Lords Sitting of 25 March 1954

Preamble
The House met at four of the clock The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers

TOWCESTER RURAL DISTRICT COUNCIL (ABTHORPE RATING) BILL
Read 2.
WEAR NAVIGATION AND SUNDERLAND DOCK BILL
Read 2.

SLAUGHTERHOUSES BILL [H.L.]
4.3 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (THE EARL OF HOME): My Lords, this Bill provides the necessary legislation to ensure that when meat is decontrolled the slaughter of livestock and the distribution of meat can proceed smoothly. As your Lordships will see, it is in two parts, the first containing provisions for England and Wales and the second the provisions for Scotland. The reason for that is largely historical, as I hope to show, because different provisions have grown up in the two countries. Since 1940, it has normally been possible to slaughter livestock only under licence from the Ministry of Food. Before the war it was quite different. There were a very large number of slaughterhouses in the country—I think some 12,000 —many of them small adjuncts to the butcher's shop. During the war, the Ministry of Food requisitioned or leased some 300 to 400 private slaughterhouses and they are using some 210 out of the 275 local authority slaughterhouses.
When the control over meat ends there will be need for a great many more slaughterhouses in England and Wales. Many are already being licensed because the occupiers have renewed their licence from year to year; and no doubt there
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will be others who will make the necessary application in the near future. It is the intention of the Government, as it was also, I think, of the last Government, to achieve a moderate concentration of facilities for slaughtering and to concentrate slaughtering into a few hundred slaughterhouses. Indeed, the process has to some extent been begun; certain well-equipped slaughterhouses have already been built by the Government at Canterbury, Fareham, Grimsby, Guildford, Salisbury, Swindon and Wimborne. These have been sited by the Ministry of Food to meet the needs of the Ministry under a system of control, but also to be consistent with future needs when meat is de-rationed and there is decontrol.
The Minister of Food and the Secretary of State for Scotland set up inter-departmental committees to inquire into the form which long-term arrangements might advantageously take. They have had the advantage of the reports of these committees, and the siting of the slaughterhouses in the future will be based largely on a long-term policy in the light of a moderate concentration covering the whole country. The report and advice of these two inter-departmental committees has been accepted with one comparatively small exception; that is, that in the Bill the local authorities are not given the power which the inter-departmental committees recommended to take over compulsorily premises on lease. The first requirement, clearly, is that we should secure sufficient slaughterhouse accommodation by the date on which meat decontrol takes place; and the local authorities have already been asked to consult farmers and meat traders in their own districts and to consider area plans, and a duty will be laid on them to make use of the powers conferred under this Bill to provide additional facilities where necessary.
May I now turn to the Bill? Part I deals with England and Wales. Clause 1 provides the means whereby the local authorities can both provide and operate public slaughterhouses if they so wish. Clause 2 enables the local authority, with the consent of the Minister of Food, to revise the maximum charges which may be prescribed in any local Act or statutory order. The maximum charges which were laid down some time ago may be out of line with present costs; and if it

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is necessary to vary them, it is also necessary to avoid a very cumbersome procedure —a new Private Bill or a Provisional Order in each case. Therefore, under this Bill the local authority can, with the consent of the Minister, revise the maximum charges. The clause also transfers from the Minister of Housing and Local Government to the. Minister of Food the function of approval of any variation in charges. Under the Act of 1938, the maximum period for which a slaughtering licence can be granted is thirteen months. Clause 3 enables the local authority to grant licences up to July, 1957, in cases where they are granted prior to July, 1956. That sounds rather complicated. The object is really to try to give an inducement to occupiers of slaughterhouses to make the improvements which are necessary to bring them up to date and to make them fit for use.
So far I have dealt with the measures in the Bill which are designed to provide sufficient slaughtering facilities; but in view of the eventual concentration which will take place it is not desirable, as I think your Lordships would agree, either for the local authorities or for private owners to build new slaughterhouses which may not fit into the eventual plan of concentration; therefore Clause 3 (2) prescribes that where a slaughterhouse has not been in use for twenty years, it cannot be reopened without the consent of the Minister of Food. Clause 3 (3) allows a licence to be refused if the slaughterhouse does not conform to hygiene regulations. Clause 3 (4) brings the pre-1939 slaughterhouses into line with others as regards the licensing system; and Clause 4 gives to the local authority which is satisfied that there are sufficient public facilities for slaughtering in the neighbourhood, power to close private slaughterhouses in their own district in order to make a more satisfactory area scheme—that is to say, if any particular local authority is satisfied that within easy reach, although in another local authority area, there are sufficient slaughtering facilities, they are given power to close the private slaughterhouse within their own area and make use of the public facilities outside. Clause 4 (2) gives the local authority the right to refuse fresh licences. Clause 5 deals with the question of compensation in the event of
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closure, and under it the Minister of Food is authorised to contribute one half of the compensation which is paid by the local authority.
Those are the main provisions in the Bill as it applies to conditions in England. In Scotland conditions have grown up rather differently. The great majority of existing slaughterhouses in Scotland are already owned by the local authorities—in fact, there are very few slaughterhouses owned by outside private persons. Therefore, as we see the picture at present, it will not be necessary to open many new slaughterhouses at all. That is a major difference between the English and the Scottish position. However, we have to be sure, as in the case of the part of the Bill which applies to England, that there will be sufficient killing capacity, and therefore Clause 7 lays it as a duty upon the local authority to satisfy itself that there are adequate facilities available, either in their own district or in a neighbouring district. Therefore, in order to meet an area's need, Clause 7 provides that a local authority may provide or operate a public slaughterhouse. Clause 7 also provides that they can control the opening of new slaughterhouses in any area. The approval of the Secretary of State is necessary if any new premises are to be opened. There are two significant departures from the present law: first, that the local authority can operate as well as provide a slaughterhouse, and secondly, that in the fixing of charges for the use of a slaughterhouse (if the local authority has one) the local authority will be required to consult the trade interests.
My Lords, this is a technical Bill. It is necessarily different for the two countries. But, as I said at the beginning, we are trying to do two things in this Bill—to make sure that on the day when meat is decontrolled there are sufficient slaughtering facilities available, and to make that consistent with a plan of moderate concentration which we hope gradually to work out, in which the local authorities will take a leading part. In Scotland our legislation goes back to something like 1892, and therefore we are able to consolidate it in this Bill and to give to Scotland a reasonably complete code. So far as England is concerned, the legislation upon which England operates is much more recent. There was what I might call a consolidating Act in

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the Food and Drugs Act, 1938, and therefore the difficulties are not the same; and the provisions which we are making in this Bill could easily be incorporated in a later consolidating measure. With that explanation, which is as good as I am able to make it, of a rather complicated and technical matter, I hope that your Lordships will agree to the Second Reading of this Bill. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2.—(The Earl of Home.)
4.17 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, there is no criticism of the purposes for which this Bill has been introduced, nor of the manner in which the noble Earl introduced it. The noble Earl has had a particularly difficult task, not only in explaining the Bill but in justifying the manner in which it was introduced, and he wisely confined himself to the first part and said nothing about the second. But I feel that the House is entitled to some explanation of the indecent haste with which the whole business has been rushed through, and I think your Lordships will be interested in having a short time-table of what has happened in regard to this matter.
On February 9, 1953, the Ministry of Food set up an Inter-departmental Committee on Slaughterhouses in England and Wales. Their job was to prepare a plan, which I think the noble Earl was correct in describing as a plan for moderate concentration. That was on February 9, 1953; but so far we have seen no plan for moderate concentration. I presume the Committee has been working diligently. On December 7, however, they were suddenly taken away from that task and asked to concern themselves with an entirely different job—namely, to advise the Government on what steps they ought to take to ensure adequate provision for slaughterhouses in this country, having regard to the decontrol that was to take place in July.
One wonders why it took so long for the Minister of Food to make up his mind that such advice was necessary He must have known at the time that he appointed the Committee in February, 1953, that it would be necessary to have some advice on the question of the provision of these facilities. He must have known, that the moment you hand over the livestock trade to private enterprise
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the existing slaughterhouse facilities would be inadequate, or at any rate unsuitable, and yet he waits until December 7 before diverting this Interdepartmental Committee from the task for which they have been appointed to this particular task. The Interdepartmental Committee addressed themselves very diligently to this job and reported on December 23, sixteen days later. I should have thought that was a record for any Committee that has ever been set up; I think they are to be congratulated on the extreme haste with which they were able to arrive at conclusions. Those conclusions were published in the form of a White Paper in January. 1954.
I submit that this is panic legislation. Furthermore, three or four weeks ago we had before us a Food and Drugs Amendment Bill both for England and for Scotland, and the Third Reading was held up because it was stated that it was proposed Ito incorporate in that Bill the recommendations in the Interim Report of the Inter-departmental Committee on Slaughterhouses. Suddenly we are faced with a Bill the Government have changed their minds. The Bill was first printed only a week ago, and to-day we are having the Second Reading. I protest that this gives us inadequate time to consider an important measure of this kind. I know that the noble Marquess the Leader of the House, with his usual courtesy, offered to extend our time until Monday, but that is not really convenient nor does it give us the time we require. I do not know if there are many experts on slaughterhouses in this House. We on this side try to do our duty; we have looked at this measure, we have read the Report, but I admit at once that I am no more an expert on slaughterhouses than the noble Earl who introduced the Bill. We rely on getting some information on the subject from a number of sources which we try to consult: there are trade unions, there are various organisations of different kinds, and, we try to get their views on the subject. If we approve of those views, we try to put them to the House; but it is hopeless to try and do anything in the time that has been given.
I imagine that the noble Earl is only the mouthpiece and I do not put the whole of the responsibility for this business on him, but he happens to be the target in front of us. I would commend

