service is getting are as good as they can be. I have a profound admiration for the Colonial Service and a confidence in its future if we treat it properly. I am very doubtful about a consideration which has not been urged in this debate, but which is often urged in this connection. I am doubtful whether it is wise always to insist that the topmost positions, the Governorships, should go to the Colonial Service, and that the Colonial Service are wronged if they do not get those positions. After all, in this country, to use Bagehot's phrase, we put the parrot on the donkey's back. We put in charge of Government Departments Ministers who are amateurs, but who can judge broadly and who can tell the public what is needed. They are the parrots. They have at their disposal the donkeys, who are the permanent civil servants. That is not a flattering description
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of either, and no doubt less flattering to the politician than the civil servant
Nevertheless, having given that description, Bagehot said that this is the soundest method ever devised. Put the non-professional at the top of a great professional organisation and you will get the best results. I think that applies absolutely to Governorships. Often what is wanted is a man completely free from the sort of growth of rigid opinion about the Service and what it should do which necesarily grows up in any Service. There is always an esprit de corps; there is always a doctrine of the Service, and it is better at times to have somebody quite independent. It is also better to have somebody who carries more influence in this country than any civil servant who has been out of the country for most of his life can possibly have. It is, further, sometimes very important to send to those places a man known to have that influence. That is a matter that may be of great importance in securing the content of the Colonial people themselves. Therefore, while I am all out for the welfare of the Colonial service, for its dignity and its advancement in every way, I hope that that condition which is often insisted upon will, at my rate, be dispassionately reconsidered.
There is one other consideration which we must not forget. All the services, when the process of promotion goes entirely within the charmed circle of the service itself, tend to make it a matter of routine. The late Lord Fisher invented a splendid term for that. He said that he always expected to wake up one morning and find that we had lost the British Empire because it was "Buggins's turn." Admiral Buggins happened to be the next for that job, and he got it, but not because he was fitted for it. That is a tendency in every service, and we must guard against it. The best way to guard against it is to make it clear when the higher posts are filled that the consideration is not merely the interests of the Service but the interests of the territory and the people there, and the interests of the Empire. That should be the first consideration. If that is always kept to the fore, then Buggins, happily, will never get his turn unless he deserves it.
Finally, let me add my warm support to what the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, said about the future of the Service. I

