NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HOUSEWORKERS

HL Deb 09 July 1952 vol 177 cc968-83

4.59 p.m.

LORD CROOK rose to call attention to the prospective results of the cut in the Treasury grant to the National Institute of Houseworkers as the result of which there will be curtailment of effective assistance to the home help service organised by local authorities and the reduction in the number of training centres to one only; to urge upon Her Majesty's Government reconsideration of the proposed reduction in grant; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, there will not be very much in common between my speech and the speech to which we have just listened, save that the "villain" apparently may well prove to be the same—Her Majesty's Treasury. I understand that some of your Lordships had not heard of the National Institute of Houseworkers until there appeared on the Order Paper the Motion which it is my privilege to move. Therefore, your Lordships may not know of the excellent work they do. Perhaps it is for the very reason that so few people know of the existence of the organisation that Her Majesty's Treasury have picked it out as an organisation to kill—or at least seriously maim—in the hope that nobody will notice it very much.

The cut which it is proposed to make amounts to only £120,000, but in the next few minutes I want to suggest to your Lordships that it will have a harmful effect upon the Health Service, and upon the service which local government bodies can give; it will give rise to new manpower problems for the Minister of Labour and National Service; it will affect some of the problems of the Ministry of National Insurance, and it will run contrary to some of the desires of the Ministry of Education. As we on this side of the House see it, and as I believe some noble Lords in other parts of the House see it also, it is a cut which is aimed at the heart of the people, and one which my right honourable friend the Minister of Labour was able to justify only by saying that it was a cut which "could be made without damaging either the export trade or the defence programme or"—as he ended—"anything of that kind."

My Lords, may I venture to recall to your Lordships the background of this problem? As long ago as 1918 and 1923, the Ministry of Reconstruction (out of which grew the Ministry of Labour) had caused Committees to report on the urgent post-war problem, as it was then thought to be, of the reluctance of women take part in domestic work. These Committees made valuable recommendations; but, as so often happens with the Reports of such Committees, nothing was done. Then, in 1944 that great man, Ernest Bevin, as Minister of Labour and National Service, instituted an inquiry into the post-war organisation of domestic employment. The Report which was then produced had the same essential qualities as the earlier Reports, because it drew attention to the fact that the lack of status of those engaged in domestic work was the principal cause of its unpopularity; and, further, that the conditions of employment were about as bad as they could be, and were an additional deterrent; and that there was a problem calling for urgent action by the Ministry of Labour. I must recall, too, that in the preceding year, 1943, the Minister of Labour had had to deal with another and related part of this problem. The serious strain on the insufficient number of nurses employed in this country during that difficult period of the war was accentuated by the fact that the pressure which they were already feeling was made greater by the absence of sufficient persons to perform the housework type of job within the wards, so that nurses were having to perform those functions. With all your experience in debates, and your knowledge, your Lordships will not need me to remind you of the uneconomic use of manpower involved in that work.

It was obvious, therefore, in 1943, that what the Minister of Labour and National Service ought to do was to direct women to domestic work in hospitals and so on. But the legal conditions under which direction could take place were such that direction was possible only where there were agreed minimum wages and conditions of employment. As is so often the case, despite all the lessons of the previous war, despite all the Reports of Committees, and despite the face that there were probably about 500,000 persons employed in this vocation, at the beginning of this Second World War, nobody had bothered to do anything. It was the Hetherington Committee, appointed in that year by my right honourable friend the late Ernest Bevin, which, for the first time, set down a standard of wages and conditions which, in turn, made it possible for the Minister of Labour to carry out direction of domestic labour to hospitals. I think there is no gainsaying the tremendous effect of that Report on the whole attitude of those in hospitals and of many other people towards domestic workers.

Eighteen months later, when the Ministry of Health issued a booklet on the staffing of hospitals, many of us were able to see a tremendous difference. In this Stationery Office publication, entitled Staffing of Hospitals—an urgent National Need, which I know that a number of your Lordships will have studied, because of your work on hospital committees, it was made clear for the first time that domestic staff worked as part of the team essential for the care of the patient. A year later the Ministry of Health set down firm standards of employment in that connection. It was about this time that the National Institute of Houseworkers was established. It was set up as a national corporation—a company limited by guarantee, with no share capital, and all but two of its board of directors appointed by the Minister of Labour on a voluntary basis. The objects of the Institute, set out in the Memorandum of Association, include the following: To act as a national or central organisation throughout the United Kingdom for increasing the supply of domestic workers by promoting and improving the status, skill and efficiency of such workers, and for that purpose to provide a centre of research into all questions relating to the supply and demand for such workers. By the autumn of 1946, agreed standards of training were established, and that was followed, in turn, by the opening of a training headquarters.