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to him the words of his noble Leader yesterday of which I approve wholeheartedly: that it is better to think first and act afterwards than to act first and think afterwards. It is a great pity that, having put forward that very commendable precept yesterday, the Government is acting in a wholly different sense today. Having given utterance to this protest —and it really is a serious protest; it may not be as important in this case as in some others, but it is a serious protest and it is extremely difficult for us to do our duty as members of a responsible Opposition unless we are given reasonable facilities—I want now to get to the Bill. The first words at the beginning of Clause 1 in the Bill are: "Until Parliament otherwise determines…" I would like to ask the noble Lord what that means.
THE EARL OF HOME: What what means?
LORD SILKIN: "Until Parliament otherwise determines …" certain things happen. That is always the case with every Bill that has ever been introduced: the position is as in the Bill until Parliament otherwise determines. I should like to ask what special significance one is to attach to those words. Is it intended now that Parliament should determine something, and if so would the noble Earl take us into his confidence and tell us what he has in mind by those words? I imagine that there will be (I think he used that expression himself) an eventual scheme of concentration. What is this eventual scheme of concentration? When does he anticipate that it is going to come along? Will it be 1957, 1958, 1960 or when? It is material that we should know in considering this Bill, because it makes a great difference whether the provisions here are of a purely ephemeral nature or whether we are to regard them as more or less of a permanent character. All we have to go on in this Bill are the words "Until Parliament otherwise determines …"
The noble Earl referred, as I do, to the Interim Report of this Inter-Departmental Committee, and I think he quite rightly said that the recommendations of this Inter-departmental Committee have been accepted with one exception, Recommendation (v), where it was
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recommended that local authorities should have the right
"to acquire compulsorily or by agreement, either by purchase or on lease, any existing private slaughterhouse or slaughterhouses that can be used to provide public slaughtering facilities."
This is not in the Bill, or, at least it has been considerably modified. I should like to ask why it is that the local authorities, who have been given a specific job to do to ensure that there are adequate slaughtering facilities against the time when de-control comes, are not given the powers that are required to enable them to carry out this task. The noble Earl I think was mistaken in saying that they were merely not being given powers to acquire leases. I think they are not being given powers to acquire land they may need. They are given powers to acquire by agreement, but they are not being given powers to acquire compulsorily.
Nobody wants to use compulsion where agreement is adequate, but I would say two things on that matter: first, that there may be cases where it is not possible to acquire simply by agreement what the local authority consider they need. Evidently there is some urgency about this matter, from the manner in which the Bill has been handled; but it is within the power of anybody to refuse to agree or to hold the local authority up for a higher price than they are entitled to, and thereby to delay the operations of the de-rationing scheme. The other point is that local authorities have found it useful in the past to have in the background compulsory powers. This is not a new thing. They do not always use them. The wise local authority uses its compulsory powers sparingly; nevertheless it has been found to be essential in the operation of most of the powers of local authorities that they should have compulsory powers of acquisition of land. I should like to ask whether it is purely on ideological grounds, or on what other grounds, that this power has been withheld from the local authorities.
There is one other point relating to the Bill with which I want to deal, and that is this. I do not see anywhere in the Bill what steps local authorities are required to take to improve the standard of slaughterhouses. In view of the great haste with which they are required to act, I can, of course, understand that the

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emphasis is on urgency at the present time. It is desired to get this Bill through both Houses of Parliament by Easter, and if that is done there will be merely a matter of weeks before decontrol comes into effect. And local authorities are required to have ready by that time the necessary slaughterhouses to enable them to carry out decontrol effectively. So can understand the haste. Nevertheless, is it not desirable that the private slaughterhouses should be hygienic and, generally, in good condition? Ought not adequate time be given to enable the necessary steps to be taken to get them into this condition? I see that the Bill and the 1938 Act, with which it is associated, or to which it is related—in particular, I think it is Section 57 of the 1938 Act—both contemplate that some months are required in many cases to enable slaughterhouses to be put into satisfactory condition. That time will not be available, and I should like to ask the noble Earl what steps are to be taken to ensure that these words in the conclusion of the Interim Report are carried out.
"The private slaughterhouses must not be allowed to slip back into the conditions of the pre-war disorders and numbers. Traders must, however, be given early notification whether they are to be permitted to resume private slaughtering or whether their needs will be met by the provision of public slaughtering facilities."
There is nothing in the Bill about that. There is no indication as to what steps local authorities are going to take, or are required to take, to ensure that the conditions of the private slaughterhouses are up to the hygienic standard which we expect to see maintained to-day.
I said at the outset that I regard this Bill as necessary, and I suppose, if we are to have decontrol by July, it is urgent. But I would go so far as to say that it would be better to postpone the operation of decontrol and to ensure that we have satisfactory facilities for the slaughtering of livestock before we carry out decontrol, than to carry out this decontrol and then be left with inadequate and unsatisfactory facilities for slaughtering. At this late hour, I would ask Her Majesty's Government seriously to reconsider the question of the decontrol of livestock. There are many other grounds on which one could advocate postponement, but this is not the moment to advance them: I understand that there may well
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be a debate in the very near future on this subject, and the matter could then be further developed. But on the question of the inadequacy of slaughterhouses, and of this example of the way in which things are being rushed, I would seriously suggest it might not be a bad idea to put off the operation of decontrol. I would urge the Government, to give heed to the very wise words of the Leader of this House—"think first and act afterwards."
4.36 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I have noted what seems to me to be a rather remarkable omission from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in that it contained no reference whatever to a rapid change of circumstances which has taken place in regard to the supplies of meat available. I find it rather hard to accept, and to agree with him, that very much complaint can be levelled against Her Majesty's Government for taking rapid action to meet a rapid change of circumstances—indeed, I think they are to be congratulated on doing so. I was surprised to hear the noble Lord refer to such rapid and, to my mind, well thought-out action as an example of "indecent haste." I am, however, quite in agreement with him when he says that the duty of the Opposition is to oppose, and I am sure that your Lordships on all sides of the House will be ready to agree that he has used his great ability to the full, and has fulfilled very creditably the duty to which he referred.
I would regard this Bill not as a hastily devised piece of rush legislation, but as a rather clever and. well thought-out measure aimed at securing the best that is available from any source from which it is available. To start with, the Bill imposes on the local authority the ones of ensuring adequate slaughtering facilities in an area. If I may pause there just for one moment, I would say that that must be an excellent provision, because it will promote the efficiency of slaughtering, and perhaps we shall be able to get away from the arrangements of a somewhat cumbersome nature which now exist, whereby animals are sent all over the country, with consequent wastage in travelling. In some quarters, there is divergence of opinion about whether meat should be marketed as between the producers and the butchers "on the

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hoof "or" on the hook." I do not think there can be any question that when it comes to the transport of meat "the hook" is the answer. Consequently, the organisation of adequate slaughtering facilities all over the country will surely benefit the transport system, so far as meat is concerned, once the livestock has been slaughtered. In the second place, after the onus has been imposed on the local authority, the Bill goes on to give certain details of the aid which may be given to the local authority which they can use to carry out the object in view. They do not have to use it. I think that one of the greatest strengths of the whole Bill is that the local authority are left a wide discretion in the use of existing facilities to the best of their ability without their having to impose heavy burdens on the ratepayers, and possibly on the taxpayers also, should they receive a grant from the Minister towards building and equipping further slaughterhouses.
Oddly enough, the meat trade are of the opinion that they can handle their own affairs quite well and organise their own slaughtering arrangements. The farmers also feel that they can do a certain amount on their own behalf. What I say is amply proved, I think, by the most energetic discussions which are being carried on all over the country between the local authorities, butchers and farmers. Those discussions, I understand, are meeting with a considerable degree of success in planning arrangements—a degree of success about which I was pleasantly surprised to hear. The butchers, in particular, are not in favour of large officially run slaughterhouses. Why should they be? Why should the meat trade expect a local authority to be able to run the most essential adjunct of their own business better than the trade themselves can? Furthermore, they are prepared to run them, and in many cases are making successful arrangements to do so. They wish to run their own slaughterhouses because the majority of them have got used to it. It must be remembered that since the meat trade was last free there has grown up almost another generation of butchers, people who have not learned the full details of their trade because they have not been in it long enough, as the butchers themselves freely and honestly admit. Many wish to buy their meat "on the hook."
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There are still a considerable number of butchers who wish and are prepared to operate their own private slaughterhouses. Although that may seem slightly contradictory to the general desire to buy meat "on the hook," it has the advantage that, together with the more centralised slaughterhouses which may be taken over by the meat trade, the local authorities are in control and will be able to ensure that the necessary standards are maintained.
Another important point is the question of casualties, which the farming community view with considerable concern. Despite the existence in these last years of the Ministry's slaughterhouses, when it comes to a question of emergency slaughter the arrangements simply do not work. I could tell your Lordships of many cases of animals that have had something happen to them on Saturday afternoon having to wait until Monday to be slaughtered, despite a telephone call to the local superintendent of police to see whether a slaughterman can be found. I think it is desirable that a certain number of local butchers should be permitted to operate their own slaughterhouses, in order to deal more efficiently with the casualties which must inevitably occur, despite the farmer's hopes, from time to time. There is ample possibility of proper control so long as the authorities do not permit more slaughterhouses to come into existence than they can control; and I feel that that is scarcely likely. If only the meat trade, the local authorities and the producers can work together in full co-operation to make sure that there is no slackening of standards, I feel that it will promote great efficiency and a return to the quality of meat which we know the farmers can produce, which we know the butchers wish to sell, and which the consumers ought to be offered.
4.47 p.m.
LORD BURDEN: My Lords, before I come to the main substance of what I should like to say this afternoon, perhaps I may be permitted a word of personal explanation. Like some other noble Lords, on both sides of the House, and some honourable Members of another place, I have the privilege of being a Vice-President of the Sanitary Inspectors' Association. To my own knowledge, the Sanitary Inspectors' Association have devoted considerable time and attention during the

