Lords Sitting of 13 March 1951

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, THE LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers
The Lord Cadman—Took the Oath.
CITY OF LONDON (CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT) BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

DISTRIBUTION OF PLANNING CIRCULAR
2.36 p.m.
LORD MERTHYR: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether it is a fact that Circular No. 81, issued by the Ministry of Town and Country Planning on February 17, 1950, and sent for information to all parish councils and parish meetings in England and Wales has not yet reached the parish councils and parish meetings in the County of Gloucester; and, if it has not, what is the reason for the delay, and what steps are proposed to be taken to effect delivery.]
THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (LORD MACDONALD OF GWAENYSGOR): My Lords, I understand that Circular No. 81, and the accompanying memorandum, which concern the survey to be made of public rights of way, have not been sent by the Gloucestershire County Council to their parish councils and meetings, although my right honourable friend asked that that should be done. Moreover, it was agreed in advance with the County Councils Association that the circular and memorandum should be sent out through the county councils, and I am informed that all other county councils have observed this agreement and have passed on copies of the circular to their parish councils and meetings. My right honourable friend has no power to compel Gloucester County Council to do what all other county councils have done.

MANUAL OF MILITARY LAW
2.37 p.m.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask His Majesty's Government, the new edition of the Manual of Military Law not yet being obtainable, to what book are officers about to proceed on active service advised to refer in order that they may make themselves acquainted with the added responsibilities which they now have to bear, and the liabilities which they may incur, under the amendment to the Manual dated April, 1944, which is also unobtainable.]
THE MINISTER OF CIVIL AVIATION (LORD PAKENHAM):My Lords, the amendment to the Manual of Military Law dated April, 1944, to which the noble Earl's Question refers, provides that the fact that a war crime was committed in pursuance of superior orders docs not automatically exempt the perpetrator from punishment. This matter was discussed at some length in your Lordships' House on July 19, 1950. Although further copies of the Manual of Military Law, with amendments, are not available now, copies have been issued to all units. An officer going overseas may go direct from his unit or he may be posted into a draft before, and in either event a Manual of Military Law, with its amendments, should be available for his use.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his answer to my Question, may I ask whether the Government are aware of the position so far as the Stationery Office are concerned? A short time ago, I went to the Stationery Office and asked for a copy of the Manual of Military Law for a young officer proceeding overseas. I was told that I could not have one as they were not printed yet. I asked when they would be printed, and I was told that a new edition would be out towards the end of the year. I should like to ask why Amendment No. 12 of the Manual printed in 1949 bears no reference to the Amendment of 1944. Is it satisfactory to a young officer that he

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cannot go to the Stationery Office and buy a book which he believes will tell him the new liabilities to which he is subject, and his new responsibilities? Is it satisfactory that he should be given this Appendix, which tells him nothing at all about it? I should like to ask, further, whether the result of the Private Fargie case does not show the absurdity of trying to make soldiers serving under Military Law in active service conditions liable to be prosecuted by the Civil Law. And may we not congratulate ourselves that we have a General there who has refused to offer up a private soldier on the altar of the Civil Law?
LORD PAKENHAM: My Lords, I cannot, of course, accept the wide-ranging implications in much of what the noble and gallant Earl has said. He is under a misapprehension, I believe, in talking about new law. As the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, pointed out on a previous occasion, the Manual of Military Law does not itself make law; it merely records what the law is. With regard to the noble Earl's first point, I will certainly have that matter looked into. As I have explained, any officer going overseas can obtain from his unit an up-to-date copy of the Manual with all amendments.

OVERSEAS RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT BILL
2.40 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS (LORD OGMORE): My Lords, in moving the Second Reading of this Bill I should like to recall to your Lordships' memories the fact that, when the original Bill was before the House in 1948, the principle enshrined in it was welcomed by noble Lords on all sides. On details some noble Lords had reservations to make, but on the principle there was a general welcome for the Bill. The purpose of the measure, as noble Lords will remember, was to attempt to make good the world shortage of oils and fats by the cultivation, by methods never before adopted on the scale envisaged, of land which had not previously been cultivated. So there were
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two points put before your Lordships' House: first, the cultivation of land which had never previously been cultivated and, second, the cultivation of such land by methods never before adopted on the scale envisaged. At that time, as your Lordships will remember, the domestic fat ration was 7 oz. a week. It was hoped that a scheme of this magnitude would go some way towards relieving the shortage. In addition, it was hoped by a large number of people, not only on the Government Benches, but also among noble Lords on the Opposition side, that the standards of living of the Colonial peoples, themselves, would be raised as the result of this project.
The original plan envisaged the clearing by 1953 of 3,210,000 acres of bush in Eastern and Central Africa, and an annual production of ground-nuts after that date of about 600,000 tons. It was estimated that the maximum requirement which the Treasury would have to meet was not likely to exceed £23,000,000. It was found by sad experience, however, that not only were the estimates of annual clearing and planting beyond the Corporation's capacity, but also that the cost of clearing the land was much greater than had been anticipated. The situation is therefore this. At Kongwa there is a cleared area of about 90,000 acres. At Urambo the bush has been felled on 65,000 acres, of which 45,000 acres will be available for agriculture by the harvest of this year, and 60,000 acres will be available in subsequent years. In the Southern Province some 20,000 acres have been felled, of which about 7,000 will be available for agriculture for the 1951 harvest. During the current wet season a further 40,000 acres will be felled by two land clearing teams built up for this purpose.
I do not intend to go over the many reasons which have led to such a disappointing result. I think they are well known to your Lordships. I have no wish to engage, and I am sure your Lordships have no wish, either to engage in witch hunting or in bandying personalities and quotations. To my mind, the danger of the failure of this experiment is that it may discourage the attempting of others and gravely endanger the development of under-developed areas. I think your Lordships will agree that that is a very real danger which failure in an attempt of

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this kind brings in its train. Therefore, we must guard against it.
We must see this matter in perspective. I regard it as a battle in the campaign waged against the immemorial enemies of mankind—hunger, malnutrition, disease, soil erosion, land infertility, extinction of the life of plants, animals and man. It is a battle which is always going on, and nowhere more fiercely than in areas such as Eastern and Central Africa. We have to meet the needs of an increased population, especially in rural areas. Broadly speaking, population in many parts of the world is doubling in thirty years, and the population in rural areas is increasing more rapidly than that in industrial areas. This fact was brought out very significantly in a recent report from the United Nations Economic and Social Council at Santiago. I have not seen the text of this Report but have seen only the Press report; broadly speaking, however, the figures must be about right. The Press report said that 74 per cent. of the population of Africa was engaged in agriculture, as compared to 70 per cent. in Asia, 60 per cent. in South America and less than 40 per cent. in Europe and North America. Yet most of this agriculture is primitive, migratory, and barely serves to meet subsistence needs. As anyone who has been connected with Africa knows, from time to time large supplies of grain have to be taken into certain districts to meet famine conditions or the possibility of famine. What industries there are on the continent supply minerals and metals to the outside world. The average annual income per capita, the report continued, is less than 50 United States dollars. With 23 per cent. of the world's land area. Africa provides only 5.9 per cent. of world exports and 8 per cent. of world imports. The population rose from 136,000,000 in 1920 to 198,000,000 in 1949. There are only 40.000 miles of railway track in Africa, half the mileage of Latin America.
It is against these facts, and against the circumstances found in the middle part of the continent of Africa, that you must judge the scheme and the proposals of His Majesty's Government. I would say that man's survival with any reasonable standard of living depends largely on the success of the campaign carried out in country of this type. The campaign is not merely for the bodies of men, but for
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the hearts and minds and souls of men as well. We are now in the cold war, and Communist Russia has had her greatest, indeed her only, successes so far in countries which are mainly agrarian and with a low standard of living. Contrary to what was believed years ago would be the course of events, she has had few successes, if any, in industrial areas. To prove my point on the danger of leaving these rural areas in a sort of intellectual, moral and spiritual vacuum, I should like to quote from two sources, from a combination which I believe is somewhat unusual but which I think is almost in-vincible—the noble Lord, Lord Tweedsmuir, in your Lordships' House, and the Minister of Health in another place. The noble Lord, Lord Tweedsmuir, said, on March 1:
"Hunger, poverty and disease are good growing weather for Communism. Communism is an army which marches on other people's stomachs."
The Minister of Health said:
"The Soviet Union has won its victories in those agrarian parts of the world where poverty is her chief ally. She has not won them, and she will not win them, in modern industrial communities."
So far the Russian campaign has been fought in Eastern Europe and Asia: but who knows where there may be in future another battle ground?
I remember that General Smuts once told me that:
"Africa was a forgotten continent, but at last it is coming into its own."
We are waging similar campaigns in many parts of the world. Our Colonial Development plans are well known to your Lordships. India and Pakistan are making efforts of this kind. So are the United Nations, through their specialised agencies, and so are the United States. In South East Asia we hope the Colombo Plan will co-ordinate the efforts of the various countries and agencies into a scheme which will bring great assistance to the peoples of the area.
The primary difficulty of development in the type of country one finds in Eastern and Central Africa was brought out in this year's proceedings of the United Nations. On behalf of His Majesty's Government, I had the honour of initiating the debate on the Report of the United Nations Economic and Social Council. That Report dealt largely with the diffi-

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culty of financing development in underdeveloped areas. It was to that aspect of the problem that the delegates present addressed their minds, and there was great discussion on it. But it became apparent, before we had gone very far, that this country was a great way ahead of any other country (at least, that was my view, although of course I was biased) in developing organisms for dealing with this problem. All the major countries of the world were represented there. It has been found a matter of the utmost difficulty to finance unproductive but essential primary development in rural territories. Before there can be any real development someone has to pay for the roads, water supplies, electricity, hospitals, schools and so on. The financing of that primary development, before one can proceed to the development which will have a direct financial return, although it may not be for some years, has been a matter of great difficulty, and it has not yet been solved.
I had discussions with the International Bank on this point, because they objected to something I said in the course of my speech, but it became apparent that even they do not finance development of this kind. I want to pay tribute to the great work they are doing in this field, but they do not—and one can hardly expect them to, in view of their charter— finance development of a purely non-productive kind. What they do is to take products that are non-self-liquidating with self-liquidating products, make them into a bag and advance money on the whole lot. We have started something in organisation in this way that deserves great credit. I do not say that this Government started it all; in fact, it was partly started in the time of the Coalition Government. We have, through the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund, a method of financing in under-developed territories the development of projects which have not. and will never have, any direct commercial return: and. in the second place, through the Colonial Development Corporation and the Overseas Food Corporation, with which we are particularly dealing to-day, we have methods of assisting private enterprise in dealing with the projects, which are likely to give a commercial return, although this may not be immediate.
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One of the difficulties of this particular scheme has been that it has been necessary to carry an enormous amount of expense, which no project in this country or in any developed country would possibly have to bear. They have had to build roads, to finance or guarantee railway expenditure, to spend money on docks, to deal with hospitals and the like; and there is, as one can imagine in countries and areas such as this, considerable reluctance on the part of private enterprises to go in—and who can blame them? When they have to deal with developments of this kind, the first thing that happens is that they come along and ask for some Government guarantee. I remember that when I was in the Colonial Office private enterprise firms came along on several occasions and asked: "Will you, or will the Government of this territory, take over part of the expense to which we shall be put by reason of the fact that we have to do so much work building houses, schools, and the like—and which will never give a direct remunerative return?" It is interesting to note that the Sudan Plantations Syndicate, which is often quoted to us on this side of the House as being a profitable enterprise and one that has rendered great benefit to the community —to both of which facts we readily subscribe—went six years before earning even a small profit. Their last dividend was 25 per cent., they have a vastly increased capital, and the £1 shares now stand at 73s. 6d. or possibly more. So that it was some time before even the Sudan Plantations Syndicate got on their feet and began to earn money.
It seems to me that one of the things that we have got to work out in this country, and in international affairs generally, with reference to the development of these territories, is some method of differentiating between the supply of capital on non-productive projects and that on productive projects. I do not think, whether it be a State Corporation or private enterprise which is concerned, that it will be easy to find both types of capital. We have learned many lessons from this scheme, and those lessons are being applied in the scheme which is now being pursued. And the lessons which have been learned there will, of course, be of use and available