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do not think my noble friend Lord Tweedsmuir meant what he said in the sense that this is a worked-out mine. It is the greatest Service to which young Englishmen, Scotsmen, Welshmen and Irishmen can devote themselves. I am delighted at the entry which we are getting at the present time, and I hope it will continue. I believe that this Service will justify itself to the Commonwealth and to the world, if we treat it with sympathy and understanding.
7.10 p.m.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I think the number of noble Lords present in the Chamber is quite often no true measure of the interest taken by your Lordships in the subject under discussion, because what may be a feast to the experts is apt to become caviare to the general. I shall cater for the Colonial epicures, in the shape of former Secretaries of State and Colonial Governors, by giving them as full a reply as I can and taking the risk of being blamed for speaking at such length at this hour of the evening. I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tweedsmuir, for giving the House this opportunity to discuss the Colonial Service, and I know that my gratitude is shared by all those connected with the Colonies. It is not often that public attention is directed to the fine work—as has been acknowledged by every speaker—that is being carried out by public servants in the Colonies and Protectorates of our Commonwealth. Throughout those territories they are maintaining the high standards of administration of which this country is justly proud, and which represent an essential part of the contribution of British political genius to the progress of mankind. The noble Lord the mover of the Motion, has himself served as a member of the Colonial Administrative Service in Uganda, and speaks with first-hand knowledge of conditions in East Africa.
The noble Lord said, among other things, that we ought to have a Secretary of State for Africa, because the Secretary of State for the Colonies is overworked, and he needs someone to share his burden. I agree that he is overworked—all Cabinet Ministers are overworked. I am not a Cabinet Minister myself, so I can say that without inviting sympathy. I should like to point out two things to the noble
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Lord, because I think they show that my right honourable friend's burden has been lightened; and quite recently. A Minister of State at the Colonial Office was appointed in January of this year, and I know from personal experience that my right honourable friend has been able to farm out a lot of the work he has hitherto been obliged to do himself. Secondly, we have decided to surrender the Mandate for Palestine. I do not think anyone who has not been in the Colonial Office realises how much the time of the Secretary of State has been occupied by only one of the territories for which he has had responsibility. The surrender of the Mandate will relieve him of a considerable part of the work he has had to do lately. May I answer some of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rennell, before I get on to the substance of what I have to say? The noble Lord complained that the district officers are pinned down to their offices by paper work. But, of course, that is a direct responsibility of Colonial Governments, rather than the Colonial Office.
LORD ALTRINCHAM: Will the noble Earl allow me to interrupt? I have been a Colonial Governor—twenty years ago—and a great deal of this work was caused by questions from the Colonial Office and, in particular, by questions asked in Parliament.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: What I desire to say is that the Colonial Governments should see that their district officers are not snowed under by paper work.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: Set them an example!
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: I assure your Lordships that they are aware of the vital importance of district officers being able to circulate freely in their district. If the noble Lord, Lord Rennell, will let me have any specific complaints, I will see that they are brought to the attention of the Governors in the Colonies concerned. The other point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rennell, was about resignations from the Colonial Service. I can tell him only that we have no figures at the Colonial Office for the number of resignations among those who have actually gone out to the Colonies.
LORD RENNELL: Since the war?
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: Since the war. But I can tell him that if there had been any large or significant number of resignations in any territory that fact would certainly have come to our ears. I hope that that will reassure the noble Lord that this has not become a serious problem in any of the Colonies.
The first point I should like to make is rather obvious, but it is sometimes overlooked. The Colonies, Protectorates and Trust territories for which we are responsible are separate units of the Administration, each with its own public service. It is true that we often speak of the Colonial Service as though it were one body, like the Foreign Service or the Home Civil Service. This expression is, in fact, a label for the aggregate of the staffs of some thirty-four separate Governments. The Colonial Service is the sum of the public Services operating in each of these territories. I say this to make it absolutely plain how much can be done by Ministers here at the Colonial Office. It is the duty of the Secretary of State to advise Colonial Governments about the conditions of service which they should offer if they are to attract Government servants of the right type and quality. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State, however, has never been able to prescribe conditions for the whole Service and to require Colonial Governments to conform to them. These people are the servants of the Government of the territory in which they work; and who pay their salaries.
My next point is this. It is a commonplace, of course, and I will not labour it, that the aim of our Colonial policy is the progressive advancement of all the Colonial peoples along the road to self-government, within the framework of the British Commonwealth of Nations. It follows from this that the public Services of the Colonies must be adjusted to local requirements, and they must be staffed to a large and ever-increasing extent by locally recruited people. It is equally important to recognise, frankly and openly—and this was stated by the noble Lord, Lord Milverton—that for a long time to come most of the Colonies will not be able to find among their own inhabitants enough suitably qualified staff to fill all the posts required by an efficient and up-to-date Administration. It is one of the chief aims of our educational policy to make young people of both sexes competent to
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take an active part, when they grow up, in the work of their own Governments throughout the whole Colonial field. But pending the availability of a sufficient number of locally trained personnel to staff their public services, the Colonies will Continue to look to the rest of the Commonwealth, and especially to the United Kingdom, to provide suitably qualified individuals for key posts in their administrative and technical services.
But already the vast majority of those employed by Colonial Governments are of local origin. It is estimated that the figure is about 96 per cent. of the total which, to all those who continue to think of the Colonial Service in terms of the young men who go out from the United Kingdom to the Colonies, is a striking proportion. It is extremely satisfactory—as I am sure your Lordships will agree—that so many of the indigenous population of the Colonies are now engaged in Government service. Of course, there is no bar, in whatever Colony they may work, to their promotion to the highest Government appointments in their own communities. It is true that at this moment the remaining 4 per cent. are people from this country and the Dominions; and, of course, they occupy most of the leading positions. Nevertheless, no effort is being spared to promote the advancement of locally born people in every grade to their technical and administrative services, and in the next few years we hope to see an even larger number of responsible posts held by men and women of local origin. As a practical contribution to the achievement of this aim we have set aside £1,000,000 of Colonial Development and Welfare money to provide scholarships for Colonial people who wish to obtain the academic or professional qualifications required for the higher branches of the Colonial Service. So far, nearly 200 of these scholarships have been awarded to candidates from a wide range of Colonies. This scheme will ensure that the public services of the Colonies in the next ten years will be reinforced by at least several hundred fully qualified men and women, drawn from the Colonial communities themselves.
I now turn to the recruitment and training of the Colonial Service. I will say about recruitment only that there has been a large and satisfactory expansion in the two years immediately following the war. I was delighted to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, said, speaking