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past decade to the problems of slaughterhouses and slaughtering. On no fewer than three occasions during the last ten years this subject has been considered at conferences of members of the Association and representatives of various Ministries and local authorities, numbering somewhere about 1,500. I make that point in order to show that questions of slaughtering and slaughterhouse policy are not confined to a few people, and that the questions arising from this Bill and its application will be of profound interest to many thousands of people throughout the country.
Whilst I agree that local authorities, after due preparation, as emphasised by my noble friend Lord Silkin, should have returned to them the powers which they formerly had, as provided for in the Bill, in other respects the Bill gives me some occasion for grave concern. It is an important measure. My noble friend Lord Silkin has referred to the timetable. Why these "rush" tactics? Why is the House treated with scant courtesy in regard to an important measure of this kind? This Bill is not a leap in the dark; it is a leap backwards; and, as I shall endeavour to show, in some respects it is most retrograde and reactionary in its effects.
Further, this Bill ignores—indeed, it flouts—the painstaking work of the officers of the Ministry of Food, who, since the Meat and Livestock Control Scheme came into operation in January, 1940, have gathered a volume of experience in regard to the techniques of slaughtering. Profiting by this knowledge of the various types of slaughterhouses throughout the country which were in existence before the war, the Ministry of Food officials have made some essential improvements in equipment and layout at a number of these slaughterhouses, although for obvious reasons —limitation of materials, imperfect siting and so on—the Ministry have been unable to do all that would be of value. In addition to this work, the Ministry of Food officials, as was mentioned by the noble Earl in charge of the Bill, have built experimental slaughterhouses at Guildford, Fareham and other places, and these incorporate desirable facilities, of which the Ministry have gathered knowledge in the course of the last ten years or so. I agree that in the day-to-day working some
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further improvements might be incorporated in the building of slaughterhouses in the future. The Ministry's technical officers responsible for the slaughterhouse policy have been in constant touch with the day-today operations, yet all this valuable information and work of the Ministry of Food officials is, I suggest, being thrown away, so far as any future action is concerned, by this dash for freedom.
I should like to say a word or two about the past. But for the outbreak of the war the coming into operation of the Food and Drugs Act, 1938, would have brought a new era with regard to slaughterhouses and slaughtering. It is well known that prior to the operation of Section 57 of the 1938 Act there were three categories of slaughterhouses in this country: first, registered premises where the slaughtering had been continued from the date of the provisions of the Town Improvement Clauses Act, 1847, the privilege to attach to the building and not to the occupier; secondly, those premises licensed without limitation of time for those established between 1847 and 1890 when the Public Health (Amendment) Act came into operation; and thirdly, premises where the licence is renewed at specific periods. In 1939, some 115 public and 1,600 private slaughterhouses were in use, and to my knowledge, the sanitary officers of local authorities were reporting as to the condition of these slaughterhouses in accordance with Section 57 of the Act. Following adverse reports, many of these slaughterhouses were no longer licensed, and to others special conditions as to improvement and reconditioning were attached as a condition precedent to licensing by the local authorities. This situation was brought to an end by the outbreak of the war, and under the direction of the Ministry of Food slaughtering has been concentrated in some 530 slaughterhouses—a number which some people have suggested has been reasonably adequate for the number of animals coming in for slaughter, although of that point I am not entirely convinced. But are even these 530 slaughterhouses to-day in a satisfactory condition for continued use for slaughtering? Some, no doubt, are, but I suggest that some of them, due to circumstances for which no one is responsible, arising out of war conditions, and so on, have got into a very bad condition; in fact, I

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am told that in some instances lime washing was regarded as a luxury. Mr. Priestley, the chief sanitary inspector of Blackpool, said at the 1943 Conference of the Association:
"It is generally considered that the ideal slaughterhouse should consist of (a) suitable lairage, (b) slaughter halls for cattle, sheep and pigs, (c) cooling room, (d) detention room and inspection room with lavatory equipment, (e) condemned meat room, (f) facilities for the treatment of edible offals and by-products and condemned meat, (g) inspector's room, (h) staff room, with cooking and washing facilities, (i) adequate boiler plant."
How many of the 530 existing slaughterhouses—perhaps I would make an exception in regard to those run for the Co-operative Movement, and apart from those built by the Ministry—comply even with the bare minimum of conditions for efficient humane and decent slaughtering?
Again, what has happened to slaughterhouses closed by the Ministry? I believe that many have been used for other purposes—and to my own knowledge certainly one or two have. They have effected a much-needed improvement to the butchers' shops to which they are attached. I suggest that, with due consideration, and bearing in mind the public health side of the picture, many of those one-time slaughterhouses might be usefully incorporated in the other business.
Coming now to the Bill, as recommended by the Interim Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee, local authorities are to be placed under the duty of ensuring that sufficient slaughtering accommodation is available for the needs of their districts in the period pending the implementation of moderate concentration affecting the district. I agree that Clause 1 of the Bill will give statutory effect to that recommendation, but as my noble friend Lord Silkin has pointed out, local authorities must be given adequate powers to enable them to carry out this duty. Subsection (2) of Clause 1 enables local authorities to provide public slaughterhouses in one or other of two ways. Either they may acquire land and provide slaughterhouse facilities there, or they may acquire land on which such facilities have already been provided by other persons and ensure that such facilities continue. If, as is anticipated, the Ministry of Food control is to come to an end in July, clearly
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there is no time to build to provide for a deficiency of slaughterhouse accommodation which may exist when decontrol takes place. For the purpose of interim provision, therefore, local authorities will be driven to resort to the second of the alternatives that I have mentioned. As my noble friend has pointed out, compulsory acquisition of land by normal processes takes a long time. Even if the local authorities were able to act with compulsory purchase orders, I doubt whether the normal processes would be complete by July. The noble Earl, Lord Home, will appreciate that this point has already been put to the Ministry by the Association of Municipal Corporations, but no satisfaction has yet been received. I am advised by people who should be aware of the fact that, unless the Ministry take this point into consideration and meet it effectively, a state of emergency will certainly arise in some districts.
Again, I am aware that the Inter-Departmental Committee recommended that the Government should contribute one-half of any compensation payable by local authorities in respect of the closing of private slaughterhouses on other than public health grounds, and the Bill gives effect to that provision. I suggest, however, that the Government should accept full responsibility for the compensation payable in connection with the implementation of the policy of moderate concentration of slaughterhouses. If the Government wish to see this moderate concentration policy implemented it is essential that they should not impose financial obligations on local authorities which will discourage them from a policy of concentration. I know that it has been suggested that, where a public slaughterhouse is provided, it will relieve the local authorities of adjoining areas by reducing the work of sanitary inspectors responsible for meat inspection. I think that this is an illusion. In fact, the local authorities concerned will have plenty of work to keep their sanitary inspectors occupied, and no reduction in the numbers is possible.
I wish to revert for a few moments to Clause 1, which places upon local authorities the duty of ensuring that there are adequate slaughterhouse facilities for their area. They are given wider powers for providing public