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elsewhere. Before I leave the past history of the scheme, I should like to pay a tribute to those who work on the ground there. I feel that, in whatever capacity they work, they deserve a great meed of praise. It is no fault of theirs that the scheme was not successful. They put an enormous amount of energy and imagination into it; and they worked under difficult and trying conditions. I feel that your Lordships' House would like me to pay tribute to them, wherever they may be.
The Government proposals are based upon the Overseas Food Corporation's recommendations, which your Lordships can find in the Annex to Command Paper No. 8125. The new proposals cover a new seven-year period up to 1957. There will be no further land clearing at Kongwa. Of the cleared area of 90,000 acres, about 24,000 acres are to be set aside for agriculture, of which some 12,000 acres will be under crop each year. The remainder of the cleared land will be available for grazing. At Urambo, although it is not expected that more than 45,000 of the 65,000 acres felled will be available for agriculture for the harvest of 1951, in subsequent years 60,000 acres will be available. Only 45,000 acres, however, will be under crop at one time. In the Southern Province, of the 20,000 acres felled about 7,000 will be available for agriculture for the 1951 harvest. In addition, 40,000 acres are being felled during the current wet season, and further clearing processes on this land will be maintained up to 1954, when there will be a review as to whether further felling will be desirable. Your Lordships will see that there is a slight variation there between the recommendations made by the Corporation and the decision ultimately taken by the Government. Instead of fanning units of 30,000 acres, units will vary from 1,500 to 6,000 acres; and the need for continuity of agricultural operations over a period of seven years is emphasised in the interests of efficiency and morale.
The Government have also made further decisions. First, they have made a financial estimate of the amount required. The cost of the scheme over the seven-year period is of the order of £13,500,000 gross, but the net cost to the Exchequer is estimated at £6,000,000. That does not allow for contingencies, or for any bush clearing after 1954, but it is hoped that
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after 1954 the Corporation will break even. Then there is a change in the ministerial responsibility, whereby responbility for the Tanganyika scheme is transferred from the Minister of Food to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. This arrangement will not apply to the Queensland project, and the Minister of Food will take direct responsibility for the Queensland British Food Corporation.
I will say just a word about the Queensland British Food Corporation, established under Statute of the Queensland State Parliament in March, 1948. The primary purpose of selling up this Corporation was to secure the production of grain sorghum on a range of properties in Queensland, to be used either for pig production in Queensland or for export to the United Kingdom. The Corporation are jointly responsible to the Queensland Government and the Overseas Food Corporation. The Overseas Food Corporation nominated the Chairman and the majority of the members. The Queensland Government nominated the Deputy-Chairman and the remainder of the members. The capital was found, as to one-quarter by the Queensland Government, with, a maximum of £500,000, and the balance by the Overseas Food Corporation, who have already advanced £1,500,000, so that the total capital available is £2,000,000. The Queensland Corporation were able to commence sorghum production on an extensive scale in advance of the pig breeding, and the United Kingdom took, and are still taking, the surplus for the time being. There is no direct contract between the Ministry of Food and the Corporation for pig meat or beef. The action of the Corporation has given a lead to the private farmer—or so I am informed. The Corporation own 727,000 acres of land in Queensland, part being used for cattle production and part for sorghum. This land was previously over-grazed, but it is now getting back into good heart. The total production of sorghum is about 28,000 tons, and 25,500 tons of sorghum from the 1950 crop were for the United Kingdom.
As to pig production, two piggery units are now in operation, at which the Corporation have 2,180 pigs and piglets. They are now experimenting with range feeding, allowing the pigs to wander about at large. As to cattle production, the grazing land unsuitable for cultivation is used for cattle for grazing, and the

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sorghum stubble offers a considerable area of keep for cattle. This enables the Corporation to purchase numbers of store cattle at satisfactory prices at a time when breeders have little keep. The cattle are carried through the winter on stubble, and finished off on new grass in the spring. There was an exhibition of beasts fattened in this way in May, 1950, and it evoked favourable comments. The Corporation now own 23,230 head of cattle, and about 9,000 head have been previously sold off. It is estimated that, with certain improvements to the land, 22,500 head can be carried for fattening, and that when it gets into full production this production plan will certainly help to swell Australia's exportable surplus of beef. I am glad to say that two Members of Parliament, including a member of your Lordships' House, have made public comments on this scheme. The noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, said at Rockhampton that it was obvious that the undertaking was in splendid hands, for he had been impressed by the sight of so much achievement in so short a period of time. Mr. Hurd, who is a well-known agricultural expert, said, also in Rockhampton:
"What I saw impressed me tremendously, and I shall take to the House of Commons an excellent report of the Queensland British Food Corporation activities here…. The whole job is a thorough one."
Now with regard to the intentions of the Bill. Clause 1 transfers to the Secretary of State for the Colonies the functions of the Minister of Food under the Overseas Resources Development Act, 1948. Clause 2 relates to the functions of the Overseas Food Corporation, now confined to operations in East Africa, for Central African operations have gone. It also provides a new constitution for the Board—namely, a Chairman and not fewer than two or more than six other members. Clause 3 relates to the duty of the Overseas Food Corporation to secure as soon as practicable a balance in their account, and further provides for expenses, advances and other financial arrangements. It provides for the writing off of advances already made. Clause 4 relates to the Queensland Corporation, and provides that the rights of the Over-seas Food Corporation in respect of advances made by the Overseas Food Corporation to the Queensland Corporation shall be transferred to the Minister
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of Food. Other consequential financial matters are also dealt with in this clause.
There will no doubt be matters into which your Lordships will wish to inquire, and with the permission of the House I will try to clear up at the end of the debate any doubts that your Lordships may have on matters of detail. I hope, however, that you will have no doubts at all on the main principle of the scheme. This is not a new venture. It is a continuation of the venture on a good deal lower scale than was contemplated previously, and there will of course be consequential adjustments. I think there has been some misapprehension in the public mind on that account. They have tended to regard it as an entirely new scheme, instead of as a continuation, on a smaller scale, of an existing scheme. In future, what will take place in East Africa is a large-scale field experiment, combined with scientific research. By the seven years' run we hope to develop a pattern of agriculture suitable to the soil, 'the climate and the people, and thus demonstrate what can be done with these marginal lands in Africa and elsewhere. Queensland is a notable development between two Governments, and the scheme is promising—I say no more. Again, we hope to demonstrate what can be done in such belts as this—and there are many—where the rainfall is of the order of between 20 and 25 inches a year.
In conclusion, I should like to reiterate that neither we, nor anyone else, have yet found the answer to the problem of the development of under-developed areas, whether in Africa or elsewhere. There may not be a single answer; or the answers may depend upon circum-stances. A great deal of trial and error is required, on the organisation side, on the field side, on the research side and on the financial side. The scheme in its modified form, as I have described it to your Lordships, must be continued. It is one of the many trials which we, and others, are conducting; and we, as the greatest Colonial Power of all, must not be discouraged by the setback we have had. I feel that we must go on. We owe it to Africa; we owe it to ourselves; and we owe it to poor and hungry people everywhere. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.— (Lord Ogmore.)
3.9 p.m.
VISCOUNT SW1NTON: My Lords, the noble Lord the Under-Secretary of State commended this Bill to us in a speech which contained a number of agreeable and humane generalities, but which at no point condescended to matters of detail. He has been good enough to say —and the House will welcome his statement—that he will deal with the more detailed aspects of the matter when he comes to reply. He has also based his claim for the support of your Lordships on the fact that when the scheme was originally introduced a number of people in different quarters of this House, and in another place, made speeches welcoming it. Well, it would be an unhappy affair if we were all to be bound for ever by all the speeches which we had made. It would cause great embarrassment in all quarters of the House.
I would also remind the noble Lord that at the time when those speeches were made the only source of information we had was the Government prospectus, showing what this plan was going to cost and what the results were likely to be. I think we should have been charged almost with misconduct, and certainly with misrepresentation, if we had suggested that the Government prospectus did not conform to those rules which apply to the promises and prognostications held out by private enterprise in invitations to the public to subscribe. Indeed, with great respect, I think the Government ought to be even more particular in a prospectus because, after all, if private enterprise makes an offer to the public, the public have the option to subscribe or not as they please; but when £30,000,000, £40,000,000 or £50,000,000 is to be raised compulsorily from the taxpayer for a State Corporation we all become shareholders, whether we like it or not.
I therefore naturally wish to consider how far I have been—I will not say taken in by the prospectus, but how far I have, shall I say "fallen for" it. I have looked up the speech I made on the Second Reading of the original Bill. It is true that I wished the scheme well—if I had not I should have been told that I was very churlish, and was running down a great undertaking. But I did venture to utter some warnings, and to make some criticisms. In the first place I took the strongest exception to the diarchy—to
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having the Ministry of Food brought in over what I believed should be within the jurisdiction of the Colonial Office. I will not trouble your Lordships with the speech, but there it is. I also commented upon the fallacy of ignoring the small producer, who, in the great African territories, will always be the main source of supply. I said, too, that surely the wise thing to do if we wanted to get ground-nuts or oils and oil seeds quickly was to go where we knew we should get the supply. I begged that supplies of rolling stock—engines and trucks and other railway material—might not be diverted from Nigeria, where we knew ground-nuts were, and were, indeed, lying in store, to this unknown project in Tanganyika. I am bound to say that I think all those warnings;—all of them, I need hardly say, entirely disregarded— were, in the face of the Government prospectus, not altogether unwarranted. But, of course, we are now in a very different position. We have now three years' experience of the Minister of Food and his Corporation. I am not going to engage in a heresy hunt —but are we not to learn at all from past experience? Let us not be accused of heresy hunting if we try to learn a little from the fallacies and follies of the past. After all, the White Paper which is before us and the Bill which is presented to us are in the first place an inquest on a ghastly fiasco; and, in the second place, they contain proposals and commitments for the future.
I have in my time seen some fairly big failures which have caused loss and unhappiness; but I think that to lose £36,000,000 in three years (with more to come) on a single project must constitute a record in either public or private enterprise: and it was all so unnecessary. If the Government wanted—as they did— more ground-nuts, and wanted them quickly, surely the obvious thing was first of all to expand production where we had obtained extra production in the War. I remember that when I went out to West Africa the noble Lord who was then Minister of Food said to me, "It all depends on what you can do in West Africa whether we can keep up the fat ration of this country." It did not, as a matter of fact, depend upon me, but upon millions of small producers in the West African territories. However,

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together we did it and we did not let the fat ration down. We obtained increased quantities of palm oil and an enormous increase in palm kernels, and we were able to get a production of ground-nuts of between 300,000 and 400,000 tons in a year out of Nigeria, some more from elsewhere and 30,000 or 40,000 tons from Gambia—where ground-nuts seem to grow better than hens.
But this was done by a very simple and, it seemed to me, very obvious expedient: it was done by getting people who knew how to grow ground-nuts to grow more ground-nuts, in ground where ground-nuts would grow. I am bound to say that I did not think that that was particularly clever at the time; I thought it was rather obvious. But now, when I look back at the liquidator's Report on the Food Corporation enterprise, and compare that with what I have just described—which, of course, was done by us in West Africa without a penny of cost to the taxpayer, and with great benefit to the producers and to the standard of life of the people of West Africa—I really feel that I was rather a genius. If only I could have a commission on the difference between what I produced for Lord Woolton and what Mr. Strachey has cost the taxpayer, I should be able to retire from both public and private enterprise.
All that activity could have been expanded without difficulty. If, instead of rushing into this new project, we had spent a million or so in bringing fertilisers into the area of Kano and Katsina, where these millions of people are growing ground-nuts, we should have intensified production and obtained far more than we should have obtained in Tanganyika. It is doubtful now whether we shall ever succeed in producing ground-nuts, except by intensive individual cultivation, certainly on the soil of Africa; and there is at Kano and Katsina this vast population of millions accustomed to growing this crop. There is no tsetse fly. It would not have been difficult to extend from Kano to Bornu. The country is of the same kind; it is the same sort of soil; it is all orchard bush, easy to clear. It would not have been necessary to construct a great new railway from nowhere to nowhere. The railway was already there. As regards port facilities,
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so far from constructing a doubtful port at Lindi or Mtisara, or wherever it may be, there is the Port of Lagos, a great deep-water port, already equipped with cranes. Ocean-going ships of many thousand tons can get up to those great wharves fully equipped with cranes, a port which, without any adaptation, would easily take, I should say, another 1,000,000 tons of traffic a year. What is more, it would mean delivering the ground-nuts at a port with all these facilities thousands of miles nearer the points of consumption—that is to say, this country and America—than is the East Coast of Africa.
That was all too easy and too obvious for the planners. Now, at a cost of £36,000,000 (I quote from their Report) the Corporation have made this remarkable discovery:
"The ground-nut is not a plant which lends itself readily to mass methods over vast acreages. The attainment of economic yields demands intensive farming."
If this business had been entrusted to the Colonial Office, instead of to the Ministry of Food, I think that discovery would have been made a great deal earlier, and before most of the money had been spent. But if the Government— and they must share the responsibility with their then Minister of Food—were determined to go into Tanganyika, surely the elementary precaution was to test by pilot experiments. The soil had not been tested. It would have been found by a simple pilot experiment whether or not the ground-nut lent itself to mass production. Above all, I should have thought that this was wise when going into a territory where there was no African population. Africa is a very densely populated place. If there is found a part of Africa in which the Africans are not living, and are not cultivating anything, I should have said—and the youngest district officer will tell you this —that that was something which ought to put the Government on their guard and cause them to make inquiry. Incidentally, it seems, unhappily, that the same mistake has been made in Gambia. I cannot believe that the Colonial administration on the spot there were properly consulted, any more than they were in Tanganyika. I think they would certainly have advised that it would be better to find out by a pilot experiment whether the climate suited the hen, and whether

