Sitting of 27 November 1916

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

SHOPS (EARLIER CLOSING ORDER).
Sir C. SWANN: I wish to read a Petition from the wholesale and retail confectioners—
Mr. SPEAKER: The right hon. Gentleman is not entitled to read it. He can summarise it.
Sir C. SWANN: It is only about three sentences.
Mr. SPEAKER: The Order of the House is that Petitions are not to be read. The right hon. Gentleman can summarise it.
Sir C. SWANN: It is from wholesale and retail confectioners of Manchester and the district. They feel very hardly the new arrangement by which all shops have to close at eight o'clock, and they hope, in view of the Christmas trade coming on and in the general interests of trade, the House will give an extension of time for
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the purpose of preventing many small businesses from being entirely curtailed and destroyed.
Mr. SPEAKER: Will the right hon. Gentleman be pleased to bring the same to the Table.

DESTRUCTIVE INSECTS AND PESTS ACTS.
Copies presented of Orders numbered D.I.P. 410 and 413 to 416, declaring the areas described in the Schedules thereto to be infected with Wart Disease and infected areas for the purposes of the Wart Disease of Potatoes (Infected Areas) Order of 1914 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
TREATY SERIES (No. 5, 1916).
Copy presented of Exchange of Notes between the United Kingdom and France and Russia, modifying Article 2 of the Convention of 9th November, 1914, relating to prizes captured during the present war [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

TREATY SERIES (No. 6, 1916),
Copy presented of Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between the United Kingdom and Portugal. Signed at Lisbon,

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12th August,1914 (Ratifications exchanged at Lisbon, 20th May, 1916 [by Command; to lie upon the Table.

PUBLIC WORKS (IRELAND).
Copy presented of Eighty-fourth Annual Report of the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland, with Appendices, for the year ending 31st March, 1916 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE COMMISSION (JOINT COMMITTEE) (REGULATIONS).
Copy presented of Regulations, dated 22nd November, 1916, made by the National Health Insurance Joint Committee, the Insurance Commissioners, the Scottish Insurance Commissioners, and the Welsh Insurance Commissioners, entitled the National Health Insurance (Exempt Persons) Consolidated Regulations, 1916 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
MUNITIONS (HEALTH OF MUNITION WORKERS).
Copy presented of Memorandum No. 15, by the Health of Munition Workers Committee (Effect of Inustrial Conditions on Eyesight [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
ARMY TERRITORIAL FORCE).
Copies presented of Schemes made by the Army Council for the establishment and constitution of Associations for the counties of Aberdeen, city of Aberdeen, Berwick, Brecknock, Buckingham, Carnarvon, Cumberland, Denbigh, Derby, Durham, Elgin, Essex, Flint, Forfar, Gloucester, Hereford, Huntingdon, Inverness, Kent, Kincardine, Kirkcudbright, Lanark, Lancaster, Lincoln, Linlithgow, Merioneth, Monmouth, Montgomery, Nottingham, Oxford, Peebles, Pembroke, Radnor, Roxburgh, Rutland, Selkirk, Somerset, Southampton, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Sutherland, Westmoreland, Wilts, Worcester, Yorks (East Riding), Yorks (West Riding), and Zetland [by Act]; to lie upon the Table
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
  WAR
    GREECE.

      ARMS CAPTURED FROM BULGARIANS.
      Mr. LYNCHasked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any official information showing that guns and rifles handed over to the Bulgarians at Kavala and Fort Rupel by the order of King Constantine's Government have been used by the Bulgarians in recent fighting, and have lately been recaptured by the forces of the Allies; and, if so, whether he is prepared to make any statement on the subject?
      The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Mr. Forster): The answer is in the negative.
      Mr. LYNCH: I shall raise this question to-night.

    CANAL COMPANIES (WAR BONUS).
    Mr. O'GRADYasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has received a statement from the Manchester Ship Canal Company (Bridgewater department), the Rochdale Canal Company, and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal Company pointing out the fact that through pressure of existing circumstances the railways cannot cope with the ordinary goods traffic and that the canal companies have had to undertake a great. deal of such traffic; and whether, in view of the fact that the Government has agreed to cover part of the war bonuses granted to the railway employés, there is any reason why a similar subsidy should not be given to the canal companies, whose employés have tabled a claim for war bonus to meet the increased cost of living?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Pretyman): I have received a statement on the subject, and the Board of Trade have invited representatives of the canal companies to attend a meeting, when the questions raised can be discussed.
    Mr. O'GRADYasked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the position of canal carrying companies in the fact that many

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    such companies are suffering from shortage of labour and that the Leeds and Liverpool Canal Company have at present sixty-boats tied up from shortage of labour; and whether, although there are men of military age still in the employ of these companies, he will, having regard to the fact that canal companies are now doing an increased carrying trade to relieve railway congestion, take steps that no more men, even though of military age, shall be taken from this industry for service with the Colours?
    Mr. PRETYMAN: The importance of retaining the services of workpeople employed in connection with canals has been fully recognised by the Board of Trade, and effect has been given to this view in the list of certified occupations. I am aware, however, that in spite of this reservation there is a shortage of necessary men on certain canals, and representations have been made to the War Office on the subject.

    ENEMY BUSINESSES.
    Major HUNTasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will state the number of enemy businesses or companies in this country which have been sold by the Public Trustee or the Board of Trade under the Trading With the Enemy Acts; and in how many of such cases the name of the purchaser, the conditions of sale, and the price have, previous to the sale, been submitted to and approved by any independent Committee advising the Board of Trade?
    Mr. PRETYMAN: The number of businesses within the provisions of Section 1 of the Trading With the Enemy Amendment Act, 1916, in which either the property has been sold by a Controller appointed to wind up the business or the enemy-owned shares have been sold by the Public Trustee is approximately 200. Particulars as to the sale have not been submitted to any Committee before an offer has been accepted, but in a few cases the Advisory Committee appointed under the Trading With the Enemy Amendment Act have made suggestions as to the persons to whom the property might be offered.
    Mr. PEMBERTON BILLING: How many enemy businesses are there in this country?
    Mr. PRETYMAN: We have dealt with rather over 600.
    Mr. BILLING: Is it the intention of the Government to close all these businesses during the War?
    Mr. PRETYMAN: All enemy businesses are being dealt with. If the hon. Member studies the Act he will see exactly what we are supposed to do and that is what we are doing.
    Major HUNTasked the President of the Board of Trade whether any Committee advising the Board of Trade has considered the claims of our Russian, French, and Belgian Allies to 49½ per cent. at least of the shares of the British Petroleum Company, Limited, the Petroleum Steamship Company, Limited, and the Homelight Oil Company, Limited; and whether such Committee has advised that these claimaints should be excluded from participating in the shares of the three companies and denied the remedy which would cut off their association with the Germans and give the Russian, French, and Belgian claimants full protection over the assets of the Germans in the three companies?
    Mr. PRETYMAN: This question has not been referred to any Committee, but is being dealt with administratively.

    FOOD SUPPLIES.

      FLOUR MILLING ORDER.
      Sir JOHN SPEARasked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware that some bakers and confectioners had bought sufficient flour to supply their requirements until Lady Day next before the Order prohibiting the use of such flour after the 1st January next was issued; and will he, in such cases, allow the use of such flour until exhausted?
      Mr. PRETYMAN: The information available to me does not confirm the suggestion that bakers have stored on their own premises four months' supply of flour. If they have bought for forward delivery, it is to be noted that the customary grades of flour will no longer be made. Further, I understand that the present custom of the trade limits forward sales to twenty-one days' deliveries.
      Mr. W. THORNE: Is it possible to get a return as to the storage of the stock they have in hand?
      Mr. PRETYMAN: We have power to do that. I will consider whether it is necessary.
      Captain C. BATHURSTasked the President of the Board of Trade (1) whether he realises that the effect of the Flour Milling Order will be that the millers, by desisting from taking out. the finer grades of flour formerly used for confectionery, will be able still to supply the bakers with flour quite as white as that supplied heretofore provided that they use no English varieties of wheat in their mixtures; whether, in order not to place any discount upon English wheat and its production, and seeing that the percentage system was tried and failed in France, he will consider the desirability of adopting a colour standard for bread as is now employed in that country; and (2) whether, seeing that under the recently issued Flour Order the authorised percentage in the case of No. I Manitoba wheat selling at 10s. per quarter above English wheat in consequence of its dryness, thinness of skin, and proportion of gluten, and choice white Karachi with 6 to 7 per cent. less moisture than English wheat are fixed at seventy-six, while English wheat with its thick skin producing more bran and an excess of moisture is fixed at the same percentage, he will consider the desirability of altering the latter to seventy so as not to cause English wheat to be eschewed by millers under existing circumstances altogether?
      Mr. PRETYMAN: The scale of percentages in the Milling Order was fixed after consultation with milling experts. The scale does not preclude control by means of a colour test. The hon. and gallant Member is aware that the results obtained by the application of a fixed percentage of extraction, such as is prescribed in France, are not the same as those obtained by the use of a scale of percentages varying with the description of wheat milled. I anticipate that the flour to be milled from to-day onwards will be whiter than many people expect.
      Captain BATHURST: Does my hon. Friend realise that this will deter millers very largely from using English wheat in preference to Manitoba and other wheats?
      Mr. PRETYMAN: The present price does not bear out that interpretation.
      Captain BATHURSTasked the President of the Board of Trade why, in the schedule to the Flour Order, Nos. 1,
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      2, and 3, Manitoba wheats are mentioned, while Nos. 4, 5, and 6 Manitobas, also used by British millers, are not referred to; also whether, in fixing the percentages, he has considered the case of garlicky wheats, such as are found in North Gloucestershire, and which the new Order seems likely to render unmarketable except as cattle food?
      Mr. PRETYMAN: The report of the expert Committee which dealt with the scale of percentages to be required under the new Milling Order related to the classes of wheat practically available at the time at which it was made. I expect to supplement the scale at an early date by the inclusion of other descriptions of wheat.

      MILK.
      Sir J. SPEARasked the President of the Board of Trade if contracts to supply milk extending to Lady Day next will be annulled on 1st January in cases where the price agreed on is above the Government maximum; and, if so, will he provide that a breach of contract under these circumstances shall not be liable to financial penalty?
      Mr. PRETYMAN: Should no supplementary Order be made, the price which may be charged for milk delivered after 31st December next will be required to be within the limits laid down in the recent Price of Milk Order. The effect on contracts after the 1st January raises a legal question on which I cannot express an opinion.

      BASIC SLAG.
      Mr. PENNEFATHERasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture if he is aware that the free use of basic slag on certain soils largely and quickly increases their food-producing capacity; and if the Board of Agriculture will not only urge its use wherever suitable, but also take steps to ensure that farmers are able to get sufficient quantities promptly and at fair prices?
      The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Acland): Yes, Sir; the Board and farmers are very well aware of the facts stated. Transport and manufacturing difficulties are at present preventing the manufacture and delivery of slag fast enough to keep pace with the agricultural demand, and the Board are doing all they can to remove these difficulties.

      MINIMUM PRICES.
      Mr. PENNEFATHERasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture if the Government is prepared to guarantee to farmers and others who break up pasture in order to grow food minimum prices for a fixed period; and, if so, will he state the prices and the period without delay?
      Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSYasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether he is aware that winter wheat is generally sown at this time of year; and, in order to encourage the sowing of a larger area of wheat in Great Britain and Ireland for the coming year, can he say whether the Government will give any guarantee to farmers that their wheat will be taken from them next year at a price which will pay for the increased cost of labour and tillage?
      Mr. ACLAND: I can only refer to the answers which I gave to questions on the same subject by the hon. and gallant Member for the Ludlow Division of Shropshire on the I2th and 18th of last month.
      Mr. PENNEFATHER: Can the right hon. Gentleman state in reply to my question whether it is intended to offer minimum prices for a fixed period?
      Mr. ACLAND: That is exactly what cannot do. If I could have stated that, I would have done so.
      Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: Having regard to the fact that milk and butter, beef and mutton are fetching such high prices, does the right hon. Gentleman expect that farmers will go to the expense of tilling the land if they do not get some guarantee of a minimum price?
      Mr. ACLAND: I can only say that farmers, to their credit, are doing so to the very best of their ability, with the labour that is left to them, being sure, as reasonable men, that prices will keep at a remunerative level.
      Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there was less tillage in Ireland last year than there was the year before?
      Mr. ACLAND: Yes; and yet they were quite certain of very good prices. It is not a question of profit; it is a question of the availability of labour and weather.

      FEEDING STUFFS.
      Mr. PENNEFATHERasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture if he is aware that acorns are a valuable food for pigs and some other live stock; and will he, in view of the scarcity and high prices of other feeding stuffs, endeavour to organise the collection and distribution of the acorns which are now falling and being wasted?
      Mr. ACLAND: The value of acorns as a food for pigs and other live stock has been continuously pressed upon farmers by the Board, and I believe that they study their own interests sufficiently to take the action which the hon. Member suggests wherever it is possible to do so. But I am obliged to him for the opportunity his question gives of once more bringing the matter to the farmers' notice.

    INDUSTRIAL ASSURANCE COMPANIES.
    Major HUNTasked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the figures given of the nineteen industrial assurance companies for 1913 and 1914 to the effect that they collected more than twice as much from working people, in-eluding soldiers and sailors, as they paid out in claims and surrenders, he can now say what he proposes to do to put an end to this state of affairs by which such a sum of money is extracted, without any benefit, from our soldiers and sailors and other working people?
    Mr. PRETYMAN: The Courts Emergency Powers Act contains provisions to prevent the lapsing of small policies which have been in-existence for any substantial time, and I doubt whether any further action with regard to industrial assurances is expedient at present.
    Major HUNT: What has happened to the £10,000,000 taken from the working classes in 1913 without benefit and the £9,000,000 taken from them in 1914 without benefit, and why is there no supervision over these companies as there is over shopkeepers and others? Cannot my hon. Friend see that the working people are being horribly swindled by these companies?
    Mr. SPEAKER: I do not see that question on the Paper.

  MILITARY SERVICE.

    ARMY RESERVE MUNITION WORKERS.
    Major NEWMANasked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in any future adjustment of the option at present given to all men outside of Category A to be enrolled as Army Reserve munition workers, he will consider the desirability of excluding from the option men of under thirty years of age passed for garrison duty overseas, who, in the opinion of the medical board, might be expected after a period of military training to reach the standard required for general service?
    Mr. PRETYMAN: This point will no doubt be kept in mind by the War Office.
    Major NEWMAN: Does not the Board of Trade decide it?
    Mr. PRETYMAN: No; the War Office decides it.
    Major NEWMANasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will instruct managers of employment bureaus that at the moment all men, other than skilled men, who are called up for service in the Army and who are not fit for general service in Category A are to be given an opportunity of enrolling as Army Reserve munition workers; and whether the manager of an employment bureau has authority to pick such men as he deems suitable for. munition work and to refuse permission to enrol and send back to military service the remainder?
    Mr. PRETYMAN: Men enrolled as Army Reserve munition workers must be suitable for employment on munitions work, and it would therefore be most undesirable that all men should be enrolled irrespective of their physical and other qualifications. It rests with the military authorities and not with the Employment Exchange manager to decide whether men who are liable for military service and are not enrolled should go into the Army. In the case of any men not enrolled who are not required for the Army, the Exchanges are instructed to register full particulars of their qualifications in order that they may be placed on any work for which they. are suitable.

    AGRICULTURAL WORKERS.
    Captain WRIGHTasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether, in view of the unequal treatment by tribunals of the calling-up of agriculturists to the Colours, and the
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    consequent unequal distribution of agricultural labour in the various counties he will make representations to the War Office that until this unequal distribution has been remedied no more men bond fide engaged in agriculture in England, Scotland, and Wales shall be called up?
    Mr. ACLAND: Representations to the general effect indicated by the hon. and gallant Member have been made, and the general position as regards agricultural labour is being reviewed by the Board, the War Office, and other Departments concerned.
    Captain WRIGHT: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the census recently taken has yet been sifted?
    Mr. ACLAND: No. It is being very rapidly pressed forward, but no results of the census are yet available.
    Captain WRIGHT: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that farm labourers are now being called for rehearing before the tribunals before that census has been completed?
    Mr. ACLAND: Yes. It is not unreasonable to hear a case, the result of which would not take place until after the new-year; but it would not be reasonable that persons in the exempted class should be taken into the Army before the 1st January, nor do I think they are being taken.
    Mr. R. GWYNNE: Are the Board of Agriculture represented on the local tribunals?
    Mr. ACLAND: The Board of Agriculture have officers on or before; the local tribunals and the Appeal Tribunals to put the agricultural point of view. That has been going on for months.
    Mr. GWYNNE: May I take it that there is no representative on the local tribunal but only on the Appeal Tribunal?
    Mr. ACLAND: Both the local and the Appeal Tribunal.
    Sir FRANCIS BLAKEasked whether arrangements can be made whereby farmers shall have an opportunity of personally interviewing men proposed as substitutes for farm workers so that they may be able to form some idea of the suitableness of such men before they are definitely sent to the farms?
    Mr. ACLAND: The point made by my hon. Friend that farmers shall be assured

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    of the suitability of the substitutes provided has been realised as of great importance by the War Office. It is proposed to meet it by arranging that men shall normally be returned if possible to the same farm or, at any rate, to the same parish as they came from, so that the farmer will know what work the man is accustomed to in civil life before he is asked to consent to the substitution. Agricultural representatives will also be nominated for each district to co-operate with the substitution officers in arranging each case of substitution, and this will be an additional safeguard to the farmer. I am informed also that it is not proposed to call up the man for whom the substitute is offered until after the substitute has actually arrived on the farm and begun work.

    INLAND REVENUE VALUATION OFFICE.
    Major HUNTasked how many men of military age are still employed in Labour Bureaux, also under the National Health Insurance and Unemployed Acts and in land valuation; and whether it is proposed to substitute for men of military age so employed other men who are above military age?
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. McKinnon Wood): The number of permanent officials of military age in the Inland Revenue Valuation Office who are being retained for their civil duties is 149, and all of them are either over the age of thirty or medically unfit for general service. As regards employés on a temporary engagement, the question of military service is one entirely between them and the military authorities, the Commissioners of Inland Revenue being in no way concerned. It would take about a fortnight to get out the figure for the latter class. As regards the other Departments mentioned, I must refer the hon. and gallant Member to the Ministers responsible.
    Mr. PRINGLE: Will the right hon. Gentleman speak a little louder when he speaks at Leicester next week?

    ABSENTEES (COUNTY LIMERICK).
    Mr. LUNDONasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he is aware that two brothers named Lee were arrested at Cahirconlish, county Limerick, last March, on the charge of being absentees under the Military Service Act, and without any trial whatever sent across to Carlisle, where under com-
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    pulsion and without trial they were forced to join the Army; is he aware that these two boys only left their homes on the 24th August, 1915, to take up two temporary posts in an asylum at Carlisle; whether these men ever joined the regiment into which they were supposed to be attached as a protest against the methods of trial they were subjected to; whether one of them was arrested recently and without trial hauled off to Tralee; and, in view of the recent decision of the King's Bench in the case of John Jones, will this man be released from Tralee and given a fair trial?
    Mr. FORSTER: Inquiries have been made into the facts of this case, and it has been ascertained that the brothers Lee were arrested in Ireland in March and brought to Carlisle under escort. They were not taken before a Civil Court at Carlisle, as they elected to serve if posted to an Irish regiment. They were posted to the Munster Fusiliers on the 30th March and given travelling warrants to Tralee. Prior to arrest, the brothers Lee had been resident in Great Britain from the 24th August, 1915, to the 4th March, 1916, and they did not claim to be ordinarily resident in Ireland. Inquiries are being made from Tralee as to what happened subsequent to the men being posted.
    Mr. LUNDON: As these men allege that they were forced into the Army, will the hon. Gentleman, in view of the decision of the High Court of King's Bench that no man can be handed over to a military tribunal without. the right of trial in Ireland, allow the man now in Tralee Gaol to be released and tried before an ordinary tribunal?
    Mr. FORSTER: There is no evidence as far as I know of their being forced into service, but if they had not been willing to join the forces they would have been taken before a Civil Court in Carlisle. I am told that they joined the forces purely voluntarily.
    Mr. LUNDON: In view of the decision of the King's Bench, will the hon. Gentleman have one of these men discharged to be tried by an ordinary tribunal?
    Mr. FORSTER: Perhaps the hon Member will give me notice of that.