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from his own experience, about the quality of the new recruits. The total number of recruits to the technical and administrative services during this period was equivalent to seven and a half years' normal intake. I think that says a lot for the popularity of the Colonial Service and the sense of responsibility and high adventure that still prevails among young people in this country.
But of course the work of the Colonial Office does not stop by any means at recruitment. We must equip the Colonial Service thoroughly for its task; and this means better and broader training than before the war, both on first appointment and later. Several noble Lords were interested in the subject of training and I will try to give them a brief review of the situation. Before the war, training had to be reduced or suspended, and could not begin again until the first urgently-needed post-war reinforcements had been hurried out to the Colonies. But a new start was made in the autumn of 1946, and since then there has been much progress and the field of training has been widened. In accordance with the recommendations of the Devonshire Committee, the training courses are held, not in the isolation of a staff college—there was considerable discussion of the respective merits of staff colleges and universities in this House, which many of your Lordships will remember—but in the main stream of English education. For this purpose the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London form the present team and between them account for a high proportion of the courses. In so far as improved Colonial Service training requires increased contact between experts in this country and those with Colonial experience, it is probable that increasing use will also be made of the training facilities provided by Government Departments such as the Ministry of Labour.
The chief object of preliminary training is to instruct the recruit in the Colonial aspect of his work, administrative or otherwise. The first training course for some 120 administrative probationers has already been completed at Oxford, Cambridge and London; and the second one, with 150 probationers, has been running since last autumn. Another large batch will be starting the third course in the series next October. Alongside of it there have been special courses for agricultural
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education, fisheries, forestry, survey and veterinary probationers and for technical people whom we have to send out. This year it is hoped that probationers for the engineering and legal services also will be brought within the training arrangements.
The Devonshire Committee's most novel proposal was for a combined further course in this country for officers of all branches after some years of Colonial service. The first of these courses finished in March of this year. Nearly 100 officers from a wide range of Colonial territories attended it, and some 150 more have been put forward by their Governments for the next course. At the same time the special one-year post-service course at the Imperial Forestry Institute, Oxford, has been continued, and new courses in road research have been started for engineers. Training for labour officers is to begin in 1949, under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour. Four short Colonial Service Conferences have been held since the war: at Oxford in 1946, at the London School of Economics and Cambridge in 1947, and at St. Andrews in 1948. It is hoped that such Conferences will be held regularly in the future. They should fulfil two functions: a quick refresher for the officer on leave, who will be able to enjoy the chance to exchange ideas with men and women from other territories; and an opportunity of discussion of special problems common to the officers concerned. One significant aspect of post-war training courses is that Colonial-born officers have been taking them along with expatriate officers. We have mixed these classes as completely as we can. The numbers of the local men will, of course, grow as more qualify for appointment to the higher grades of the Service.
Now let me say a word about pay and other conditions of the Service. We have to remember that the rise in prices that has taken place all over the world has hit the Colonies as hard as any other territory. That has been the experience all over the Colonial territories. The main pressing concern of Colonial Governments in matters affecting pay and terms of service during the post-war years has been to adjust salaries to meet current conditions, including as a rule this general rise in prices. That need has been experienced throughout the Colonies, and a whole series of salary revisions has been undertaken since the end of the war. In many