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the climate suited the crop which it was proposed to grow to feed the hen.
In winding up this costly ground-nut fiasco, surely our aim ought to be to cut our losses as cheaply as possible? No one in his senses would spend £1.000,000, much less £6,000,000, in the way proposed in the White Paper if we were starting this scheme completely afresh. We all agree that we have to write off the millions that have been lost. We all agree—I am glad that the Government have come round to this; we have pressed it from the start—that the responsible Department should be the Colonial Office and not the Ministry of Food. If the Government had come to us with a plan to do those things, we should all have been in agreement. But the Government insist on linking to these changes a commitment to carry on a modified scheme for seven years under the Food Corporation. I may say at once—I have read all that has passed in another place—that the evidence on which we are asked to undertake this new commitment is far too indefinite and vague. The present Minister of Food— I could have understood it from the last one—in a purple passage said this:
"We all know now what is needed to face and conquer tropical Africa."
Do we? The noble Lord was more modest to-day when he said something very different. It really is foolish, even under provocation, to say things like that.
I notice that the White Paper, too, is much more modest. The White Paper says, in paragraph 14:
"Even on the modified basis now proposed, the scheme cannot fail to be an important contribution to the economic prosperity of the territory. It would not be justifiable to allow the considerable acreages of hitherto unusable land which the Corporation have already made available for agriculture and pasture to revert to bush."
Is that really sense? It is the kind of generality that sounds attractive until you try to find out what it means. It means that you have to go on whether you make a profit or a loss. I challenge that general assumption and that aphorism. It is not unjustifiable or uneconomic to let land revert to bust unless that land can be cultivated without further loss, and the Government are not doing any good to the taxpayer or to Africa by going on piling up losses. The statement that "the modified scheme cannot fail to contribute
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to the economic prosperity of the territory" is unsupported by evidence. All this makes me suspicious that a determination to go on doing something in the area colours the whole scheme. We are also told in the White Paper, and we we were told by the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, to-day, that it will cost us as much to close down as to carry on. If your Lordships will look at Paragraph 17 of the White Paper, you will see these words:
"Any estimate at this stage of the probable cost of the new scheme must be subject to a wide margin of error, but on the best information available at present to His Majesty's Government the amount required over the seven-year period will be of the order of £6,000,000, without allowing for contingencies or for any bush clearing after 1954. This cost is not widely different from the heavy liabilities, amounting to several million pounds, which the Corporation would in any case have had to meet, if it had been decided to abandon the whole project forthwith. This constitutes a powerful additional reason for continuing the scheme on the lines proposed above."
As I say, I have read all the explanations and estimates which were given in another place, but I do not find this evidence at all convincing. We are still dealing in millions.
In the first place, although this did not show up in the White Paper—the Undersecretary of Slate said it to-day—the £6,000,000 is not only a hypothetical figure; it is a hypothetical net figure. The gross expenditure in future years is admitted to be £13,500,000. The £6,000,000 is arrived at by deducting £7,500,000 of possible sales from the £13,500,000. I cannot be in the least satisfied, on any of this evidence, that the cost of closing down has not been overestimated, and that the cost of continuing this plan has not been underestimated. What are these liabilities amounting to £6,000,000 which the Corporation would have to meet if they closed down now, but which they will not have to meet if we spend £6,000,000 in continuing the modified scheme? I am sure the noble Lord will tell us in detail.
I take one example. Under the guarantee the sum payable to the railway, which ought never to have been built, will have to be paid, whether we stay or whether we clear out; it is an obligation on the Government. At the same time, if anything is to be got back out of the railway, now or in the future, I cannot in the least follow the argument that was advanced

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somewhere, to the effect that we must not shut down the Corporation because if we did we should not recover anything from the railway. Surely, if the Government have got to pay the railway, if there is anything to come back on the other side of the account from the railway belonging to the Colonial Government, we should get that back.
LORD OGMORE: Perhaps I can explain to the noble Viscount. There are, in fact, two railways concerned. There is the stretch of railway which goes up to Kongwa; and the other railway, to which we have given a guarantee, is that which runs to the new port in the Southern Province. Possibly that affords an explanation.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I am very much obliged. So far from that being an explanation, we now know—indeed, I think I did understand it, but let us all be clear —that there is an obligation not only in respect of one railway but in respect of two. One railway is to be constructed, and the other is to be guaranteed. But I should have thought the liability must be the same, or less, if the project were closed down. I hope that the noble Lord will particularise on this matter. I understand that this is a guarantee of receipts, and that the liability is there, whether the scheme is closed down or continued. Nobody pretends that the spending of £13,500,000 on this doubtful and very limited continuation of the enterprise will bring in receipts which will make a substantial difference to the railway. I hope that at least the noble Lord is not going to produce the kind of optimistic prospectus to which we have listened before.
With regard to the other railway, which I gather is only connected with this scheme, surely the simple thing to do is to find the cheapest way out of it. It would be better for the Government to cut their losses as quickly as possible. We know that the pipeline which was intended to bring in £100,000 worth of oil a year is now admitted to bring in only £5,000 worth, which shows how the scheme has shrunk. Therefore, if the second railway is to serve only this greatly modified plan, I should have thought that the best way to deal with it was for the Government to get out as quickly and
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as cheaply as possible. There is no dispute between us that as regards railway number 1 the liability continues. No doubt the noble Lord will explain to us in detail, in regard to railway number 2, why we are going to save a great deal of money if we go on or lose a great deal of money if we shut down.
Your Lordships will also observe that the estimate of £6,000,000 for carrying on, in the words of the White Paper, "must be subject to a wide margin of error." My Lords, estimates in the past in this business have constantly shown a wide margin of error on the wrong side. Nor do I believe that if we continue the scheme our financial commitment will be really limited to £6,000,000, or whatever may be the correct estimate. There is no evidence at all that anything can be produced at a profit on this land in the manner proposed. The noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, was very fair about this. Although he did not say that he could give any sort of guarantee, he did say "let us hope." Well, we can all hope. Hope is the only commodity not yet taxed under the present Administration. But hope and reasonable expectation are rather different things.
If we commit ourselves to the seven-year plan shall we not find at the end of that period that we have got to undertake further unremunerative expenditure, either to get out or to go on? I remember that in the First World War one general justified continuing the muddy and bloody offensive of Passchendaele on the ground that he could not think of anything better to do. Is there not something of that sort in the Government's determination to continue an offensive which we all know now should never have been undertaken? Certainly I think we need much stronger evidence before we commit ourselves to another seven years. I think that the request for an independent inquiry was entirely reasonable. However, this Government, with little moral or electoral authority, have insisted on forcing this Bill through another place. We shall not ask your Lordships to divide on it to-day. The Government must take their responsibility for it. But I must say, without any qualification, that we reserve our right, as it will be our duty, to review the whole of this matter when we have the facts and the responsibility, as before long we shall.
3.37 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, the East African ground-nuts scheme has been a godsend to the Party opposite. It has lent itself to music-hall jokes, and, I understand, although I listen only to the news, is a favourite quip on the British Broadcasting Corporation. Last night I took part in a university debate, and the scheme and what we have lost on it were the main arguments of my Conservative opponents. Now we have another one approaching; it was mentioned by the noble Viscount, and it concerns the poultry faming scheme in Gambia. Although the noble Viscount made some reservations when the ground-nuts scheme was first before Parliament, it is a fact that when it was first adumbrated, when we first heard of this large-scale plan for reclaiming a vast area of bush country which was not being put to any good use at all, it was welcomed by all Parties in both Houses. I admit that there were reservations here and there. The noble Viscount has a highly critical outlook, and in whatever scheme is brought forward he always finds some blemish or defect. I am sure he performs a very useful function accordingly. But in the City of London there is a process known as "jobbing backwards," and this is a perfect case of jobbing backwards.
After all, when this scheme was embarked upon, the Government had the support, the expert advice and the approval of, I suppose, the Corporation that has the greatest knowledge in the whole world concerning Africa—I refer to Unilevers and the United Africa Corporation. For generations now they have done great work all over Africa in developing native industries, trade and commerce, and their knowledge is unrivalled. They advised us that the scheme was practicable and worth embarking upon. We had a great surplus of tractors, bulldozers and so on from the recent World War, which were apparently suitable for the purpose of clearing this bush country, and here seemed to be the opportunity for embarking on a great pioneering scheme which would have great results. I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Ogmore on his speech in introducing this subject. I believe, with him, that in the long run the knowledge and experience that we shall gain from this admittedly experimental work will be of tremendous value to the whole world.
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What really is the problem? Let us try and take a very wide view here. In Africa, which the noble Viscount knows very well, and in many other parts of the world, the small, individual farmer whom he praises is gradually exhausting the soil in the most fertile areas. Particularly is this the case in East Africa, where overgrazing, overcropping, the devastation of forests, and so on, is leading to a loss of fertility of the soil. That is becoming a most serious menace for the whole world. Everywhere, as Lord Ogmore has said, populations are increasing, especially in the rural areas, but the area of cultivable land is actually decreasing. That is particularly so, I believe, in the continent of Africa, but, curiously enough, there is a similar problem in the United States of America, and the most strenuous and costly efforts have to be made there to preserve the soil from further devastation in the same way. So the problem is one of increasing population and decreasing areas of cultivable soil —soil on which crops can be grown and cattle reared. At the same time there are vast areas of land, not only in Africa but in other parts of the world which I propose to touch upon briefly in a few minutes, which are under scrub or under secondary growth—that is to say, the land has been cleared but has been allowed later to go back to the forest—and under jungle, which, if it could be cleared by modern mechanical methods, would undoubtedly do something to redress the balance and to produce the extra foodstuffs that are so badly needed. That is the problem to be faced. Whether we have wasted—and it is putting the matter at its lowest level to use that word—a considerable sum in East Africa or not, we have at any rate made an attempt to solve this problem. And it is a problem which will have to be solved, for it is getting worse and worse.
There are other parts of the world in which the experience we are gaining will be of tremendous value. In this connection, I am glad to see that we are going on with the new seven years' scheme which will give a chance of showing whether really good results can be achieved. The experience to be gained from such schemes will be of immense value to all other parts of Africa and to other parts of our tropical dependencies. One country which I believe has potentialities of great richness which could be

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developed, provided that the necessary capital is made available and the machinery and skilled labour provided, is the vast island of New Guinea. I am told that if the jungle there could be cleared the exceedingly rich soil would produce crops which would make the island another Java. Then, Brazil has vast unused areas—it is a country as great in size as the United States—which have not been touched. The interior of Brazil, because it is difficult of access and owing to the intractability of the jungle, has so far defeated efforts at close settlement. If our experiments in the mechanical clearing of bush and jungle are successful, they can be applied elsewhere and vast areas of land which are at present completely wasted may eventually be brought under cultivation and used for grazing and cattle-rearing purposes. That is the problem viewed as a whole. I think great credit is due to our Government in that directly after the exertions of the Second World War they embarked on this very large scheme, on expert advice. If the scheme succeeded—as it may yet succeed—it would bring great benefits, not only to the British Commonwealth, not only to the continent of Africa, but to the whole world.
I notice that there was no criticism from the noble Viscount—there has been none so far, at any rate—of the Queensland development scheme. Whether he has refrained from criticising out of consideration for the Queensland Government —he did not mind criticising our Government—I do not know. But if there is criticism to be made of that scheme I suggest that now is the time to make it. Queensland is a vast country of which I know a little, and it, also, is a country of tremendous potentialities. It is, I suppose, one of the richest undeveloped areas in the world. If young men ask me to what part of the world I would recommend them to go, I always answer, "Queensland." There are vast cattle-grazing areas, great stretches of cultivable soil, vast quantities of minerals and timber, and practically everything else that is needed. I should say it is the richest undeveloped district of the world. What are principally required are communications—railways and so on—and up-country refrigerating stations. I believe that the food producing potentialities are such that a production equal to that of the Argentine could
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eventually be achieved. We are embarking on a more modest scale, in partnership with the Queensland Government, on this project for growing sorghum, raising pigs, and developing up-country cattle stations in Queensland. Why has there been no criticism about the smallness of this project? If I were to criticise it, that would be the ground upon which I should do so. Seeing that the potentialities of Queensland are so enormous and the need in the future of its products will be so great, I should have liked to see more money devoted to the scheme. It does not need any pilot plan or anything of that kind because where there are communications the cattle trade has been most successful, and so has general agriculture. That, 1 suggest, is also the way to look at this whole project in East Africa.
There is another matter—it is only a small one, but I should like to refer to it. I do not like that part of the Bill which contains references to the Secretary of State and not to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. It may be that there is good reason for it. I do not remember if this is common form or not. Although during my Parliamentary life I have seen many hundreds of Bills, I am uncertain about this point, and it may be that there is constitutional reason for not putting into the Bill: "Secretary of State for the Colonies." But when the Bill becomes an Act it will be read by other people besides Members of Parliament, and if it still contains the words "Secretary of State" they will be wondering which Secretary of State is meant. It might be the Secretary of State for Scotland.
LORD OGMORE: I will look into that point, tout I imagine that the passages to which the noble Lord refers are drafted in their present form because the Bill is to be read together with the Act of 1948. The Secretary of State is, of course, defined in the principal Act, and therefore further definition is not called for in this measure. I imagine that that is the case.
LORD LLEWELLIN: I believe that it is common form.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT JOWITT): May I intervene just to say this? I think you will find it is common form. I believe that constitutionally there is only one Secretary of