    AGE LIMIT.
    Captain WRIGHTasked the Secretary of State for War whether, before calling up additional men to the Colours either

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    by combing out from the ranks of skilled labour, agricultural or technical, or by extending the age limit, he will introduce legislation to enforce in Ireland the same conditions of liability to military service as are in force in the rest of the United Kingdom, and by so doing remove the feeling of injustice which has been raised by this inequality of treatment?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Lloyd George): I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to the answer given by the Prime Minister on 23rd November to the hon. and gallant Member for East Down.
    Captain WRIGHT: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that this feeling is becoming widespread, that Irish labourers are being brought over both for the farms and munitions works, and that English workmen refuse to work with them?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I am aware of the difficulties, and I will look into the matter, but I am not in a position to give any other answer than that I have given.
    Captain WRIGHT: Will the right hon. Gentleman give the Government a lead in this matter?
    Colonel CRAIG: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Prime Minister has not answered my question? I will put it again to-morrow.

    SUPPLY OF CLOGS (KIRKBURTON).
    Mr. ARNOLDasked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that, owing to the calling up for the Army of the two sons, who were assistants, of A. Goldthorpe, clogger, of Kirkburton, near Huddersfield, it is impossible for many miners, children, and others to get their boots repaired without great delay, and that, as A. Goldthorpe is the only clogger in this district, injury to health is being caused to many persons in Kirkburton and the surrounding places; and whether, in order that the health of the population in the matter of footwear may be better safeguarded, he will order the release from the Army of one or both of the sons of A. Goldthorpe?
    Mr. FORSTER: These circumstances would be familiar to the tribunal within whose jurisdiction it lay to decide the case.
    Mr. ARNOLD: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that these people are engaged
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    in the vital work of coal-getting, and can he not do something by way of substitution?
    Mr. FORSTER: I will look into the matter further. I think the responsibility rests with the tribunal.

    RECRUITING.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked theSecretary of State for War whether he is aware that a large proportion of the time and energy of the War Office is devoted to the recruiting of men for the Army as distinct from the training, equipment, and disposal of them after they are in the Army; and whether he has considered the advisability of transferring the whole work of recruiting to a civilian department in the same way as has been done with the supply of munitions?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The business of the Recruiting Department is so intimately connected with purely military problems that it is not considered that any advantage would be gained by its separation from the War Office.
    Mr. SCOTT: As this is intimately connected with other problems that arise, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman if he is aware that the manner in which recruiting is now being carried on is not only causing much dissatisfaction in the country, but is responsible for many of the difficulties with regard to the supply of men?

    REJECTED MEN.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Secretary of State for War, in regard to men rejected for military service after the 14th August, 1915, to whom, in accord ance with the Military Service Act, a notice was sent before the 1st September, 1916, calling them up for medical reexamination, and who were thereupon again rejected, whether those men may consider their rejection final or whether they are to remain constantly subject to having the decision reviewed?
    Mr. FORSTER: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer given on the 23rd November to the hon. Member for Cambridge University.
    Mr. SCOTT: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the form given to these men calling them up states that the examination will be final, and do the War Office respect that decision?
    Mr. FORSTER: I cannot answer without notice in reference to the statement on the form. In regard to the latter part of the question, my answer to the hon. Member for Cambridge University was that the matter would be final.
    Mr. SCOTT: Is this matter in the Department of the hon. Gentleman? May I ask for an answer?
    Mr. FORSTER: Everything with which the War Office is concerned is naturally a concern of mine.

    OFFICERS' DEPARTMENTAL WORK.
    Major HUNTasked the Secretary of State for War (1) how many officers have been employed at the War Office throughout the War; will he consider the advisability of the work of these officers being done by officers wounded or injured in the War; and (2) how many officers of military age now employed at the War Office have not been present at any fighting during the War?
    Mr. THOMASasked the Secretary of State for War the number of officers holding commissions prior to the War now engaged on various Staff positions; and whether any steps are being taken to send these officers to the front, and so relieve others who have been in the fighting line for eighteen months and upwards, and whose experience could be utilised with advantage in positions at home?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: All these three questions deal with the same point. My hon. and gallant Friend opposite and my hon. Friend on my right will find, in a reply given to the hon. and gallant Member for the Enfield Division on 7th March, by the late Under-Secretary of State for War, a statement which answers the latter part of question 46, and of question 52. Arrangements have been made under which officers holding Staff appointments at home and fit for general service are sent to the front in exchange for officers from the Armies in the field, or on replacement by officers who have been invalided and have become fit for Home service.
    Mr. REDDY: How many officers who are in Major's uniform in this House have been at the front, and how long have they been there?

    APPLICANTS FOR EXEMPTION.
    Mr. JOWETTasked the Secretary of State for War if the statement made by
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    the chief military representative of the Enfield district at the Enfield Tribunal on the 18th instant to the effect that tribunals are to be asked to instruct applicants for exemption passed for B 2, B 3, C 2, and C 3 to register at the nearest Labour Exchange within fourteen days so that young men can be freed for general service correctly represents the policy now in force; and, if so, whether the same policy is, or is about to be, applied to men so classified who are making no application to the tribunal for exemption?
    Mr. FORSTER: I am inquiring into the statement alleged to have been made by the military representative at Enfield, but I may point out that it is open to tribunals to instruct applicants for exemption who are in military categories B 2, B 3, C 2, and C 3 to register at the Labour Exchange if they desire to make the proviso to a man being exempted that he undertake work of national importance, and men who, under those directions, register at an Exchange and are placed by the Exchange in munition work as substitutes or as reinforcements of labour receive their certificates of conditional exemption and retain them so long as they remain in such employment. Similarly, any men in B 2, B 3, C 2, and C 3 can register at an Exchange, and if similarly placed as a substitute or reinforcement will receive the same conditional certificate of exemption as if they had registered and obtained employment under the direction of the tribunal.

    HOSPITAL CONDITIONS (INDIA).

      STATEMENT BY MR. CHAMBERLAIN.
      Major HUNTasked the Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been called to the bad and verminous condition of another miliary hospital in India, and as to the desire to keep down expenses without regard to the comfort and well-being of the sick and wounded men; and whether he proposes to take any action in the matter?
      The SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Mr. Chamberlain): In explanation of his question my hon. and gallant Friend has been good enough to send me a newspaper extract which does not specify the name of the hospital about which complaint is made or give the name of the person who makes the charges. I do not know whether I am right in assuming that the hospital

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      intended is Colaba Hospital, but allegations reached me recently on the authority of an officer who, I regret to say, refused to give his name, to the effect that the roof at that hospital was full of bugs which dropped on the beds, that there was no ice, that there was great scarcity of linen, and that officers arriving from the front were put in unwashed pyjamas. I telegraphed to the Government of India expressing my regret that the officer making these serious charges refused to allow his name to be given to me and would not come forward to substantiate them. But I added that as I was informed that he was a thoroughly reliable person I must ask the Government of India to investigate and report upon these charges. I said that I should be glad if the Governor of Bombay could be associated with the inquiry. To this telegram I received the following answer:
      "The General Commanding at Bombay was requested to investigate the allegations made in collaboration with His Excellency the Governor. They reported that there was at all times in October (winch was the date named) an ample supply of clean linen and pyjamas kept specially for officers: that the supply of ice never-ran below 900 lb. on any day in that month; and that no complaint was entered during the whole month in The complaint book kept for that purpose in the officers' ward. They reported further that every possible means had been taken to eradicate bugs by the use of the cyanide process in wards and of blow lamps for beds, and they stated that they were satisfied that there was little cause for complaint under this head and none under the others."
      In transmitting this Report the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Charles Monro, said that it would be clear that the allegations made were groundless and unjust to a body of medical officers and ladies who were doing their utmost to make the sick as comfortable as possible. The Commander-in-Chief added that he inspected all the hospials in Bombay towards the close of October, and he gave it as his opinion that they were admirably conducted and organised in every respect, adding, "The responsibility is mine and I accept it." In forwarding this Report to me the Commander-in-Chief and the Viceroy make an earnest protest against the dissemination of such charges on anonymous authority against deserving officials who are working their hardest for the public good.
      I hope the House will allow mo to add that, having now called upon the Government of India to investigate several of these anonymous allegations, and having found in each case that they were either grossly exaggerated or altogether without foundation, I think I am entitled to ask
      20
      before ordering further investigation that the people who make the charges shall give evidence of their good faith by supplying full particulars and by themselves coming forward to substantiate the charges which they make.
      Sir J. D. REES: Were not serious allegations made against a hospital at Wellington, which proved upon inquiry to be totally unfounded, and caused great annoyance to those concerned in the management?
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: Yes, Sir; that is another case in which allegations were made which I thought it my duty to investigate, and they proved to have the very slightest foundation.
      Mr. DILLON: Can the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that any officer or medical officer who substantiates such charges will not be persecuted?
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: So long as I am responsible—and I think in a matter like this I can speak for my successors—no officer who discloses in a proper way defects in our administration which ought to be remedied, and who proves the case which he alleges, will be penalised for so doing. I do not think that I ought to give, or that the House would expect me to give, an indemnity to everyone who repeats tittle-tattle and gossip without a scrap of foundation.
      Mr. DILLON: I said, if he proves his charges.
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: If he proves his charges, so long as I am responsible, no officer shall suffer for making them.
      Mr. BILLING: Does that answer also refer to the inspection of hospitals occupied by rankers?
      Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The particular complaint referred to a hospital for officers and to the officers' quarters in the hospital. The Commander-in-Chief's reply stated that he had personally inspected all the hospitals in Bombay and his commendation applied to them all.

    INDIAN MEAL.
    Mr. LUNDONasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture whether millers in Great Britain are allowed to extract any percentage of oil from Indian meal; and, if so, how much?
    Mr. ACLAND: There is no restriction on the extraction of oil from maize, or the meals of maize, but it does not follow that the product after oil has been extracted can be sold as Indian meal or maize meal without disclosure of the fact of the extraction.

    NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.
    Mr. YEOasked the Postmaster-General whether, seeing that Christmas Day falls on a Monday, and that separation allowances for soldiers' and sailors' wives and families are usually paid on Mondays, he will consider the advisability of permitting payments due on 25th December, 1916, to be made on the previous Friday or Saturday?
    Sir GEORGE RADFORDasked whether arrangements can be made with the Post Office for the payment of separation allowances which in the ordinary course would be paid on Monday, the 25th December, on the previous Saturday?
    Mr. FORSTER: This is being considered by the War Office and General Post Office, and I hope it will be possible to make an announcement shortly.
    Mr. YEO: Will the hon. Gentleman consider the advisability of paying for two weeks at the beginning of that week, and thus saving trouble to the Post Office and that Department?
    Mr. FORSTER: It is being considered in all its aspects.

    PRISONERS OF WAR (EXCHANGE).
    Mr. J. M. HENDERSONasked the Treasurer of the Household whether any steps have been taken, or will be taken, to exchange British and German prisoners interned in Switzerland so that such as are incapacitated for military service may be enabled to return to their homes and to civil employment?
    Mr. JAMES HOPE (Treasurer of the Household): We have made a proposal which has, we understand, been accepted by the German Government, that British and German prisoners of war who have been transferred to Switzerland shall be repatriated if found totally unfit for military service.

    SIR THOMAS BEECHAM.
    Major HUNTasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, in view of the fact that Sir Thomas Beecham is of military age, he can say what tribunal exempted him from military service?
    Mr. FORSTER: Enquiries are being made.

    INCOME TAX.
    Mr. FELLasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if the attention of the Income Tax authorities is being directed to the number of persons who are making large profits out of commissions on contracts and otherwise owing to the vast expenditure on the War, and who have no offices and live at hotels and temporary residences and hope by this means to avoid the payment of Income Tax, Super-tax, and War Profits Tax; and will he say how he proposes to collect the tax without taxing the profits at the source from which they are derived?
    The CHANCELLOR Of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. McKenna): This important matter is engaging the attention of the Board of Inland Revenue, and I shall be much obliged if my hon. Friend will be good enough to communicate to me any suggestions that he has for strengthening the law in this connection.
    Mr. FELL: May I be allowed to suggest that contracts should contain a clause to the effect that every person receiving a contract from the Government should be an agent for the Government and deduct the Income Tax from any commission which he pays?
    Mr. McKENNA: I will be glad to consider any suggestion of the kind.

    TILLAGE (IRELAND).
    Mr. LUNDONasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he can see his way to introduce a Bill immediately with a view of compelling holders of large grazing tracts of land throughout Ireland to till a certain amount of it next spring as well as to let by conacre a portion of the same to poor people at a reasonable price for the purpose of sowing potatoes?
    The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Duke): The question of an increase of tillage, both as an emergency food-supply measure and in the general interests of agricultural development in Ireland, has been receiving the attention of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, but I am advised that the adoption of compulsory legislative methods such as are suggested in the question for one class of owners would raise serious difficulties and would not be likely to advance the object the hon. Member has in view.
    Mr. FIELD: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is necessary to have a certain amount of tillage even on grazing farms so that the cattle may be kept during the winter and spring months, and that, therefore, it would be to the advantage of that special section to which he refers that there should be more tillage?
    Mr. DUKE: Yes, I am aware of that. I am also aware that not only among owners of land on a large scale, but also among owners of land available for dairy and grazing purposes on a small scale there is a strong disposition to make the largest amount from it by using the land for grazing and dairying.
    Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: How long more will the Department be considering this question before taking any action?
    Mr. DUKE: If the hon. Member will give notice of that question, I will see whether the Department will give an answer.

    ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY.
    Mr. LUNDONasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he is aware that a head constable of the Royal Irish Constabulary at Kinsale was recently victimised through the findings of a Court of Inquiry; whether for some time previous to the holding of the inquiry this head constable and the district inspector were continually at loggerheads; whether one of the chief causes of this inquiry was due to the action of the head constable in charging the district inspector with using a motor vehicle without licence; and, in view of the animus which the inspector was possessed of against this victim, will a further inquiry be held and have the same constituted of impartial men?
    Mr. DUKE: The head constable referred to was recently tried by a constabulary Court of Inquiry for a number of offences against discipline. He was found guilty of all the charges except one, and the proceedings of the Court were confirmed by the Inspector-General. Being satisfied that the head constable was quite unfit for his rank, or any post of responsibility, the Inspector-General, in desiring to deal leniently with the case, directed that the head constable should send in an application to be retired on pension. He has done so, and he will be discharged on pension on the 30th instant. I am assured there is no ground for the suggestion that the district inspector in preferring charges against the head constable was actuated by any improper motive. The charges were impartially investigated, and there is no ground for holding any further inquiry.

    PETROL CONTROL (IRELAND).
    Mr. PATRICK O'BRIENasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether the Petrol Control Committee is the sole authority for the issue of permits for the purchase of petrol; will he state under what Statute or in pursuance of what duty a district inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary has recently served notice in writing on an Irish firm in Kilkenny warning them that the sale of petrol to any person is prohibited unless a permit issued by the police is produced by the purchaser or unless the licence issued by the Petrol Control Committee is countersigned by the police; will he state by whose authority it has been decided that such licences are invalid unless countersigned by the police; and, if this Regulation is not sanctioned by any Statute and is not permitted in England, will he take steps to see that officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary obey the law and do not take upon themselves powers which have not been given to them?
    Mr. DUKE: In the procedure adopted by them in this matter, the police were acting in accordance with instructions from the military authorities in Ireland. I am making inquiries as to the matters of law which are involved in the question.
    Mr. O'BRIEN: I will repeat the question.

    SCIENCE TEACHING (IRELAND).
    Mr. BOLANDasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he has now received a reply from the Intermediate Board as to their knowledge of the Scottish system of testing students in experimental science?
    Mr. DUKE: Yes, Sir. The Board inform mo that in Scotland the schools frame their own programmes in science, and, therefore, a universal common examination is impossible, but that it cannot be said that written examinations in science are not held in Scotland and that the examination is different at different schools. The Board consider that they are not at liberty to adopt the methods of the Scottish Education Department, for the reason that the statutory powers of that body are entirely different from those of the Board.
    Mr. BOLAND: Will the right hon. Gentleman acquaint himself exactly with what is done in Scotland by inquiring at Dover house which is within a quarter of a mile from this House?
    Mr. DUKE: If I have a free hour some day, I will be delighted to do so.

    ROYAL WEST KENT BATTALION.
    Mr. ROWLANDSasked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that men of the Royal West Kent labour battalion working at Erith have been billeted on the householders of Erith, Slades Green, etc.; is he aware that the payments for the billets have been irregular, in some cases a period of three weeks having elapsed; and, as these are mostly working-class people who occupy the houses, will he see that they receive their money regularly every week?
    Mr. FORSTER: Inquiries are being made into this case, and I will let my hon. Friend know the result.

    NAVAL DIVISION (10th ROYAL DUBLIN FUSILIERS).
    Mr. REDMONDasked the Secretary of State for War whether the 10th Royal Dublin Fusiliers are still attached to the Naval Division; and, if so, what reason there is for not attaching them to an Irish Division?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I recognise, of course, the special interest taken by my hon. and learned Friend and by other Members in the allocation of this battalion, but it is, I fear, impossible to make exceptions to the rule that military information in regard to details of the order of battle must not be made public. The point raised is one for the Commander-in-Chief in France to settle, and I have no doubt that he has done and will do all he can to secure the close association of Irish units, but he must, of course, have regard to paramount military considerations and he must also bear in mind the fact that the principle underlying my hon. and learned Friend's question is capable of very wide extension, and, if so extended, would in effect remove from the Commander-in-Chief a large part of his discretion in regard to the disposition of his troops. The power to use and dispose of troops according to military exigencies and to military exigencies alone is, of course, an essential and indefeasible function of a Commander-in-Chief.
    Mr. REDMOND: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, in view of the fact that serious complaints have been made that Irish reserves are not being sent to fill up certain gaps in, the Irish Division, and in view of the fact that the 10th Royal Dublin Fusiliers was raised as a reserve battalion in Ireland, is it not reasonable for us to ask that they should be sent to the Irish Division?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I have no doubt that consideration is present to the mind of the Commander-in-Chief. As a matter of fact, my hon. and learned Friend knows that it was brought specially to his notice, but I made it perfectly clear that the allocation of this battalion must be subject to military exigencies in France, and as the Commander-in-Chief has alone to be the judge of what ought to be done under these circumstances it would be a very serious matter for us to interfere from the War Office with his discretion.
    Mr. REDMOND: Am I to understand that the battalion is not, or will not be, attached to the Irish Division?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: No. My hon. and learned Friend simply referred to a single battle—
    Mr. REDMOND: That is the other question which I postponed at the request of the right hon. Gentleman. This question is simply whether the 10th Royal

    27
    Dublin Fusiliers are still attached to the Naval Division, and, if so, what reason is there for not attaching them to the Irish Division?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: My hon. and learned Friend has asked me if I can state whether there is any intention of retaining them in their present position. I clearly could not give an answer to that without consulting the Commander-in-Chief.
    Captain W. A. REDMOND: What have the 10th Royal Dublin Fusiliers to do with the Naval Division?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The same question might be put in reference to any Scotch, Irish, English or Welsh men in the Naval Division?
    Captain W. A. REDMOND: Why are military regiments put in the Naval Division?

    QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to the number of questions answered by the Financial Secretary to the War Office on matters outside his own Department and upon which he has had confessedly neither time nor opportunity to inform himself fully; whether he is aware that this system is unsatisfactory to Members who desire to receive information from a responsible Minister, and that, by distracting the attention of the Minister from his own Department, it is detrimental to the exercise of proper financial control; and whether he proposes to take any action?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: It is quite true that my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary has often to answer questions not immediately concerned with his own Department, but these have always been approved and considered by the responsible head of the branch before my hon. Friend gives them. It is quite impossible for any Secretary of State, with the multifarious and responsible duties cast upon him, to undertake to answer personally all questions for which my hon. Friend is not responsible. If Members would only realise the enormous amount of trouble given to an already overworked Department by these questions, many of which have already been
    28
    answered in this House, I am sure they would consider whether there are no other means of eliciting the information they seek. For instance, there are many questions which can be far more speedily answered by direct reference to the Departments of the War Office immediately concerned, and I am circulating to Members in the next few days a leaflet giving information on this subject.
    Mr. SCOTT: Arising out of this indication that "the weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of his fate," may I ask the right hon. Gentleman how he reconciles this with his previous answer, that he will not consent to the devolution of the work of supplying soldiers to a Civilian Department.
    Mr. HOGGE: Will my right hon. Friend consider the advisability of sending out regularly to Members of this House such things as Army Orders which convey information, and which would obviate the necessity of a great many of us putting down these questions?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Yes; but I must consider that very carefully before giving an answer. Perhaps my hon. Friend will put a question down.
    Mr. SCOTT: Does the right hon. Gentleman not think there is need of devolution?