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slaughterhouses where these are necessary. The clause does not limit the period during which this duty will remain with the local authorities, but—and this is the important point—the Inter-Departmental Committee recommended
"that the responsibility for seeing that sufficient slaughtering accommodation is available for the needs of each district in the period pending the implementation of moderate concentration affecting that district should be placed on the local authority."
Although the Committee may not have intended it, there is in this recommendation an implied suggestion that the responsibility is to remain with the local authorities only for the interim period until the long-term plan for the moderate concentration of slaughtering has been evolved. I put it to the Minister that local authorities will need some assurance on this point, otherwise they are likely to be reluctant to embark upon costly schemes for providing public slaughterhouses. They will fear that at some future date these premises will be transferred to some other body. The same inference to which I have referred can be drawn from the Inter-Departmental Committee's recommendation about licensing. I put the question quite clearly to the noble Earl: What is the Government's policy in relation to the responsibility of local authorities? Is this merely an interim responsibility, and is it envisaged, or hoped, that some other authority will be responsible after this interim period? This is a point of great substance to the local authorities.
Clause 2 (2) gives power to the local authority, in addition to making charges in respect to the use of public slaughterhouses, to make charges in respect of services provided by local authorities at the slaughterhouses. I should like to know whether meat inspection is to be interpreted as a service for which a charge is to be made. In my view, it should be, and sanitary inspectors of local authorities have earnestly hoped that there will not be a return to the old system. I think that a case has been made out for some increase in the number of slaughterhouses at present in use. The siting of many of these slaughterhouses does not tend to efficiency: it is wasteful of transport, both of the live animal and the dressed carcase. The problem will not be met by narrow parochial views. There may have
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to be some combination of local authorities. But if slaughtering were concentrated in too small a number of very large slaughterhouses, live cattle would have to be transported over long distances before slaughtering. Further, I suggest that it is important that, in the distribution of meat, the meat should reach the consumer with the least possible delay and should not be subjected to unnecessary handling in the process. The correct method seems to be a moderate concentration. By this policy, the necessary standards of hygiene and humane slaughter can be achieved, the by-products properly utilised and all these operations carried out with reasonable economy.
I suggest that, in the interests of public health and humane treatment of animals, it is imperative that there should be a national slaughtering plan, and that those responsible for the preparation of this plan should recognise that the key function of an abattoir is the discharge of public health obligations. It follows, therefore, that the public health authorities are the most appropriate bodies to operate slaughterhouses, and their chief health official at the slaughterhouse the one best suited to co-ordinate administration. There need be no fear that such a scheme would be wasteful: local authorities are extremely alive to the necessity for reasonable economy. Nevertheless, I would emphatically protest against the concentration of slaughterhouses based merely upon economics. Public health needs are the primary consideration. It cannot be too strongly emphasised that the overriding aim in providing suitable slaughtering facilities is the protection of public health and the humane treatment of the animal. A slaughterhouse of proper size, with adequate facilities for dealing with by-products and sufficient cold stores can be made to pay; but lack of profits should not prejudice the provision of satisfactory slaughtering facilities if the need is there. It is because this Bill deliberately evades these grave responsibilities, as pointed out by my noble friend Lord Silkin, that I have ventured to describe the Bill as a retrograde and reactionary Bill.
5.10 p.m.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, the noble Earl from Scotland must be rather sorry that he had the temerity

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to produce before your Lordships an English measure. I can assure him that no Englishman has yet had the temerity to present to your Lordships' House a Scottish measure. I suppose as a piece of panic, un-thought-out legislation this Bill is a fair sample. As a piece of economic planning, it does not even add up to sense. My noble friend Lord Silkin asked the noble Earl some searching questions. In chronological order, he gave the sequence of events, and he wanted to know the reason for the haste. I am going to suggest an answer. The real reason is that Her Majesty's Government have not the first idea of a policy for livestock marketing. They have not even begun to think about it. All they have thought about is a dash for freedom, and so everything else, whether or not it is in the national interest, has to be sacrificed.
As the noble Earl's noble friend Lord Woolton said the other day, this is an "article of faith," the Ark of the Covenant of the Conservative Party—the Noah's Ark of the Covenant of the Conservative Party, where the animals go in to be slaughtered two by two. Really, the Bill is so contradictory as not to add up to sense. Both my noble friends have riddled it with ridicule. What is the position? In three months, a thousand local authorities in this country are required to have a slaughterhouse system ready for the day when we dash for freedom. If there is one thing that calls for a national and a regional approach, it is the slaughtering of animals. Yet one thousand local authorities have three months in which to build slaughterhouses. As my noble friend says, that is demonstrably impossible. One thousand local authorities, without any co-ordination whatsoever, are required to have a modified plan of concentration. They will not be able to build the slaughterhouses. What will they have to do? In effect, what will happen is that they will issue licences ad lib., and we shall be back to the 1938 days of terrible conditions as regards cleanliness, public health and humane treatment of animals to be slaughtered.
The noble Earl—and he has my great sympathy in having to act as a substitute in such a matter as this—says it is going to be a policy of moderate concentration. I want to ask him a direct question.
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There were 16,000 slaughterhouses in this country before the war and there are now about 500 or 600. What is the figure in future to be? Is it 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 10,000, or what is it? Of course, I am quite ready for him to tell me that the Government have not even thought about it. If they have thought about it and if they have arrived at a figure, how are they going to parcel that figure out amongst 1,000 local authorities? I do not know. Will the noble Earl tell us?
In July next, when meat rationing ends—and I have no desire at all to delay the end of meat rationing—what are we going to have? We are going to have the advent of the auctioneer, the drover, the market ring. I ask the noble Earl, are we going back to the days when cattle were driven through the streets of our towns, befouling them, terrified at going through dark alleys into small slaughterhouses? Are we going back to those days? I had the privilege of sitting as chairman of a Committee which inquired into the working of the Agricultural Marketing Acts. We had before that Committee expert evidence on what the policy before the war was costing this country —and, incidentally, I would ask the noble Earl to note, really costing the producer of livestock, because it all comes back on to the price. I now quote prewar figures and pre-war values. It was estimated by experts that it cost 25s. to 35s. per head of cattle to transport it from the farm to the slaughterhouse. That is not taking into consideration the loss of weight through having to drive the cattle from market to market and from slaughterhouse to slaughterhouse. For pigs and sheep it was 6s. to 10s. per head. If you treble that to bring it to present-day values, look at the terrific economic loss. I was hoping that the Government would have a slaughter policy to take the animal direct from the farm, without any intermediary, to the abattoir by mechanical conveyance, so that the animal had never to be driven from the lairage through the streets. I ask the noble Earl to picture what I have actually seen, the frightened cattle being driven in a cruel way through some big market city, for instance, Norwich, Is that what we are going to go back to? Perhaps the noble Earl will tell us.
Now let us take the slaughterhouse. During my time in His late Majesty's

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Government it once fell to my unfortunate lot to deputise, as the noble Ear, is deputising this afternoon, for the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, who was then the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture. The occasion was on a Motion on humane slaughter, moved by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Dowding. I expect many of your Lordships will remember it. For quite a week after that debate I had literature, pictures and photographs sent to me. I have a fairly strong stomach but they nearly made me physically ill. There were blood-drenched men, especially in some of the kosher slaughterhouses. I remember standing up at that Box promising on behalf of the Government that there should be a Weinberg pen caster, so that these animals should not be subjected to torture. What undertaking can the noble Earl give us that we shall not go back to those days and, as the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, has quite rightly said, to operations by people who have never been in the business of slaughtering cattle? Let us not forget that there have not been any slaughterers in these small slaughterhouses since 1939.
One other point was given in evidence before the Lucas Committee, if I may so call it, in regard to the loss of value of by-products, which ranged in these small slaughterhouses from about 15s. per 1.ead of cattle slaughtered. To-day one might call that £2. The expert evidence before the Committee was that the economic through-put for a modern abattoir was about 3,000 head of cattle per week; it was impossible to collect economically the by-products—the blood, the glands and the hides—frorn slaughterhouses which slaughtered one or two cattle. The noble Earl who is to reply for the Government is deputising. I suppose for the noble Lord the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, whose absence we all deeply regret and to whom we wish a speedy return to good health and to this House. But if the blood of these animals had been conserved and used for fertilising our land, instead of gushing down the sewers of this country because of these ill-equipped slaughterhouses, the farming community would have been a great deal better off.
My Lords, the standard work on slaughterhouse policy is the Report of the
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De La Warr Committee. I expect many of your Lordships have read that Report. It gives as one of the first principles the fact that you cannot have efficient slaughtering unless you have a highly mechanised abattoir of sufficient size, and employing resident inspectors to see that diseased meat does not come out to the general public. I wonder how much tubercular infested meat has come out from some of these small slaughterhouses in the past. That is what we are going to suffer, because there cannot be any inspection policy behind this Bill. It is, as has been frankly admitted and as my noble friend said, a matter of expediency, for as long as Her Majesty's Government may so desire. There is no siting and no proper co-ordination. The noble Lord said that this Bill was being produced—I wrote down his words—so that the transfer to the de-rationing of meat could proceed smoothly. T should think that in the livestock world July will bring confusion worse confounded. There is only one certain thing in the whole of this policy, if I may call it a policy, and that is that the price of good quality meat will go up, because the cost of operating a system like we had before the war will be so high in this Year of Grace. I would again ask the noble Earl to tell us—I think we have a right to an answer—what is meant by moderate concentration. What machinery, other than that contained in the Bill, is going to be set up to see that there is some co-ordination between the 1,000 local authorities, and that the siting of these slaughterhouses will suit the requirements of the time? We may make an attempt on the remaining stages of this Bill at least to put some sense into it—
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: If we get time and notice.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: Yes, if we get time and notice. We have had only three days between the introduction of the Bill and its Second Reading. I suppose the noble Earl was hoping, as his noble friend said when he introduced the Bill the other day, that it was not going to he very contentious. He has no illusions now.
5.25 p.m.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I have tried to understand the Opposition's case against this Bill, and I am bound to say