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State; that is why they can be interchanged with each other. I think that for generations we have always referred to "the Secretary of State."
LORD STRABOLGI: It may be a custom hallowed by long usage here, but I think it is time we changed that custom. If the person meant is the Secretary of State for the Colonies, why not say so? Or is that too iconoclastic a suggestion? I do not want to shock the Lord Chancellor, who, I know, is a great guardian of all tradition and continuity.
May I make one further observation on this great subject? I think it is relevant here to mention the question of reclaiming marginal and waste lands in other parts of the world. I have often wondered—in fact, I have argued this point as well—why modern mechanical methods of clearing rough land and rough scrub cannot be employed in our own country to a far greater extent. One or two experiments in the use of modern machinery and the modern internal combustion engine have been carried out on some of the forest waste land and have been successful. There is a considerable area of waste land or marginal land in England, Scotland and Wales, and I believe that if modern mechanical methods of reclamation were applied to them great results might be achieved. That is not a matter for private enterprise. It is not a commercial proposition—not even with Government subsidies and assistance. But it may be of tremendous importance to this country in the future if we can bring a few more thousand acres of land into cattle-bearing or crop-producing condition. Perhaps even our experiment in East Africa may in the future produce lessons of value to hard-pressed Ministers of Food if they can be applied to our own marginal areas in this country.
3.50 p.m.
LORD LLOYD: My Lords, the noble Lord who has just sat down said that this scheme has been of great advantage to noble Lords on these Benches because it has become a music-hall joke. If I may, I should like to suggest to the noble Lord that the reason why the scheme has become a music-hall joke is that the British people, being philosophical, feel that when disasters get to a certain pitch tears are no longer appropriate and all
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we can do is to laugh. Those who observed the troops in war time saw that that was frequently the case. It is a joke because it has been a great disaster. In his speech this afternoon the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, was keen to leave the past, and after a brief reference to "witch hunting," he pressed forward rapidly to the glorious future to be obtained when we have spent another £6,000,000. I certainly do not wish to indulge in witch hunting, but, as my noble friend Lord Swinton said, we cannot be entirely oblivious to the past or go on trying to write this off by saying that a certain private enterprise company advised the Government and, therefore, must bear the blame. It is the Government's responsibility. The Government took all the credit that was going in the early days for this wonderful, mammoth scheme that was to put the British Empire right after the years of Tory misrule, and now they must take the blame. It is no good blaming the United Africa Company.
LORD OGMORE: I never mentioned the United Africa Company.
LORD LLOYD: I beg the noble Lord's pardon. I was not referring to his speech. It was the noble Lord, Lord Slrabolgi, who made reference to the United Africa Company.
LORD STRABOLGI: I certainly mentioned the United Africa Company, but I did not blame them. I am certain they gave the best advice they could, and they are very experienced.
LORD LLOYD: To my mind, the implication was that the United Africa Company had been responsible for the scheme and therefore it was their fault; but if I am misrepresenting the noble Lord. I am only too pleased to withdraw my remark. Now the great disaster has occurred, it is no good saying it was not our fault. We have to see why it was a disaster and try not to do it again: that is the first lesson. The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, said that this measure was welcomed by all Parties, and certainly the principle of the Bill was welcomed by all Parties. I speak with particular feeling on this matter, because, for family reasons, I have always been interested in colonial development and I take a modest pride in the fact that it was my father who introduced the first

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Colonial Welfare and Development Bill in your Lordships' House during the war.
We all believe in the vital importance of developing the Colonies and the Dominions. I would go so far as to say that in the long run the only solution of our economic difficulties and of those of the whole Empire is that we should be able to develop the Colonies. But when we talk gaily about great schemes of development we should remember the difficulties, particularly the financial difficulties. If we had enormous resources, how easy it would be to undertake great schemes, to take great risks and to lose large sums of money! But one of our difficulties has always been that there were financial limitations on what we could spend, and that is more true to-day than ever it was. Therefore, it is vitally important that the money we spend on Empire development should be well spent, spent in the right place, and should yield the maximum results and advantage. The lesson of this scheme is that that has not been done. Only the minimum advantage has been obtained, and all we have learned is something which we could have bought for a great deal less than £36,000,000—namely, that we cannot plant ground-nuts successfully in East Africa and that they are not susceptible there to large-scale development. As my noble friend Viscount Swinton said, a pilot scheme would have taught us that in half the time and at about one-fiftieth of the cost.
The impression I have about this Bill is that it is not really any better thought out than the original Act. The information is vague. We are not told the grounds on which better results are now hoped for. It is admitted that there is not going to be any profit in it; it is an experiment. But we have had an experiment, which has proved that we cannot grow ground-nuts in a large area in Tanganyika. Do we need another experiment to prove the same thing? I very much doubt it. Again, we are told that we have to go on with the scheme because it would cost us more, or as much, not to go on with it. I am extremely sceptical about that. We have had no figures to suggest it, and I would press the noble Lord to tell us what these great liabilities are which make it so imperative to continue the scheme. It is
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an axiom in business to start in a small way in order to learn the business and then to build up from the small foundations. It is another axiom in business to cut your losses. It is no good carrying on with the idea of "Next time, lucky." That does not work in gambling, in business or in colonial development.
With the limited financial resources at our disposal, surely we have to consider the British Commonwealth as a whole. It is open to consideration whether we could not have done better by spending the £36,000,000 elsewhere. There are many places where development is urgently needed—in Rhodesia, for instance, where much could be done by irrigation. Before we embark on another experiment to cost £6,000,000, and possibly a great deal more, we ought to have a full and impartial inquiry, with all the facts made available; and no decision should have been taken until that had been done. I can have no confidence in this Bill. We are not going actively to oppose the Bill, but I feel the gravest misgivings. I would rather have seen something far less spectacular, but built on sound lines from the start. By spending more millions on this scheme, I do not see how we are going to make it any more successful.
3.58 p.m.
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, after the detailed speech of my noble friend Lord Swinton, I do not wish to say very much about the ground-nut scheme. From the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, one would not have thought that the main purpose of the Bill was to change the management of this highly unsuccessful undertaking. That crept in only remotely in his speech. One of my regrets about this frightful fiasco of the ground-nuts is that it has brought a once great Ministry, the Ministry of Food, into considerable direpute. At no time, certainly not when I was there was that Ministry equipped to run a Colonial enterprise of this sort, and they ought never to have taken on such a job. That is the sort of job which should have been in the hands of the Colonial Office and their administrators.
The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, said that the failure of the scheme was a godsend to the Opposition. Of course, it is. It is always a godsend when what we have been saying a Socialistic Government would do turns out to be right. We

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have long said that they would be extravagant and waste the people's money, and that is certainly what they have done in East Africa. The noble Lord also said that we were jobbing 'backwards, and that it was easy enough to do that. Parliament in this matter is not the board of directors, but only the shareholders who act on such reports as their directors give them. It is the directors who ought to watch the matter all the time, and not allow things to come to such a pass that an extraordinary general meeting has to be called—which is what we are engaged in here this afternoon—in order to change the board of management. I would just correct the noble Lord on a further point, if I may, having travelled through West Africa and Kano. The ordinary settled small producer in the Kano district does keep up the fertilisation of his soil. One can see the trouble he takes to collect all the donkey and camel dung to put back into the land that he cultivates. He usually has a considerable smallholding, about half of which he uses for groundnuts and the other half for feeding his own family; and he changes it round and tries to keep the land in good heart. At any rate, we could have supplied those people with a little extra fertiliser, if that was the idea, at far less expense than the £36,000 000 which we are discussing to-day.
I do not want to delay your Lordships because, as I said, my noble friend Lord Swinton has dealt with that matter, and particularly with that point. I should, however, like to say a word about the Queensland project. It is possible that I am the only member of your Lordships' House who has seen it; at any rate, I was there last December, and the noble Lord in opening the debate quoted some words I used at Rockhampton just after I came back from seeing Peak Down and its neighbouring farm. That has started off in far better circumstances than did the ground-nuts scheme in East Africa. First of all, the Queensland Government secured, as Vice-Chairman of that Corporation, one of the ablest business men in Queensland; a man whom the Prime Minister of Queensland has just put on his Capital Resources Committee, and uses for many purposes. He knows, on the spot, the right men to pick to run a project of this sort, and I believe that at the moment they have good men running the scheme. I was interested in some of
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the figures which the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore gave; that the cattle had gone up 6,000 since I was there. That is quite normal, because they probably brought in stock cattle to feed. Pigs, I think he said, now number 2,000. There has been a phenomenal increase. I walked round in half an hour, and saw all the pigs at one half of the pig project. However, I am glad to think that that part of the organisation is going well. I was disappointed in the figure given by the noble Lord for the probable amount of tons of sorghum. I believe the noble Lord gave a figure of less than 40,000 tons—
LORD OGMORE: I said 28,000 tons.
LORD LLEWELLIN: I hoped, and the people there hoped, that they were likely to get some 40,000 tons. Do not let anybody think that this is all plain sailing. One thing I deprecate about Lord Strabolgi's speech was that he wanted a vastly expanded scheme compared with that which they have at the present moment. I believe that they are right in not rushing into things before they have the necessary equipment and the man-power. That is where there is wise management on the spot. I am one of those people who hate quoting average figures. I know that they quote the average figure of rainfall—I think the noble Lord said it was; twenty inches.
LORD OGMORE: Twenty to twenty-five inches.
LORD LLEWELLIN: In the Peak Down neighbourhood they have had vastly more rain than that this year; it has been a frightfully wet year in Queensland. But, if we look back at the history of this property, we shall find that the owner who had it just after the last war discovered that it was rather like the Egypt in the Bible days, and had five or six years of drought. If this particular owner had not had family connections unconnected with that land he would have been in great difficulty, because he could not do anything with the land.
When I was there they had sown about half the crop of sorghum they intended to sow, but they were waiting, despite the wetness of the year, for a shower or two of rain before they put in the extra seed for which thousands of acres of land had been prepared. They cannot put the seed in unless they get that rainfall just to start it off. There is a time coming when they

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will not have that rainfall in Queensland in any part of the year. Do not let us take average figures as though they mean that every year there will be between twenty and twenty-five inches of rain in that particular place, because there will be some years when they will get very little, and even none. They are complaining there this year that they have had too much rain. Farmers are just the same all over the world: there has either been too much rain, too little, or the rain has come at the wrong time. But it has prevented their ploughing as much of the land as they would have liked. On the other hand, they have a second crop this year out of last year's sowing, which in a normal year is not to be expected, and that will put up their tonnage of sorghum.
Another reason why this matter should not be rushed is the difficulty of getting adequate labour so far from a town as these properties are situated. A young man who goes there and works hard will make about twenty Australian pounds a week, with the overtime that he does. The men themselves make their own arrangements for feeding, and that costs them about £2 10s. a week; and there is no shop or public-house nearer than about seven miles, where they can spend anything additional. So a man, willy-nilly, has £16 or £17 a week in his pocket, and, often, depending on the man, when he has done ten, fifteen or twenty weeks' work, he will say: "I will go somewhere and spend this money." So back he goes into Brisbane or some other town, with the result that it is necessary to recruit new labour. That is understandable, but the result is that the Corporation are always training new tractor drivers, and the wear on tractors is excessive—far worse than if the same driver operated the same tractor, year in and year out, and looked after it.
When there is a dearth of labour, as there is at the moment in Australia and Queensland, it is not easy to attract people to places out in the country such as this. I believe that the only way to do that will be by building more houses or a small village there. I do not say that the Corporation should do that. I suppose the local authority could be brought in, At any rate, until we see married people settling there, and forming a small community, there will always be changing
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labour in these remote districts. I believe that the Corporation are right to go slow, and to get over their difficulties one by one. If people like the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, who have not been there are going to press them to go ahead wholesale, then we shall lose money in quantities as we have lost it in East Africa. Let that part of the show, at any rate, go on under good management, without political pressure being put upon it one way or another.
One thing which disappointed me in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, if I understood him aright, was when he said that this country was going to take only the surplus sorghum. I believe that what we should be doing is bringing in as much feeding stuffs as we can. I believe that one of the best countries in which to rear pigs, and cattle which make good beef, is this old country of ours. In my view, it is far better for us to bring in as much of the product of these estates in the form of feedings stuffs as we can. If beef is brought from Australia it has to be frozen, and everybody who knows what a decent piece of beef tastes like wants to get back to our British home-bred beef which has not been frozen. It is true that you can make use of the remains of the sorghum—the stalks which are left after you have cut off the head which has the seed in it—for cattle feeding. By all means use it for that, and by all means put something back into the land by letting the cattle which feed on the sorghum fertilise the land in their turn. I believe that the Government are the majority shareholders in this concern—at any rate I know that the Queensland Government will do what they want with regard to the produce— and I beg them to bring back feeding stuffs so that we can produce more of our own food in this country, both cattle and bacon, and then indeed we may have thanks to offer to the Queensland scheme. In regard to these schemes generally, my view is that the Government cannot carry on being great benefactors to the world. They have to remember that there must be good business organisation in these matters, as there is in free enterprise; and that, just as directors are responsible, and rightly responsible, for their shareholders' money, so the Government are responsible for