    MILITARY DECORATIONS (POSTHUMOUS HONOURS).
    Mr. REDMONDasked the Secretary of State for War whether it is under consideration to alter the Army Order relating to posthumous honours, so that decorations other than the Victoria Cross may be conferred in cases where the officer or man concerned met with death in the performance of acts of conspicuous gallantry in the field; and whether he is aware that there is a feeling that this change should be made?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I am aware that there is a feeling that there should be some alteration in the present practice, and I explained in an answer I gave to my hon. and learned Friend on 25th October the steps I have taken. I fear I can add nothing to-day. The matter is not one which can be settled offhand.
    Mr. REDMOND: Has this point been under investigation. Is the right hon.

    29
    Gentleman aware that I was informed by the War Office that the only thing that had been under investigation and settled was that a posthumous honour might be given in the case of a man who died after the honour had been allotted to him but before it was actually given to him, and that if the death occurred in the performance of the deed of heroism it was impossible?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: that was undoubtedly the original decision, but the whole question of posthumous honours is under review at the present moment, and I am not in a position to answer, but I hope to be able to do so soon.

    ARMY FURLOUGH.
    Mr. THOMASasked the Secretary of State for War whether, in view of the hardships of non-commissioned officers and men who have been in the fighting line practically since the commencement of the War, and the fact that numbers of men have been in training in this country for nearly twelve months, arrangements will be made to give relief to men at the front by those fully trained at home?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I quite agree with the hon. Member that men who have had long continuous service without leave should have every facility given to them for such leave this winter. The Commander-in-Chief in France is most sympathetic to this view, and I think we can safely leave it in his hands.

    BILLETING RATES.
    Captain C. BATHURSTasked the Secretary of Stats for War whether he is aware that in Salisbury and its neighbourhood, where the cost of living is exceptionally high, the allowance for billeting soldiers and munition workers is only 2s. 6d. a day for the first man and 2s. 3d. per day for each additional man; if so, at what date were these rates fixed, and when, in view of the recent considerable increases in the cost of food, it is proposed to revise them?
    Mr. FORSTER: The question of billeting rates is under consideration.
    Mr. CAUTLEYasked the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether the
    30
    scale under which allowances for lodging, board, and washing are now made to nurses mobilised for military service is still the same as that prescribed by the standing orders for the Territorial Force Nursing Service as issued for the year 1912, and, if so, whether by reason of the increased cost of living, he will now take steps to increase such allowances?
    Mr. FORSTER: The question of increasing the board and washing allowance is under consideration.

    RECOVERED SOLDIERS (REGIMENTS).
    Mr. TICKLERasked the Financial Secretary to the War Office if he is aware that men after being in hospital are being sent to other regiments instead of to their own regiment on their return to duty; and can he arrange that this practice shall be discontinued, as it is causing dissatisfaction to the men?
    Mr. FORSTER: On discharge from hospital men are sent to join the reserve battalion of their own regiments. Owing to shortage of accommodation some men have been temporarily attached to other units; but, on becoming fit to proceed overseas, they are returned to the reserve battalions of their own regiments before joining a draft.
    Mr. BUTCHER: Will the hon. Gentleman see that they are sent back to their own regiments in France?
    Mr. FORSTER: Yes, as far as possible.

    DISTURBANCES IN IRELAND.

      UNTRIED PRISONERS.
      Mr. DILLONasked the Prime Minister whether he can now give a day for the discussion of the Motion in reference to the Irish political prisoners standing in the name of the Member for East Mayo: ["That the time has come when all untried prisoners detained in connection with the Irish insurrection should be released, and that all the Irish prisoners convicted of complicity in that insurrection should, in accordance with the modern practice of civilised States, be treated as political prisoners"?]
      The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith): I hope to communicate with my hon. Friend on this matter almost immediately. If he then still wishes to debate this matter I will certainly endeavour to provide facilities.
      Mr. DILLON: This question has been postponed five times. What day shall I say for it?
      The PRIME MINISTER: My hon. Friend need not put it again. I hope to communicate with him on the matter.
      Mr. DILLON: I beg to ask the Home Secretary a question to which I think he can reply without notice, namely, whether his attention has been called to the refusal of the Governor of Frongoch Camp to allow reporters to be present at the court-martial held on Irish prisoners on Saturday, and whether the Governor stated that this refusal was based on express instructions received from the Home Office, and whether that statement was well founded, and whether the court-martial was obliged to adjourn its proceedings to a locality outside the precincts of the camp in order to comply with the law regarding that it should be an open Court, and whether he will give immediate directions to the Governor to allow the court-martial to sit as an open Court in the precincts of the camp?
      The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Herbert Samuel): As the hon. Member has stated, I received no notice of this question. I know nothing of the procedure of this court-martial, which is held under military law, and the matter is one, I think, for the decision of the War Office. I am not aware that any instructions were given by the Home Office in respect of the admission of reporters. The matter did not come before me personally, but I will at once make inquiries to see exactly how the matter stands.

    ANTWERP EXPEDITION.
    Mr. PRINGLEasked the Prime Minister if his attention has been called to the fact that the story of the Antwerp Expedition is being told by the late First Lord of the Admiralty in the columns of the "Sunday Pictorial"; and whether, in view of this, he will now consent to the publication of the official Papers relating to this subject?
    The PRIME MINISTER: The Antwerp Expedition was only an incident in an extensive plan of operations, and it would be impossible to submit the whole of the relevant Papers without disclosing matters which, for military reasons, it is undesirable at present to disclose.
    Mr. HOUSTON: Will the right hon. Gentleman take into consideration the fact that the publication of the official Papers might deprive the ex-First Lord of a profitable weekly source of income?

    SUBMARINE MENACE.
    Mr. GEORGE LAMBERTasked the Prime Minister whether, having regard to the anxiety felt for the safety of our transport and food services, he will assure the House, by Secret Session or otherwise, that the hostile submarine menace is well in hand?
    The PRIME MINISTER: My right hon. Friend may rest assured that this subject engages the unremitting attention of the responsible authorities, and that all possible steps are being taken to deal with it.

    FRANCHISE LEGISLATION.
    Major NEWMANasked whether, before the House is asked to undertake legislation to bring the Government of Ireland Act into immediate operation, or other legislation of a party character that might involve the break-up of the Government, the Special Register Bill, or some similar measure to enable soldiers and sailors to exercise the franchise, will be placed on the Statute Book?
    The PRIME MINISTER: No such legislation is at present in contemplation, and I see no reason to give a contingent undertaking in regard to it.
    Mr. BILLING: Does the right hon. Gentleman think it right or just that the old register should be used for the forthcoming election?

    BOARD OF PENSIONS.
    Mr. SCANLANasked the Prime Minister whether it is the intention of the Government to appoint a Parliamentary Secretary to the office of the Board of Pensions proposed to be set up by a Bill

    33
    now under the consideration of this House; and, if so, will he explain why such an appointment should be made so long as the head of the Board is a Member of this House?
    The PRIME MINISTER: The answer is in the affirmative, and for the reason given by my right hon. Friend in speaking on the Financial Resolution on Thursday last.

    PARIS ECONOMIC CONFERENCE.

      LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH'S COMMITTEE.
      Mr. G. TERRELLasked when the interim Report of Lord Balfour of Burleigh's Committee will be published or a copy issued to Members?
      The PRIME MINISTER: I cannot answer this question till His Majesty's Government have had an opportunity of considering this Report.
      Mr. TERRELL: May I ask whether, in view of the great urgency of this matter, the Report, will be issued to Members soon?
      The PRIME MINISTER: I cannot say as to that. The Report will be considered by the Reconstruction Committee, probably not this week, but early next week. The Government are fully alive to the urgency of the matter.

    COAL SUPPLY (IRELAND).
    Mr. FIELD(by Private Notice) asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether it is a fact that coal is selling at Garston for 25s. and 26s. per ton; whether the cross-Channel freight is 10s. 6d.; whether it is true that the current prices in Dublin are 42s. to 43s.; whether he is aware that the want of fuel at a moderate price is causing much distress and dissatisfaction in Dublin city and suburbs; whether he can state what the Government is doing, or proposes to do, at once as the need is urgent?
    Mr. DUKE: I believe the hon. Member's figures to be substantially correct, but I have no official means of ascertaining coal prices in England, and I am not aware of difference in principle in the conditions of trade in Dublin as compared with other business centres which would warrant special legislation for the case of Dublin. Section 13 of the Local Government Act of 1898 provides means by which the local
    34
    authorities are able to afford some assistance, and the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Dublin are again instituting a special fund which will, I trust, receive generous public support.
    Mr. FIELD: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if the Government will cooperate with the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress in endeavouring to meet the wants of the people of the City of Dublin?
    Mr. DUKE: I can assure my hon. Friend if he or any of the other hon. Members for Dublin will point out any effort which the Executive can make without legislative action I shall be delighted that it should be made, particularly as matters at present stand, as I am advised that it is confirmed in the way I have mentioned and which would have the effect my hon. Friend desires and which I would desire also.
    Mr. FIELD: May I have an opportunity of talking it over with the right hon. Gentleman to see if we can arrive at a solution?

    GERMAN RAID IN CHANNEL.
    Mr. BILLING(by Private Notice) asked the First Lord of the Admiralty if there was any other reason than a desire for accuracy in delaying the Admiralty Communiqués on the enemy destroyers' raid off Ramsgate on Thursday night until after the publication of the German official statement?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara): There was no other reason.
    Mr. BILLING: Are we to understand that it is necessary to wait for the German official communiqué before the Admiralty can make up its mind as to the results of a raid?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: No, Sir; No, Sir! The German destroyers attempted to approach the north end of the Downs during the night of the 23rd and 24th November. Our communiqué was issued on the evening of the 25th November, and had no reference to the issue of the German communiqué.
    Mr. BILLING(by Private Notice) asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he had any information of the part played by the German air fleet during or immediately

    35
    preceding the raid by the enemy's destroyers off Ramsgate on Thursday night, and what part, if any, our Naval Air Service took in the action?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative. The answer to the second part is, none.
    Mr. BILLING: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether his attention has been called to the fact that, although we have many naval air squadrons, up till recently they have been absolutely and definitely forbidden to drop bombs on Zeebrugge; and that it is only by the repeated representations of the Wing commanders that they have been allowed to do this?
    Mr. SPEAKER: That does not arise out of the question.

    ROYAL COMMISSIONS (QUESTIONS).
    Commander BELLAIRS: Mr. Speaker, may I put to you a question affecting the powers of Members of this House to ask questions relating to Royal Commissions'! I believe it was decided, owing to an abuse of the privilege, that Members should not be allowed to ask questions affecting Royal Commissions. This House has latterly appointed two Royal Commissions. May I ask you of whom we may ask questions affecting the progress those Royal Commissions are making, or are they sitting altogether in camera?
    Mr. SPEAKER: I do not know whether or not these Commisions are sitting in camera. Royal Commissions are appointed by His Majesty for the purpose of making certain inquiries, and it is the duty of the Commissioners not to give information except to His Majesty. That information will be in any report that is presented.
    Commander BELLAIRS: Is there anything to reconcile us to the former practice of which this House was possessed of being able to question Royal Commissioners?
    Mr. SPEAKER: No such power ever existed so far as I am aware.
    Mr. LOUGH: Was it not the original practice that proper questions as to the proceedings of these Commissions might be asked from the Home Secretary?
    Mr. SPEAKER: I have known questions asked of the Home Secretary as to when a Commission was likely to report, and I think the Home Secretary would probably
    36
    inquire from the Chairman for the information; but I do not think there can be any question asked of the Commissioners themselves as to what they are doing.
    Mr. PRINGLE: Does your ruling, Mr. Speaker, apply to Statutory Commissions as distinct from Royal Commissions—that is to say, Statutory Commissions set up by Act of Parliament, and which, by Statute, have to report to both Houses of Parliament?
    Mr. SPEAKER: I had better look into that matter. My observations related only to Royal Commissions.

    Irish Egg Trade.
    Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSYasked the President of the Board of Trade whether the Board of Trade received a petition from the London Chamber of Commerce-asking it to interpose to protect the Irish egg trade against the negligence of the railway companies in allowing the eggcases to be exposed to rain during transit and many of them to be broken and others delayed in transit until the contents were stale, while some of them were lost and no notice was sent to the addressees; and whether, in view of the loss to traders and co-operative societies in Ireland, he will take immediate action to prevent the ruin of the Irish trade and oblige the railway companies to do what has already been done in bringing eggs-from the Continent, namely, to provide special arrangements for the carriage of Irish eggs to the English markets?
    Mr. PRETYMAN: Complaints have been received from the London Chamber of Commerce and from traders regarding the handling of this traffic, and I understand that the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland have arranged a conference on the subject with the railway companies, at which-the London Chamber propose to be represented.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
  Mr. STUART-WORTLEY: May I ask the Prime Minister what business will be taken upon Wednesday and Thursday?
  The PRIME MINISTER: On Thursday we hope to take the Report and possibly the Third Reading of the Board of Pensions Bill. As to Wednesday, I will say to-morrow.

BOARD OF PENSIONS (SALARIES AND REMUNERATION).
Resolution reported, "That it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of the salaries and remuneration payable to the President, officers, and servants of the Board of Pensions constituted under any Act of the present Session establishing a Board of Pensions."
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution."
Sir H. DALZIEL: This Resolution asks the House to confirm the action of the Committee in providing certain moneys. I would like to ask from what source, from what Vote, is the Pensions Minister being paid at the present time? Is he being paid as Paymaster-General; if so, will he receive his salary as occupant of that office while he receives this one? We ought to know whether any salary attaches to the post of Labour Adviser. Is the right hon. Gentleman going to occupy both posts? Will any salary appear on the Votes for the Labour Adviser? Can my right hon. Friend say what the amount of his salary is to be, and also that of the Parliamentary Secretary?
The PAYMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. A. Henderson): It appears to me that the first question is entirely outside the scope of this Bill. And it will be very much better if my right hon. Friend will address any questions in regard to my personal position and salary to the Prime Minister. In regard to the second question, the scale of a Parliamentary Secretary to a Minister with a salary of £2,000 is £1,200.
Mr. PRINGLE: My right hon. Friend has somewhat misinterpreted the terms
48
of the Bill. I find in Clause 5, Sub-section (2), the words:
"There shall be paid, out of moneys provided by Parliament, to the President of the Board, unless he holds another salaried office …"
Consequently the question put to my right hon. Friend was quite relevent to the Bill constituting the Board of Pensions. Obviously we must consider whether any additional charge is now being placed upon the Treasury. The answer to that question depends upon whether the prospective holder of the office at the present time holds a salaried office. As I understand, my right hon. Friend asks whether the prospective Minister of Pensions at the present time holds a salaried office in the Cabinet. We understand that the office by which name he is known, that of Paymaster-General, is an unsalaried office. We also know that he holds another office which does not appear in the Votes, which is only a recent creation and which has no statutory existence. We do not even know whether or not that is a salaried office. Under these circumstances, I think that my right hon. Friend is bound to give some information to the House: in the first place, as to whether or not he does hold another salaried office, because in the event of his holding another salaried office it is a question whether there will be any effective payment under this Resolution so long as he retains the Presidency of the Board of Pensions. The question is, I think, relevent, and I hope he will see that it is so and will give a reply.
Mr. HENDERSON: I again ask that the question should be referred to the Prime Minister. The only promise that I can give is this: that, whatever salary is included in this Bill, will not make any difference so far as I am concerned.
Sir H. DALZIEL: Pooling?
Mr. HENDERSON: My right hon. Friend has asked me a question and he is answering it himself. After all, the position is, I admit, rather anomalous. I am quite prepared to tell the House that I do not know whether I am paid as Labour Adviser or Paymaster-General; but these are questions that ought to be addressed to the Prime Minister.
Sir H. DALZIEL: I will put a question to the Prime Minister.
Question put, and agreed to.

BOARD OF PENSIONS BILL.
Considered in Committee.
[Mr. WHITLEY in the Chair.]

BOARD OF PENSIONS BILL.

  CLAUSE 1.—(Constitution of Board of Pensions.)
  For the purpose of the administration of such pensions and grants to persons who have been officers or men of His Majesty's military forces and their dependants as are hereinafter mentioned, there shall be constituted a Board of Pensions consisting of the Paymaster-General, who shall be President of the Board, and of the Parliamentary Secretary of the Admiralty, the Financial Secretary of the War Office, and the Parliamentary Secretary of the Local Government Board.
  Mr. HOGGE: I beg to move to leave out the words "For the purpose of," and to insert instead thereof the words "In order to unify."
  I quite realise, in moving this Amendment at this early stage in Committee, that I am challenging the whole structure of this Pensions Board Bill, and I may say quite frankly that that is my intention. I think Members of this House, having read over this Bill, will have come to the conclusion that it is very unsatisfactorily drawn, and that we are not likely to get any very much better or more efficient administration from the Board which appears in the Bill than we are getting at the moment, and that if there is another way in which this matter can be settled satisfactorily, the Committee ought to take that method straight away. There are two things by which the whole system of pensions could be improved right away. The first of those is the overhauling of the Royal Warrants which deal with the amount of pensions, and which can be done altogether apart from any fresh machinery which requires to be set up, and there is, secondly, the setting up of a scheme of machinery which will overcome all these faults of the existing machinery. If hon. Members have done me the honour of looking through the Amendment Paper, they will see a number of Amendments there to which my own name is attached, along with the names of other hon. Members, and I should like to say that all those Amendments follow logically upon this first Amendment I am moving, and that they substitute, if accepted, a single, unified centralised scheme for the scheme that we have in
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  the Bill. I think it will save longer discussion later if I may be allowed to outline at the outset what that scheme means.
  If this Amendment I am moving is-carried, and if, as a consequence of it being carried, the Government agreed to the other Amendments with which my name is associated, then we should have-a scheme something like the following. There would be created a Board consisting of, as I have put down in my Amendment, a Pensions Minister and an Under-Secretary, and I may say incidentally that if you, Mr. Whitley, do not consider that two men can make a Board—that is to. say, we cannot make a Board out of a Pensions Minister and an Tender Secretary—it would be within the power of the House to create other nominal members of that Board in order to satisfy the exact interpretation of the word "Board." But the main point is that I want to get rid of the four present members of the Board, and to substitute in their place something very much more tangible. First of all, there would be a Board consisting primarily of the Pensions Minister directly responsible to this House, and there would be transferred to that Minister four separate powers. Those four separate powers would be the powers and duties of the Commissioners of Chelsea, including in-pensions. That is to say, instead of the proposal in paragraph (a) in Clause 2, I would give to the Minister the inclusive powers which the Commissioners of Chelsea have now. Secondly, I would give them what stands in paragraph (b) of Clause 2, namely, the powers and duties of the Army Council, but I would give them power also to deal with service pensions. I make quite explicit in connection with that this fact, about which I think we ought to be quite clear in this House, that this new Board has, at any rate, the power to promulgate new Royal Warrants. If we are taking over the powers of the Army Council we want to make it quite clear that we are taking over the powers to promulgate what is urgently necessary now, new Royal Warrants. I place under that Board the powers and duties of the Admiralty with reference to the pensions and grants to persons who have been officers, etc. That is left out now, but I bring that in. Fourthly, I put in the Statutory Committee altogether; I leave none of it out. Then Clauses 3 and 4 would disappear as they stand in the Bill.