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that I am a little surprised to hear them say, in the first place, that this Bill is produced with indecent haste and, in the second place that it is going to have its effect in time. It seems to me that those comments are a little inconsistent. I cannot see that the Government are wrong in making an inquiry, getting their facts and making up their minds before proceeding to act, If the complaint is that the Bill is being read a second time too soon after it has been introduced, I am glad to hear the complaint, because that was one of the things we on this side of the House very often had to complain of under their administration. For example, I remember the introduction of the Public Registers (Scotland) Bill, which was a very technical matter, and I got the case from Scotland only in the afternoon as I was walking into the House to hear my noble and much-lamented friend, the late Lord Morrison, developing the Second Reading. 'I am afraid that that is a fault of most Governments. If we are to make it a virtue not to do such a thing in future. I shall be very glad. In regard to the case made by the Opposition, the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Burden appeared to be a useful speech, not particularly because it was in opposition to the Bill but because it coursed ahead and showed where the sandbanks and other obstacles lay. I do not think that the Opposition have done much to damage the Bill: they have only drawn a horrible picture of what may happen, and tried to give us an awful warning.
5.29 p.m.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, the noble Lord. Lord Lucas of Chilworth, offered me his sympathy. I can say that usually the incursions of a Scotsman into England are more rewarding than they look to be to-day, but at least I hope that I have come to bring something, rather than to take something away. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, who opened for the Opposition was good enough to say that our broad objectives are the same. It was well that he said so, and it was well that Lord Lucas of Chilworth was not too rude about the words "moderate concentration," because I took them from what Mr. Webb. the then Minister of Food, said in another place was to be the objective of the Government at that time. A policy of moderate concentration, as I think I was right in saying when I
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opened this debate, is a policy which is fairly generally agreed. Nor, I think, will there be much difference of opinion that the local authorities are the instruments who should carry out this policy of moderate concentration. They have showed themselves well able to provide acceptable facilities, and I would therefore say at once to the noble Lord, Lord Burden, who asked a question on this point, that the local authorities are visualised as those who will be responsible for supervising the slaughterhouse policy in the different areas. So both the policy of moderate concentration and the policy of using the local authorities would seem to provide a good deal of common ground.
The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, asked: "When is this policy of moderate concentration likely to be completed?" That is an extremely difficult question to answer—I think almost impossible. It might take five years, it might take ten years; it has to be done area by area; it is a complicated job, and I should not like to be tied down to giving any particular target—
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: Am I to understand that the Departments concerned, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Food, after their joint consultations over the last three years cannot tell us roughly, what is to be the number of abattoirs? I gather that the noble Earl was about to move away from that point, and I should like to know the answer.
THE EARL OF HOME: I am coming to that, when I answer the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth. But this point is not easy. You may well talk about a plan of moderate concentration: but it is not easy to find how long it will take to achieve it. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, went on to say: "Why hurry? There has been almost an indecent haste in this matter." I am sure that he will acquit the Government of any intention to be discourteous to the House. What happened was that we saw a chance to de-ration meat. The Ministry of Food were satisfied, not long ago, that the supply position justified that step, and when we saw a chance to de-ration meat, it did not seem right to delay it: in fact, it is a public duty to take that chance and not to delay it even by an extra month. It is, I understand,

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although I am not an expert in these matters, a difficult thing to forecast when the supply position will justify the de-rationing of meat. Not so very long ago, it looked like being 1956. but comparatively suddenly it seemed that it would be safe to do so in July, 1954. We tit ere-fore took the view that we must de-ration meat, and that we must proceed to loosen the controls which the Ministry of Food exercised over slaughtering and distribution.
In the Government's opinion, controls are dangerous things to leave lying about. It may be incredible to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, but there are people who positively like controls, and to whom a controlled economy is Utopia; and we think it is a public duty to take temptation out of their way. So, although I agree that this has been rather a hurried measure, nevertheless, we believe that we could not in the public interest delay the de-rationing of meat, and once that de-rationing of meat was decided upon it was necessary to go forward with this scheme for giving the local authorities the organisation to see that slaughtering is properly carried out all over the country. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, said that the local authorities will be hampered here because, although they may take leases for premises by agreement, and although they may purchase by agreement, nevertheless there is no power for compulsory purchase. He will find that power already in existence under the Public Health Act, 1936, Section 306 of which has been carried on into the Food and Drugs Act, 1938. So the power for compulsory purchase of buildings and land is there. I think that that is the main point that the noble Lord raised, and I am glad to remove any doubts.
I come then, my Lords, to the questions which exercised the minds of other noble Lords, the question of hygiene and the question of cruelty in slaughterhouses. Of course, many of us have been revolted at the conditions we have seen. So far as cruelty is concerned. that is being dealt with in the Slaughter of Animals (Amendment) Bill, now before another place, so perhaps I may leave that question for that Bill. Various noble Lords have raised the public health needs. So far as hygiene is concerned, new regulations are now in preparation, and when
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they are completed they will be operated by the local authorities under Section 8 of the Food and Drugs Act, 1938. It is the Government's intention that we shall never go back to the old conditions that reigned before fie war, but that the new regulations now in preparation shall be made, and that the local authorities shall operate them under powers which exist in an Act of Parliament already on the Statute Book. I hope, therefore, that the news about the powers of compulsory purchase, the Slaughter of Animals (Amendment) Bill, and the fact that these questions on hygiene and public health can be dealt with under the Food and Drugs Act, 1938, will remove some of the apprehensions which were legitimately raised by noble Lords opposite.
I felt that the noble Lord, Lord Burden, was a little inconsistent. He seemed to admit that the local authorities were the proper instruments to run this policy, yet his speech was almost a plea for the retention in perpetuity of the Ministry of Food. I am glad to see that the noble Lord shakes his head and that I have misinterpreted him, because I think it is right to trust the local authorities to do this work, and it is their proper business to do so.
LORD BURDEN: I said deliberately that the local authorities were the people to do it, but that there should be adequate time for them to make proper preparation for the job.
THE EARL OF HOME: I am sorry if I misinterpreted that. To deal with some of the questions which were asked, the noble Lords, Lord Lucas of Chilworth and Lord Alexander, have said to me, "What sort of number of slaughterhouses will seem to be necessary after decontrol?" It is difficult to estimate but the figure is put at somewhere about 3,000 to 3,500. It is from there that we shall begin the policy of moderate concentration.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: Does that include Scotland?
THE EARL OF HOME: The figure of 3,500 is the United Kingdom figure. The noble Lord made some play with the fact that we were making a dash for freedom, and that freedom was a kind of Ark of the Covenant. I think he got his Biblical history a hide mixed, because he

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said the animals went in two by two to slaughter. On the contrary, they went in two by two to be saved; and the noble Lord and I would not be here unless two of them had gone in. We would never represent this Bill as bringing salvation. At the beginning I made it clear to your Lordships that it was an interim measure, which explains the words "Until Parliament otherwise determines "—although I do not insist on those words and I do not think it was necessary to have them in the Bill. As this is, in some sense, not a permanent measure but an interim measure, and there seems to be a common objective, that we should work towards a policy of moderate concentration, T hope that your Lordships will be agreeable to giving the Bill a Second Reading.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: I am not quite clear what is the real intention of the Government. There were 16,000 slaughterhouses before the war. It is apparent that already the Government want to increase the number from about 600 to 3,000. May I take it that that is because it is estimated that, with an entirely new system of marketing, more centres will be needed nearer the point of sale than there are now, under the war-time scheme: that that is the main reason for increasing the number to 3,000? And, if so, is it thought that the majority of the increase of 2,400 slaughterhouses will be found by re-licensing those who have in existence slaughterhouses but whose licences were made inoperative from 1939? I should like to be quite clear about that.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, I should prefer to consider this matter before giving my answer: I think I shall need a little more time. May I say now, however, that I think the majority will come from re-licensing. If, let us say, the Co-operative Society or, perhaps, a local authority, or anyone who could provide a good service, wanted to build a new slaughterhouse, then the local authority would have permission either to allow or refuse it. Now any new building has to be confirmed by the Ministry of Food, so that the siting of any new buildings can be made to fit in with the overall area plan.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: I am much obliged to the noble Earl. As he knows, we have had very little time to examine the Bill, and I found that in one very important quarter—the Co-operative Society, to which the noble Earl has referred—there was a feeling that a large number of those whose licences were made inoperative from 1939 could hardly be brought back on anything like a permanent basis. If that is the case we shall have to consider it afresh in the near future.
THE EARL OF HOME: I gave a rather impromptu answer to the noble Viscount, and if I may, I will write to him. I think I can clear up any doubts which he may have.
On Question, Bill read 2, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

BRITISH INDUSTRIES FAIR (GUARANTEES AND GRANTS) BILL
5.43 p.m.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, I am now asking you to move with me from the slightly unattractive premises of the slaughterhouse into the much more attractive and, I am happy to say, less controversial premises of the British Industries Fair. As your Lordships are aware, Her Majesty's Government have been concerned for some time about the decline in popularity of the London section of the British Industries Fair, and the object of this short Bill is to enable management of the Fair to be reorganised. As a result of this reorganisation, it is hoped that we may be able to check the decline in the Fair's fortunes and to re-establish it as Britain's most important shop window.
May I, for a moment, remind the House of the origin of the British Industries Fair? Its history goes back to the First World War. It has since been held annually—except once, in 1925, and, of course, during the last war—and it is for me a particularly happy coincidence that the last reorganisation of the B.I.F., which took place after the Wembley Exhibition in 1925, was put before Parliament in plans that were introduced into another place by my