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the taxpayers' money. They ought to make certain that no more is wasted in the way it has been wasted in East Africa.
4.15 p.m.
THE EARL OF LUCAN: My Lords, the Bill before us is a Bill to launch the East Africa ground-nuts project on its second stage, which is to be an experimental development scheme on a limited scale. I understand that noble Lords opposite would wish us not to proceed with it until there had been yet another inquiry. It seems to me that it was only a few days ago that this Government was being accused from the Benches opposite of vacillation, hesitation and failing to give a lead. Now the Government are being accused of going ahead too rapidly, of taking too definite a policy, and of not waiting to make sure of the ground until every experiment has been made and every pilot scheme carried out. It is not profitable to use this debate to go back to the early stages, but your Lordships will remember the world food situation when the scheme was initiated. The urgency of the matter seemed then, and surely still seems, to have justified cutting a few corners and taking a few risks. Noble Lords opposite have made full use of the analogy of business. They talk of the money being wasted. The question is, what do they mean by "wasted"? I hope in a few minutes to show your Lord-ships that the money spent in East Africa on schemes such as this is a very definite contribution to the development of Africa and to the improvement of the conditions of our African citizens.
We have been a Colonial Empire for a long time. It is not too much to say that, in the past, we have run our Empire on the cheap. We have not invested money boldly and on a large scale. It seems to me that this scheme is going a long way to remedy the deficiencies and omissions of the past. The African's standard of living is deplorably low, as no one will deny. We have heard from the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading of the very low annual income per head of the population. Unfortunately, the popular conception of the African subject as a magnificent physical specimen is all too far from the truth. There has been malnutrition, shortage of food and disease in most parts of Africa, and the only way in which that state of
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affairs can be remedied is by improving the economic position of the country and its inhabitants. That means that we must improve the productivity of the soil and the productivity of the agricultural man-power. The only way in which that can be done is by introducing modern techniques, and they require capital and experience. We have to get away from the hand hoe, which is the time-honoured African agricultural implement. We cannot afford to wait, and this scheme takes a big step towards remedying those deficiencies.
I should like to refer to four aspects of the improvement that has been made to the conditions of Africans. First, there has been steady employment in Tanganyika Territory for a considerable number of Africans—employment which is not too far from their homes and which has removed the threat of famine and food shortage under which every African family has always lived. This has been confirmed by nutritional surveys in the area itself, in which the employees of the Corporation have been found to be better fed and healthier than Africans living outside the Corporation's sphere. Secondly, there is the question of health. The medical facilities provided by the Corporation have supplemented those of the Territory; and, as a result, thousands of Africans have had health facilities— both preventive medicine and curative medicine—which they would not have had if it had not been for the ground-nut scheme. That is a definite gain; and it has benefited not only the employees of the Corporation, because last year 20 per cent. of the 200,000 or so who attended the Corporation's clinics or were admitted to hospital came from outside the ranks of the employees. Thirdly, their housing has improved. As the scheme became more concentrated and more developed it became possible to provide housing of a greatly improved standard, better than the standard prevalent in the Territory outside.
Lastly, there is the matter of education. It is no good improving the African's health and giving him a modicum of education unless you can teach him those skills that are necessary to make the most of the soil on which he lives. The Corporation had to begin practically from scratch. The population in that part of the Tanganyika Territory are pastoralists or agriculturists. Apart from the

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sprinkling of ex-Service men who learnt a trade in the Forces, very few had any mechanical knowledge. The Corporation started by setting up their own training scheme; and so successful was it that last year 55 per cent. of the 15,000 men employed were of the skilled trades. They were all trained locally from local material. This gives good promise of the adaptability and latent mechanical ability of the African. That technical education was built on a foundation of elementary education, children's schools and so on. And all this has not only a direct but also an indirect effect, because not only do the men who are working for the Corporation derive the benefit, but the standards set by the Corporation spread over the whole country; and the ideas that men have learnt in this employment will spread and leaven the whole of the social and agricultural habits of the East Africans. To abandon the scheme now would be quite unthinkable. Not only should we forfeit our prestige as a Colonial Power, but the abandonment would be very much regretted by the Tanganyika Government and the people and would bring to a premature close what is a most promising chapter in African Colonial development.
4.26 p.m.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, I did not intend to speak to-day and I shall not speak for more than a few minutes, but, having looked up what I said on the original Act, I felt it would be only consistent to speak against this Bill too. I thank His Majesty's Government for having come round to my point of view that the enterprise should be handed over, first of all, to the Colonial Office. But I should like to know precisely what is going on. I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, with great care and I found it difficult to discover precisely "what was up." Apparently the original scheme was introduced because we had only a 7 oz. fat ration at that time and required more. But there were approximately 3 to 4 oz. of the fat ration lying in Nigeria, waiting for rolling stock. That fact I mentioned in my speech on the original Act.
Then the noble Lord spoke about the battle against malnutrition—not the battle against malnutrition in this country, apparently, since we were told the other
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day that we in this country are remarkably well fed and that, therefore, that battle is not necessary here. The battle against malnutrition to which the noble Lord referred was in Africa. Therefore I take it that he was speaking of the feeding of the growing population of Africa. But a third object seems to have come into view and was mentioned by both Lord Ogmore and the noble Earl, Lord Lucan, and it is that the scheme is to be a sort of large-scale field trial, with scientific co-operation. What is the noble Lord's object? Is he thinking of the cultivation of the kitchen garden of Africa or is this to be merely a playground for agricultural scientists? Or is it merely a glorious symposium, the idea being that if you fail at one you can always say that the other was the real object? We should like a practical answer to that question. What is quite certain is that the Government's plantation is to function. Everyone in your Lordships' House welcomes the development of the Commonwealth and Empire, and none more than I do. But none is more averse than I to its being done by direct Government efforts. I believe it is entirely and absolutely wrong for the Government to go into large schemes of cultivation.
Noble Lords opposite seem to talk as though the world has never been developed. The world is, in fact, being developed. At this moment, for instance, great tracts of Brazil are being opened up. In India, great irrigation schemes are in progress. The whole process is going on all the time. The Government have not pioneered in this scheme in Africa; they have merely been using a different method of achieving the same end. How is it done elsewhere? The Government stick to their function. They first survey the ground and ascertain whether or not a commodity can be grown; whether the rainfall is suitable, and so on. Having made up their minds, they provide facilities which other people need to develop the area. In the first place, they provide, perhaps, a railway and possibly feeder roads and electricity; and also, maybe, irrigation. Then the individuals come in and do the pioneering. Individuals come in for many reasons. All over the world there will be found men who are restless. They will always be attracted by the lure of

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something new. They come in in search of gain. They do not come in in search of gain through growing crops—there is little gain usually to be found in that— but they come in with the hope of a capital gain. They see land going at extremely cheap prices—Is. an acre being the sort of once which land in those outlandish places fetches. They think: "We will buy a block of, say, 5,000 acres and in ten or twenty years' time, when the place is opened up, we shall be able to sell it a twenty times what we paid for it." That is the way the backwoods are developed: through the sense of adventure and the lure of gain to the individual, all very wicked, of course, to noble Lords opposite.
The people who can go in will be either individuals or plantation companies. Tropical agriculture is appallingly difficult. The hazards are tremendous. Some members of the Socialist Party, speaking in various places, seem to forget the difficulties of tropical agriculture. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Croft, who had great experience in these matters, telling me that in East Africa he had tried to grow every conceivable crop, and had succeeded in making a loss on every one of them. When it was not blight, it was baboons. The British and the Dutch have the greatest tropical agricultural experts in the world. If the Government get a scheme going by providing the facilities, they can then go to our great experts, and they should come in. If they refuse to come in, there is a pretty good reason for believing that the scheme is not a good one. The Government can go a bit further. They can perhaps offer to take some share themselves. If, in spite of that, the real experts still refuse to come in, one may be certain that the scheme is not worth proceeding with.
Growing things in the soil is rather like mining for minerals. There are enormous deposits of minerals all over the world, but at the moment only those are worked which it is profitable for men to work. In the same way, the amount of soil cultivated depends on the pressure on the soil at any given moment. In times of boom prices and so on. there is a chance to extend, and in times of low prices the reverse occurs. At the moment, we are passing through a time of almost unprecedented boom prices for all agricultural products. I believe that these 3,000,000 acres may well be cultivated one day,
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perhaps not in my Lifetime but in the lifetime of my children or my children's children. As the population of the world advances, and as science advances, it may become possible for the cultivation to be done economically, but in the meantime I do not think we should continue with these 250,000 acres without a full inquiry. I cannot help feeling that His Majesty's Government are rather frightened of the result of such an inquiry; otherwise they would not insist on refusing it.
4.34 p.m.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I think all your Lordships will agree that we have had an interesting debate, in the course of which a number of valuable suggestions have been made. I will try to deal with the main points that have arisen, and to satisfy noble Lords on the various questions that they have raised. The noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, has charged us with developing East Africa to the detriment of West, and has said in fact, though not perhaps in actual words, that we have neglected the production of ground-nuts in West Africa and the expansion of the railway there because of the work that was done in East Africa. In fact, this has not been the case. If this large development of ground-nuts could have taken place in West Africa, it is odd that the corporation with probably the largest experience of growing plantation crops in West Africa should have recommended the East Africa scheme. I refer to the United Africa Company. No one has had more experience in this field in West Africa than they have, and they were the people who recommended, and indeed originated, this scheme in East Africa. Knowing full well the situation as regards the production of ground-nuts in the West, at no time have we allowed the East African adventure in any way to imperil the future of the West African industry.
It was said, and we were advised, that in West Africa there could be only a marginal increase in supplies, and that no very great increase could be expected after the work that the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, and the officers serving under him had done in that field during the war. That was our advice. On the question of closing down the scheme, I told the noble Viscount that I would give him the breakdown of the overall figure