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  Whether the Committee agrees with that solution or not, it has the merit of extreme simplicity. It gets rid of the present existing tangle, whereby you have four separate bodies dealing with four separate categories of pensions, and you put them within the control of one man who is responsible to this House, and in that way you give the House a direct control over the Board of Pensions. There is only one argument I have heard that has any weight with me, and that is what is to happen with regard to what are known as the local war pensions committees. I am in favour, and have always been in favour, of maintaining the existence of local war pensions committees, because they are in direct touch with the localities. They know the conditions in the localities. They know, for instance, the variety of occupations which the disabled soldier who recovers may take up. They know the rent and food conditions in the particular locality which may determine the amount of disability pension. There is no reason at all why those local war pensions committees cannot remain in existence, and cannot work under the direction of the Pension Minister instead of under the direction of the Vice-Chairman of the Statutory Committee. Those local war pensions committees would continue in existence, and they would carry out in the various localities the desires of this House expressed through the Minister of Pensions. That is a thoroughgoing, a far-reaching and an efficient method of machinery which would get rid of the existing mess and muddle.
  If the Committee will look at the Bill as it stands, this Bill has been brought in to simplify the scheme of pensions. I will read out to the Committee, if I may be allowed to do so, nine different things that will happen under this Bill, which was set up to simplify pensions. First of all, if this Bill is carried as it stands, disabled soldiers will receive their pensions from the Board, both on scale and supplement at one time of asking. Second, widows and other dependants of soldiers will receive their pensions from the Board at one time of asking. Third, disabled sailors will go to the Admiralty for both scale and supplement. Fourth, widows and other dependants of sailors will do the same. Fifth, Service pensions will be paid by the War Office. Sixth, in-Pensioners will still go to
  52
  the Chelsea Commissioners. Seventh, Greenwich will remain untouched. Eighth, the Statutory Committee will remain in separate existence in a separate building for all its other purposes than supplementing pensions out of State money. Ninth, the local war pensions committees will also remain, but will have three masters instead of one; they will require to correspond with the new Board, with the Admiralty and with the Statutory Committee. Can anyone conceive for a moment that that is a scheme which will simplify the present administration of pensions? Now does this House, or does this House not, want a simplified scheme? We can have a simplified scheme if we like. The Government has not given us a simplified scheme. Let us throw over the Government.
  4.0 P.M.
  After all, we know a great deal more about this question than the Government do. I do not know anybody who knows anything at all about pensions who has been asked by any single Member of the Government whether he has any ideas with regard to this scheme at all. There is in existence in this House a large group of Members who have been giving their time and attention to the question of pensions, and that group has never been consulted. They have not been asked if they have any ideas, and presumably they are thought not to be worth anything. This scheme has come from the Cabinet. It is not a good scheme, and it is not going to make the administration of pensions any easier. The Members of the House of Commons are responsible to the disabled men, and we can change the whole of this scheme, and I invite hon. Members to do that to-day. Supposing you overthrow this scheme. You do not deprive any man of his pension, and every man would be entitled just as he is now, but he will get it. a little quicker. I do the Paymaster-General this justice, that he is quickening up the administration of Chelsea. He has done that while he has been at Chelsea, and that side of the administration of pensions is quicker, but the right hon. Gentleman gets power from this House in that direction quite apart from this Bill. Until he gets power to alter the system of awarding pensions, the right hon. Gentleman cannot do much more. This Bill is not necessary to give that power, for it can be given otherwise, and so we are not depriving any man of his pension.

  53
  It is not worth the while of this House to agree to this scheme simply because the Cabinet have compromised the matter, and are demanding a single administration. I do not want to be personal, but I want to show how this Board has been constructed. One of the members is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board, and he is put on to the Pensions Board because he happens to be a member of the Statutory Committee, and no Member in the House knows better than I do that the right hon. Gentleman knows a great deal about pensions. But supposing this Government went out of office next month, and another Member of this House went to the right hon. Gentleman's position at the Local Government Board, he would not be a member of the Statutory Committee. This Board has been constructed to get upon it my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board. I am only making that criticism to show that this Board is a compromise. This House docs not want a compromise, but it does want an efficient instrument by which once and for all we sions, and their widows and dependants upon us outside who are expecting pensions, and their widows and dependents who take this view that the Government ought to provide machinery by which at one time of asking and by one method a man's pension and claim ought to be satisfied. Here is another item which shows how absurd is this arrangement. We have now a full meeting of the Board on the Treasury Bench. After this Bill becomes law it will be necessary for Members of this House, if they want information on pension points, to still put down questions to each one of these four Gentlemen. What kind of unification is that? If we want to know anything about the Statutory Committee outside the supplementation of pensions, we shall have to ask the Secretary to the Local Government Board. If we want to know anything about Service pensions, we shall have to go to the Financial Secretary to the War Office. If we desire to know anything about Admiralty pensions, or the supplementation of Admiralty Pensions, we shall have to question the First Lord of the Admiralty. If you want to know anything about anything else connected with pensions, you will have to put your question down to be answered by the Paymaster-General.
  54
  We have to ask four Gentlemen now, and if this Bill is passed we shall still have to ask four Gentlemen for the information we require. This seems to me to be a powerful argument why this House ought to consider whether it is worth while going on with this Bill on this kind of arrangement, or whether we ought not as a House, as a thinking House that sometimes takes matters into its own hands, if the Cabinet will not do the proper thing, to so alter the structure of this Bill in Committee that it will give the country the Bill the people want. It seems perfectly easy if we agree to this Amendment to do this at the outset of this discussion, and declare, that we want a unified scheme, with a Minister who shall have full control of the existing machinery, who shall be responsible to the House for anything arising out of that machinery, in order that we shall be able to be assured that those dependent upon us, when they are in difficulty, if they apply at the Board of Pensions, a Board under the responsibility of the Pensions Minister, that Minister will exhaust for them everything they are entitled to from any source at all with regard to pensions instead of the present scheme, where the poor soldier or his widow and dependants have got to accumulate the pension somewhat on the hire-purchase system, getting something here and something elsewhere. I think the feeling of the House is behind the view which I have expressed. At any rate I hope it is, and I hope hon. Members will show that in the discussion. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will be prepared to meet us in that matter, for he himself has told us that if he had his way he would not have had a Board, but would have had a simple single scheme of administration of pensions. Now there is one set of people who can give him his way, and that is his colleagues in the House of Commons. The Cabinet does not understand this question, and has not sought to understand it. The Cabinet did not grapple with this question until it became urgent in this House, and when they did grapple with it they gave us a scheme which is not satisfactory, and I ask them to take time now and give the country what it wants.
  Mr. J. SAMUEL: I think this Amendment is really one of vast importance because it touches the very vitals of the scheme. I agree with almost everything the last speaker has said, and personally

  55
  I am in favour of making this Bill apply to one strong Pensions Board, having full powers to deal with all aspects of the question with one exception. I am not in favour of the Service pension being handed over to this Board. I think we ought to deal in this Bill with pensions arising out of this War rather than with the Service pension, and the decorations foreshadowed in the ninth Clause. With regard to the pensions arising out of the War, I do believe that we should have one unified scheme, and we should have a Board that would deal with the problem effectively. I am bound to say that I do not believe in the efficacy of this Board. I certainly think it is a patched scheme and a compromise. If anybody were to construct this Board in a proper way, they would never think of putting upon it the three Gentlemen selected to work with the Pensions Minister, because they are practically overworked at the present time. The Parliamentay Secretary to the Admiralty has enormous responsibilities during this War. [An HON. MEMBER: "No!"] Anyone who comes in touch with the right hon. Gentleman knows that it is very difficult to get an appointment with him, and I know he is working very hard. The same applies to the Financial Secretary to the War Office, and certainly the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board, who has to overhaul the whole of the administration of this country dealing with public health and a hundred and one other things. Those are matters which require the whole attention of these three Ministers.
  There is an Amendment on the Paper which appears very absurd, for it gives power to the Board to meet not less than once a month. This Board ought to sit daily if it is going to do its work thoroughly. It ought to sit every day because of the enormous number of disability pensions which will have to come up for consideration. Then there are the supplementary pensions and grants, and the work is enormous, and the Board ought to sit daily at least for the next two or three years with the growth of pensions which must arise out of this disastrous War. I have been in touch with the local secretaries of various local committees. The points which were made by the hon. Member for East Edinburgh do not arise in this respect because the Paymaster-General has put down a new
  56
  Clause under which he proposes to handle and annex the whole of the work of these local committees to serve this Board with information and recommendations. That is an important new Clause and one which I hope will be carried. What they complain about is that there is an enormous-waste of time. In my own Constituency 1,250 cases were examined in three months, and now they have to write to eight or nine different Departments. Under this Bill they will have to write to four different Departments. Why cannot we concentrate the whole work under one head, so that they know exactly where to write to, and the Board should have the necessary information. I think this Pensions Board ought really to have a grip and knowledge of what every man is going to get, and every woman. This will be public money, because there will be no voluntary gift in the future and all of it will come out of the State. It is most important that this Board should have a full knowledge as to what every man will get in the form of a pension or supplementary pension and grant, so that they can check any waste in any part of the country. I am quite certain that the Board we are setting up now, without unification, will not be adequate to meet the demands of the country and the House of Commons, and therefore I hope the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill will see his way to accept this Amendment.
  Sir H. CRAIK: I have also upon the Paper an Amendment which is more or less on the lines of that proposed by the hon. Member for East Edinburgh. Naturally, I would prefer my own Amendment because I think it would give more general control and powers of supervision, but as against the Bill I am fully persuaded that the Amendment of the hon. Member for East Edinburgh more expresses my own view, and, if he goes to a Division, I shall be bound to support him. What is the real purpose of this Bill? It is not to introduce new executive administrative machinery, but to bring about unity in the whole thing and some power of control and supervision that will be exercised by the Pensions Minister. We want it. Everyone who has worked at it knows that it is wanted. We know that it is wanted on the Statutory Committee. We come to differences with the War Office or with the Admiralty, or with Chelsea, or with

  57
  Baker Street, and when we remonstrate we want someone to whom we can go and appeal and who will be able to settle matters. I am quite certain that the great body of the House feels in this way. We may have differences as to the extent to which the right hon. Gentleman should interfere with the administration. Personally, I think it would be better to leave a good many of these bodies existing and to keep a complete control. I would be quite ready to propose to give to the right hon. Gentleman, not only the power of control, but even the power of telling each of these bodies how much they should do and of taking away from them that which he thinks they do not perform properly.
  I think it is a great mistake that that the Bill should only lead to the creation of a new administrative executive office. There is in the whole of this Bill the flaw and the vice that it is an attempt at a compromise and patchwork. That is the defect of the Bill. We know perfectly well what in the Constitution a President of a Board means. The President of the Board of Trade does not think very much of the other people who sit upon the Board; the President of the Board of Education does not think very much of them; and the President of the Local Government Board does not think very much of the other Members who sit upon his Board. The central power is in the President, and you do not try to compose a sort of patchwork, variegated board with the idea possibly that other opinions may prevail. The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that he will be the master. The President must be the master. I have myself served under the President of a Board, and I know quite well, although the Board is occasionally called together, that they have no executive power. The President can act alone and does act alone, and, if he differs from them, he can override their decision. The master ought to be, and will be, the President, and there is no use attempting to reconcile differences of opinion by making A make-believe board. I am quite certain that the House desires unity. I would prefer it perhaps in another form of words than that proposed by the hon. Member, but I am certain that the Amendment really expresses the views of the House, and that he will have very large support if he goes to a Division.
  Mr. HENDERSON: It is for me to put briefly before the Committee our views with regard to this very drastic Amendment moved by the hon. Member for East Edinburgh. I was not very much surprised at the terms of the speech of the hon. Member. I am fully aware of the very keen interest he has taken for some time in this question of pensions and pensions machinery, but I must confess that I was surprised very considerably at the speech to which we have just listened from the hon. Member for Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities (Sir H. Craik). I do not know whether he has seriously examined the purport and inwardness of the Amendment before the Committee, but to find that he, a member of the Statutory Committee, is prepared to become a wholehogger and to go in for such a drastic alteration of the Bill that even his own Committee, with which we have dealt very tenderly, is going to be swept away, is one of the most surprising things that I have met in the discussion of this question. There can be no doubt—and I hope my hon. Friend realises it—that if this Amendment is carried the Statutory Committee ceases to exist as a separate body.
  Sir H. CRAIK: As an independent body.
  Mr. HENDERSON: As a separate body. I followed very closely the speech of the Mover, and there is no mistaking what he wants. If the members of the Statutory Committee, who are also members of this Committee, agree with my hon. Friend opposite, I hope that they will say so in the Debate on this Amendment. We have been at some trouble to find out exactly what is the position of the Statutory Committee, and I have had it impressed upon me very much—and if I had not had it impressed upon me, the Amendments on the Order Paper would show it—that the last thing that the Statutory Committee desire is to be swallowed up in any such body as has been hinted at. There are, in fact, several Amendments on the Paper which go to show that they really want to have back the supplementation that we have taken from them in one of the provisions of the Bill.
  Sir H. CRAIK: Under your supervision?
  Mr. HENDERSON: Let me examine the position put before the Committee by the Mover of the Amendment. He does not like the scheme of the Bill. It is a

  59
  compromising scheme. He proposes to substitute for it what he calls a single, central, unified scheme. That single, central, unified scheme is to consist, as I understood his speech, of a president and an undersecretary. I am not quite sure whether I have to interpret this Amendment in the light of other Amendments which he has upon the Order Paper.
  Mr. HOGGEindicated assent.
  Mr. HENDERSON: I am a little perplexed to find out exactly what he and others really want. I have been at some trouble to put some of these Amendments together, and we find that some of them really want to set up a board or a committee of commissioners from six to ten in number.
  Mr. HOGGE: No, no. I do not want to be misunderstood. You will find among the new Clauses a separate scheme which does that; but the speech I made hangs entirely on the Amendments with regard to unification, and those alone. The alternative scheme in the new Clauses is an entirely separate thing.
  Mr. HENDERSON: I asked my hon. Friend if I had to interpret his Amendment in the light of other Amendments that stood in his name upon the Order Paper and—I am in the recollection of the Committee—he nodded assent. Those Amendments propose to set up the scheme to which I was making allusion. They propose to bring in commissioners; in fact one of the sets of Amendments proposes that twenty-two persons shall be engaged on pensions administration.
  Mr. HOGGE: On a point of Order. I do not want this Debate to be confused, and I hope my right hon. Friend will not do me the injustice of pursuing that argument. He is now interpreting my Amendment in the light of something which occurs in the new Clauses. My scheme rests logically on a uniform scheme, and it has nothing to do with the new Clauses. I hope that he will not mix the two up.
  Mr. HENDERSON: It is all very well for Members to move Amendments and talk about unification if they leave us to grope about in the dark and find out what they mean by unification.
  Mr. HOGGE: I am telling you.
  Mr. HENDERSON: I have only these different Amendments on the Order Paper to guide me. I have gone into them, and I put the question to my hon. Friend, I think very properly, whether I was to interpret this Amendment in the light of subsequent Amendments. That, surely, is very fair. I do not want to misrepresent him, and I do not want to read into this Amendment propositions contained in his subsequent Amendments if there is no connection, but I am anxious to find out what he really means by his substitute of a single. central, unified scheme. He dealt with the powers, and he complained that the new Board did not deal with Service pensions. He proposes, I suppose, that his unified Board should deal with all the questions that he cited—Service pensions, Admiralty pensions, Greenwich, and, in fact the eight or ten different points that he brought before the Committee.
  Mr. RUTHERFORD: Everything.
  Mr. HENDERSON: There, again, I must say, if we wore prepared to favourably consider taking in everything, that the Committee would be very seriously divided as between the members of the Statutory Committee who are against taking in everything and those members of the Committee who have no connection with the Statutory Committee and who are in favour of taking in everything. I pointed out on the introduction of the Bill that if we had been beginning de novo it is just possible that we should have introduced a different scheme, and I think I ought to remind the Committee that some ten months ago the House had an opportunity of dealing with this question, and, instead of reducing, as I am attempting to do, the number of authorities dealing with the pensions question, they actually set about and created another one. The Statutory Committee has only been in operation some nine months. I am, of course, talking about the House of Commons. The work I am representing is the work of the Government, and I say if we complain about the large number of bodies dealing with the pensions question we have to remember that this House accepted the proposition for setting up the Statutory Committee.
  Mr. RUTHERFORD: And we are going to put it right now.
  Mr. HOGGE: You promised to do so.
  Mr. HENDERSON: I am sure the hon. Member for Liverpool will remember the old adage about "wait and see." I am prepared to wait and see whether we are going to put it right or not. But I do not agree that this Amendment is going to put it right because I am sure of this: there are a number who believe that the Statutory Committee ought to have a further opportunity of doing the work which we are leaving to them outside this Bill and who will not be prepared to sweep away that Statutory Committee at this moment.
  Mr. HOGGE: Why not?
  Mr. HENDERSON: I am not a member of the Statutory Committee, and I am not going to say why not. There are Members who take great interest in the Statutory Committee's work who will no doubt be prepared to give an answer. Another reason put forward was that the hon. Member's new scheme would give power to deal with the Royal Warrants. I thought I made it clear in the previous Debate—I do not know if the hon. Member for East Edinburgh was present—that we had the power to deal with the existing Warrants and to replace them by new Warrants, and we do not, therefore, need a unified scheme such as is suggested in the Amendment in order to secure that power. I thought, too, I had made it clear that it was my intention at the earliest possible moment to bring the conditions on which the new Warrants were based before the House of Commons, with the consent of the Prime Minister, in order that the House might have a full opportunity of discussing the proposals which the new Warrants would cover. Therefore, I do ask my hon. Friend to consider, knowing, as I do, his deep interest in this question, whether he is justified in trying to upset the scheme of the Bill for the purpose of getting power to deal with the question of Warrants—
  Mr. HOGGEI did not say that was the reason.
  Mr. HENDERSON: I thought that was one of the arguments advanced in favour of the Amendment. I am in the recollection of hon. Members who agree with me.
  Mr. HOGGE: I said it did not matter whether we destroyed the Bill, because we had power to deal with Royal Warrants interfering with any man's pension.
  Mr. HENDERSON: I do not want to put the position unfairly, and if the hon.
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  Member stated, as is quite correct, we. have the power to deal with the Warrants, and we are going to deal with them, I quite agree, but I rather thought that in raising the question at this moment he was under the impression we had not the-power. Then he referred to the leaving out of the Admiralty. My right hon. Friend the Secretary to the Admiralty (Dr. Macnamara), in a most impressive speech on the introduction of the Bill, dealt with that question, and I do not know that I need take up any time by further referring to it. All I need say is that if I thought that the position of the sailors under the administration of the Board of Admiralty was in any way going to suffer, or if there was going to be any lack of uniformity of scale by their remaining outside, I should most strongly oppose their not being included in the Bill. When this question was inquired into by a Cabinet Committee, I may say that the members of that Committee started with the opinion that the Admiralty ought to form part of the scheme, but the evidence put before us was such that the Committee unanimously agreed that the case as between the War Office and the Admiralty was so different that the work could be best done by those who have had it in charge from the beginning of the War. The problem was different. It was very much smaller, it was done-under one roof, and in order to secure uniformity and to secure the interchange of information my right hon. Friend was included as a member of the new Board.
  Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: They did not say so.
  Mr. HENDERSON: At any rate my right hon. Friend made out an excellent case for it.
  Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH: To what Committee is the right hon. Gentleman referring?
  Mr. HENDERSON: A Committee appointed by the Prime Minister representative of the Board of Admiralty and the War Office gave evidence before it. I feel that the strongest point my hon. Friend made in moving his Amendment was that the Government have taken the responsibility of setting up the scheme contained in the Bill without making any inquiry whatever from those who are interested* in the question of pensions. Surely my hon. Friend must have been suffering from a lapse of memory when he-made that statement. May I remind him