I do not wish to occupy your Lordships' time by taking you in detail through the various steps taken in the years that followed, but on the limited funds available, clearly progress was likely to be slow. However, by September, 1947, the first training centre was working adequately. And, following that pioneer centre, additional centres in Scotland and Wales, and then throughout the whole of Great Britain, to a total of nine, were duly opened. I think your Lordships will see that it is only now, after five years of largely experimental work, that the labours of this organisation are really bearing fruit. In local government circles a great welcome was given to this organisation. If those of your Lordships who move among local authorities, were to ask what they thought of the services received from the National Institute, you would have no doubt about the value of the £120,000 involved in this cut. I refer, for instance, to the operation of services under the Maternity and Child Welfare Acts of 1918 and the Public Health Act of 1936, which concern the not unrelated matters that we were discussing some ten days ago. Those Acts require local authorities to establish maternity and child welfare committees, and permit them to provide home-helps for nursing and expectant mothers and for mothers with children under five years of age. It is hardly surprising to me, and I imagine that it will not be surprising to your Lordships, to learn that the women working in these services have come to regard themselves as performing an important social service for the country.

Your Lordships will also recall that under the recent National Health Service Act of 1946 domestic help is provided for households where that help is required—I quote from the Act: owing to the presence of any person who is ill, lying-in, an expectant mother, mentally defective, aged or a child not over compulsory school age. The Health Departments of State in Scotland, England and Wales have urged local authorities to give earnest consideration to the organisation of this service. And your Lordships will recall that we have already heard that most of the local authorities have, in fact, done so. I believe we were told that there are now something like 20,000 women engaged in this service, a service which has been performed by the National Institute of Houseworkers, as to whose ability to help in that direction a special circular was issued by the Ministry of Health in 1947. As a result of the circular the help of the Institute was sought by local authorities in various parts of the country. Those of your Lordships who are members of the London County Council, or who are associated with it, will know that the largest force dealt with was the London County Council Home Help Service, as to which the Institute issued a report, entitled Report on the L.C.C. Home Help Service, which many of your Lordships will have read. Last year, the Institute complied with the request of the Ministry of Health for submission of a plan for training domestic workers in hospitals. I am sure that nothing will ever come of it now, because all this is to be swept away. Only one centre is to be left. No centre is to be left in Scotland; no centre is to be left in Wales. One token centre is to be left in this country.

LORD PAKENHAM

May I interrupt the noble Lord for one moment? He is interesting us all very much, and I should like to ask him whether he can tell us what a token centre will be.

LORD CROOK

I should like to deal with that in a minute, by pointing out the attitude which the Minister himself has taken up and which seems to me so completely contradictory. It seems to me that the Minister wants to meet the behest of his lords and masters at the Treasury by crushing the organisation of the Institute while pretending that it is still going to exist.

I ventured to call your Lordships' attention in an earlier debate to the grievous shortage of nurses in this country, and to the grave problem which was involved in having to keep many hospital wards closed while people suffered and died at home. We saw clearly in that debate that the services of nurses can be deployed with greater ease to provide a larger effective number of beds in use if only more domestic workers can be recruited for hospital work. There is much domestic work to be done in a hospital ward. If effective corps of domestic workers can be organised to take over some of that work from hospital nurses, think what it will mean. For one thing it will mean that the services of those nurses are released for their more effective employment on techniques of nursing. More important still, I venture to suggest that, in this grave difficulty in which we are placed with regard to the recruitment of nurses, if it could be brought home to the nurses that when recruited they will not be required to waste 50 per cent. of their time doing work appropriate to domestic workers, but will be able to get on with the interesting job of nursing, which they really join to perform, the rate of recruiting might be stepped up, thereby easing some of the present anxieties of the Ministry and the College of Nursing.