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which would probably be incurred if we abandoned the scheme. The Corporation would have to find a little over £1,000,000, as compensation for various interests and for breach of contract in connection with transportation in the Southern Province. Other major contracts with suppliers would add another £300,000. Under the general heading of "personnel," there would be costs for termination of contracts and for salaries while waiting passage to the United Kingdom. That, together with the cost of those passages, is estimated at £1,650,000. There would be miscellaneous commitments, amounting to £500,000, in relation to the dispersal of African labour and the breaking of supply contracts. The cost of concentration, maintenance and disposal of surplus assets is estimated at £1,000,000. Adding that up. we find that it comes (if my arithmetic is correct) to £4,450,000. That is roughly £4,500,000, which was the figure given in another place.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: Might I have the last £1,000,000 reference again? I do not follow that. Why is it that that is not incurred if we carry on, and is incurred if we stop?
LORD OGMORE: Because, as I am informed, that is the cost of concentrating the movable vehicles, the plant and machinery at the centres, first of all, either in Kongwa or Urambo or in the Southern Province, then moving them down to the ports or whatever place is decided upon for the auction sale, and keeping them in good condition in the meantime.
LORD STRABOLGI: Making dumps?
LORD OGMORE: Yes, making dumps, probably at a port where people could come and purchase, either at auction or by private contract.
LORD LLOYD: Will the noble Lord forgive me for interrupting? Does that take into account any sums which might be expected to be realised by the auction of those assets, or are those amounts not included? Is that the net figure? If the assets are disposed of, large sums will presumably be realised which should more than cover the cost of their concentration and of disposal.
LORD OGMORE: No, that is not covered, because the value of the assets
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taken over exists in the books of the Corporation as having been taken over. Therefore you do not deduct the value of the assets taken over from the cost of disposal. This is an additional sum which is to be expended over and above the amount that is expendable if the Corporation take them over.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I am sorry again to interrupt the noble Lord, who is being very helpful about this matter, but do I understand that the writing down of all these vehicles and machinery has been carried out and is reflected in the £36,000,000? We have written off £36,000,000, and the whole of these assets stand at one penny value in the balance sheet. Therefore, having amortised them down to nothing, you had better leave them where they are.
LORD OGMORE: I was coming on to that point, because I think there has been some great misunderstanding about it. In fact the £36,000,000 is written off because it was a loan out of the Consolidated Fund. Of course, the whole of that money has not been lost, and I am sure noble Lords will make that clear if they are ever challenged on it on public platforms or elsewhere. There are a great variety of assets in the shape of hospitals, plant of various kinds, stores, schools, houses, cleared and cultivated land, water supplies and so on. There are movable assets such as bulldozers, lorries, earth-clearing machinery and a hundred-and-one other items of constructional or agricultural value. Of course there will be cash receipts from the sale of the surplus assets, because the Corporation are not taking over all the assets. They are going to decide what assets are needed to enable them to conduct the smaller-scale project. The surplus assets will be sold and that money will be returned to the Exchequer, and will go some way to relieving the £36,000,000 which has been written off.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I thought that item of receipts from surplus assets was amongst the receipts which were to be deducted from the £13,500,000 of new expenditure, to reduce that figure to £6,000,000. But if it is not, and if it is to be deducted from the £36,000,000 which we are now writing off, I do not understand what are the £7,500,000 receipts which reduced the £13,500,000 to £6,000,000.
LORD OGMORE: The receipts are estimated to be the yield from sale of produce. The noble Viscount was quite right in saying that this was only an estimation. If there had been actual physical assets, then of course we could estimate the value far more clearly than has been, possible. But that, I understand, is the position, and I hope I have satisfied the noble Viscount on the facts, because those are the facts.
LORD LLOYD: Would the noble Lord forgive me for putting another point to him? As I understand it, one of the arguments of the Government for proceeding with the new scheme is the expense of completely discontinuing operations. I think that is correct.
LORD OGMORE: Yes.
LORD LLOYD: If you are going to dispose of these assets, and it is part of the argument that here is £1,000,000 which is going to be needed, I should think (and perhaps the noble Lord will agree) that it is only fair to set against the cost of the disposal of the assets the sale price which is realised for them. If that is the noble Lord's argument, then I do not think the figure given is quite a fair one with which to support his argument. I think he should have included the sale price of the assets against that £1,000,000.
LORD OGMORE: Quite frankly, I thought at first that that was the way they were doing it. Now I have gone into it, I understand that it is not so. As the noble Lord said, it is perfectly true that you can have a book item and you can set it off, debiting the Corporation with the amount of the assets which they have taken over. In fact it has not been done in that way, and as it is only a book item I do not think it matters much in the long run. The assets that the Corporation retain will be retained at the value they stand at in the books; the Corporation will not get them at any cheaper value, because they are assets which they have had possibly for some years.
LORD LLOYD: It does not matter, except for the noble Lord's argument.
LORD OGMORE: You can adopt either the cue course or the other. The argument the Government valuers have suggested is quite a sound one; but I do not think you can mix the two systems up. It is one which I think we
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can now all agree gives a clear answer to the public. On the question of the railways, I regret to say that I gave the noble Viscount some misleading information when I intervened. Of course there are two railways, and I had assumed that the operating guarantee and the construction advance related to one and the other, but in fact both relate to the railway in the Southern Province. The guarantee to the East African Railway and Harbour refers to the operating losses which may be incurred on the Southern Province Railway. It is a liability if the scheme continues, but it is not a liability if it does not. It is only then a continuing liability. If the Corporation close down and the railway is noS completed, the Corporation are not entitled to recover the £3,000,000 advanced for the construction of the railway. It is a liability which, if the Corporation is closed down, will just be written off.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I hope I am not cross-examining the noble Lord too much, but could I know this? The £3,000,000, or perhaps more, has been spent on construction. Apparently we may get that back at some stage. But shall we get it back only if the railway shows a profit?
LORD OGMORE: Yes.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: It is not just a loan for a few years or a short-term money advance to the East African Government to spend on construction. If it is done, it is done by the East Africans as agents for the Corporation, and unless the railway makes a profit out of which the loan can be repaid, presumably we shall not be repaid the loan at all.
LORD OGMORE: That is true. But, after all, East African Railways are a big concern. They operate the Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika Railways, and they may be in a position to say, "We can easily afford to spend £3,000,000 on this particular line." In regard to the Southern Province, I think the railway is vital from the point of view of the development of Central Africa, and I personally hope that the East African Railways will go through to Lake Nyasa. All that area will undoubtedly be opened up one day. We all know of the congestion existing at the port of Beira, which is the one port in Central Africa, and the congestion on the Nyasaland

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Railway. I hope that this stretch of railway will not close down but that East African Railways will find it in their power to continue with it, because it will embrace, as it were, the hinterland of the Southern Province, which has considerable possibilities, and will enable Nyasaland to send its produce down to a port entailing a much easier haul than the haul to Beira. Perhaps that is a different consideration, but it does mean that from the rather broader viewpoint of the Corporation the £3,000,000 may still be well spent in the end.
The question of an independent inquiry has been fairly well canvassed in another place, and the arguments are no doubt well-known to noble Lords. This is not a new scheme (as I have said already, it is only a reduction in scale of an existing project) and it is intended to experiment with different crops—tobacco, cotton, and rice—in addition to the ground-nuts, maize and sorghum with which the Corporation have already been dealing. They have also had cattle at Kongwa. The Government believe that matters would be delayed very considerably if an independent inquiry were to be held. No better or more highly qualified persons than those who have given their advice through the Overseas Food Corporation could be wished for. Your Lordships will no doubt know most of these people. I could read out a list of their names, but I think I need say only that they are men of great reputation, who have had vast experience in agriculture, both in this country and abroad; they are, in fact, men whose names. I feel sure, will command great respect from your Lordships.
The noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, asked a question about the sorghum surplus. Perhaps I did refer to it as a surplus but it is a surplus simply in the sense that it was the amount not used locally. This is very much a case of the tail wagging the dog, because out of the total of 28,000 tons we got 25,500 tons, which was the lion's share of the sorghum that was grown. The Ministry of Food fully appreciate the need for animal feeding stuffs, and they will always bear this necessity in their minds. They will no doubt consult with the Queensland Government and the Queensland Corporation as to how best Lord Llewellin's views can be put into practice. The 28,000 tons
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was the harvest of 1949–1950. Personally, in agricultural matters, I do not like making large estimates of the increased yield that we expect from future harvests. It may be that this year we shall get the 40,000 tons to which the noble Lord referred, but I think it is safer to stick to the figure for the yield which we have already had. If Lord Llewellin is correct and we do get 40,000 tons, I am sure that all noble Lords will be delighted. I am grateful to Lord Llewellin for what he said, and I am sure that his visit, and that of the other members of the Parliamentary delegation, to the Queensland project gave great encouragement end had a profound effect on the morale of the people working on the scheme.
May I now say a word or two with regard to the last speech, that of Lord Hawke? He asked: Why Government intervention? He said—and perhaps rightly, although I myself probably would not have spoken as he did of private enterprise being dependent upon the possibility of gain—that private enterprise would go into a territory only in search of gain, and that there was no gain in these crops. I do not think that is so. I think that very often the love of adventure has actuated pioneers—it has not always been love of gain. However, I am not here to argue the matter on behalf of private enterprise, so I shall carry that point no further. I should like to add that Governments have often been under the necessity of developing areas with which it would have been unfair to expect private enterprise to concern themselves. I have said nothing to-day criticising private enterprise for not developing these areas. I do not expect them to do so. I do not think that people in private enterprise are able to stand the tremendous capital charges which are called for before there is any possibility of return. They cannot face the prospect of locking up great amounts of capital in many of these areas. The whole point of schemes of this sort is that Governments or international agencies must do a good deal by way of pilot schemes and the like to ascertain whether it is possible to develop these under-developed areas.
To-day, I suppose, there are few more profitable crops than rubber. Yet I think —and the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, will no doubt bear this out—what Sir Frank Swettenham says in his book about this industry is true. He devotes several

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pages to showing the difficulty which the Government experienced in the early days in getting anyone to take an interest in rubber growing in Malaya. He writes of the tremendous amount of work which Government officers had to do to foster that infant industry. In this connection, I recently read a work by a district officer of the Gold Coast, in which he wrote of the difficulty which had been experienced in getting private enterprise to take up the growing of cocoa there. In other words, in many cases it is necessary—and I believe that it will always be necessary—to have Government intervention in places where private enterprise, owing to its very nature, is unable or unwilling to intervene. Finally, in answer to Lord Hawke, I would say once more that this is a largescale field experiment, combined with scientific research, and that we hope to develop a pattern of agriculture suitable to the soil to the climate and to the people. That is our object.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

RESERVE AND AUXILIARY FORCES (TRAINING) BILL
4.55 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Your Lordships, I know, are familiar with the objects of the Bill, which have already been fully explained in the debate in another place. I shall therefore at the outset state only briefly the main intention of the Bill, which is to give effect to the undertaking given by the Prime Minister in another place on January 29, that legislation would be introduced to enable certain categories of officers and men with previous experience in the Forces to be recalled for training. The three Services are not, of course, affected by the provisions of this Bill to anything like the same extent in each case. The Admiralty do not propose, under the provisions of this Bill, to call up for training any of their reservists. The Navy is faced with the problem of manning additional ships of the reserve Fleet, and keeping in commission as many ships as possible of the active Fleet.
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The Army and the Royal Air Force, on the other hand, are vitally concerned with all the provisions of this Bill. May I in the first place take the Army, and indicate the measure of their man-power interest?
The Army is faced with the problem of strengthenening the active Army, and also of building up its reserve formations. As the House is aware, we intend to have the equivalent of ten divisions in existence by April of this year. In the event of an emergency, these divisions will require certain non-divisional, corps and army supporting arms, and administrative troops which they now lack and which, when supplied, would transform them from a number of separate formations into an Army. To provide these supporting arms and administrative troops, it is proposed to recall up to 115,000 officers and men to be trained to fill these rôles. This proposal has been criticised because it does nothing at this stage to strengthen our formations overseas. I would say to your Lordships however that it is quite wrong to imagine that as a result of the steps that are now proposed the state of readiness of the corps and army troops will not be improved. A proportion of the corps and army units which would be required in the theatres overseas after a mobilisation will receive reservists this year, and as a result such units will undoubtedly be more efficient if they are called on to mobilise. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that our formations over-seas have already begun to be strengthened by the extension from eighteen months to two years of Colour Service by National Service men. The training and efficiency of Anti-Aircraft Command—so vital to the defence of this country-—must also be improved, and it is therefore proposed to recall for training this year up to 40.000 officers and men with previous experience in anti-aircraft units.
It is further necessary to strengthen the reserve divisions, comprising Territorial Army personnel. Recruitment to the Territorial Army has gone steadily forward since it was reopened in 1947. The material is good, I am glad to say, but the numbers will require supplementing in an emergency. Moreover, the flow of National Service men into the Territorial Army after completion of their Colour Service has hardly begun, and the extension of the period" of Colour Service from

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eighteen months to two years has automatically had the effect of suspending the intake till April next. The Army's plans for the strengthening of the Territorial Army this summer are based on the recall of some 80,000 officers and men to Territorial Army units.
Turning now to the Royal Air Force, the chief man-power problem to which the present Bill is addressed is the need to train personnel of the control and reporting organisation. To meet this need, up to 10,000 airmen are being recalled, together with a few hundred officers released since the last war. The personnel of the twenty fighter squadrons of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, numbering some 2,300, are also being recalled for periods of refresher training lasting three months. These squadrons will be trained for part of the three months alongside a regular day squadron at a fighter station, and will also complete a period of gunnery training. It is hoped that it will be possible for the remainder of the three months to be spent at the squadron's local airfield. In addition, up to a thousand officers and men who have received training in air crew duties are to be recalled—also for three months—for refresher training, with the object of fitting them for service in an emergency as reinforcements in Fighter Command. A further 200 will be required for up to eighteen months as instructors. It is hoped that the R.A.F.'s requirements for these air crew personnel will be met as far as possible from volunteers.
May I turn now to the clauses of the Bill itself? Clause 1 details the classes of persons who are liable to be called up in 1951, and describes the services which they may be called upon to perform in the United Kingdom. Regular Army Reserve officers, the Territorial Army Reserve of officers and the emergency commissioned officers at present have no liability for training. The Regular reservists who are being recalled have a liability for training, but only for twelve days in the year, and they have not in fact been called up for such training since the recent war ended. We therefore propose in this Bill to provide for them the same period of training as the reservists with whom they will be serving. The great majority of those being recalled by the Army—Class Z men released under the Armed Forces (Conditions of Service)
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Act, 1939—have no training liability. None of the R.A.F. officers and men who are liable to be recalled for fifteen days have a liability for training, except the men of the Air Force Reserve, who, like the Army Reserve, have a liability to do twelve days' training in a year. The officers and men whom it is proposed to call up for three months' or up to eighteen months' training have a liability for continuous training, but for not more than fifteen days in any one year.
The call-up procedure is detailed in Clause 2, and is on lines similar to that worked out for the call-up of National Service men, for training lasting six days or longer during their periods of part-time service under the National Service Acts. There are, however, one or two differences to which I would draw attention. The period of notice has been decreased from thirty to twenty-one days. It will not be possible, in respect of the first periods of training, after the passing of this Bill, to give longer statutory notice than this. Generally speaking, however, those who are recalled later on will get very much longer notice than this. Further, it has to be remembered that, in addition to this statutory notice, all those who are being recalled will have had a warning notice. The warning notice sent by the War Office will have given the month, and in the majority of cases the precise period for which the man will be required for training. The R.A.F., with their rather different requirements, have been able to be even more accommodating, and they offer a choice of dates from which those being called up can indicate which will be most convenient for them.
It is recognised that some of those to be called up may face undue hardship in complying with the call-up for training, and arrangements have been made for applications for exemption on hardship grounds to be considered by special branches that are being set up in the War Office and Air Ministry. Arrangements have similarly been made for applications from those who may be unwilling to comply with their notice, on grounds of conscientious objection, to be considered by one or other of the tribunals which have been set up to deal with such applications for registration as conscientious objectors under the National Service Acts. Men will become aware, on receipt of the warning notice, that it is open to