  63
  that, on the 12th September, he received a letter from myself containing a questionnaire, and that one of the questions dealt with total disablement and with partial disablement. Another question was, "What changes do you suggest in the pensions administrative machinery, national and local?" That questionnaire was not sent to my hon. Friend in his individual capacity; it was sent to him, and I think to another hon. Member, as secretaries of what was then, I believe, a newly-created House of Commons Pensions Committee. The questionnaire asked some very important questions with regard to disablement pensions. I hope my hon. Friend admits that he received it. It was sent to a good many Members of the House—to all the Members who had taken part in the previous Pensions Debate.
  Major H. TERRELL: Why was it not sent to all hon. Members?
  Mr. HENDERSON: My hon. Friend said he had never been asked about the machinery. I think the question I am putting to him is a very proper one. The committee exists and in fact is very active. I have had scores, if not hundreds of letters, from its official representatives, and I took the trouble to reply to them. I have a right to call the attention of the Committee to this fact, that the Mover of the Amendment makes a point against the Government's present scheme as embodied in this Bill, by saying that we have been setting up new machinery without consulting those who have taken an interest in the pensions question, whereas, on the 12th September, I sent him this questionnaire and one question embodied in it was what suggestion he had to make with regard to pensions machinery, national and local. May I add that to this moment I have not had an official reply to any one of the questions, including that dealing with national and local machinery.
  Mr. HOGGE: I think I ought to reply at once to my right hon. Friend's statement. It is perfectly true he did send me that questionnaire. I remember quite well, and perhaps he will also remember quite well, that I told him I was not going to fill it up, as the questions were put in such a way that they did not admit of an answer worth anything. I added that the only thing to do in regard to the pensions schemes was to scrap them all, and to have
  64
  a proper uniform scheme. That was my own personal view which I expressed to him. I told him that I would not fill up the paper. With regard to whether it was sent to the Pensions Committees, I am certain, as Secretary of the Pensions Committee, that I never got it, and that it was never sent. As far as I am personally concerned I admit quite freely that my right hon. Friend showed it to me, and I have told the committee the answer that I gave at the time.
  Mr. HENDERSON: I do not know whether the questions were so drafted that they did not admit of an answer, but I do know that I did not get an answer.
  Colonel Sir HAMAR GREENWOOD: Did the questionnaire refer to this Bill or to any Bill?
  Mr. HENDERSON: I asked my hon. Friend to give me the benefit of his views with regard to local and national machinery. If my hon. Friend the Member for York wishes I will read the questions. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no!"] The hon. Member for Stockton (Mr. Samuel) who rose to support the hon. Member for East Edinburgh, opened his speech by at once taking exception to a point made by the Mover—that his unified scheme included certain pensions. The hon. Memeber for Stockton said he did not agree with their inclusion. Here we have two hon. Gentlemen supporting a scheme of unification and yet differing on what, in my opinion, is a fundamental point. May I say at once that I cannot accept this Amendment. I am well aware of the strong feeling that exists in this House. I admitted on the introduction of the Bill the difficulties of the position. On the Order Paper will be found Amendments which lead us to two extremes; the Bill supplies the middle course, and, so far as I can see, the Government would have been pursuing a mistaken course if it had permitted its scheme to ignore entirely the position as it has existed since the beginning of the War. It is quite true we have not secured complete unification, but we have improved the position and if we bring under one roof five different authorities dealing with disablement pensions, it seems to me that this is an immense improvement. If we also effect such relationships with the Admiralty and the Statutory Committee as will lessen the possibility of friction and delay, and as will secure something in the nature of uniformity of decision and of scale, it seems to me that that, too, is a

  65
  step in the right direction. I can only ask those hon. Members who believe in the one extreme and those who take the other extreme to look more carefully at the matter, and if they will do that I think they will see that the middle course is an immense improvement—at any rate, that is the course which the Government propose to abide by.
  Mr. GRIFFITH: We have listened with great interest to the speech of the new Minister of the Pensions Board. May I begin the remarks I have to address to the Committee by quoting from the report of his speech on 21st November, in which he said:
  "It is quite true that the Debate has revealed differences of opinion as to method, but I am quite sure that there has been a marvellous degree of unanimity in the object that we are all aiming at."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st November, 1916, col. 1370, Vol. LXXXVII.]
  That is the point which the Committee ought to bear in mind during this discussion. We are all united in the purpose that we have in view. There really is no need for any bitterness or controversy about this matter. We are all genuinely anxious to do what is best; therefore I am quite sure there ought not to be a cross word or a bitter word imported into this Debate. As I understand it, the substance of this Amendment is the subject of unification. The right hon. Gentleman has been a Minister and in the Government for some time, and he used a very old argument which, I regret to say, I heard many years ago, when he said, "There is one extreme on the one side and another extreme on the other side; I am in the middle, and therefore I must be right." To anybody with a sense of humour, which I do not profess to have, that must have appeared to be a very humorous observation. The real question is which is the right thing to do, not whether it is extreme on the one side or extreme on the other, or whether the Government stands in the middle. The Government generally is in the middle. It has not pleased anybody, but must it therefore be right? The point is which, on the whole, is the best view for the Committee to adopt? I see the whole Board before me. It is not often that that happens. I am bound to say they do not look extremely happy.
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara): We were all here on the First Reading.
  Mr. GRIFFITH: One has forgotten the First Reading now. The fact that the Board should remain united up to the Committee stage would be a remarkable thing. It would be a poor point and I do not make it, but the fact is that the Board are not united even up to this stage. The right hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board made a speech in November, 1914, and on the Second Reading he was very proud of it. I wonder whether his pride survives the speech of his right hon. Friend the President of the Board?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Hayes Fisher): I am quite proud of it.
  Mr. GRIFFITH: Is he proud of it after the Paymaster-General's speech? He told us:
  "I have had experience of all these bodies for many years, and for the life of me I cannot conceive why we do not amalgamate all these bodies—"
  he meant his natural life, not his official life—
  "under one roof, so that these cases may be considered by one body always controlled by the Government of the day and always answerable to Parliament. I believe that will be the only satisfactory solution of this great problem."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th Nov. ember, 1914, col. 457, Vol. LXVIIL]
  Does he still think so? I do not say that he ought to sacrifice his natural life, because that would be too hard a sacrifice. But I must say that I do think his official position is not quite consistent with the views he expressed on 18th November, 1914. I, for one, am of the same opinion in November, 1916, as he was in November, 1914. I follow him at a respectful distance, but I follow his views two years late. He is still ahead of me in November, 1916. He is so difficult to catch up. That is the view many of us take now. It is, at any rate, advisable—I put it no higher for the moment—at least to unify under one central control all these vast questions of pensions. That is our view. If I may say so to the Committee, there is only one answer to that. I think we are all agreed that it is advisable. It may be said to be impossible. That is a perfectly good answer. But is it impossible? The right hon. Gentleman in 1914 thought it was possible, because he would not have thought it was advisable unless he had thought it was possible. I want to know what has happened during the two intervening years to make what was advisable in 1914 impossible in 1916? That is the difficulty we are in. Now the Admiralty stands out. The right hon. Gentleman who

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  has just sat down said that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty had made a very convincing speech. [An HON. MEMBER: "Impressive speech!"]
  Dr. MACNAMARA: He hoped it was convincing.
  Mr. GRIFFITH: Quite so. This is what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board said on 21st November, 1916:
  "Many of us heard the very powerful speech, to my mind a very effective speech, made by my right hon. Friend and colleague who represents the Admiralty (Dr. Macnamara). It was a speech "full of the tender sentiments which we would have expected from him in this matter. We all know how much he has cared for the sailor under his charge, and how much he has tried to do for him. But, although I admire the speech, I am unconvinced, and as latitude was given to him, so I hope latitude may be extended to me."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st November. 1916, col. 1273, Vol.LXXXVII].
  He took his latitude, I have no doubt, quite correctly. Really there is a little difference of opinion between the different members of the Board. There is only one answer to the claim of the Admiralty to stand out of this Bill. The right hon. Gentleman (Dr. Macnamara), whose tender sentiments are always appreciated by me, told the Committee that there was no ground but one, which is that the Admiralty can manage this matter better than the Pensions Beard.
  Mr. RUTHERFORD: On a point of Order. Will this discussion cut out the specific Amendments which follow on the Paper with regard to the question of the Admiralty?
  The CHAIRMAN: No; that difficulty has been growing in my mind as the discussion proceeded. If I may say so, the Committee is rather too much inclined to cover points which ought to be raised specifically later on. This first Amendment will not, although it may have some reference to it, rule out the Amendment just referred to. If the Committee takes a decision upon this Amendment, hon. Members will have clearly in their minds that they will be able to raise subsequently in some form or other the matter referred to.
  Mr. GRIFFITH: If, as you, Sir, say, your difficulties grow more, so my speech will grow less. I will try to avoid any detailed reference to matters which are on the subject of separate Amendments. Of course, the right hon. Gentleman quite unavoidably had to deal with all these matters at one time. All I have to say is that there are a great
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  many of us in this Committee who are anxious, without reference to any controversial matter, to bring this very great question under one central authority. First of all, we think it necessary; secondly, we think it possible. I was present at the First Reading, I have read very carefully the Second Reading Debate, and I have heard the speeches to-day. I am bound to say that I have not heard a single sentence which convinces me that it is not possible. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board thought it was possible in 1914. I am going to be perfectly fair. As I understand it, he said in his recent speech that, although it was possible in 1914, it was less-possible in 1916, because of the intervening circumstances. I put it to the Committee that nothing has happened in the intervening two years to render it impossible to have this real scheme of unification. The Paymaster-General, in the speech from which I quoted first, said there was unanimity in the House as to the object to be achieved. We are all united about this.
  May I not suggest to the Government; that this is a point upon which the Committee might be consulted. When the right hon. Gentleman said that he could not accept this Amendment he turned, L am sure quite unintentionally but perhaps unconsciously, to the Chief Whip. That may be a mistake on my part. In any event, may I ask him now to let the Committee decide this question on quite nonparty lines? I am quite sure that he wants a scheme which will commend itself to the House of Commons. There is only one way of finding out what the House-of Commons intends, and that is not to put on the party Whips in a Division of this kind. I see all the other three members of the Board making notes. It will be quite a long time before the Division comes on. I am quite sure that the right hon. Gentleman wants, to make his new Department a great success. It will concern millions of people, the men and women who have really suffered from this war, to whom we are anxious to give, not only justice, but ample generosity. We are all agreed upon that. May I beg of the right hon. Gentleman to let the Committee make up its own mind upon this subject, so that the new Board over which he presides may represent not merely the machinery of the Government, but a body to which the House of Commons has given its approval and all the support it can

  69
  give? I feel certain that there is a very strong feeling in this country that there have been very grave derelictions of duty in the authorities which have been in charge of this Department. I admit frankly and gladly that those omissions of duty are becoming fewer from day to day, and I am sure we are very glad of it. It is important, in order not merely to do justice to those who have fought for us, but in order to encourage those who are going to fight for us. That is an important point, because every matter that comes before this House or this Committee now has a relation to whether it tends to win the War or not. If you put this matter upon a firm and solid basis you will find it would help to win the War, because every man who goes to the front to fight will know that his wife, children, and relatives will be in a certain position. whatever may happen to him. This is one of the most important matters that has ever come before the House of Commons, and I would therefore invite the Government, and especially the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill, to let the Committee, without stress of the party Whips, to proclaim an unfettered opinion upon the great point we are now discussing.
  5.0 P.M.
  Mr. BARNES: I was not present when the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) made his speech in moving the Amendment, therefore I have not in my mind what he had in his mind. I did not intend to take any part in the discussion on this Bill, and would not have done so now but for what might be called the challenge the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill made a little while ago. I heard the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities (Sir H. Craik), and I take it that that speech was regarded by the right hon. Gentleman as one made on behalf of the Statutory Committee. The challenge was thrown out that if it was not other members of the Statutory Committee were present and might give their views. I will give mine. This is a most unfortunate Bill—a Bill calculated to make existing confusion worse confounded. The matter of substance in the Bill is raised in this Amendment, and if my hon. Friend goes to a Division—I do not care twopence whether or not the Whips are put on—I am going to vote for it. It is perfectly
  70
  clear that there are two experiments, so to speak. I am in favour of one extreme which, I understand, is contrary to that put forward by the hon. Member opposite. I am in favour of letting things alone. Possibly I have few supporters in that view in this House, and I know I am not supported in that view by the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge).
  I think the time most inopportune to approach this question from a theoretical and academic point of view. I have heard a lot of talk for months about unification, supervision by one body, and a lot of fine phrases which were intended to cover proposals for a new Department and a new Minister. I do not care a row of pins for any of them. What I have had in my mind all the time has been getting the money into the hands of the soldiers and sailors or their dependants at the speediest possible moment, and in order to get that done it seemed to me that the most important thing was to leave all the existing authorities with all their existing imperfections upon their heads to go on their way, but to strengthen them with money and personnel as much as possible. That has been my view, and, consistent with that view, I should say that Statutory Committee, as one of the existing authorities dealing with this matter, ought to be let alone. What is the alternative? As far as this Bill is concerned it is neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. It neither leaves it alone nor does it take it over. It does neither one thing nor the other. It takes away from it the supplementation of pensions to the soldier and gives that to the new body. It takes away the supplementation to sailors and gives that to the Admiralty, and in doing so it puts the poor unfortunate local committees into this position, that they must deal now with three authorities instead of one. There are some who say it does not matter; that if it is a matter of pension they can write to the Admiralty. But it is not so simple as that. In the first place, the new authorities have to make themselves acquainted with new Regulations, and, if I know anything about central authorities, through acting under them, there is nothing dearer to their hearts than regulations.
  Consequently, I can say that one of the first duties of my right hon. Friend (Dr. Macnamara) will be to fix up new Regulations and Instructions. Then the new Board, probably, if we can judge from the speech we have had to-day,

  71
  will have their Regulations and instructions, and the unfortunate local committees, after having gone through the Regulations and Instructions of the Statutory Committee, which we discussed in this House some time ago, and, after having mastered them—not at all an easy job, my hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh knows that—having mastered all of them, are to be called upon now to master two other sets of new Instructions and Regulations, and then, having done that, and having had cases submitted to them from their district, they have to use their discretion to decide under which set of Regulations any particular claim comes. That is not so simple as it looks, because six months after a man dies his family may be on separation allowance. If on separation allowance, and it is a matter of separation allowance pure and simple, the local committee will in that case have to deal with the Statutory Committee. If it is a question of pension they have to deal with the Admiralty, and so on. All this is going to create confusion, and, instead of getting the money quicker into the hands of the soldiers, or the widows and dependants, it is more than possible that it is going to create further delay. For that reason I object to the Bill. I would rather act in the direction of leaving all the other bodies as they are. The Amendment, as I understand, proposes to make the best of a bad job. We have a new Department, a new body, and a lot of new jobs, and all that sort of thing; therefore, we have, according to the Amendment, as I understand it, to make it effective in lessening confusion. I can conceive of no better way of lessening confusion than to have all the existing authorities dealing with this matter of pensions under one control. That brings me to my final argument, with which I shall sit down, namely, that now we have got a Bill, let us make the best of it. Now that we are proposing to set up a new authority, let us take all the existing authorities and put them under the supervision of that authority. That seems to me the essence of simplicity, and the proper thing to do.
  Sir RYLAND ADKINS: I hope the Committee will allow one of the members of the Statutory Committee to say a word on this matter. I shall endeavour to follow the hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. Ellis Griffith) and other speakers in the tone in which I approach this matter.
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  This is really not a matter for acrimony. It is purely a matter of finding a solution for one of the most difficult problems that the Government ever had to or can undertake. We have an imperative duty to discharge to those who have earned pensions, and we have at the same time to bear in mind the less popular duty that public funds must be administered with care, and that a large number of these matters should be decided so far as possible in a judicial spirit and temper. In what I have to say I would like to put forward two different points of view. My right hon. Friend the Paymaster-General tried to fix on the Member for Aberdeen University (Sir H. Craik) the onus for speaking for the Statutory Committee. Neither he nor my right hon. Friend who has just spoken had of himself any right to speak for that Committee officially, but it is only fair to the Committee to state its attitude, as the Statutory Commitee is very naturally the Committee at which everybody else throws stones. That is very natural; I do not complain; stones must be thrown, and it is as well to throw them where they would not do any injury. I should like to point out what is the attitude of the Statutory Committee to this Bill and to these proposals. They have been set out in a letter to the Prime Minister to which I venture, by permission of the Committee, to quote four or five sentences. The Committee say:
  "The Committee have been at work a little over nine months, and they have carried out the duties imposed upon them by Parliament. Local committees are now formed throughout the Kingdom with the exception of a few places in Ireland. Great pains and care have been expended on the drafting of Regulations, which have been submitted to Parliament and generally approved. The transference of the work previously done by voluntary societies to the new committees has been effected without friction and with mutual good will, and there has been no hitch in the arrangements; at a. time when ordinary staff was unprocurable, the Committee have gradually. with the help of volunteers, built up an organisation, and many of their own members have devoted their time to administrative work. The Committee would wish that the Government would allow them to carry out the work for which they have so carefully prepared, and they believe there would be great advantage in the supplementary pensions based on individual needs being administered by an independent committee representative of all sections of the community and that these pensions should be kept separate from the flat-rate pensions claimed by all alike. They feel that their object and that of the Government is the same, namely, to ensure that the best possible measures shall be taken for the benefit of the men who have fought for their country. Consequently, if the Cabinet decide that they desire the Committee to hand over the portion of their work suggested above (i.e., the portion referred to in paragraph (e) of the Clause), they are willing to co-operate loyally with the Pensions Board in such way as the Government may direct."

  73
  I think it is only fair to say to the Committee that that is the attitude of the Statutory Committee. They have respectfully expressed the opinion which they have come to from their experience, and they are perfectly ready to work loyally not only with the Government, but with any decisions that this House puts upon the Government in order to help in this work. I think myself that there are certain aspects of this work which demand the appointment of a Minister specifically to do them. The Statutory Committee have no responsibility, and ought to have neither praise nor blame for many acts of delay in pensions and allowances reaching the people who ought to have them. The delay has been partly due to Chelsea, but the criticism has been reduced in its gravity by the influence and leadership of my right hon. Friend. It has also been partly due to the utter congestion of business in what is familiarly known as Baker Street. The Statutory Committee have had to go step by step, working with different Government Departments, and not least of all with the Treasury, and everybody knows how in this country for the best of reasons swiftness of movement on the part of the Treasury is an impossibility. I do desire to say, on behalf of the Statutory Committee, that there has been no slackening of energy on their part and that their officials and their members have done everything they could to speed up the working of the Pensions Act; but it is far easier for a Minister who himself is a member of the Cabinet to deal with other Government Departments which have to be consulted in the great work of speeding. Therefore, I, for one, am not sorry to see a Bill introduced which has in it the element of a responsible Minister who will be charged with that side of the administration.
  On the other hand, I really think we ought to face the fact that we are deaing with pensions, and, still more, with temporary allowances, which are not according to a flat rate, but which are meant to vary with the needs of the individual. That most difficult and invidious task should be undertaken as far as possible not by the clerks in an ordinary Government Department, but by a body which, at any rate, has the opportunity of exercising judicial or semi-judicial qualities. I am certain that all of us would be terrified by the prospect of pensions varying in individual cases according to political pressure exer-
  74
  cised upon Members of Parliament or by Members of Parliament upon this House. The real difficulty of the problem is to combine proper Parliamentary control over the expenditure of large sums of public money with getting the decisions in individual cases as much judicial and as little political or local as it is possible. For that reason I believe that if you abolish the Statutory Committee to-night you would have to create some similar body whose decisions in individual cases should be regarded as judicial; while if those decisions indicated in any considerable period that they were not calculated on a sufficiently generous scale or had not taken into cognisance certain facts and aspects that ought to be taken into consideration, then that would be put right-by Parliament or by the Government of the day. Therefore, when an Amendment is moved like this we are all of us in the greatest difficulty as to how we can express our views in voting one way or the other. I want a Minister at the head of a pure administration, and I do want some judicial or semi-judicial body to deal with pensions which are intended by Parliament to vary with the circumstances of the individual, and by comparison between the positions of the persons concerned before the War and their positions now. I hope before these discussions are over that these apparently divergent ideals may be harmonised. I cannot vote for this Amendment, because, while I think it clearly has everything to be said for it, I do not quite see how now, in the middle of a great War, you can combine these elements which I have mentioned by wholly new machinery. I know it is always easier to listen to speakers who are whole-heartedly in favour of a particular form of words or whole-heartedly against them. I hope the Committee will forgive me for taking up time in expressing what I know to be the attitude of the Statutory Committee, which is one of loyalty to this House and the Government, and one desires to use any experience they have for the benefit of these pople, and at the same time to ask the Committee to consider how best it can unite in getting proper responsible administration and proper judicial decisions.
  Mr. CURRIE: My interest in separation allowances and pensions dates from the very early days of the War, and I am not surprised, as the War has developed, that the difficulty surrounding the question of