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father, who was then a representative of the Board of Trade in the House of Commons. The Fair, as your Lordships know, is held concurrently in two sections—London and Birmingham. In general, products of the lighter industries are shown in London, and those of heavier industries—engineering, building, and hardware, and so on—at Castle Bromwich, Birmingham. The London section occupies a little over half a million square feet of exhibition space at Earl's Court and at Olympia. It is organised by the Exhibitions and Fairs Branch of the Commercial Relations and Exports Department of the Board of Trade. Largely because of the change from a sellers' to a buyers' market, the number of exhibitors has fallen from something like 2,300 in 1947 to just over 1,000 in 1953, and the space occupied by exhibitors has been reduced over the same period, but not quite so sharply.
Your Lordships may wonder exactly why this has happened. I think I can best illustrate this by saying that, after last year's Fair, when I had gone round the stalls, it happened to strike my notice that one exhibitor whom I knew by repute was no longer showing his wares. I asked him why this was so and the answer he gave illustrates, I think, the whole problem which we are facing and trying to solve in the Bill. This gentleman manufactures very high-class textiles. He had exhibited for many years before the war. When I asked him his reason for discontinuing, he said: "I am no longer going to exhibit. If I were going to spend £3.000, which is what it would cost me to exhibit, I would rather spend it sending my trained salesmen around the world to markets with which I am familiar. If I spend this money at home, as I used to do on previous exhibitions, judging from my experience I shall not make a penny. Indeed, if I were to collect orders at home, I should be embarrassed because at the moment I cannot fulfil them. It would be a waste of time, a waste of effort, and a waste of money. If, of course, the Board of Trade want me to exhibit in order to add a little glamour and prestige to a national display, well, of course I will do my part, but"—and here is the important bit, my Lords—" the Government must pay."
That, my Lords, is the difficulty we are up against. We have to meet that diffi-
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culty, and one of the objects of this Bill is to do so. I must add that, with the exception of the 1952 and 1953 exhibitions, the London Section has shown a loss on its trading account in post-war years totalling very nearly £150,000. The Birmingham Section has quite a different record. It is organised by the Binning-ham Chamber of Commerce, who, apart from expenditure on publicity, are entirely responsible for financing their part of the exhibition. The Birmingham Section of the Fair now runs at a profit—it always has done. I think that is largely became Birmingham is fortunate enough to have its own exhibition building, and does not have to pay the heavy rentals with which the London Section is burdened. In fact, I think it is fair to say Mat the London rentals greatly exceed the average annual loss of about £30,000 in running the London Section.
Faced with this problem, the President of the Board of Trade asked his Exhibitions Advisory Committee- to review the management and the whole conduct of the British Industries Fair. This Committee is a standing body which advises the Department on all matters relating to exhibitions and trade fairs, both at hone and abroad. Its members include representatives of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, the Federation of British Industries, the National Union of Manufacturers and the Trades Union Congress. The Exhibitions Advisory Committee set up a sub-committee, under the Chairmanship of a distinguished industrialist, Sir Ernest Goodale. After a most thorough examination, for which Her Majesty's Government are extremely grateful to Sir Ernest and his colleagues, the sub-committee produced a Report which was adopted by the main Committee and published in November, 1953, as a White Paper—Command Paper 9013—which is now on the Table of your Lordships' House. Because the Report has been published and is, I think, familiar to most of your Lordships who are interested in the subject, I will not do more than give a short summary of the main recommendations.
The principal recommendation is that the B.I.F. should continue annually. It should cater for those industries which are not able to run their own exhibition—in the way that, for example, the motor industry runs the Motor Show—and for

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those trade buyers from home and abroad who are interested in a wide range of goods and want to examine them at a single fair. The Committee further recommended that the B.I.F. should be more than a trade fair; it should be a pageant of all that is best in British industry.
May I at this point interpose a personal observation? It seems to me that if this recommendation is accepted—as accepted it has been—and if the B.I.F. is to be a shop window and a pageant of all that is best in British industry, there must be no rubbish in the shop window. Those of your Lordships who have been round the Fair year after year, as I have been, must have been struck by the number of exhibitors—not a great many, but a number—who do not seem to have realised the damage they do to British prestige by exhibiting shoddy goods. The trouble is that shoddy goods are contagious. One bad exhibit affects the whole show, and the foreign buyer is apt to take away with him a wrong impression taken solely from the exhibit we should least like to be remembered by. We are not going to hold our place in the markets anywhere if we do not sell our goods more competitively, and our best ground for competition is not mass production, not even keenness of price, but the fine quality of our goods. The new proposals that we are putting forward will not necessarily enable the Fair to display automatically the best possible goods, but I think that the company will have the effect of discouraging those who are still not prepared to put the best goods in our national shop window. Another point which I think I must make is that throughout the years the B.I.F. has provided a service to industry in organising smaller fairs, and it has been responsible for the birth of many specialised trade shows which are now an established and successful means of selling British goods at home and overseas. With the greater flexibility of private management which we now propose for the B.I.F., the Fair will be better able to continue as a general Fair and take under its wing any new displays which may be desirable.
The company's memorandum of association, which your Lordships may have seen, is drawn widely, as such memoranda usually are. It is drawn more widely than people have realised. The
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company now has powers to organise British exhibitions overseas, and in due course it may be able to perform a useful service in organising displays of British goods at overseas trade fairs. Of course, the main concentration at the moment is upon the B.I.F. at home and its reorganisation, but we have a large part to play in fairs abroad. I think that our organisation is a little haphazard. Either it is done by some private company organising national displays, as was done at the Stockholm Fair, or it is done by a chamber of commerce abroad, or by a commercial attaché, or, as in the case of the Baghdad Fair which is shortly to take place, by the Federation of British Industries who have formed a special company for the purpose. I think that these various arrangements have often worked in the past, but not always.
I speak from a rather melancholy experience. I had the honour of representing Her Majesty's Government at the opening of St. Erik's Fair at Stockholm, the big Swedish international fair. Not to put too fine an. edge on it, our performance there was nothing short of lamentable. I was very sorry, but there was nothing I could do about it. I could not explain to the many foreign buyers and representatives who approached me to ask why I did not do this or prevent that, that I had no power whatever to order any manufacturer to exhibit this, or to prevent any manufacturer from exhibiting that. All the Board of Trade were able to do was to set up an information stand and give such encouragement as people were prepared to accept. There was no more that we could possibly do. The displays made by East and West Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Holland, even China, in the aisles of the Fair did not increase my pride in the manufactures displayed by our own industries. That sort of thing does us much harm. If we cannot hold up our heads higher than most of our rivals in the manufacture of high quality goods, we might as well withdraw altogether and not suffer the loss of prestige which undoubtedly we suffered at the Stockholm Fair. I hope that the rearrangement we are proposing will enable the new company to be of powerful assistance to those who wish to have a British shop window abroad.
Despite many advantages of having a permanent home for the London Section

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of the Fair, the Goodale Committee thought that they were not justified, in present economic conditions, in recommending the Government to provide buildings which the Committee, known as the Ramsden Committee, whose Report is also on the Table, some years hack estimated would be of benefit to the B.I.F. The reason was solely economic. 'The proposal would have cost something like £6 million to £8 million at the time it was put forward, land to-day it probably would cost something like £12 million. At the moment, we do not think that that is an economically feasible proposition. The Committee therefore reached the conclusion that the management of the Fair, which had hitherto been in the hands of the Board of Trade. should be entrusted to a company which would be responsible for co-ordinating the policy of the Fair in London, in Birmingham and in any other centres which might be established. I should like to emphasise that point. The company should also make special provision for the management of the London Section.
In saying that, I do not wish to imply any criticism of the civil servants who have been running the Fair in London for a long time past. The Goodale Committee recommended, and the Government have advised that the management of a Fair of this kind is a complex job which can best be done by people who are employed continuously on work of this nature, rather than by civil servants who are switched from one job to another every three or four years. I should be the last person to have a word said against the staff of the Board of Trade who have run this Fair. To start with, they have been running it for some twenty-five or thirty years, and nobody has found any serious criticism to level against the way they have done it. In suggesting that the Goodale Committee are right, and that the Government are wise to accept their views, I recognise that civil servants who change from year to year, and Who, by their own regulations, have one hand tied behind their backs, are not perhaps the best equipped, in their position as civil servants, to run this Fair to the greatest advantage and to the greatest confidence of British industry. The arguments for handing over the management of the Fair to private hands are that civil servants, working within the confines of a Government
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Department, and restricted by rules of Government accounting and accountability, could not run the Fair perhaps quite so well as those who are unrestricted—for example, they cannot build up reserves in good years to carry them over lean periods. If industry were given a greater share in the management, they would regard the Fair more as their own venture and would be prepared to give it greater support than they have in the past.
Therefore, British Industries Fair, Limited, was incorporated on February 3, 1954, to assume responsibility for the Fair. It will have a board of directors of not more than seven in number, comprising a chairman, four independent members, a representative of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and one Government nominee. The power to appoint and remove the chairman and the four independent members of the board is vested in four trustees, who are respectively the Presidents for the time being of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, the Federation of British Industries and the National Union of Manufacturers—here I should like to say how much. it pleases the Government that the President of the National Union of Manufacturers is my noble friend Lord Rochdale—and, lastly, the Chairman of the Trades Union Congress. Sir Arthur Smout, who, until recently was a director of Imperial Chemical Industries., and who during the war was Director of Ammunition Production for the Ministry of Supply, has. I am glad to say, accepted the appointment of chairman of the new company. Sir Arthur has another important qualification for this post, because for a number of years he was on the Fairs Management Committee of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce. Sir Ernest Goodale, who was chairman of the subcommittee which produced the Report to which I have referred, and who has many important interests in the textile industry, has agreed to serve as the director nominated by Her Majesty's Government.
The Bill is a simple one, covering in the first clause the provision of working capital for British Industries Fair. Limited, and. in the second clause, a contribution by Her Majesty's Government towards defraying the expenditure