May I call the attention of your Lordships to an important speech which was made in this connection by a member of Her Majesty's Government—Miss Pat Hornsby-Smith, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health—only last week? She told of Government plans being made for the operation of hospital and first-aid services in the event of war and said: The need would be for 100,000 extra nursing staff. Miss Hornsby-Smith was speaking to the Association of Hospital Matrons at University College Hospital, and she told them that if the extra nurses could not be obtained then the Government's post-war plans would break down. Those are her words, not mine. She said that the figure of recruitment up to now was 24,000 only, and she went on to say that the appeal of nursing to-day was not proving attractive. My Lords, it is not proving attractive for the reasons which I have indicated. Women know that when they enter the nursing profession, in the circumstances which now exist, they have in their first year to devote their energies to drudgery of a type that domestic workers ought to undertake and that during the rest of their professional life quite a large part of their time—even when they become sisters—will be taken up in doing jobs which could better be done by domestic workers. And those are jobs which, if permitted, could be carried out through the agency of the National Institute of Houseworkers.

These matters are not unrelated to the question of the value of the home-help services to which I have referred. Without those services, in these days of difficulty of operation of all local authority services, how else could maternity and welfare services get by at all? There are hundreds of sick men, women and children for whom there is no accommodation in hospitals. Hundreds are waiting for operations, or are having to be nursed at home. Two of my medical colleagues in this House, who had hoped to address your Lordships if this debate had taken place last week, would have had something to say about this very great problem—this problem of people who have to lie and wait for months for a bed in hospital and have to be nursed at home. This nursing at home becomes a breakdown proposition for many loving mothers and loving wives, already overburdened, as they are, with ordinary household cares. But this nursing can at least be made possible, if not enjoyable, if some home-help can step in to do a few hours' work. If these people had a little of the ordinary domestic work taken off their hands they would not find nursing so burdensome.

There never was a time when there was a greater problem of home nursing to be solved. Now this cut will mean that the valuable services which the National Institute has been performing in this direction will go. In addition to the other matters which I have mentioned, surely there is a point here which is related to the debates we have had on production, because it is of equal importance that daily housework services shall be available in the home if we are to encourage women to play their part as effective members of the gainfully employed community. Many a woman would remain in her job after marriage—a thing which the Minister of Labour wants and keeps on urging—or would be prepared to go out to work if there were somebody who could do the odd two or three hours of "donkey work" at home. Unless we provide a properly organised service of daily housework help we cannot hope to expand the reservoir of women manpower to help in productivity in this country.

This is no new argument from me or from others of your Lordships. All this work of the National Institute of House-workers is to be dissipated if this cut of 66 per cent. is to be made in the £170,000 which the organisation costs the State. There are nine centres but the Treasury is going to leave only one. I do not know what my Nationalist friends of Scotland, or my friend in Wales, will think, and we shall hear with interest what the Government have to say upon the matter. My friends have heard much said on behalf of the Government about the justice which is to be given to both those countries. Yet they are not to be allowed to have one training centre. All that is to be left is this one token centre to which my noble friend Lord Pakenham has just alluded. The Minister does not pretend that it is anything other than a token service. In this connection I should like to quote to your Lordships some words which he used in another place. He said: we have, however, managed to save something here, from which I hope. when times get better, the Institute will rise again. What a proposition! There ought to be no question of the Institute being pushed down, crushed and broken, to rise again.

I sympathise with the Minister because I do not believe that he himself thinks this is the right attitude for him to adopt in this matter. He made that clear on Friday last in an excellent speech that he made when he went to Bristol to open the conference of this very Institute. Domestic work, he said, has been raised to the level of a skilled occupation, of which no woman should be ashamed. He went on to say that for many years there had been a steady drift away from such work—"had been," the past tense— But in the last six years, thanks largely to the Institute, much of the old slur against domestic workers has been cast away. I paid a tribute to the Minister of Labour in this House a fortnight ago. He is a worthy successor to my dear friend Ernest Bevin as Minister of Labour. One thing I feel about him is that he is an honest man, expressing honest views. These are his honest views, but he has to get up in another place and justify the casting down of something which he hopes will rise again.