  75
  pensions has increased. I am far from thinking the present Bill is perfect, and if I have to vote for it I shall not do so without some feeling of regret. We do not know at this stage—and we never shall know until the end of the War—perhaps till some time after the end of the War—what the pensions question really in its fullness amounts to, and if we accept this legislation now I think we should do so, and the Government should do so, with the feeling that further legislation, which might perhaps bring in the Admiralty and also various other things which we have scarcely time to do now, will be necessary before anything like a final settlement can be effected. I should have been glad to hear anything from the Government to show that they realise that fact, for as such I regard it. I think it possible that this Act may raise the class of difficulty as to which we have heard something, and I think it is going to place local committees in a position of great difficulty. It is from that quarter that the right hon. Gentleman's difficulties will very largely come. At the same time, I think the Bill, even as it stands, will bring about a certain quickening up in making the money reach the soldier, which is the main object of us all, and for that reason alone I am prepared to vote for the Bill, reserving my right to ask for further legislation. I think the Government has met the Committee upstairs, perhaps not halfway, but a portion of the way. It has given us a Minister, and I am glad that the distinguished Members of the House who have been responsible for the matter of pensions have been civilians. It is an advantage that the civilian element in the administration should be strong. I really attach a good deal more importance to the Royal Warrants than to questions of machinery, and I should be glad to hear as soon as possible when we shall be able to see the new Royal Warrants. I have no feeling of soreness that the right hon. Gentleman did not consult people more as to what their views were. The suggestion that a Commission might be established something on the lines of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, entirely divorced from politics, has for me a good deal of attraction, and I am not sure, perhaps a couple of years hence, when we are trying to bring this question of the permanent administration of pensions on to a final basis, at that idea may not require to be fallen back upon. At the same time I am
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  not prepared to take the responsibility of losing the Bill, and I hope the hon. Member (Mr. Hogge), if the Government is not willing to give way, will not go the length of pressing this to a Division. We should be wiser to stop our criticism and reserve our rights to press for further legislation.
  Sir H. DALZIEL: I do not agree with the conclusion to which my hon. Friend has arrived. There is no doubt as to the position in which the Committee is placed. There is really no driving force behind this Bill. Who is going to claim the parentage of it? No one on that bench. This is not the Bill of the Pensions Minister. I should like to hear his unrestrained and unequivocal remarks about the whole position to which the Cabinet is brought. I have no doubt my right hon. Friend intended this Bill to include all the other Departments which are to be left out. I have too high a respect for his statesmanship, his brains, and his experience. He knows this Bill is almost indefensible. I am going to stand by the Pensions Minister and his original ideas of what this Bill ought to be. What has been its progress? We are told that the Cabinet appointed a Committee. Fancy members of a Cabinet who are supposed to be overworked spending time at present in discussing all the questions of disability and all the hundred and one things that appertain to the operations of the Bill. I would much rather they were considering how to defend Roumania than wasting their time in regard to that. This is a House of Commons matter; it is not a Cabinet matter. What interest has the Cabinet in it? Except that the President of the Local Government Board has come in in the last few minutes no Cabinet Minister has taken the slightest interest in the Debate. There was a meeting of a Committee of the Cabinet, and they say, "Take it to the House of Commons." They do not pay the House of Commons the respect of coming to listen to what the House of Commons has to say. If there is one thing that the House of Commons ought to take an interest in and ought to have a right to vote upon without any consideration of party, it is surely this great question of pensions. It is an insult to the House of Commons that when we are discussing this matter the Cabinet Ministers who were responsible for the Bill are not here to defend the attitude they took up. This is one of those miserable compromises, a

  77
  sort of Coalition Bill, brought about, not because it is desirable, but because there are opposing interests and they must all be reconciled, and we must look a happy family.
  There is no secret as to the history of the matter. The Secretary to the Admiralty was determined that he would not be brought in. The Statutory Committee, as represented by the Local Government Board, did not quite like being brought in. Therefore they said, "Bring them all in nominally and actually they will all be out." That is the position—a fine perspective to please the people outside. It is worthy of a bogus company promoter. They got the names in the Bill and pretend that there is unity, but when you look into it there is really no unity at all. They are to be members of the Board, but are they going to have any real supervising power in its operations? Nothing of the kind. No one knows it better than they themselves. Respect has been shown for their sensitiveness, and therefore they are brought in nominally without actually feeing brought in. We are asked, in my opinion, to assist in perpetrating a fraud upon the people of this country because we pretend to them that there is unity because they are all on one Board, when all the time there is nothing of the kind and it is simply make-believe. The overpowering consideration with the Committee ought to be what is going to be best for the men who are risking their lives, when they came back to England. We are all anxious to do what is best. That is the only question that guides me. Poor men walking the streets and almost dying of starvation That is the position you have brought us to. No credit is due to the Government for what they have done. It is said, Everything will be put right. It will never be put right until you have one man and one man only, at the head who takes the responsibility, without dividing it with any other Ministers. I make this prophecy. Most of us may live to see the day when the very proposal which is put forward now will be carried into effect. It is bound to come. You cannot prevent it. Fancy the great question of pensions in America ever being settled in the miserable way in which it is brought forward by the Government. There is no precedent in any other war for this sort of makeshift. It is a political truce in regard to this matter. It is mot to be for the benefit of the men themselves. We all know what Ministers think
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  about it. They know in their hearts they would never have put this forward themselves. It is a patched-up thing by the Cabinet in order to secure peace. We should be false to our duty to the men we have advised to join the Army if we did not take the very first opportunity of telling the Government what we think in regard to it. The hon. Member (Mr. Currie) talked about losing the Bill. Does he thinks we are going to lose the Bill if we defeat the Government? I should not break my heart if we did. We have had precedents when the House of Commons exercised its own mind. Three different Register Bills have been brought forward, and they are going to bring forward another. The Government did not resign.
  Mr. CURRIE: I said nothing about the resignation of the Government, but only of losing the Bill.
  Sir H. DALZIEL: My hon. Friend really must look at it from a Parliamentary point of view. He misunderstands the whole position. My right hon. Friend (Dr. Macnamara)) gave a most emphatic "Hear, hear!" when my hon. Friend, said he was going to lose the Bill. Is the position of the Government that if the House of Commons adopts this Amendment the Bill is defeated? We ought to be told. No matter what the future of the Bill is the men will not suffer by our voting for the Amendment. If we vote for the Amendment, we shall be saying to the Government: "Wake up and deal with this question in a proper manner." They have never really consulted the House of Commons. They threw it on the floor, and practically said: "Take it or leave it." The duty of the Committee is to exercise its own mind. Do not be misled by the eloquence of the Secretary to the Local Government Board or the violent orations of my right hon. Friend (Dr. Macnamara). Our duty is to the men whom we advised to join the Army, and I do not envy the position of Ministers when they have to say afterwards: "We have passed a Bill, but things are really worse than they were before." Let us try and make them better, and the only way to make them better is to adopt the Amendment.
  Mr. HAYES FISHER: I am sorry that the Committee should find itself in a very uncomfortable and unhappy position. It has got a Bill which it does not altogether like, and it would like to have another Bill. Is the Committee altogether free

  79
  from blame for the position in which it finds itself? The right hon. Gentleman has just made a powerful speech. Is he altogether free from blame for the position in which he finds himself? I have been told that two years ago I was strongly in favour of some unified system of pensions, and made speech after speech in this House in favour of a complete system of unified pensions. I gave evidence before a Select Committee in favour of that system. Again and again when I was put in charge of the Bill for setting up the Statutory Committee I avowed that I much preferred a unified system of pensions. But did the right hon. Gentleman, who never seems to me to be in the very least abashed in attacking the Government, ever once support me? Did he ever on any one of those occasions get up and advocate any system of unified pensions?
  Sir H. DALZIEL: It was not before the Committee.
  Mr. HAYES FISHER: It was before the House again and again. How was it that I was able from the opposite side of the House to make speeches of considerable length and vigour, attacking the Government, of which I was not then a member, because it did hot unify our pension system? I did not in those days receive any support from the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Ellis Griffith), who now taunts me with my inconsistency. I have never seen his name in connection with any of the great societies with which I have been working now for at least fifteen years for the improvement of the position of the soldier and the sailor. I received no support from the other side of the House at that time for my proposal for a unified system of pensions. Therefore the House must really blame itself to a very large extent when it finds itself in the position in which it finds itself to-day. I have not changed any opinion that I ever held on this subject. I believed at the beginning of this War—and I believed it most fervently after long study of this question, after sitting on many different bodies, and having been a Commissioner of the Chelsea Hospital for three years during the Boer War, and having brought about many reforms in our pension system—that this War would make it absolutely necessary to unify the whole of our pension system under one body, acting through a Minister of Pensions, under one roof. But
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  two years or more have passed since then. There was then only a staff in London of 250 officials dealing with pensions in different buildings. We have now a staff of 2,500, scattered about different buildings in London, who are dealing with the pension system. I do not know how it is possible to unify all that enormous staff to-day under one roof. My right hon. Friend (Mr. Henderson) said he hoped to be able to do it some time in May or some time in June.
  As I said the other day, there are many obstacles in the way to-day which did not exist two years ago. In my opinion, a system of unified pensions ought to have-been introduced before. Meanwhile, the Statutory Committee has been set up. I am an ex-officio member of all its committees. I have spent many hundreds of hours in attending the meetings of those committees, and I may say this of the-Statutory Committee, that I have never seen better work done. I have never seen more laborious hours worked. I think the-House has paid a high testimonial to the work of the Statutory Committee when, with very few exceptions, it has approved of the standard of pensions set up by the Statutory Committee—a much higher standard than has ever existed before. There is the Statutory Committee in existence. The Statutory Committee has set up 300 local committees and 200 disablement committees. It has a very powerful central disablement committee. It is incoherence with employers and employed, and it has got its rules and regulations broadcast through every local committee. Recommendations are pouring in every day to the Statutory Committee for higher rates of pensions. Much work is in hand in making preparation for training, for employment, and so on. All this work is being done by the Statutory Committee. I do not say that this constitutes an insurmountable obstacle, but it is a very formidable obstacle at the present time in the path of unification. At all events the Government think that. For my own part I think it is very difficult indeed at the present moment to carry out any such scheme of unification as is advocated by the hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge). If I were advocating unification now, I should go further than the hon. Member for East Edinburgh goes. I observe that he does not unify the Civil Liabilities Committee, of which I ant chairman—
  Mr. HOGGE: Yes, I do!
  Mr. HAYES FISHER: I think not.
  Mr. HOGGE: I have got it on the Order Paper in my name.
  Mr. HAYES FISHER: I do not see it.
  Mr. HOGGE: Yes, you will find it.
  Mr. HAYES FISHER: Well, we will deal with it when it comes. I would unify everything, if only it could be done at the right time. I advocated unification when it was possible—when you had not set up your Statutory Committee, when two and a half years had not elapsed, and when you had not this difficult question of staff to deal with.
  Mr. HOGGE: Do it now.
  Mr. HAYES FISHER: I would ask the Committee not to be in a hurry in this matter You may have the very best of machinery and yet you may have a very bad system of pensions. You may have very second-rate machinery and a very good system of pensions. What I have been anxious about—and I am as anxious as the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir H. Dalziel)—is to do what is really practical and best for the soldier and sailor. What we want is to get a better pension, more regularly paid, into his pocket. What we want to do is to do more for his training and more for his employment. I am inclined to think that there was a great deal in what was said by the right hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division of Glasgow (Mr. Barnes), who has done good work on the Statutory Committee, when he said that at the present time we are proceeding very far towards an infinitely better system of pensions than we have at the present time. The Committee ought to be very careful that it does not make confusion worse confounded by tearing up the whole arrangement of the Statutory Committee, and transferring all that is being done by the Statutory Committee to the Pensions Board. Before I could give my consent to a unified system of pensions at the present time, I should want to have a very satisfactory answer to a number of questions. I should, first of all, want to know whether you are quite sure that your local committees are going to act under and take their instructions from the Pensions Board.
  HON. MEMBERS: Yes. Why not?
  Mr. HAYES FISHER: Hon. Members say "yes." Are you quite sure of it. I do I not feel quite sure of it. It is a very dif-
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  ferent hting to fit your local committees into a voluntary system than to fit them into an official system. The local committees are accustomed to their present master, the Statutory Committee. They have been set up by the Statutory Committee, under schemes framed by the Statutory Committee. They have their rules and regulations made by the Statutory Committee. They know that the Statutory Committee are volunteers, as they are. I am not at all sure that the Pensions Board, being a paid body, an official body, will have the same power over these local committees, and will be able to work them to the very full as the Statutory Committee can undoubtedly work them at the present time. I do not feel sure about it. and this is one of those things where we ought to feel sure before we tear up the Act constituting the Statutory Committee, and allow the Pensions Board, with am official system, to take its place. I want to make an appeal to hon. Members. When, years ago, I proposed that we should have one unified system of pensions, administered in one office by one Minister, I then attached to my ideal system of pensions this proviso, that you must have outside any official system some body—a. powerful body—which would be able to-appeal for voluntary funds and which ought to be able to use those funds for the-many eases of compassion to which anyone of us would give a pension or grant, but which were turned down and refused a pension or grant by the official body. If we merely adopt a unified system of pensions such as that sketched by the hon. Member for East Edinburgh, and by so doing abolish the Statutory Committee—because that is what you do—
  Mr. HOGGE: No!
  Mr. HAYES FISHER: Oh, yes!
  HON. MEMBERS: No, no!
  Mr. HAYES FISHER: I say you certainly do. You abolish the Statutory Committee.
  Sir H. CRAIK: No, we do not!
  Mr. HAYES FISHER: My hon. Friend may argue as he likes. I am entitled to my opinion upon the matter. I have studied the Bill very carefully, and I say you do. I do not say you could not alter your Bill so that you could keep the Statutory Committee alive, but I do say that by this proposal you abolish that Committee. My point is that it is necessary, if you are going to have a merely official system, if

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  you are going to have all pensions, grants, and allowances, and all the questions of training and employment dealt with by officials, however sympathetic or humane they are, there always will be a great -category of cases which are not dealt with in the same humane and understanding way as they are now dealt with by a competent body such as the Statutory Committee. I will give an instance of that. Quite lately the Financial Secretary to the War Office and the Army Council have turned over to the Statutory Committee the duty of deciding in regard to forfeiture of pensions. That is a most important matter from the individual point of view. Over 20,000 cases of forfeiture have had to be decided during the last few months. Therefore, the Committee will understand what a very important question this is to the individual. Just imagine anybody getting a letter one morning to say that their pension, which they thought they had got for life, had been forfeited owing to some act of misconduct, or otherwise. That is a very serious thing. Since we have taken over this duty we have, to the best of our judgment, come to the conclusion that in very many of these cases the official answer was too arbitrary, and did not make sufficient allowance for the individual, and we have been able by different methods to so adapt the system as to make it a little more humane, a little more kind, and a little more forgiving towards the individual. I make no charge whatever against those who forfeit these pensions, and I make no charge against any official. All that the official has to do is to act strictly within the Regulations. I say in regard to this idea of a Pensions Board, with nobody but -officials deciding these very difficult questions, that I am perfectly certain there are a great many people who would get pensions or allowances from a body like the Statutory Committee who will fail to get those pensions or allowances from a body which consists wholly of officials and is bound by strict rules and regulations.
  If the Committee in its wisdom thinks fit now to say that the Government should embark upon the course of unifying our pension system so that there shall be no outside body to supplement pensions, and no outside body to give pensions where no pensions are now given, out of State funds, then I do not feel sure, looking at the matter from the point of view of the soldier and the sailor, that we shall improve
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  the position so far as they are concerned. What I have always regarded as the great merit of this Bill—it is only a halfway house towards unification—is that you do get a quartette of people who are singularly sympathetic towards the soldier and sailor. When my right hon. Friend who is to be the new Pensions Minister assures the House, as he has done again and again, that directly the Pensions Board is appointed he will overhaul all the Royal Warrants and the Orders in Council with a view to remedying the grievances from which our soldiers, and, I think, sometimes our sailors, legitimately complain, and with a view-to putting the pensions upon a footing which I believe is generally desired by all Members of this House. I do say that a Bill which only does that is worth a great deal to the soldier and sailor. I want the Committee to understand quite clearly that I renounce none of the views I ever held. I wish it had been possible, and I think it may be possible hereafter, completely to unify our pensions system; but I do say, speaking for this Bill and the Government's attitude in regard to it, that it is a half-way house towards unification. It puts no obstacle in the way of further unification. The mere fact of setting up a Board of Pensions with a Pensions Minister at its head, and he a powerful member of the Cabinet, ensures for the soldier and sailor within the next few weeks that the whole of our Royal Warrants affecting this great question will be overhauled from top to bottom, and a much more generous system of pensions will be established in this country—a system of pensions which I believe all of us have been longing for for some time past.
  This is my defence of the Bill. It is difficult—I do not say it is absolutely impossible—to establish a perfectly unified system of pensions at the present time. The Bill goes half-way towards that unification. I am not quite sure that it does not go a great deal more than half-way. Certainly it goes a very long way towards unification. It enables a complete overhauling of the Royal Warrants, and it ensures that we shall be able to carry out within a very few weeks what we all desire to do, and that is to scrap a great many of these old Warrants, and to put on a proper footing a very much better system than we have at the present time. If the Committee should unfortunately take the line that they would prefer to scrap this Bill, let me say that, knowing

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  this Bill as I do, it is not a Bill which is designed to be, or in Committee could be, so altered as to carry out the additions which I, personally, and I believe the Committee, have in view. To carry out the idea which my hon. Friend has in mind would necessitate a new Bill more complex in character, for which we might have to wait some time, considering the congestion of business in this House. My desire is the immediate welfare of the soldier and sailor and the immediate reform in our pensions system by allowing this Bill to go through, even though before very long hon. Members have at the back of their minds the intention to ask the Government to reconsider the question and to go still further in this matter.
  Mr. HLAW: I cannot speak, as could other Members who have addressed the Committee up to the present, in any way as an expert, for I speak neither as a Minister, who is bound to have great official knowledge of these matters, nor as a member of the Statutory Committee, or of any of the great local committees which are busily engaged in the actual administration of pensions. But my very simplicity in this matter may, perhaps, have a certain advantage, because those who are themselves deeply immersed in the actual working of schemes of this sort are almost necessarily, I think, brought to think too much of the details of machinery and of perhaps, I might say, the feelings of individual officials. I have been asking myself in this Debate, and in other debates dealing with this question, not how does it affect the tender feelings of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty; not whether somebody on the Statutory Committee will think me very rude if I do not seem to give full value to the excellent work which that Committee have done; not whether or not the present Minister for Pensions is sympathetic towards our disabled soldiers. To my mind, those things are, if not irrelevant, at least transitory and of very small importance. What I ask myself is, "What scheme is it which will enable the disabled soldier, or the dependants of the disabled soldier or sailor who has fallen, most easily and quickly to obtain that which the whole nation intends them to get?" From that point of view I would like to consider the Amendment. As I understand, we have been told by the Government that they resisted the Amendment only on these grounds. In the first place, that the
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  Statutory Committee has been a very short time at work, and that after nine or ten months it was very undesirable to pull this tender plant up by the roots; and, again, that the Admiralty was actuated by such tender feelings towards its sailors that it would be very unkind both to the right hon. Gentleman and perhaps to the sailors themselves to remove them from the fatherly care of that Department.
  I think that the main reason for which the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down asked us to vote for this Bill is that we have got four Ministers who were, he said, of all men in this House perhaps the most sympathetic towards our disabled men and their dependants. I am perfectly willing to accept that. I know of the work which the right hon. Gentleman the Pensions Minister has himself already done, and how kindly disposed is the Financial Secretary to the War Office, and that is equally true of the other two. What on earth is the relevance of that? Here we are considering a Bill, not to set up these four Gentlemen, but to establish, I will not say for all time, but it may be for many years to come, pensions affecting millions of men and women, and if we can only make the work straight now we shall not have to rip it up again. The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down told us that there are, I will not say insuperable obstacles, but very great difficulties now which did not exist when he made the speech which has been referred to. What are those difficulties? He tells us of a great staff; that the problem has grown because we need more staff; and, again, that the problem has grown in complexity. If the problem has grown in complexity, that itself is a reason not for resisting this Amendment, but for simplification and for unity. He painted a picture of the local committees and their work and of applicants for pensions, helpless in a sort of naked world in which there are nothing but Government Departments. But under your Bill applicants have to go to the Government. You do not get away from a Government Department by leaving the Statutory Committee in existence. Does anybody suggest that if you succeeded in unifying the policy you will not have people underneath the Minister dealing with the actual executive work? Of course you will. Nobody knows that better than the right hon. Gentleman. For those reasons I myself and I believe my colleagues are whole-heartedly with the