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incurred by the Company in advertising the fair. Clause 1 empowers the Treasury to guarantee loans up to £100,000 made to the company during the first five years of its life. The maximum liability to Her Majesty's Government, and therefore to the taxpayer, is £100,000; and I think this might well be compared with the £150,000 losses, to which I have referred, which were incurred in connection with five of the post-war Fairs. Not only, therefore, is the liability of the Government limited in amount, but there are adequate safeguards to ensure a proper control of public funds. Subsection (1) states that the Treasury may give guarantees
"in such manner and on such conditions as they think fit."
Subsection (3) states that the Treasury shall inform both Houses of Parliament when any guarantee is given, and shall present a final statement at the end of the first five years when the guarantee ends. This, coupled with the standing of the four trustees, should, I submit to your Lordships, ensure that the management of the Company is in good and prudent hands.
Clause 2 empowers the Board of Trade to make grants towards the cost of advertising the Fair. These grants will be given on such conditions and will be of such amounts as the Board of Trade may determine. No definite annual sum has been fixed, but the Government recognise the importance of advertising the Fair abroad. The number of overseas buyers who visited the B.I.F. has averaged about 15,000 a year over the past three years. This, I believe, is a higher number of business visitors than attended any of the large international trade fairs in Europe: and I would remind your Lordships that, when compared with the Milan Fair, Brussels, Zurich, Stockholm and so on, it is well to bear in mind that the B.I.F. is a national Fair, while all the other big Fairs are International Fairs. The figures I have given to your Lordships indicate the attention which the Government have given to advertising the Fair in the past. This policy will most certainly be continued. It is sometimes said that the European Trade Fairs, to which I have referred, are advertised more widely and more skilfully than the B.I.F.,
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but most of those Fairs are unable to attract nearly as many overseas visitors as we manage to attract to the B.I.F.
This Bill does not mean that Her Majesty's Government are losing interest in trade fairs, in general, or in the B.I.F., in particular. On the contrary, it is because the Government hope that the Fair will become a more effective means of selling British goods that this reorganisation is suggested. I need not remind your Lordships that competition for overseas markets is daily becoming keener and keener. In the difficult days of German and Japanese competition that must lie ahead it is also essential that there should be the closest association between industry and the Government; and the purpose of appointing Sir Edward Goodale as the Government nominee on the board of British Industries Fair, Limited, is to ensure that there shall be close and permanent links between the company and the Board of Trade. The Board of Trade, and my right honourable friend the President, will give the company all the help they can, and will continue to assist industry, as they have done in the past, to ensure that United Kingdom participation in overseas trade fairs also is maintained at the highest possible level. The Government hope that this Bill will create conditions under which the B.I.F. will flourish, and that the Bill, embodying the recommendations of a representative committee of businessmen. who examined the problem thoroughly will commend itself to the House. I conclude by hoping that your Lordships will give this Bill and the B.I.F. your support. The Fair opens on May 3, and closes on May 14, and I hope that as many of your Lordships as possible will visit it during the hours of 9.30 until 6. I beg to Move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2.—(Lord Mancroft.)
6.6 p.m.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, we are indebted to the noble Lord for a most interesting presentation of this Bill. I hasten to assure him that my support for this measure is just about as warm as my support for the slaughtering episode previously was cold. I feel that the noble Lord has done a service by frankly saying many of the things he

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has said. I should like to start from where he left off. I support this Bill. I support it because, in my view, we are starting on the most intensive commercial battle that this country has ever known. Anything that will help this country in its export drive—and that is what we must face as being priority No. 1—should have the support of us all. I can, at least, speak from some experience. Why I like this Bill, and why I like the British Industries Fair, is that, in my view. it is the right type of national advertising. I hold the view that there is far too much money and far too much of the national wealth wasted in persuasive advertising. This is an outstanding example in this country of the form of advertising which is to be commended that is to say, informative advertising.
I think the noble Lord is right. We have to examine why the attendances and the attractions to exhibitors at the British Industries Fair are falling. The noble Lord put his finger on the point. We must in future reorientate our ideas of salesmanship. We must take our goods to our customers: we cannot expect our customers to come here to see the goods. I believe he is right, also, in bringing forward a measure like this which will enable the British Industries Fair to go abroad. His experience in Stockholm was precisely the same as mine when I represented the Board of Trade there during the period of office of the Labour Government. One of the most outstanding examples of the success of industry in taking goods to the customer is to be found in the experience of the motor trade at Geneva. The highest class of product of the British motor industry had an outstanding success there.
But there is something we must do which I suggest the noble Lord and the Government will find most difficult. We have to persuade our manufacturers to intensify their personnel in the overseas markets—because personal contact, by representatives of first-class personality and a great knowledge of the product they are selling, is the finest instrument for selling. Letter writing, and all those old fashioned ideas, have gone. We should take a leaf out of the book of Germany to-day. They are employing intensely-trained young men to go into the bazaars of the East and the remote corners of the
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earth. They are not sending managing directors who have to stay at nice hotels, but hard-working salesmen. That is the way to capture markets. I have always agreed with the noble Lord that some of our manufacturers do not know the first principle of selling. Good articles, good engineering products, have an external finish that would repulse anybody. I hope this new company will have something that the Board of Trade found it difficult to have, and that is the power of veto—the power to say, "If your goods are not up to standard we will not allow you to exhibit." The Board of Trade never had that power. I hope that that will be a cardinal factor, because it is no good this company thinking that its success as a space-letter is the be-all and end-all of its existence.
The other thing I want the noble Lord to do, if he viii, is to try and improve the standard of our commercial attaches in our Embassies and. Ministries abroad. The universities of this country and the Civil Service are no training ground for the hard work of selling in a fierce commercial market. The commercial attaches attached to our foreign service fall far short of the standard that will be required in the future. I am glad that an attempt has not been made to centralise this Exhibition. One of the reasons why the London site of the British Industries Fair has not been a success is because we have no facilities in this great city to house a decent exhibition. I think Earls Court is the most wretched building have ever seen erected for the purpose of a fair. The amenities are deplorable and the catering arrangements are a disgrace—and that is the biggest exhibition building we have in London. We sadly lack some of the fine halls for exhibition purposes that can be seen in some of the great cities of the world.
I have little more to say, because I do not wish to embarrass the noble Lord by being too full of praise. I hope it will be very successful. I am glad the noble Lord has shown such a splendid example. If he will forgive me for a seemingly personal remark, he himself is a shop window this afternoon for the textile industry. That is commendable. They did not do things of that kind when I was in the Board of Trade, and I do not know why they do it now. There

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is one serious suggestion I have to make to your Lordships regarding this Bill. One section of the financial provision of this Bill is a guarantee and the other is a grant. It is a grant in aid towards advertising, and it is a guarantee of £100,000 for its operation. Parliament, in its wisdom, will give a grant in aid for advertising, and there Parliamentary responsibility will end. I believe we need greater Parliamentary responsibility on the guarantee side. I make the suggestion to the noble Lord that the President of the Board of Trade should be the chairman of the trustees. The President of the Board of Trade is the Minister who will be answerable to Parliament for what is done under that guarantee. I hope the noble Lord will find that suggestion acceptable. If he does, I am quite willing to put down an Amendment on Committee stage to that effect.
Let me end by saying that now that the British Industries Fair is passing under new management we should at least pay some tribute—and I join with the noble Lord in paying tribute—to the Exhibitions Department of the Board of Trade. I am glad that Mr. Reading, who was such a figure at the Board of Trade when I was there, is now the Director of the British Industries Fair. With his knowledge and the noble Lord's new company, I think we can expect the Fair to play an added part in what we have to do to maintain the exports and the economy of this country.
6.16 p.m.
LORD ROCHDALE: My Lords, this is a very short Bill, but the shortness and also the small number of your Lordships who I understand wish to speak on it is in no way indicative of the importance of the subject matter, because, underlying this measure, we have something of considerable significance—in fact, the whole future of what has been so aptly described as the national shop window, the British Industries Fair. British industry has sometimes been criticised in times past for paying too little attention to salesmanship. I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, did not rather support that point of view. I have heard it said overseas and also by people who otherwise would be our well-wishers that we are inclined at times to take it too much for granted that our
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goods are wanted and that the world markets are waiting for them to come. Now there may be some justification for that criticism—I hope there is none to-day. At any rate, it would be a dangerous assumption for British industry to act upon now.
To-day, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, says, we cannot afford to neglect any possible way of selling our goods in the highly competitive markets that we are now finding, and we cannot afford to neglect any possible medium that may offer itself to us. I agree with the noble Lord when he says that there is no better way of selling than personal contact. I would add only one point to another connected statement he made, when he referred to the importance of hard-working salesmen. Something more is wanted. The salesmen must not only be salesmen, but they must have quite an amount of technical knowledge. That is equally important. Despite the importance of personal contact, there is a definite place for trade fairs and our participation in trade fairs. My noble friend gave us various figures as to what had been happening in the British Industries Fair over the last few years, and I think that what he told us was quite enough to justify concern as to the trend of things, at any rate in London. So it was right indeed that Her Majesty's Government gave to the Goodale Committee the task of examining the whole position.
In order that we can get the breadth of this examination clearly before us perhaps I should be allowed first to remind your Lordships what the terms of reference of that Committee were. The Committee were asked whether, in the light of recent experience, any change in purpose, character, scope and location of the Fair were called for. Then they were asked:
"Whether it is desirable and practicable that responsibility for the organisation and administration of the Fair should be assumed in full, or in part, by industrial and commercial interests; and if so, to recommend on what basis this should be done."
They were further asked to consider the financial aspects. The result, as my noble friend has said, has been this White Paper (Cmd. 9013) from which I have just been quoting. I should like to join with my noble friend and with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, in applauding the care and