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them to make objection on conscientious grounds. Provision is made in the clause for the punishment of those who fail to respond to a training notice, it being made clear that it will be a defence for anybody who fails to turn up to show that he had applied, on receipt of the warning notice, to be exempted and had not been informed chat his application had been refused. Where a person without reasonable excuse fails to answer a training notice, it is obviously undesirable that such a person should be able to escape his training obligations. Provision has accordingly been made in the clause for the Service authorities to be able to serve another training notice on such a person, should they desire to do so.
Special arrangements, as detailed in Clause 3, have been made for the medical examination of those who are being called up for fifteen days' training. This medical examination will be arranged some weeks before training is due to begin, and those who are found medically unfit will not be required to present themselves for training at all. The system of medical boards—over ninety of them, covering the whole country—set up by the Minister of Labour under the provisions of the National Service Act, 1948, will be used to examine those called up for fifteen days under this Bill. Extra boards will be set up when the necessity arises, and men called up should not experience any real difficulty in attending for medical examination. Considerable thought has also been given to the need for ensuring that those called up for medical examination are given sufficient notice of the date of their examination. During the debates in another place, an assurance was given—an assurance which I wish to reiterate here to-day—that no man will receive less than seven days' notice. As a further safeguard, it has been made clear in the clause that there can be no conviction for failure to comply with the medical notice unless the court is satisfied that the period of notice was reasonable having regard to all the circumstances of the case.
Clause 4 deals with the release of persons called up under the Bill. The maximum period of service for which persons can be held after their arrival at the place of training is detailed in the table in Clause 1, less a reasonable period of travelling time to and from the place
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of training. It is recognised that some people who are recalled may turn up late, and provision has been made in this clause to deal with such cases. The Service authorities—in practice the officer in charge of the unit—will have to decide within twenty-four hours of the arrival of the man either to accept him for training or to send him home again. In the latter event, the Service authorities will have to decide whether they wish to call him up for training on another occasion. If so, they will have to serve another notice upon him. Clause 5, in addition to providing for the framing of regulations to cover such matters as the discipline and pay of those called up, provides that persons called up under the Bill will be subject either to the Army Act or the Air Force Act during their period of training, but not when travelling to and from such training.
The penalty for inching those called up, or liable to be called up, under this Bill to evade their obligations is provided for in Clause 6, and is a re-statement of the existing law found in the Incitement to Disaffection Act. 1934, so far as that Act applies to persons affected by this Bill. I should make it clear that the inclusion of this clause is not intended to increase in any way the restrictions on freedom of speech. The reason for the inclusion of this clause is quite simple. It seemed desirable, now that we are proposing to recall for training a number of class Z reservists—members of His Majesty's Forces, though frequently not so regarded in the popular mind—substantially to embody in a single statutory provision the existing law relating to the incitement of members of His Majesty's Forces. This does not mean that previous enactments on this subject are repealed. It does mean, however, that where this clause covers the same ground as. or conflicts with, any earlier law, we shall proceed under this clause.
Part II of the Bill protects the civil interests of those who are called up. Clause 7 honours the undertaking given by the Prime Minister that those called up for fifteen days' training under the Bill would be given the same protection against loss of employment or holidays on account of their training as is enjoyed by National Service men summoned for training during their part-time service. Clause 8 applies the provisions of the

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Reinstatement in Civil Employment Act, 1950, and thus gives reinstatement rights to persons liable to be called up for periods of three months' training or eighteen months' flying instructor duties under the Bill (as distinct from periods of fifteen days' training) who are called up or who volunteer for such training or duties. The protection afforded by this clause is further extended to those naval officers who volunteer for eighteen months' service after January 29, the date on which the Prime Minister made his statement in another place. This clause will also make it an offence for an employer to dismiss any of these men, before they begin their service, by reason of their liability to be called up or because they have volunteered for service.
Part III of the Bill deals with two quite distinct matters. Clause 11 ensures that if a class Z or comparable reservist is discharged from his reserve obligations in order to join an Auxiliary Force, and is subsequently discharged from that Auxiliary Force, his obligations as a Z reservist will revive. The object of this clause is to ensure that no Z reservist shall evade his obligations in an emergency by joining an Auxiliary Force and thereafter purchase his discharge.
Clause 12 provides that Part I of the Bill (relating to the calling up of persons for training) can be extended, by Order-in-Council, on an Address presented by both Houses, to the years 1952–54. Whether such an extension will, in fact, be necessary cannot be decided at this stage. As my right honourable friend the Minister of Defence explained during the Report stage of the Bill in another place, this measure is, to a large extent, an experiment. We all hope that it will prove a success, and we are taking every step we can to make it so. But it may be that the Government's military advisers will wish to suggest that in the light of our experience this year more should be done. In such circumstances we consider that the wise course is to take powers in the Bill to extend, by Order-in-Council, the present scheme as it stands. Naturally, if it were found in 1952 that a modified scheme was necessary, the Government would introduce a Bill making such changes in the present scheme as were required. In any event, whether the present scheme has to be extended or not, the assurance given by the Minister of
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Defence still stands: that anybody who has been called up for training this year will not be called up for training in any subsequent year.
With this rather brief explanation of what is a fairly lengthy and important Bill, I should like to commend the measure to the House. It was said by one of the Front Bench Opposition spokesmen in another place that the Bill had been much improved down there in the course of debate, and there was not much disagreement at the close of it. I hope, therefore, that the Bill as it now stands, having regard to the purpose it has in view, will meet with your Lordships' approval. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a. —(Viscount Alexander of Hillsborough.)
5.15 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: My Lords, I hope the noble Viscount will forgive me for saying that I find myself overtaken by a certain breathlessness as a result of listening to his opening of this debate. But I hope I can sufficiently collect myself to say that His Majesty's Government may rely upon us to support the main purpose of the Bill as a measure devised for the greater defensive efficiency of the country, although at the same time we have our reservations on certain specific points with which I will deal at a later stage. The Bill in its wider aspects has been considerably discussed in our recent debates on defence in general, and, therefore, although I am bound to say that we still regard it as being stamped with the Government's trade mark of "Too little and too late," at the same time we are now determined to approach it from what I may call a Festival of Britain angle; that is, whatever our personal view may be as to its timing or adequacy, at this stage we are determined to give the Government every support in their efforts to bring the experiment to a successful conclusion—for experiment it undoubtedly is. Nevertheless, we shall retain our right to ask for elucidation of points of doubt and, at the same time, to propose Amendments where we consider them desirable.
The noble Viscount said that it was the general opinion that the Bill had been greatly improved during its passage through another place, and with that opinion I am in full accord. To take only one example, I refer to, and then dismiss

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from further consideration. Clause 6, where the insertion of the words, "maliciously and advisedly" as essential ingredients of the offence of inciting to evasion of duties and liabilities imposed by the Bill when it becomes an Act, has met what would otherwise have been the very formidable and justifiable objections we should have raised to the clause. I have studied with some care the not inconsiderable output of words which accompanied this Bill on its march past the vigilant Members of another place, but, with every desire sincerely to understand the Bill, I still find myself in one great difficulty; I find it impossible to visualise the master plan of the training contemplated. I cannot even yet picture to my own mind what is to be the general appearance of the pattern of the mosaic when all these 200.000 or more individual pieces haw been fitted into it. The obscurity under which I labour has only been increased by the speech in which the Under-Secretary of State for War summed up the debate on the Second Reading in another place, for he there attributed certain priorities of importance which His Majesty's Government attach to the various purposes for which the Bill is designed. He said (it is reported in the House of Commons Hansard of February 26. 1951, under the rather belligerent numbering of Col. 1870):
"Quite clearly. one of (he main reasons, if not the main reason, is to bring together the units and formations that, in fact, would be acting together if a very grave international emergency came upon us in the very near future. This is fielding the team. …"
Now your Lordships will observe that the approach there contemplated does not appear to be merely that of bringing a certain number of units up to, or within sight of, their full strength. He talks about the bringing together of units and formations. Now I have always understood that the lowest formation recognised by the British Army was a division, and, if that be so, it looks as though what was contemplated was not merely unit, nor even merely brigade, but something in the nature of divisional or even corps training. Is that the intention? Is it really considered that the Z reservist, recalled for a period of concentrated training, is going to get the maximum benefit out of it by being involved in the usually ponderous and prolonged manœuvres represented by divisional exercises, especially carried out in the inevitably
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artificial conditions which apply to such proceedings in peace time in this country. I can well understand chat operations on some such scale as that would be of great advantage to commanders and staff, but I feel great difficulty in appreciating that they would not be to a very large extent a waste of the time of a reservist recalled for the special purpose of undergoing a fifteen days' intensive refresher course. Again, I am still in some doubt as to whether it is the intention to bring certain formations up to war establishment strength and to ignore the rest. Or is it the intention to devote the main weight of the call-up to summoning men from technical branches? If it be from the technical branches only, it seems to me that it is very difficult to carry out anything on the lines of corps or divisional training when there may be nothing available except two field companies of the Royal Engineers and a detachment of R.E.ME. It will not give a very realistic exercise.
The Under-Secretary of State then goes on to his second priority, and he says:
"A subsidiary purpose,"—
I call attention to that—
"but still an important one, is not the collective training, not the fielding of the team but the individual training and the benefits which individual men will receive from it."
I confess that I am amazed at that being given the second priority in these circumstances—that the individual training should be put in this list below the collective formation training. It seems to me overwhelmingly the most important and the most productive form of training which can result. I cannot help thinking —if I may slightly expand the Minister's metaphor—that what the War Office are trying to do in this matter is to expect men who have not had a bat or ball in their hands since the previous summer to take the field in a county match at Lords without any opportunity of previous practice at the nets. The Minister's third and subsidiary purpose, which he characterises as still important, is the testing out of the machinery of mobilisation. That is, of course, an important aspect. But for whose benefit is it primarily designed, and how far down will the exercise aspect of it extend? Is it to be for the benefit only of those who order and supervise mobilisation, or is it also intended to be of benefit to the commanding officers of units?

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In other words, will only the transmitting sets be concerned, or both the transmitting and the receiving sets? If it is intended that the commanding officers shall derive benefit from it, I would point out that they will not derive it if all that they get in are little groups of technicians, but only if they receive drafts in sufficient numbers to give real authenticity to the test.
May I make one earnest appeal to His Majesty's Government on the subject of accommodation for men who are covered by this scheme? I realise—although not every Member of another place seemed to realise—that these fifteen days are not intended as an agreeable holiday for the officers and men concerned, but as a period of strenuous effort. However, those concerned come overnight, as it were, from civilian life, and they are entitled to be housed in reasonably habitable camps and not to have to make do with decaying and derelict shacks. I speak on this matter with some personal bitterness, because only last summer rumour reached me of the camp allotted to a Territorial regiment with which I happen to be somewhat closely concerned. I went down to see the camp, and I discovered it to consist of hutments which appeared to date from the very early days of the war, to have received no repair in the interval and to be constructed of some composition resembling blotting paper which had lost the faculty of absorbing moisture. Moreover, central messing arrangements were in force, so that the regiment had no opportunity of exercising its own cooks under its own supervision. Although this was a mechanised unit, and although the period of camp is, above all, of importance for familiarising men with their vehicles, the hard standings provided for those vehicles were over a mile distant from the so-called living quarters. If it is the policy to discourage Territorials, depress National Service men and disgust Z reservists, there is the infallible recipe.
Reference was made in another place to the desirability of taking the opportunity to exercise staffs in connection with the scheme. Having been a staff officer for some part of both wars, I know very well that the technique—I almost said the mystique—of staff work changes very rapidly, and that it is essential to keep up to date. But why only staff officers? There are thousands of officers
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on the Regular Army, Emergency and Territorial Army Reserve to-day who are being just as summarily ignored by the authorities as their predecessors were in the years between the wars. Not a pamphlet, not a lecture, not a demonstration is ever put at their disposal. No official finger is ever lifted to make them feel that they are, or might be, still a valuable national asset. And yet, if the emergency does arise, they are the first people to be called upon to take charge of men who know, just as they themselves know, that they are no longer sufficiently up-to-date to exercise proper command. There, again, in the fourteen years before 1939, I was one of the victims of that Olympian indifference, and I have some idea of what the feelings of those officers are. I know, too, that the Treasury have been inexorably stubborn in dealing with this particular matter. But, after all, the present Secretary of State for War, as we have heard this afternoon, was in another capacity not wholly unsuccessful in extracting considerable sums from the Treasury which perhaps, in the end, produced a less profitable return than a much smaller expenditure in this direction might have realised.
We are still disposed to take the view that amendment to Clause 7 may be desirable. We are not satisfied that, so long as—but only so long as—the particular scheme is in force, it is right that the volunteer should not have at least the same advantage as the National Service man and the Z reservist. Both reason and justice would seem to indicate that he is entitled to certainly not less favourable terms than the other two classes. I do not propose to argue the matter at this stage, for we shall supply an opportunity for a more ample discussion on the point when the Committee stage is reached. Similarly, we are not convinced that it is a right procedure to give power to renew this scheme under Clause 12 from year to year without the possibility of amendment; and here again, we shall put down an Amendment on the Order Paper to omit that clause, with the object of making it compulsory on the Government of the day to reconsider the position each year, to take into account any changes in the system which experience in the interval may indicate and to make their case for it anew. This is an emergency measure and we recognise it as