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  right hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment.
  Sir C. HENRY: I am certain that the hon. Member who has just sat down has expressed the views of the majority of the members of this Committee. I desire to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary to the Local Government Board on his speech. It was a speech of ability, and I believe that no man in this House could have made out his case on better lines. My right hon. Friend the Member for Anglesey appealed to the Government not to put on the official Whips. Since his appeal my right hon. Friend the Paymaster-General and the President of the Local Government Board have listened to this Debate, and I am convinced that they will be acting very unwisely if they do not adopt the course recommended by my right hon. Friend. If we lose this Bill it is certain that neither soldiers' nor sailors* dependants will suffer. My right hon. Friend the Paymaster-General has said that whether this Bill is passed or not he will be able to deal with Royal Warrants by which increased pensions can be made to the soldiers' or sailors' dependants. That is not dependent upon this Bill.
  Mr. HENDERSON: I could not make that statement, because until I get the power from the Army Council I cannot deal with the Warrants.
  Sir C. HENRY: My right hon. Friend will recognise that the power from the Army Council is not dependent upon whether this Bill comes into law or not.
  Mr. HENDERSON: Until the new Department obtains the necessary power with regard to Royal Warrants we are in the hands of the Army Council.
  Sir C. HENRY: Then I say let the War Office and the Admiralty act. We want this Bill thoroughly understood. If we take the risk of throwing out this Bill no one can say that it prevents either soldier or sailor from receiving additional pensions. That should be perfectly understood. This Bill seeks to marry different Departments which deal with pensions. In my opinion that is divorce? before marriage. Take for instance the Admiralty. Under the existing Bill of 1915 the Admiralty is dealt with by the Statutory Committee. It divorces the Admiralty. Then what about your process of unification? The hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) referred
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  to service pensions. I consider that service pensions should continue to be dealt with by either of the Departments, the War Office or the Admiralty. Service pensions are deferred pay. They are not in the shape of pensions at all and do not come into this category. My right hon. Friend the Secretary to the Local Government Board laid special stress on the desirability of this Bill on account of the Minister whom we have to administer it. He will, however, recognise that the right hon. Gentleman will not always be the Paymaster-General and that other members who may form the Board may not have the knowledge of pensions that he has, and it will not be administered with the same knowledge as he possesses. No one knows how long a Minister in these days will be in his present position. After all, this is only a temporary Board; he must recognise that. If for no other reason I maintain that that Board cannot be looked upon as a satisfactory Board. I have an Amendment down on the Paper which practically scraps the Statutory Committee. I was not quite certain of my ground when I put down that Amendment, but after hearing the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackfriars (Mr. Barnes) and the hon. Member for Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities (Sir H. Craik), I feel certain that those members of the Committee would rather see that Statutory Committee scrapped entirely than that it should be relegated to the duties which are placed upon it under the Bill. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Middleton (Sir R. Adkins) gave the views of the Statutory Committee very half-hearted support. The duties which are proposed to be laid on the Statutory Committee are the duties of administering voluntary funds. They have also the duty of looking after aftercare.
  Mr. BARLOW: They administer £7,000,000.
  6.0 P.M.
  Sir C. HENRY: That would be dealt with by the Board of Pensions—that is the supplementary. The pensions should be administered by the Board of Pensions, and not by the Statutory Committee. Am I right or am I wrong in saying that I believe the Statutory Committee will only have the administration of voluntary contributions? I am sorry to think that voluntary contributions may not be very substantial. There are Amendments to scrap the Statutory Committee—
  The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: I would point out that the hon. Member, in dealing with the general question, is going too much into detail.
  Sir C. HENRY: I will not further pursue that point, and in conclusion I trust that the Government will not persist in the course they are following, but that they will accept the Amendment of the hon. Member for East Edinburgh, which embodies our views of unification and co-ordination of the system of pensions I believe would not only meet the wish of this House, but the wish of the country.
  Mr. RUTHERFORD: I think we ought to approach this subject not as politicians, not as either for or against the Government, but as business men dealing with a business proposition. It is not a political question that we are dealing with; it is a serious matter of business affecting hundreds and thousands of our wounded, as well as widows and orphans. I do not support this Amendment out of any hostility to the Paymaster-General; nor do I approach it out of any hostility to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty or to the Financial Secretary to the War Office, both being perhaps the very best Parliamentary Secretaries we ever had. The amount of work which they have done and have to do is perfectly stupendous, and the way in which they have attended to it commands the admiration of all sections of this House. Having said this, I wish to address myself to the purport of the Amendment, which is that we ought to unify and consolidate the administration of pensions—a most important subject. What are we to get out of the Bill? We are to get out of it a Board of four members, representing different Departments of the Government. We object to that very strongly. We would prefer that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty and the Financial Secretary to the War Office should be left to continue the work of their Departments—which, some of us think, wants looking after very badly. We have only got to mention, for instance, the word "Roumania," heard this afternoon —[HON. MEMBERS: "Order, order!"] I say that we would prefer the Parliamentary Secretaries of these two Departments to continue their work, which is so important that it should be done wholeheartedly.
  What are we to have under this Bill? The Paymaster-General is to have a third office. He is Paymaster-General and
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  Labour Adviser to the Government; he is now going to take up this matter of pensions. We do not want a half-timer in charge of these pensions and allowances. We are going to get about a third of the right hon. Gentleman's time, and about 1 per cent. of the time of the other members of the Board. The whole business instinct of the House of Commons objects to this kind of muddle and mess. We want the whole thing unified and co-ordinated and that, as I understand it, is the object of the Amendment. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board told us quite frankly that we were in a very difficult position in this matter, and he mentioned, as an illustration, that 20,000 cases of forfeited pensions had been referred from the different Departments to the Statutory Committee —work, by the way, which had nothing to do with their original appointment. The mere mention of a fact of that nature, that there are 20,000 such cases to be dealt with, surely can be cited in support of our claim that the administration of these pensions should be on a unified and co-ordinated system, under one head. The right hon. Gentleman who replied on the Amendment on. behalf of the Government said that the effect of passing this Amendment would be that the Statutory Committee would be swept away—it would cease to exist. That argument has been repeated by all those who have supported the Government in any shape to-day. The object of the Amendment is not to sweep away the Statutory Committee; we do not want to do that. There are 2,000 clerks at present engaged on the work; the last figure given was 2,500, but perhaps the whole of them are not necessary, if we had the entire business properly unified and co-ordinated as proposed by this Amendment, and it could be carried out under one head who would be responsible for it. That is the object we want to attain, and under such a system the one person at its head would be responsible to Parliament.
  As a matter of business, pure business, submit that is a practical proposition. No firm in the City of London would dream of tackling a subject of this kind excepting it was put under one responsible head. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board admitted that this was an ideal system, but he blamed the House, and said that it was the House's fault that they had gone wrong some little time ago, that they had

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  taken the wrong step. I would remind hon. Members that we are only at the beginning of this pensions matter, and that in America pensions arising out of the Civil War, now so many years ago, are still going on. How many years will this Pensions Board have to continue their work none of us can tell—at least sixty years. Is it not necessary, whatever mistakes may have been made in the past, at all events to take a step in the right direction now, and to see that the muddle and mess is not perpetuated, and that it is put an end to as quickly as possible. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board told us the other day that some millions of letters have had to be written by one or other of the Departments. That I can readily understand from my own personal experience. I represent an artisan constituency in Liverpool, and a great many of the men have been wounded at the front, and a number of them have been killed. I have received many letters, and I can only say that the amount of correspondence one has to deal with, even in so small an area as that to which I refer, is overwhelming. I have found that in almost every case these people have been sent from pillar to post, from one Department to the other, and in several cases extra money which they should have obtained they did not get because they did not know, and I did not know, that they could get it.
  When you consider that the Regulations the Statutory Committee have issued as to these pensions occupy over 100 pages of close print, indicating the way in which they are going to deal with one of the six Departments on this subject, it becomes perfectly plain that the whole administration of pensions urgently calls for co-ordination and for unification. This great War in which we are engaged is an argument in support of my contention that unification and co-ordination are as essential to the administration of pensions as they are in other matters. To what do you ascribe the great successes which our enemy has had? Simply to the fact that the organisation of his forces and what he has been able to do has all been done under one head. I am convinced that unless this Committee can see its way to adopt the businesslike suggestion of co-ordination and unification there is very great trouble ahead. The muddle and mess which we have at present is simply appalling. I admit to the full the courtesy
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  and consideration extended to me, and to-those on whose behalf I have made communications, by the Financial Secretary to the War Office. No one could have been more courteous than he, and nothing could have been more speedy in any of the Departments during the last four or five weeks than the way in which the matters-in which we are interested have been conducted by the hon. Gentleman, though some of those matters were not within his Department. What we want in behalf of our soldiers and sailors, and in behalf of widows and orphans, is a business man, and we business men have come here this afternoon to plead for absolute unity and co-ordination of administration, so that we may have one Minister responsible in this House for the whole of the work connected with pensions. We want one head to take under his control the whole of the different branches and organisations—and there are six of them—which are at present dealing with this subject. We want somebody responsible for the Statutory Committee—it is only an accident that two Members of this House are upon it—and we want somebody responsible for every department of this exceedingly complicated, difficult, and important subject.
  Sir GEORGE TOULMIN: I think this discussion will give the right hon. Gentleman the Paymaster-General a very valuable indication of the feeling of the House. Judging even from the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board, the new Board, so far as it is constituted, is possibly willing to-be pushed on rather than to have the proposals cut down. As far as I have been able to judge from the utterances of the various hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who have spoken, three out of four are in favour of the Amendment. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board confesses that he is in favour of unification, but he says not to-day, and. he. tells us that the Paymaster-General hopes to carry unification forward some time in May or June next. I wish to know is that to be done under this Bill. If it is in prospect, why not take power under this Bill to do it? Confessedly, this Bill is a half-measure, and the House does not want half-measures at present. We have been told that the House is responsible for the position, which is admittedly a position of confusion. If that is so, the House will take the responsibility for the position, and will also take the responsibility at the present

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  moment of endeavouring to cure that confusion now. It is most necessary that we should endeavour to get on the right lines at once. And is not it a question of exercising the judgment of the House after it has had further experience, which should be left to the House? I wish to know from the Paymaster-General whether the House is really being consulted on this Bill, or is it a Bill which is presented to us as a question of confidence as to whether we accept it as it stands or not? There are many subjects on which the naval and military experts frown upon us, and possibly very properly so, and that they are quite right in doing so. I never offered to give my opinion either on Roumania or on the Channel question, but this is a civil matter and ought entirely to be within the competence of the House.
  There is an outstanding demand to unify and simplify the whole of our pensions system, and the demand is that there shall be a Minister who shall be supreme in all sections in policy. That does not mean that the Minister when he takes command shall scrap every bit of machinery which already exists to perform the duties. I cannot imagine my right hon. Friend being so foolish as to sweep away all those who are engaged in doing this work now and to divorce every man of experience from the duties which he is now supervising. The hon. Member for Middleton (Sir B. Adkins) referred to the voluntary work of the Statutory Committee. The value of their work, I believe, will be recognised when it is known. We do not know, I think, the value of a great deal of the work done by the Statutory Committee, but that Committee, as I understood the hon. Member, are quite willing loyally to accept the decision of this House. Personally I cannot see that there will be any difficulty in the Statutory Committee continuing as an organism not independent but exercising its powers under the control of a Minister. It need not, as I look upon the matter, be abolished, but I wish to ask, Is the Statutory Committee beyond the influence of this House at the present moment? Do the House understand that it is so? If it is, then we desire there should be a Minister to exercise that control. If it is under our influence we desire that the control of this House should be in the hands of a definite person who can exercise that control. If the Statutory Committee is not now under the control of the House I am quite sure that the House would desire that it should
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  be under the control of the House. If the Paymaster-General will only look at it in. this light this Amendment is really a vote of confidence in him. He appears in rather protean character here: He is a very influential Cabinet Minister; he is Labour Adviser; and he is the prospective Pensions Minister. Personally I see no incompatibility in the Labour Adviser performing also the duties of Pensions Minister, and no doubt in that capacity he gets some very valuable information which. would be very useful in what will be one part, I hope, of his duties.
  My. hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Hogge) mentioned nine points. I think there is a tenth point in the Amendment which has been put down to insert a Clause with reference to local committees under the Pensions Board. Under that Amendment there would be two sets of local committees responsible to three bodies. I think that is putting local committees in a very unsatisfactory position. The local committee is really the cutting edge of the machinery of this Bill or of any machinery of this kind which you may set up I do not think any one could exaggerate the value of the work which they will have to do. The Statutory Committee may or may not have to set up one of these committees. If they have, then that committee has to do the work of the Pensions Board. If they have not, the Pensions Board has to set up a committee. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board is not sure that the local committees will accept the Pensions Board in the same way as they have accepted the Statutory Committee, yet he is actually incorporating them under this Bill. I consider that the local committee is the strongest argument for unification. It is the work of those committees which makes it necessary that for each family there shall be-one record. Whether the case has been before the Civil Liabilities Committee or whether it is a question of disablement or-a question of a widow and dependants, there should be in the locality only one dossier, and there should only be one place for that dossier in London, in order to-avoid waste of effort in duplicate inquiries. This Amendment aims at unity and equality and justice, without which I am quite sure the public will not be satisfied.
  Mr. HOHLER: I have listened to the argument, and I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that he desired to

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  consult Members as to this Bill. If that is so, I do not see why he should not be? willing to accept this Amendment, as it is clear that members of the Committee are in favour of it. The Paymaster-General said that this not an appropriate occasion for the Amendment, and I gather that he tells us that our history in regard to pension legislation in the past has been a failure, and yet in substance he says, "continue the failure." I cannot agree with that argument. This Bill is really an immense departure on, the question of pensions, and for this reason. We know that the pensions of soldiers and sailors depend upon Royal Warrant, but under this Bill you are going to frame a Royal Warrant to provide supplemental pensions, which is a wholly new departure. The Naval and Military Pensions Act of]915 was purely a voluntary Act. There was not a brass farthing in it except salaries for the Chairman and Secretary. We ask now to have direct control with the Minister and Secretary responsible to this House, and responsible for the pensions and supplemental pensions. If the House finds the Warrants are defective, they can call attention to them and get them altered. I think this is the only occasion on which we can raise this point. This is a question in which I take a great interest. I opposed the first Bill for all I was worth along with others, and we did our best to wreck it, because there was no money in it. What happened was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer promised a million of money. But even on Third Reading it was a question whether the Bill would go through, for nobody was really interested in it, as they were not alive to the importance of this question. We were then told, "if you do not have this Bill you will have nothing at all," and, rather than that those men should not get the million which was an initial step, I supported the Bill, which went through. That was done only to catch the million, and it was not that I liked the Bill, which was a hateful Bill, and a Bill whose meanness was beyond words, since it only dealt with the contributions on the charitable public.
  I am satisfied that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board is heart and soul against this compromise. We ought, I think, to have a Pensions Minister from the first, and there is no doubt about it that we will get that. The Parliamentary Secretary says that he
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  doubts whether the local committees will deal with the Pensions Minister. If the money comes from the Crown it is what they love, and I will tell you why. Some of the local committees refused to work the voluntary Naval and Military Pensions Act of 1915, because they said that you were going to get hold of their private funds received from private benevolence to pay a debt the country owes, and that they would not have it. The Corporation of Birmingham, for instance, absolutely refused to work the Bill until the Chancellor of the Exchequer came down and gave the money. We then had a statement from the Chancellor. We are now told that existing councils, urban or borough corporations, will not work the Bill. Let me remind hon. Members that there is the voice of the elector, and if the present councillors and mayors will not work the Bill we will get somebody through the electors who will do so. I am quite sure that all these local bodies will have great pleasure in doing the work and a pleasure all the greater when the country is paying for it. Do not let us destroy this Bill when everybody is agreed we ought to have it. We want it in appropriate form and the Government have asked us to advise them on it. I have risen simply to voice what is not only the feeling of this House but of the country at large that this matter ought to be put in order at once.
  Mr. HENDERSON: On a point of Order, Mr. Chairman. I have had a question put to me as to whether the Government Whips would be kept off in connection with this Amendment. I do not like that method of dealing with a question. If, as I am convinced, the majority of the House, so far as all indications go this afternoon, favour the principle of the Amendment, I am rather disposed to accept it without troubling the Committee to go to a Division. I want, however, to be quite clear on the very important question of procedure. I want to ask you, Sir, whether, in the event of my accepting this Amendment on behalf of the Government, you think it would be possible afterwards for me to move to report Progress in order that the Government might have an opportunity of putting down its own Amendments to give effect to what it conceives to be the desire of the House for a fuller scheme of unification? I want it to be clearly understood, in accepting that position, that I do not undertake to put into the Bill all the suggestions that have

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  been made. I am prepared to go a long way, but I think the Government are really convinced on one point—that is, that the question of service pensions ought to remain where it is, seeing it is linked up with the question of discipline. If that is clearly understood, I am quite prepared to ask my colleagues to go a long way with me in what I really recognise is clearly the view of the House. I would therefore ask your ruling as to the Government being able to put down Amendments, as I should very much regret having to lose time with the Bill.
  The CHAIRMAN: It is difficult, of course, for me to give any ruling on Amendments that I have not seen, but I think I may say, broadly, that it does seem to me that it will be quite possible to introduce Amendments such as have been indicated in this afternoon's discussion, whether in the form of some of those on the Paper or in other form, broadly speaking, to carry out what appears to be the general view of the Committee. The right hon. Gentleman will understand that I am not committing myself to any particular Amendments until I see them. I think, however, that I should be taking a pedantic view if I ruled subsequently that it was not within the competence of the Committee to carry out in specific terms what has been indicated in respect to the Amendment now before us.
  Mr. HENDERSON: On that understanding I am prepared to accept the Amendment before the Committee, and then I shall immediately move to report Progress.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Mr. HENDERSON: I beg to move, "That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again."
  I do so for the purpose, as I have stated, of putting down Amendments. I hope next time the Committee meet that the Amendments will be such as will be acceptable, and that we will get the scheme that has been hinted at in the speeches. We are all agreed as to the object. That is one of the things which encourages me in moving to report Progress, for I believe it will be possible after to-day's Debate, to put forward Amendments which will give effect to a much more comprehensive scheme.
  Mr. M. BARLOW: I would like to ask one question that clearly follows from the considerable and very gratifying concession on the part of the Government. In order to make it widely effective, might I ask that the Amendments, which appear to recast the Bill entirely, should be put down so that we shall have plenty of time to consider them. I would also suggest that, if possible, the Bill should be reprinted, showing what the Government are going to do.
  Sir H. DALZIEL: I think the Government have really taken the right course in this matter. I am sure that it is the general view of the House that it would have been a very great misfortune for them to have suffered defeat in the Lobbies at a moment like this. Apart from that I think they have taken the right step in order to improve the Bill. As I understand the statement of the Pensions Minister, the Government are going to take a cue from this Amendment for the whole of this Bill. Therefore we need not look forward to controversies on the Bill and as to whether or not the Navy is to be brought in. I take it that is practically settled to-day. Everything is settled now except the service to which my right hon. Friend alluded. That, of course, is for the decision of the House. Therefore, I take it that the Bill will not require much consideration when it comes back to us. I hope the Government will not bring it back until they have fully considered it, so that it may be passed practically as an unopposed measure.
  Mr. HENDERSON: In reply to the question of the hon. Member (Mr. Barlow) I think it will be possible to take the Committee stage on Thursday. I do not want to lose time if it can be avoided.
  Mr. BARLOW: In that case it will be desirable to have the Amendments on Wednesday morning at the latest?
  Mr. HENDERSON: I see the reasonableness of the question, and I will see if it is possible to get the Amendments by Wednesday morning.
  Colonel Sir H. GREENWOOD: I should like to emphasise a question put by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy, and I want to put a question or two. Does the Paymaster-General promise to put into the new Bill the spirit of the Committee, namely, for unification to include the Admiralty; and, secondly, I hope the Paymaster-General will make it