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cases the need has supplied the opportunity for a comprehensive review of pay, grading and terms of service in the light of the general principles set out in the White Paper of 1946. To aid Colonial Governments in this my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has been able to enlist the services of several experienced Special Commissioners, and with this assistance comprehensive reviews have been either concluded or initiated in most of the main Colonial regions. Those reviews already concluded and made effective include the four West African colonies which were dealt with by a single Commission; and Hong Kong, Fiji, Cyprus, British Honduras and Mauritius. The reports of three other Commissions have recently been presented and are now under consideration by the Governments concerned. These reports are for East Africa, covering Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar; for Central Africa, covering Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland; and for Malaya, together with Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo. Similar reviews at differing stages of progress are being carried out for Aden, Somaliland, Barbados, Seychelles, and the Western Pacific territories.
As regards pay structure, perhaps the most noteworthy general principle advocated in the White Paper of 1946 was the adoption of expatriation pay for officers from overseas where salaries fixed in relation to local circumstances at rates applicable to locally recruited staff are insufficient to attract those officers who have to be obtained from overseas. Formerly the system of expatriation pay has been applied only in Palestine; now it has been adopted in the four West African Colonies, in Hong Kong, Cyprus and Gibraltar, and it has been recommended for Malaya. Another measure of comparative novelty in the Colonies to which attention was called in the White Paper of 1946 was the establishment of Public Service Commissions, so composed as to command the confidence of the Service and the public, to advise the Governor of the Colony in the selection and appointment of candidates in the Colony to posts in the local Service. This suggestion has been generally welcomed by Colonial Governments, and detailed proposals have been put forward by several of the Salaries Commissions I have mentioned.
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I am grateful to the noble Lord opposite for drawing attention to the difficulty of guaranteeing a career to young men and women in a Service which is admittedly bound to have its activities reduced as different Dependencies draw nearer and nearer to self-government, Ceylon has already achieved self-rule, and we are about to relinquish our Mandate for Palestine. But it is well to note that in Ceylon there was no question of the British staff being shown the door. Their numbers have steadily fallen as the Constitution of Ceylon advanced towards self-government, and the few British officers who remained were offered a choice between continuing in the service of the Ceylon Government and retiring on specially favourable terms; they had two years in which to make their choice. As regards Palestine, all expatriate officers have been asked whether they wish to be considered for transfer to similar work in other parts of the Colonial Empire, or whether they prefer to retire on the specially favourable pension terms which have been arranged and guaranteed by His Majesty's Government. A good deal of progress has already been made in considering the placing elsewhere of those officers who desire to continue in the Colonial Service, but of course we have had to be careful not to give those who have already come out preference over those officers who had to remain in Palestine almost up to the last moment.
I think it is clear from these two recent examples that His Majesty's Government recognise the duty which they owe to officers of the Colonial Service to meet their wishes in the event of their being thrown out of employment for reasons beyond their control. But at the same time, I do not think that any prospective candidates for the Colonial Service to-day need unduly concern themselves with the question of security of tenure. For all practical purposes, the appointments offered by Colonial Governments are as permanent as those offered by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom to candidates for the home Civil Service. It is true that the avowed at of our policy is that the local people, should provide their own Civil Service, and that it is the job of the men and women whom we send out to help then to do so. But, as has been emphasised over and over again, it is equally true that the process is bound to be slow. An acorn does not become an oak tree overnight,

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although, given favourable conditions, its progress is continuous. It is, therefore, likely that, as the process of political evolution develops, recruitment for the Colonial Service from outside the Colonies will gradually diminish. Candidates who are selected to-day may reasonably assume that they would not be asked to join the Service if it were not highly probable that they would enjoy a lifetime of service in one of the great ventures which are part of our British heritage. It is not for me to give an absolute guarantee that every career will be uninterrupted, but how often can such a guarantee be given in any form of employment, in a business or even a profession?
The noble Lord, Lord Milverton, spoke of the risks that must be taken to-day, whatever career a man may choose. I think the noble Lord said very truly that the risks taken by a man who goes into the Colonial Service are pre-eminently worth while on account of the immense importance and value of the work he undertakes. What I can guarantee is the opportunity to play a part in forming and welding together this great family of nations, whose members are at different stages of political and economic development, but each of whom is contributing something to a world-wide association of peoples which we believe to be the biggest single factor making for stability and ordered progress in every part of the habitable globe. I cannot leave this subject without paying my tribute, following the noble Lords who have already paid their tributes, to the exemplary and devoted work of the Colonial Service over the past years. Palestine, of course, is much in our minds to-day. The British staff who have served there—and let me emphasise that these were ordinary men and women from every walk of life in this country—have earned our deep admiration for their loyal service, their devotion to duty and their high standards of conduct and administration, often in the face of calumny and violence. But what of the territories which are not front-page news? In the Far East, as I have recently seen for myself, they are recovering with surprising speed from the ravages of war, and are rehabilitating with remarkable energy and competence the territories recovered from the Japanese.
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The noble Lord, Lord Harlech, was no doubt glad to hear that, because he was the last Minister from the Colonial Office to visit that part of the Empire before I went there. Over the vast Continent of Africa, the men and women of the Colonial Service are administering justice, guiding the people in the ways of social progress, educating the young, curing the sick, providing the bases of law and order needed for the development of trade and commerce and gradually building up institutions of democratic self-government on a secure economic foundation. In the West Indies and in the islands of the seven seas it is the same story. Everywhere you will find devoted members of His Majesty's Colonial Service, giving all that they can to promote the happiness and well-being of the peoples whom they serve. We owe them all a deep debt of gratitude for their selfless service. I am sure that those of your Lordships who have not already congratulated them will wish to join with me now in congratulating them on their record of achievement, and in encouraging them to go forward with the good wishes and high esteeem of their fellow countrymen in their great adventure.
I should like to thank the noble Lords who have taken part in this debate for the sound and constructive advice which they have offered. I can assure them that it will receive the close and serious attention of my Department. I should like to thank them also for the encouraging things they have said about the Colonial Service. I can assure them that what has been said will be immensely appreciated by those concerned.
7.18 p.m.
LORD TWEEDSMUIR: My Lords, we have had a very interesting debate this evening. I am only sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Hailey, could not have been present to give your Lordships the benefit of his great fund of experience in these matters. The noble Lord, Lord Milverton, speaks with years of accumulated knowledge on these affairs. I listened to his speech with great interest. I would like to correct a slight misapprehension which arose from my speech. I never intended to give the impression that I personally thought that the Colonial Service was a gold mine that was almost worked out. I said that that impression might appear, and that we must be vigilant to correct it when it does, as we