While the Minister of Labour was making this speech in Bristol, another member of the Government was across the channel in Cardiff. Mr. David Llewellyn, Joint Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Home Office, was speaking on behalf of the Government, dealing with another vital problem close to your Lordships' hearts, the problem of 62,691 boys and girls who, for various reasons, are not able to live with their parents. I quote again from the Press what Mr. David Llewellyn said: The most natural and happy upbringing for them is in a foster home. He appealed to women to train as housemothers to care for homeless children. Who is going to do this training? What little training exists in this sphere is done by the National Institute, whose vote we are discussing now, who are to be left as a token, down in the ashes, to "rise again." Whatever may be the decisions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it is clear that other members of the Government do not agree with him. They think this is a valuable service which should be left.

I do not believe that noble Lords sitting opposite, or those on the Cross Benches, merely because they sit on those Benches, have any different kind of mental approach to this matter. All the experience I have had of your Lordships' House convinces me that on matters which are not political but are of importance in the service of the community, all try to find a way to carry out their bounden duty; and wherever you may sit your Lordships line up together. From conversations that I have had I believe there are many of your Lordships who are unable to understand why this cut has been made. They know, as we all know, that there must be economies, but they demand, as I demand, that when economies are made, they should be made with due thought to the final effect. I believe that, even if the Government save £120,000 in this connection, they will lose far more than that sum in what they fail to get in applied manpower as the result of cutting off this training opportunity. I sympathise with the Minister of Labour, and I also sympathise with the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd. When he comes to wind up for the Government he will have all my sympathy, because I suppose he will have to try to justify this quite unjustifiable cut. There is no representative of the Government with whom I am on better terms, and, placed in such a false position, he will have my full sympathy when in due course he replies to my Motion. I beg to move for Papers.

5.25 p.m.

LORD MCENTEE

My Lords, this is the first time on which I venture to address your Lordships. Eighty-one may be thought rather late in life to make what is called a maiden speech, but although this is my maiden speech in your Lordships' House, as some of you will know, it is not my maiden speech in the country. It may be thought, too, that the subject is not an ambitious one for a maiden speech or even that it is not a very important one. I gather from what has already been said by my noble friend Lord Crook that the Government do not consider it to be very important. Otherwise I can hardly believe that they would have reduced by £120,000 the sum that is allocated to the training of domestic helps. The sum is small and I cannot believe that even the Government think that any saving is ultimately likely to be made.

My interest in this matter is the result of my experience of uninterest in it that I gained over many years. I was born into a middle-class and Conservative family, and the first thirty years of my life were lived in the last thirty years of the reign of Queen Victoria. Those of your Lordships who are old enough will remember with me the atmosphere in which one was brought up in middle-class homes in those days. In my own home I was surrounded by birds and flowers in grass cases, aspidistras in the front windows, what-nots in every corner of every room, and second and third rate oil paintings of my reputed ancestors on the walls, together with sporting prints set wherever pictures would fit, so that the wallpaper was completely covered. The two attributes in my home were pride and poverty. My parents died when very young and I was left in an atmosphere of abundance of pride and superabundance of poverty. As a consequence, I was compelled to become a member of the manual working class and went out at a very early age to earn my own living. And I had experience, politically and industrially, that compelled me to change the point of view that I had formed during my early home life and it is that experience which makes me consider this motion to be of the utmost importance.

I was compelled to join the working class. I started with nothing but a good constitution, which I think I still have. I worked in many industries—not in many jobs in a single industry; I worked in seventeen or eighteen industries in an attempt to gain a living. I was an ordinary common labourer, not of necessity, but deliberately of choice. I went to sea and worked at sea. I worked as a shop assistant, and as a solicitor's clerk. I claim to be a first-class joiner—I am very proud of that—and I have worked in many other occupations, including the only one from which I had some hope of becoming rich: on one occasion I risked my reputation—certainly with my family—by working as a betting man's clerk. I thought that was the opportunity to become rich. I did not become rich, but I added to my experience. Perhaps I was inspired in that by the words of an old song which was common in Ireland in those days. It was of a mother singing of her son, and she sang: He stands on a stool at the races Dressed in a suit of sky blue, Shouting out at the top of his voice, I'll lay nine to two. Six to four the favourite, So back whatever you like, He's going to make his fortune, boys, Is my son Mike. I thought that I was going to make my fortune, but I can assure your Lordships that I did not. It was those experiences which gave me access all the time to working-class homes—that in which I lived and those of the friends I was fortunate enough to make. In those days I was struck on many occasions by the lack of opportunities in the homes, and the difficulties that arose when mother was ill, or when there was sickness or some form of disability in the house.