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energy with which that Committee has done its work. The White Paper has been followed up by this new company, and the Bill, as we have been told, establishes the financial arrangements under which it will start its career.
Towards the end of his remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, made a suggestion with regard to the trustees who appoint the directors and chairman. I should like to comment on that, but I feel it is only right that I should declare an interest to which my noble friend has already referred—not a financial interest but a rather special one, in that in my capacity as President of the National Union of Manufacturers I happen to be one of the trustees. In saying what I am going to say, I do not want it in any way to he thought that I should not be delighted on many occasions to serve under the President of the Board of Trade, but on this occasion, quite frankly, I think the noble Lord's suggestion would not be a right one. I will give a reason for that. After all, the trustees have no financial responsibility that trustees in the ordinary sense have. But, in addition to that, I think the answer is to be found in the White Paper, in one of the recommendations of the Goodale Committee. They went to some pains in paragraph 18 to say that what they had suggested in regard to these trustees was in order to take the matter out of the political field. I know the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, agrees with me that industry is much better if it can be kept away from potties. I would say to him that, appreciating what he has in mind, I think it would be better to leave this particular matter as it is, for that reason.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: Will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt? I am grateful to him for taking the trouble to answer my point, and I agree with him; but there is one thing you cannot take out of the political field, however hard you try, and that is the responsibility to the taxpayer for the proper use of the £100,000 guarantee. I would beg him to consider that when you have taxpayers' money, you cannot avoid public responsibility for it. I do not think there is a sufficient responsibility to the public in this particular case. I may be wrong; I am not dogmatic about it; but I would press that point and ask the
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noble Lord to appreciate the difference between the grant-in-aid, which is voted by Parliament in full knowledge and in its wisdom or otherwise, and the other, which is a guarantee.
LORD ROCHDALE: The noble Lord will appreciate that the guarantee is due to run out in 1959, when it is estimated that the company should stand on its own feet. We hope, and I feel certain, that that will be the case. I take the noble Lord's point, but I should have thought, in the circumstances and taking both sides of the case, that the nominee of the President of the Board of Trade on the board itself should be a reasonable safeguard.
However, to pass on, I should like to refer to what my noble friend has already said on the appointment of Sir Arthur Smout to the chairmanship of this company. I certainly wish him well in his task, particularly sc. because I think the task has great opportunities. My noble friend referred to another matter in the White Paper when he alluded to the Goodale Committee's statement that they regarded the British Industries Fair as more than a mere trade fair and as something that should project British industry on the world and be the pageant of all that is best in it. To my mind, that raises the whole concept of what some of us may have felt about the Fair in the past. It puts it on an entirely different level altogether. It offers something with immense scope and great opportunity for imagination and all that is best in private enterprise.
I would only add on that particular point that I am glad that that concept has been translated, admittedly in rather more prosaic words, into the memorandum of association of the company. Conditions have changed so much over the last few years, as has already been referred to—for instance, there has been the passing of the sellers' market, and so on. Most of us have forgotten the sellers' market by now, and there is no doubt that the type of Fair that was applicable yesterday may not be the type of Fair that we want to-day, and may not necessarily be the type of Fair that will be needed to-morrow. I can quite see that, with that need for flexibility, my noble friend could perhaps not be expected to be any more precise in the

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financial arrangements which he described to us. I personally think that there are adequate safeguards.
I come back here to a point that the noble Lord has mentioned. Of one thing which we have we can be sure: we have, first of all, a company which will start off with a sound financial backing. Secondly, we have a chairman and, I have no doubt, soon we shall have a board of directors as well who will have the support and confidence of industry which is essential if the show stands are to be filled. Thirdly, we have a body that, whilst able to enjoy a far greater degree of continuity of direction and management than hitherto, will also be free to pursue a policy as completely flexible as practical considerations permit. The noble Lord opposite mentioned in the course of his remarks the power of veto. I had not thought of that, but I must admit that it seems a very right and proper power for any board of directors to have in regard to its operations. I have heard it suggested in some quarters that this flexibility offers all sorts of opportunities, and in particular the suggestion I heard was that there might even be a floating British Industries Fair to tour the world. I remember in the War hearing of, seeing, and being on floating headquarters ships that bristled with wireless and radar, but whether it would be appropriate for any dictum on such a suggestion to emanate from Parliament at this stage and perhaps prejudice the board whom we want to start off with completely open minds, I am rather doubtful. I certainly wish the new company well.
Before I conclude, like my noble friend and the noble Lord opposite, I should like to add my tribute to those in the Board of Trade who have so gallantly and imaginatively carried on the work of the British Industries Fair in London since it was started, I think in the middle of the First World War. One other thing I should say is that I am very glad that the debate on this Second Reading has passed so harmoniously, because it looks as though the remaining stages of the Bill may pass through quickly. I can assure your Lordships that there is a need for haste. It may not always be recognised that it is already getting rather late for the consideration of the planning of the 1955 Fair, and
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therefore, if there is anything that we can do to hasten this measure so that the work can go ahead, so much the better. I am glad to support this Bill.
6.30 p.m.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, I am grateful to the House for having given this Bill such a friendly welcome. There are very few points, so far as I can understand, that separate either the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, or my noble friend Lord Rochdale and myself. The only one I could detect was this question of the President of the Board of Trade, or one of his representatives, being chairman of the trustees. My Lords, I do not think that is a very good idea. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, that it is essential that there should be Parliamentary oversight of the taxpayers' money; but I think we already have that under the Bill. There are two separate financial provisions: the guarantee of the first £100,000 and the grant. The guarantee can be supervised by Parliament, because under the Bill both the initial application for a guarantee and any subsequent application have to be laid before both Houses of Parliament. Therefore, the application can be debated, and rejected if considered unsatisfactory.
As to the other financial provision, the grants, which are largely for advertising, they, of course, can be debated by Parliament on the Board of Trade Estimates, so that the whole sum that can possibly be expended on this B.I.F., Limited, is subject to Parliamentary control. Even if that were not so, I should not welcome the presence of my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade, under whom I serve so happily, as the chairman of the trustees, because, as my noble friend Lord Rochdale has said, it would do the one thing we are trying to avoid—namely, perpetuate the link between the Board of Trade and industry. It would immediately arouse in the bosoms of businessmen the suspicion that the hand of the President was upon them once again. That is what we want to avoid. I agree that some link must be there, but we have the link through the President's nominee. I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, to think that one over; if he is not happy, I will try to convince him further afterwards. But

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I do not really think that that would be in any way a satisfactory solution to his problem.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I can give the noble Lord my answer now. I think that perhaps the balance of argument is in favour of what the noble Lord has said, and in order that there should be no difference of opinion at all upon this, and in order that we may go forward harmoniously, I shall not raise the matter again.
LORD MANCROFT: I am obliged to the noble Lord. That is the first time I have convinced him of anything in the last six months; it is a very happy event indeed. For my part, the noble Lord has entirely convinced me (not that I needed much convincing) of the need for dynamic salesmanship. And my noble friend Lord Rochdale added strongly to that point. I remember visiting a firms about six months ago, and being impressed by seeing, hanging above the desks of every executive in that firm, a small notice bearing the words: "Our goods will not sell themselves." I wish more manufacturers would bear that in mind. I wish that more manufacturers would realise that sales will not necessarily be achieved by their sitting behind a large cigar in the Savoy Grill. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, is right in saying that the only way that manufacturers can sell goods is by journeying into the market where somebody else is underselling them.
The noble Lord, Lord Rochdale, asked me about a floating B.I.F. I take it that he was referring to the proposal that when the "Gothic" returns from her present happy task she should be reconstructed, rather in the way that the "Campania" was reconstructed during the Festival of Britain. I do not strongly favour that proposal. The "Campania" cost £500,000 to reconstruct; so would the "Gothic." I do not believe for a moment that industry would support such action. It would be very expensive and impracticable, and I do not believe that the harbours of Great Britain would welcome such a project. Furthermore, I think that the principal effort of the B.I.F. should be to attract the buyers to
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the goods, and not take the goods round to the potential buyers. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, raised one more point—namely the subject of commercial attachés. There may be something in what he said—I do not know. He has probably read the Report of the Select Committee on Estimates on this subject. If I may say so, it is a little wide of the Bill, and is something that we might discuss on another occasion. My Lords, I think I have answered most of the major points raised in this debate. I conclude by thanking the House for giving the Bill such a friendly reception.
On Question, Bill read 2, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

HILL FARMING BILL
6.35 p.m.
Read 3(according to Order), and passed.

CONSOLIDATED FUND (No. 2) BILL
Brought from the Commons, endorsed with the Certificate from the Speaker that the Bill is a Money Bill, within the meaning of the Parliament Act, 1911; and read 1.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL [H.L.]
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
RHODESIAN SELECTION TRUST LIMITED AND ASSOCIATED COMPANIES BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1, and referred to the Examiners.

WANKIE COLLIERY BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1 and referred to the Examiners.
House adjourned at twenty-four minutes before seven o'clock.