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must be vigilant to provide that ample career which the noble Lord mentioned. I have also listened to the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, speaking from a long career, distinguished in Imperial matters. When I advocated security, and harped on the word, I meant to imply not a slavish devotion to it but rather a reasoned measure of it, such as a prudent man might take into account in selecting a career. The noble Lord, Lord Rennell, stressed the point of how important it is to believe in what one does, and that the mere adequacy of material things is not enough. I asked His Majesty's Government certain questions and I received answers in general terms on all of them. There is just one small point. With regard to scholarships, I should like to see some of those scholarships going to the sons of Colonial servants. I am glad to hear that some progress has been made with the courses which were recommended by the Devonshire Report. I have received an assurance upon that point. Upon those terms, I am prepared to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

SALFORD CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
The King's Consent signified, and Bill reported from the Select Committee, with amendments.
SHOREHAM HARBOUR BILL.
Reported, with amendments.

DUDLEY BRIERLEY HILL AND DISTRICT GAS ORDER, 1948.
TIVERTON GAS ORDER, 1948.
BANGOR GAS ORDER, 1948.
Report from the Special Orders Committee, That no Petitions have been presented praying to be heard against the Special Orders, and that there is nothing in these Orders to which they think it necessary to call the attention of the House: Read, and ordered to lie on the Table.

ELECTORAL REGISTRATION REGULATIONS, 1948.
Report from the Special Orders Committee, That they have examined the Special Order as required by the Standing Orders of the House; That in
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their opinion the Order does not raise important questions of policy or principle; That the Order is founded on precedent; That in the opinion of the Committee the Order can be passed by the House without special attention, and that no further inquiry is necessary before the House proceeds to a decision on the Resolution to approve the said Order: Read, and ordered to lie on the Table.

TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING (DEVELOPMENT CHARGE) REGU- LATIONS, 1948.
TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING (DEVELOPMENT CHARGE) (EXEMPTIONS) REGULATIONS, 1948
TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING (DEVELOPMENT CHARGE) (SCOTLAND) REGULATIONS, 1948.
TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING (DEVELOPMENT CHARGE EXEMPTIONS) (SCOTLAND) REGULATIONS, 1948.
Report from the Special Orders Committee, That they have examined the Special Orders as required by the Standing Orders of the House; That in their opinion the Orders raise questions of policy and principle of exceptional importance; That the Orders are not founded on precedent; That in the opinion of the Committee the Orders cannot be passed by the House without special attention, but that no further inquiry is necessary before the House proceeds to a decision on the Resolution to approve the said Orders: Read, and ordered to lie on the Table.

COMPANIES BILL. [H.L.]
Reported from the Joint Committee or Consolidation Bills, with amendments and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House.

CONSOLIDATION BILLS.
First Report from the Joint Committee, being the Report on the Companies Bill [H.L.], made, and to be printed, the Minutes of Evidence (together with the Proceedings of the Joint Committee): Laid upon the Table and to be delivered out.
House adjourned at twenty minutes before eight o'clock.