Perhaps your Lordships will have gathered by now why I am so interested in this service and why I am so grateful to my noble friend Lord Crook for introducing the debate on this Motion. The service was introduced as a public service, sponsored by the Government and administered by local authorities. In my view, a public service should be an efficient service, and an efficient service should have at least some attributes about which I feel sure we should all agree. To be efficient, it must be run by the Government in a way that enables efficiency to be attained. It must be run by a local authority with knowledge of the homes in their area, and with sympathy towards the objects of the service. Therefore I believe that training of those who go into homes as home-helps is essential. The Government, when they set up the organisation that was responsible for the training and made them a grant of money, agreed that training was essential. But there appears to have been a change of mind, or a change of heart, in the Government, which I very much regret.

In my opinion, the job of home-help should be made more important than it is conceived to be at present, and should be made as attractive as possible. The wages for which and the conditions under which home-helps are called upon to work should be of a reasonably high standard, and every effort should be made to increase their status. I believe that a simple uniform not only is a necessity, but would also be an attraction to those who work as home-helps when they go into the homes of the people. I feel that the training, although simple, should fit the home-helps for some of the essential requirements in an ordinary working-class home, or even in a middle-class home. They should be trained to be clean in person and in habit, and adaptable to good and to bad homes —because they have to visit various types of homes. They should be qualified, at least, to improve the bad homes to some extent. They should know how to do plain cooking and should understand something of the market and the spending of the money of the homes into which they go, which are generally not too well supplied with money. Further, they should have some knowledge of the care of children: and they should be tolerant and forbearing, particularly as they will often be dealing with persons who are themselves suffering and, as a consequence, may be rather difficult in their attitude to a home-help. They should be truthful and tactful; they must have self-respect—I attach great importance to that —and they must be strictly honest.

Those are all simple attributes that one might imagine could easily be found. But I think the home-helps need to be trained in them. I believe that if the Home Help Service were made sufficiently important, and if that simple form of training were available to young people, it would be a great service not only to the homes into which the home-helps go, but also to the young people who are themselves in the service. After all, nearly all young girls look forward to marriage, and many of them try to qualify for the duties that will be imposed upon them in marriage —home duties, and the like. If young people would enter this service, the experience gained would be of infinite value to them when they decided to get married. In addition, I see no reason why it should not be a career. Many women to-day, in considering which job to take, think: "This job is all right if I am married to somebody who can afford to keep me, but if I enter it I shall have nothing that will be of value to me in the future, whereas if I take the other job I shall have some kind of calling which will afford an opportunity for me should I ever be left a widow or called upon to support a family." I cannot imagine anything that would be more attractive than the Home Help Service—if, as I say, it were made attractive; that is to say, if it were given a decent status, with decent wages and conditions of employment. And, if after marriage some of the women became widows, with perhaps children to support, it would always be open to them to return to the Home Help Service and earn a living in that way. In that respect, I believe it could be an attractive career for many young people.

Guidance from the Ministry is essential. I do not think the Ministry have taken this matter seriously enough. I feel that guidance from the Ministry is necessary to the local authorities, because there is a lack of uniformity in the efficiency and administration of this service, where it has been brought into use, and a lack in the methods of recovery and of assessing needs. It is wrong in a service like this, that one local authority should adopt one method of assessing the needs of people, and another. dealing with people perhaps next door, should have an entirely different system of assessment. The Ministry ought to give more guidance and a greater amount of assistance to local authorities in that respect. In the area from which I come we find that rising prices have made a considerable difference to people in regard to the demand for Home Help Service. Where they have home help, the rising prices have affected them to the extent that they get nervous of their ability to pay for it. They have already been assessed at a certain amount for a certain number of hours' service a week, arid when rising prices affect them many people do not know that they can have a reassessment by the local authority and perhaps a reduction in the charge. More information is necessary in that regard.