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such, conceived not as a provocation but as a deterrent, as a defence and not as a defiance. But until Goliath shows some signs of attempting to reduce his stature we must do everything we can to give more power to David's elbow. Our purpose is not to incite that truculent and incalculable giant to action, but to restrain him by every reasonable means from the hideous consequences of wantonly abusing his strength.
5.34 p.m.
LORD CALVERLEY: My Lords, I entirely agree with the remarks which have just fallen from the noble Marquess. I support the Bill, though without any great enthusiasm, because I believe it to be the only way in which we can restrain what the noble Marquess has called the giant—a giant, I trust, with feet of clay. We cannot take risks, and therefore I support the Bill. I do so also because I realise that we in this country can retain our liberties only if we show our strength. But I wish to emphasise that this fifteen days' training can be, as it were, almost a leap in the dark. The noble Marquess calls it a great experiment. I agree, because, if the War Office do not organise very carefully all the waking moments of these Z reservists— most of them veterans from the last war —the call-up will do more harm than good. Speaking as one who had nine townships to look after, as an Army welfare officer in the West Riding of Yorkshire, for nine and a half years, I can tell your Lordships that I have had considerable experience of cases of men who are "browned off" and bewildered. They are bewildered because they do not know what is expected of them. I suggest that the War Office should give some adequate explanation to these men of what is expected of them. Nearly every newspaper in the country has capitalised that bewilderment, and in so doing has created a great amount of gloom and despondency. But I am thankful that since the Prime Minister made his plain announcement on this matter the situation has to some extent changed.
At the same time, while the War Office have plenty of psychiatrists—at any rate, they had during the last war—they have not, I suspect, many psychologists. I do not want to bring in any personalities; I know to whom the noble Marquess was referring when he spoke of "Britain's whipping boy No. 1." I am not going
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to blame everything on to the Secretary of State for War. Nevertheless, I should like to feel more confidence that there exist the means for giving these men simple, straightforward facts. Only last week a man of forty came to me and told me that he did not know how he would get on when he got back to his old job after a call-up, for he is not as physically fit to-day as he was in 1945. One could multiply that case by thousands. Therefore. I hope the War Office will give more enlightenment in this matter. I entirely agree with all that the noble Marquess has said on this subject.
I have had to visit many of these camps and I have always looked at the cookhouses, and also at some of the clothing supplied for both men and women—I may add that I had a chaperon with me at the time. There is this matter of clothes. It is now over twelve months since I asked your Lordships to realise that a bale of wool, weighing 3 cwt., required to clothe these men in 1939 cost about £7. To-day that same bale costs over £100, if we can get it. Only to-day, it has been announced that we are going to beg the United States Government, or somebody over there, to give up the stockpiling of wool, so that we can adequately do our duty to these men who are to be called up, because if our soldiers are not respectably dressed it means that they lose self-respect.
The noble Viscount, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, mentioned conscientious objectors. I do not think we shall be troubled very much with the conscientious objector, because these men have already served in the Forces. But in another capacity, sitting on a bench of magistrates, in a prison, I have noticed that there has been a mild epidemic of men wanting to change their religion to Jehovah's Witnesses. To one man I said: "Have you been a soldier? "He said: "Yes." I said: "And you want to change your religion?" "Yes," he replied. I asked, why, but he could give no adequate reason. He said: "I do want to be a Jehovah's Witness." Of course, we could see the reason why. I hope that we shall not have an epidemic of these people making a nuisance of themselves, and I do not think we shall. The noble Marquess, Lord Reading, had something to say about action being "too little, and too late." I would remind this House that this Government have no

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reason to apologise for the way in which they have handled these matters during these last two or three years. We set the example for all the Western Powers, including the United States of America, in prolonging something which we detested —conscription. We were the first to introduce it. It was eighteen months and we reduced it to twelve, simply to make the pill more sugar-coated, I presume. Later, we increased it to eighteen months, and then to two years. The United States of America to-day has not made up its mind what it is going to do and how it is going to create the machinery for making its own army.
LORD WINSTAR: Mr. Marshall, the United States Minister of Defence, is asking for twenty-seven months' service.
LORD CALVERLEY: I agree. I know that Mr. Marshall (as he now is) is asking for twenty-seven months, but has he got it?—No. Twenty-four months' service was introduced here months and months ago, thanks to the leadership of this Government. I am not going to stand in a white sheet with regard to that. We are in the vanguard of every democratic nation of the Western Powers.
I do not like this idea of introducing an Order in Council at the end of twelve months. I feel certain that after the training of these men by trial and error —I hope not too many errors—it is wrong for us simply to be faced with an Order which we have either to accept or reject. I suggest that it would have been better if this Bill had been drawn in line with the Army Act and had been made to operate for twelve months only. Whatever happens, I am ready to lay a wager that, if we have any imagination at all, we shall want to go one better in another twelve months' time in our calling-up plans. I venture to say that we shall have to make amendments. We shall have to learn by experience, and in that regard I am sorry that the Bill is for three years instead of only one year. But that is a pill we have to swallow. Mr. Molotov demands it, and, if Mr. Gromyko supports him, the best thing we can do is accept this Bill in the best possible spirit. I for one propose to do so.
5.45 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I should like first to say that I welcome very much, and am grateful for, the statement by
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the noble Marquess that, by and large, the general principles and objectives of this Bill are supported by the noble Lords opposite. Therefore there will be a great measure of unity on the matter in this House. I do not wish to say too much upon the controversial remark that this is another example of the Government giving "too little and too late," except that my noble friend who has just sat down is justified in the answer he made to it. Certainly not in my lifetime have any Government in anything like similar circumstances provided either the initiative or the extraordinary measures for defence that the present Government have done in recent years. I would add that the things that really concern the noble Marquess, largely based on his valuable experience and service to the country, show that at least in his memory Governments generally seem to have given great cause for criticism, not, certainly, the Government of the particular colour and objectives to which I have the honour to belong, but others.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: Not only.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER of HILLSBOROUGH: Apparently the noble Marquess felt that some of the facilities that he would have liked for officers on reserve and the like in the past have been distinctly neglected, and he seemed to imagine that it was a sort of common form or a continuous practice of the Treasury to be ungenerous in matters of that kind. I would say that the remarks of the noble Marquess on those points are worthy of note and should be studied; I have no doubt that the Service authorities will take note of them. I am a little concerned about his question as to what is the master plan for the training objectives in this Bill, and how it fits in. I am quite sure that on reflection he would not want me to say exactly what the master plan is. I can understand the reasons which are exercising his mind. Naturally, we all want to get for our defensive purposes the best possible result from whatever legislation Parliament passes in this respect, but I should have thought that in the present circumstances it would not be possible to mobilise any very large numbers in the manner which he suggested might be necessary.
It is possible to meet both the points that the Parliamentary Secretary to the

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War Office indicated. First, I think it will be possible to have the exercises of the top skeleton organisation.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: Skeleton?
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Skeleton, at the top, and at the same time paying particular attention to what the noble Marquess clearly asks —that is, that in the period of fifteen days these men, given up by their civil life, as never before in this country for such reasons, to attend this training, should have the greatest possible amount of concentrated training in matters from which they have been absent in many cases for four, five or more years. I am quite sure that the military authorities have that matter in mind. I know that that applies largely to the Army: I observe that the noble Marquess had no criticism to offer as to the steps which have been taken by the Royal Air Force to have a lengthy period of training of up to three months and also to arrange for 200 instructors to come back for as long as eighteen months—something which we regard as absolutely vital in order to see that full cadres are mounted for the Air Force that we are also glad to see growing in strength.
As to the testing out of the machinery for mobilisation, I personally have never had actual experience of a mobilisation de novo, certainly not of land forces. Most of my experience as a Service Minister has been with the Navy, and they were already very largely mobilised before I went to the Admiralty in May, 1940. Again I quite see what is in the noble Marquess's mind. He asks: Who is it intended for, and how far down does it go? Having listened to his question, I am afraid all I can say at this stage— and I think I made a reference to it on the occasion of the previous Defence debate—is that the military authorities whom I consulted before I replied to the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, gave me their assurance that, in fact, this scheme would be of very great value, not only to the Forces in general but as a mobilisation exercise. If, before the later stages of the Bill, it is possible to obtain rather more detailed information with regard to the point raised by the noble Marquess, I will certainly try to supplement what I have said in that connection.
As regards accommodation, I must say that I have a great deal of sympathy for
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the noble Marquess in regard to his experience of last year. However, it is not a very easy matter to arrange at such a time as we are living in, when so much accommodation has been diverted from military use and many camps have perhaps been turned over as temporary housing accommodation for the civil population, and when the kind of camps and ancillary accommodation attached thereto have been diverted to other purposes, partly in connection with military requirements and partly in support of the general drive in the nation in production for export. But I hope that, in a mobilisation of this kind, which turns what would be a comparatively small annual training exercise into a very substantial exercise, the authorities will be able to take note especially of the long distances between the hard standings for motor vehicles and the actual place of accommodation of the troops required to handle those vehicles. I am sure that the Minister of Defence will take note of what the noble Marquess has said in regard to the condition of the sleeping and feeding accommodation of the troops. I should hope that it would be made entirely satisfactory for its purpose.
It looks as if we are going to have more discussion in Committee on Clause 7. The noble Marquess again noticed the terms of that clause. I can only say that there seems to be a division of opinion here. The noble Marquess is recognised in this House as a great supporter of the Territorial Army. He has been exceedingly interested in it and has done his best to make it go well. But there seems to be a difference of opinion between the noble Marquess and some of those who act as a sort of general council of the Territorial Army. I am sure the noble Marquess has read what was said in another place about the anxiety in those quarters which are responsible for organising voluntary Territorial units, that nothing should be done by some sort of requirement in a Statute which would interfere with this very satisfactory understanding that the Territorial authorities have, certainly with the great majority of employers, and with their confidence that there will be no risk at all to the voluntary Territorial Forces by reason of the fact that they are not specifically included in the Statute as being entitled to the same protection from Clause 7 as is given to Class Z and Class G men. That matter will have to be

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resolved on Committee stage, but at the moment I should not like the noble Marquess to think that I am saying, on behalf of the Government, that we propose to differ in any way from the opinion that His Majesty's Ministers expressed in the earlier discussions on the Bill in another place.
I would ask the noble Marquess and his friends to consider before we come to the Committee stage whether they cannot revise their opinion upon the deletion of Clause 12. We are placed in a very difficult situation. We cannot tell exactly what is going to happen or exactly what is required for next year. It may well be that we shall be required to act very quickly in any further steps that we take in the matter. If so, then the power to deal with it by Order in Council would be preferable to going through all the work of drafting a new Bill, involving a considerable amount of time in both Houses of Parliament. It would be a pity to do that when a short Order in Council renewing the present legislation could be taken through in a short time. Indeed, it is a question of making provision on the same lines as both Houses of Parliament approve this year. Such an Order must be passed by affirmative Resolution of both Houses, and they can then deal with the situation.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: But it is not susceptible of amendment.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I agree that there is that point about it. But if it involved a fundamental amendment, perhaps it would be possible to come to some accommodation. It would not be the first time that accommodation had been arranged on such a matter. I agree with the noble Marquess that this is an emergency measure, and I very much liked his language in regard to its purpose—what it was and what it was not—and I am grateful to him for stating the case and his point of view so clearly.
Coming to the points raised by my noble friend Lord Calverley, I will look into the matter of clothing. No one can deny the difficulty in the supply of raw materials, but I have no need to cast gloom and despondency on those who are —
LORD CALVERLEY: May I just ask whether my noble friend also realises that
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the Americans are now giving Japan more cotton and less to us, and that as a result our men may not be able to be provided with even a shirt?
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I am sure that the point about the allocation of raw materials is one of great substance indeed. The Commodity Groups have been set up in the United States, and at the head of our team we have a member of your Lordships' House, who I am sure is doing what he can, with the support of the Government, to see that we receive equitable treatment in this matter. However, the noble Lord is fully entitled to raise this vital question of clothing, and I am sure that arrangements have been made to see that the objects of this Bill are not frustrated in any way by the situation there. I am grateful for the reception which has been given to the Bill in your Lordships' House, and I am sure that when we reach the Committee stage we shall be able to get the measure through with proper and adequate debate.
On Question, Bill read 2a and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
6.0 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, before the House adjourns I have a brief announcement to make about future business. It is proposed that the House should adjourn its sittings for public business on Wednesday, March 21, or Thursday, March 22. It would, I think, meet with the general convenience of the House if we could adjourn on the former date. But, as your Lordships know, we are not entirely our own masters in these matters; we are very much dependent on another place for the Bills that may need to be put through. We desire to facilitate matters so far as we can, however, and we therefore propose to postpone the Committee stage of the Rag Flock and Other Filling Materials Bill from March 22 until April 10. After the Recess, the House will meet on April 3.

CANTERBURY EXTENSION BILL [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.
House adjourned at two minutes past six o'clock.