I should like to draw attention also to the lack of publicity. There does not appear to be sufficient publicity, and in many areas there is no Home Help Service at all. Many areas do not even know of it, or they know very little of it, while some areas, including my own, are using it extensively. What are the advantages of the service? Some of them have already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Crook, and I do not wish to repeat them. It keeps people at home who otherwise would be compelled to seek some form of institutional treatment, and the demand for hospital treatment would be very much greater if the Home Help service were withdrawn. The reduction in the grant which has been made will have the effect of reducing the number of home-helps and of reducing their efficiency. When efficiency is reduced there is a lessening in the desire for home-helps, because people who have had a home-help and then have another who is less efficient, become doubtful about the service and about its ability to do its job. I cannot help thinking that this small reduction for which the Government are responsible will lessen efficiency to such an extent that a very useful and good service may be destroyed, or almost destroyed.

I think it is of the utmost importance—and my medical friends will no doubt agree with me in this—that the service should reduce worry in the home, which is one of the greatest causes of prolonged illness. If a woman can be assured that during her illness she can call on her local authority to provide a home help, thereby allowing her to stay at home where, although she may be ill, she can perhaps direct the running of the home instead of having to go to hospital, it will have the effect of reducing her worry and lessening the strain on the hospital itself That has already been referred to by my noble friend Lord Crook. The number of people who stay at home because they can get a home-help must be considerable. If the average home-help supply in all areas of the country is about the same as mine, it means that there are 500,000 women employed in the Home Help Service who are themselves better trained than they otherwise would be, and who are in touch with other women engaged in improving some of the homes which need improvement, and generally in raising the status of the homes in our country.

Frankly, I think that that is worth doing, and it cannot be said that the suggested cuts will be worth making. The service improves the health of the people generally—there is no question about that. It makes for improved housekeeping and for better wives. I appeal to Her Majesty's Government: do not ration our home happiness. The happiness of people consequent upon the institution of the Home Help Service has been very materially improved, and I think that it would be a great pity indeed if we were to lower the standard of our people in our homes for the sake of the expenditure of £120,000 in the thousands of millions of pounds which are being spent in this country. I trust that Her Majesty's Government will be able to say to us to-day that they have second thoughts in regard to the continuance in this very good service.

5.47 p.m.

LORD SEMPILL

My Lords, the fates have been good to me to-day in allotting me the privilege of congratulating the noble Lord on his maiden speech. It is, I think, very appropriate that such an honour should fall to a fellow Gael. A Scot is glad of the opportunity of voicing appreciation of the Irish and their work. This I propose to do, for your Lordships' convenience, in the English tongue. The noble Lord has spent his life working for the English in London, and is one of the leading figures in this noble City. Walthamstow, in particular, owes him a lasting debt of gratitude. On behalf of your Lordships I salute the noble Lord, and I hope that we shall see him here frequently, and that we shall hear often again the right worshipful the Mayor of Walthamstow, who carries, in a manner worthy of an eminent Victorian, the finest moustache in your Lordships' House.

I join with the previous speakers in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Crook, on initiating this debate. As the last speaker truly said, it is a very important issue that the noble Lord has raised. Your Lordships will, I feel sure, agree with me—as clearly the noble Lord, Lord Crook, does—that the female of the species is superior to the male. It is our womenfolk who have borne the heat and burden of the war, and who are forever in these days wrestling with the impossibles and imponderables of the years of austerity that have followed and which lie ahead. In all these matters, if we men in this country had done as much as the women, how different would be our position in the world to-day! The women, by their lives of devotion, give us all inspiration. If they were to become as males in their outlook—which God will surely forbid—and ever insist only on their rights, putting their duties aside, then as a nation we shall have "had it."

Since the strength of our country, or of any country, lies in the home, the millions of homes, it is vital, in my humble view, that all should be done to maintain its sanctity and to assist the housewife, as has been so ably stressed by the noble Lord, Lord Crook. I regard this cut in the Treasury grant as a disaster which strikes at the root of our national strength—the maintenance of the home. The place for our womenfolk is in the home, and we must do more to help and encourage them and also to encourage the "three Ks" outlook: "Kirche, Kinder, und Küche." Therefore, I plead for the women of Scotland; I plead with the noble Lord that, when he comes to reply for Her Majesty's Government, if he cannot at once say that he will not remove the present facilities which the women of Scotland enjoy, he will use to the maximum his powers of persuasion (and, as your Lordships know, those are very considerable) with the Minister to leave things in Scotland in this matter exactly as they are, and to have no cuts.

5.51 p.m.

THE EARL OF ONSLOW

My Lords, I should like to draw your attention to the fact that there is to be a Royal Commission at six o'clock.

House adjourned during pleasure.

House resumed.