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  clear to the Government that at any rate certain Members of this House will not obey any party Whip nor be intimidated in any way upon this question.
  The CHAIRMAN: We are on a Motion to report Progress.
  Colonel Sir H. GREENWOOD: I am sorry.
  The CHAIRMAN: I have already indicated that it will be competent for the Government, or for any hon. Member, to raise the point of the inclusion of the Navy, if the foreshadowed Amendments of the Government do not cover the point.
  Mr. DILLON: I want to ask a question entirely relevant to this Motion to report Progress. That is to say, can the Government give us any information as to the business that will be taken to-morrow, and also give us some assurance that in arranging the business we shall not waste more than half the time of even the three days on which we are permitted to sit during the War? I may point out to the Patronage Secretary that since we commenced the Session we have only been sitting three days a week, and on those three days we generally adjourn before dinner for lack of something to do. We are now getting towards Christmas, and many of us are very anxious to get home. We would be able to finish the whole business of the House by next week if there had been a rational method of putting it down. I would be very obliged to the Patronage Secretary if he could tell us now what business will be taken tomorrow in place of this Bill.
  Mr. GULLAND (Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury): In reply to the hon. Member may I say that it is not the fault of the Government that this day has not been fully utilised, for the Government had put on the Paper what appeared to be a full day's work. It was further stated that if the Committee stage of this Bill was not concluded to-night, it would be continued to-morrow. The circumstances, however, have altered, and therefore we have to readjust the business. The only other Order for to-day is No 5, the Report of the Government War Obligations, in order that the Bill may be introduced.
  To-morrow, we shall take as the first Order the Registration of Business Names Bill [Lords], as amended, the Local Government Emergency Provisions (No. 2) Bill,
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  Committee stage, and the Second Reading of the Sailors and Soldiers (Gifts for Land Settlement) Bill. I do not see any other Orders on the Paper to-day that we can. take to-morrow, but I think that those I have mentioned we certainly shall take.
  Mr. GRIFFITH: I quite agree with the Patronage Secretary. I cannot find any fault with the Government in this matter. It is their misfortune. In regard to this particular Bill I hope the Paymaster-General will be able to put down the Amendments of the Government on such a day, and in such a form, that it will be possible for us to have the opportunity of putting down Amendments to the Government Amendments before the discussion comes on.
  Sir NORVAL HELME: Under the circumstances, if the Government will, at the beginning of next week, give us the time arranged for this Bill to be considered in Committee we shall have time to deal with it.
  Mr. BARLOW: Would the Government undertake to give us at least twenty-four clear hours before they bring on the discussion after the Amendments have been circulated?
  Colonel YATE: I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill one question, and that is whether the Government Amendments he will bring in will or will not lay down definitely that we are to have a full-time Pensions Minister?
  The CHAIRMAN: That is a matter that does not arise on the Motion to report Progress.
  Sir G. TOULMIN: May I put the suggestion to the Paymaster-General that as soon as the Amendments are decided upon they should be issued as a White Paper? This can be done more rapidly than if they had to wait, perhaps, for the Amendments to be handed in at the Table here. By this means we would get to know as soon as possible what they are, and possibly save a day.
  Mr. HENDERSON: I will take that suggestion into consideration, and I assure the Committee that if the Amendments are not circulated -on Wednesday, the Committee stage will not be taken on Thursday.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again to-morrow (Tuesday).

GOVERNMENT WAR OBLIGATIONS.
Resolution reported, "That it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament, and, if those moneys are insufficient, out of the Consolidated Fund, of such sums as may be required for giving effect to obligations incurred for the purposes of the present War or in connection therewith, by or on behalf of His Majesty's Government, and for other purposes in relation thereto."
Motion made, and question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution."
Sir C. HENRY: I should like to ask the Financial Secretary one question, and that is, When may we expect this Bill? There are matters in this Bill as to which the House requires information. We were unable to obtain it in the Committee stage of the Resolution, and I think the Bill should be in the possession of Members as soon as possible.
Mr. PRINGLE: I would like to repeat the question I have already put in regard to this matter. We had rather confused explanations of the Resolution in the Committee stage. At that time it was understood by the Committee that the Resolution merely covered obligations which had been ratified by either or both of the last two Government War Obligation Acts. That was the first statement made by the Government, but it subsequently transpired that there were certain new matters covered by this Resolution. In other words, that there were fresh obligations which did not exist at the time of the passing of the previous Act which the Government had since incurred and for which, by this Resolution and by the Bill that will be founded upon if, they desire the ratification of Parliament. The point I now wish to put to the right hon. Gentleman is whether he will indicate what is the general nature of the new obligations since incurred by the Government which are included in the purview of this Resolution?
The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. McKinnon Wood): If the House agrees to this stage, the Bill will be immediately printed. As regards the other point, none of these obligations are in themselves covered by a previous Bill, but the bulk of the obligations which are covered by this Bill are of the same class as all the obligations covered by the pre-
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vious Bill. I can really add nothing to what I have said. I am sure my hon. Friend, when he sees the Bill, will find that the additions are not matters of at all the same scope and nature as the class of cases which have already been covered. There are loans to Scarborough, a very small matter, because it is a question of the possible balance of loss; the post-war question of assisting banking abroad which has been before the House, and one or two small matters of that sort; and I do really suggest that as there are three stages of the Bill to go through the interest of the House is sufficiently safeguarded, and the matters are more appropriate for discussion when the text of the Bill is in the hands of hon. Members, which will be as soon as it possibly can be done.
Mr. RAWLINSON: If there is any sense in having a Resolution of this kind—and there must be some reason—is it not possible to give some sort of indication as to the amount required by a particular Bill? The Government must have some idea. Sometimes a limit has been given.
Mr. McKINNON WOOD: As I ex plained, this is not the case of the House granting money, but the case of granting sanction for contractual obligations which the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Treasury have entered into, the money having been voted by Parliament either under the Vote of Credit or in some other form. This is not a Bill which asks for money to be voted to the Government; it is a Bill which sanctions contractual obligetions the Government have entered into, which may be paid out of the Vote of Credit.
Question put, and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in upon the said Resolution by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Herbert Samuel, Mr. Runciman, and Mr. McKinnon Wood.

GOVERNMENT WAR OBLIGATIONS.

  GOVERNMENT WAR. OBLIGATIONS BILL,
  "to make provision with respect to Obligations incurred by or on behalf of His Majesty's Government for the purposes of the present War, or in connection therewith; and for other purposes in relation thereto, "presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 128.]
  The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

GBEECE.
Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER, pursuant to the Order of the House of the 22nd February, proposed the Question, "That this House do now adjourn."
Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH: My hon. Friend the Member for West Clare (Mr. Lynch) gave notice that he would call attention, upon the Adjournment to-night, to a matter of very grave public importance. I saw the Noble Lord the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs a few minutes ago, and I have no doubt he will be in his place shortly. The hon. Member for West Clare on Tuesday last, 21st November, called attention to the Greek situation, and I am bound to say I think it is a very extraordinary thing that a count was moved and carried in the middle of his speech. If I may say so, with great respect, I do not think it reflects great credit on the British House of Commons when there is a count in so important a matter as that. It is quite true that the Noble Lord some time ago said that foreign policy was a matter that was not to be discussed by the House of Commons. From that view I profoundly dissent. It is the House of Commons that has got to pay for the successes and the blunders of foreign policy, and it is the House of Commons, too, that ought to have a voice in the discussion of them. Therefore, I think I need not apologise to the House for saying a word or two upon this question. Of course, we all understand that there are certain aspects of foreign policy that cannot be discussed publicly in this House. I fully understand that. When we move for a Secret Session we are told there is no occasion for it; but at the same time, if there is any discussion of foreign policy in certain of its aspects, a Secret Session is the only method of discussing it, and when we are denied it I do not think I, or any of my hon. Friends ought to be blamed if we, at any rate, raise this matter in its general aspects.
I am not going into a long discussion on the Balkan question, but I think I may say the whole situation, speaking generally, is not very satisfactory at the present moment. Really, discussion would serve the Government's purpose, because the Government's object, no doubt, is to get the confidence of the country in its foreign policy, and if it wants the confidence of the country it had far better have a frank
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and a free discussion in the House of Commons, because, in the absence of that discussion, there are certain rumours which get spread, and certain information gets published, which are far more likely to do harm to the Government, and much more likely to disturb their stability—not in office, because they care nothing for that—as supreme guardians of the Empire, than free discussion in the House of Commons. Is it true that the Government during the last two years have been pressing upon Greece and upon Roumania the duty of neutrality? That is a very important aspect of the question. In the second place, since M. Venizelos has formed a Provisional Government, and since he has declared war in the name of that Provisional Government upon Germany, what is the position of our Government? I ventured some time ago, when the Noble Lord was present in a Debate on the Adjournment of the House, to suggest to him that the British Government ought to make up their mind once for all between the King of Greece and the State of Greece—make up. their mind who is their friend, and to act accordingly. They have not too many friends, and when they find a friend they ought to try to make the most of him. Venizelos is their friend,, and has been their friend, and not only their friend in profession, but in practice and sacrifice, and I think the least the British Government can do is to stand by him.
The Noble Lord has. no doubt, seen a letter in the "Times," dated 23rd November, professing to speak in the name of Venizelos, in which that statesman in Greece, and the friend of the Allies, makes very definite statements. The complaint that he puts forward there is that a neutral zone has been declared by the Allies in Greece. It is a remarkable position that the Allies in Greece, in a neutral country, should declare that a certain territory is neutral territory—that is to say, not neutral as between belligerents, but neutral as between the King of Greece and the Venizelos party. That is a very remarkable proceeding, and yet we profess not to take an attitude hostile to the King of Greece. The Noble Lord said they recognise the King of Greece as king de jure and Venizelos as ruler de facto. I confess I am not subtle enough to understand that because, in so far as Venizelos is recognised as ruler de facto, it must be we are-repudiating the King as king de facto in

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that country when we recognise the Leader of the Constitutional party as ruler de facto. We have declared a neutral zone, and what our friends in Greece say is that in that very neutral zone there is no passage for Greeks to join the Venizelist party. I should like to know whether that is true or not, because if it is true I think the sooner we relax this restriction the better. In the second place, it is alleged—and I should like to know whether this is true or not, that in Greece those who have joined the Venizelist party are prosecuted for high treason and condemned for high treason. Do we really allow in Greece that those who have joined us, those whom we have recognised de facto, those to whom we have given hundreds of thousands of pounds to join us, those we have protected in many ways—do we really allow that those shall be prosecuted for high treason? Let me tell the Noble Lord this: There is a vast amount of alarm and disquietude in this country about our attitude towards Greece. Although the essence of diplomacy may be secrecy, the only justification for secrecy is success, and I do not think there is enough success in our diplomacy to justify the secrecy that has prevailed for so long, and I ask the Noble Lord to take this opportunity to give some reassuring words to this country because I am certain—apart altogether from the conditions of the War in the Balkans, about which I say nothing—there is considerable disquietude, as I have already said, about the attitude of this country towards Greece, and towards the only statesman in Greece who has sacrificed all on our behalf. I ask him to allay that disquiet and alarm and give us an assurance that everything will be done to recognise M. Venizelos, not only de. facto, but in every possible way as an Ally and friend, and a man we are prepared to back up with all the power of our Empire.
7.0 P.M.
Mr. DILLON: I think the right hon. Gentleman has done a great public service by raising this Question to-night. I confess I share entirely the feeling he gave expression to at the opening of his observations that it was a discredit to this House that when this matter in which the country undoubtedly takes a burning and a daily increasing interest was raised the other night in the House, an organised count-out took place. The Noble Lord laid down the other day one of the most astounding principles that has ever been
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addressed to the House of Commons, and it seems to me a marvellous sign of the condition to which this House has been brought under the Coalition Government. Nobody who remembers the proud history of this House as long as I do can be blind to the fact that there is rising up outside this House an increasing contempt for its deliberations. An increasing idea is spreading through the people which is most dangerous, that this House has been obliterated, muzzled, and reduced to absolute helplessness by the operation which gave birth to the Coalition Government. The right hon. Gentleman indicted the action of the Government with regard to M. Venizelos. In my opinion, this House has been far too long silent in regard to that action. The idea has spread abroad —fatal idea for this country—that, whatever nation, or whatever body of men on the Continent declared themselves friends of this country and the Allies, that nation is sure to suffer. I am not going any more than the right hon. Gentleman to enter. into the Question of the Balkans, but I do hope this House before long will claim the right to debate that Question and get some information as to the causes which have brought about the disasters which have now taken place. It may be plausibly argued, though I do not quite admit successfully argued, that in the case of Serbia and Roumania we were unable to aid them. I do not agree with that, but I think it is a question which ought to be debated, and sooner or later it must be debated. Who can say that in the case of Greece those who speak for the majority of the population—[An How. MEMBER: "No."]—
Mr. J. HENDERSON: Unfortunately, they do not.
Mr. DILLON: But I say they do. What test does the hon. Member apply? I look on M. Venizelos as a man who has had for years the confidence of the liberty-loving Greeks, and who on a recent occasion, in spite of Royal intimidation, appealed to the people of Greece and carried by a free vote, by an immense majority, the verdict of Greece. What has been the consequence since that? We were then omnipotent, and we have seen that man obliged to fly from Athens and take refuge in Crete. He then went to Salonika to aid us in the advance that ought to have taken place months ago, and when he proceeded to organise an army in support of the Allies what was

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the conduct of the Government? First of all, they allowed these men to be attacked, insulted, and imprisoned, and the lives were threatened of those Greeks who had the courage to join M. Venizelos. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the letter which was sent, I think, by Mr. Arthur Evans and Mr. Burroughs, speaking in direct communication with M. Venizelos, in which he pointed out the neutral zone. I recollect reading that letter, and these two gentlemen who were in direct communication with M. Venizelos complained that the neutral zone was drawn up in such a way as to include under the de jure domination of the King large tracts of Thessaly and Pirius which are loyal to M. Venizelos, and which are placed on the wrong side of the neutral zone, where the population are anxious to join our Army, and where they dare not join except at the risk of their lives. The moral effect of such conduct as this is fatal to the prestige of the Allies in Europe, and already there is spreading an impression that those who take sides with the Allies are sure to suffer and go to the wall. Surely we have not so many friends that we can turn our backs on M. Venizelos, who is admitted to be one of the greatest statesmen in Europe! I think that the hour has come when this House ought to insist upon its ancient right. For two years we have remained practically silent. Since May, 1915, we have remained absolutely silent as regards any effective criticisms of the War. The War Office—not the Government; make no mistake about it—and certain organs of the Press are perpetually talking about politicians having messed this War. The politicians have messed the War because they have not controlled the soldiers, and the hour has come, if this War is not to be lost by the General Staff of the War Office, when this House and the politicians should reassert their right, and call these men to question and to explain this policy which appears to us to be absolutely fatuous.
Commander BELLAIRS: I think the speeches we have just listened to have commanded the general assent of the House, and there is great alarm and disquiet throughout the country about the attitude of the Government. I ventured to protest against an answer which the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs gave me last Thursday about this very neutral zone. Tasked a question which was per-
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fectly within the rights of a Member of this House, and one which I subsequently found was approved of by the friends of M. Venizelos. We have to remember that, owing to the failure of the Allies to give adequate assistance to M. Venizelos, he has no diplomatic representative in this country, and necessarily he has to have his. case represented here by unofficial people. At the time I asked my question I did not know whether it would be approved by M. Venizelos or not, but I found afterwards, that it was approved. It was a question relating to the neutral zone:
"(1) Whether His Majesty's Government will take measures to see that the towns of Grervena, Servia, and Litohori, which are said to mark the southern boundary of the neutral zone, in which so many outrages have been committed and are still being committed against adherents of M. Venizelos by Royal troops, will now be included within the neutral zone, so that their inhabitants will be defended against further outrage; and (2) whether His Majesty's Government will take measures to ensure that followers of M. Venizelos who happen to inhabit towns in Old Greece, or towns to the south of the neutral zone now established, will receive every opportunity, and will be allowed by the Royal Government, to leave its jurisdiction and cross the neutral zone to the jurisdiction of M. Venizelos?"
Those questions were asked directly in the interests of the Allies and in the interests of those who are supporting the liberties, of Greece. Nevertheless, the right hon. Gentleman, in reply, read what was tantamount to a lecture to me for having asked that question. Of course it may be right from a Foreign Office point of view to say that a Member of this House is wrong in asking questions of that nature.
The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Lord R. Cecil): I did not say that, because the hon. Member has a right to ask anything which Mr. Speaker allows him to ask.
Commander BELLAIRS: The point the right hon. Gentleman made was that asking questions of His Majesty's Government assumed separate action on the part of our Government. I will read the answer given by the right hon. Gentleman:
"I must point out to my hon. and gallant Friend that suggestions that His Majesty's Government should take measures for this or that purpose do not take account of the real situation in Greece. The decision of all such matter rests with the Allied Governments, and I cannot say more than that these matters are receiving, and will continue to receive, the attention of those Governments. To say more than this one way or the other would necessarily give the impression that we were trying to impose our will on the Allies by making a public statement designed to force their hands. I hope hon. Members will not make co-operation with the Allies difficult by ignoring their existence in questions which are put upon the Paper, and which

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seem to expect separate action on the part of His Majesty's Government."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd November, 1916, col. 1551, Vol. LXXXVII.]
No hon. Member of this House expects separate action, but we want the case put as strongly as we can for M. Venizelos. There is an idea current in the country that His Majesty's Government have been rather a drag on progress in regard to these matters in Greece. We want them, if possible, to lead the way and clear up a situation which ought never to have existed for more than a single week. In Greece undoubtedly the attitude of the King's Government with the control of the Army has prevented a forward movement, because they are so placed that they can threaten the communications of our Armies, and it is necessary that a situation of that character should be cleared up at once so that we can render the maximum assistance to the Roumanian people. With regard to the information, if my right hon. Friend takes up that line, he can refuse to answer any question on the ground that he must consult the Allies, but what is the position of the French Chamber in this matter? They are going to have a Secret Session at which they are going to discuss these very points. They have their Foreign Affairs Committee, and the members of that committee are told practically everything, but we are in the position of constantly being put off by answers such as my right hon. Friend has given to me. It is not Question Time now, and therefore I hope the right hon Gentleman will make a full and frank statement, showing that we intend to give M. Venizelos the maximum amount of assistance in our power.
Mr. HENDERSON: I am quite in sympathy with M. Venizelos and with all he represents, but it is not quite the fact to represent him as representing the whole of Greece, and I am sorry that it is not so.
Mr. DILLON: I said the majority of the Greek people.
Mr. HENDERSON: But why should we not have the facts? Is it not a fact that all the islands are with M. Venizelos, while the mainlanders do not want to fight at all? The King could not hold the position he does if he had not had a very large backing in the country of those who do not want to fight. I have been eleven years in this House, and I have always heard on all sides that diplomacy of a delicate nature should not be discussed in this House. Eminently this is a case in which we must work with our Allies, and in bringing a
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charge against the Government you are actually bringing a charge against our Allies and discussing matters which ought to be discussed toy them in conclave, which ought not to toe hindered or reflected upon by any action in this House, more particularly as this House cannot possibly know the whole facts of the case. I wish we could declare M. Venizelos King of Greece. My sympathies are entirely with him, but I see the difficulties, and we must face them. The Allies have to face a very difficult position in Greece, and I wish them safely out of it. We must, however, face facts, and acknowledge them, and not hide from ourselves, as is manifest, that there is a large section of Greece who do not want to fight. That being so, we must give our sympathies to the Allies and our own Government in trying to deal with a very difficult situation.
Mr. R. McNEILL: I do not propose to follow the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down and to apportion the various parties in Greece, but I want to say that I am entirely of the same opinion as the hon. Member for East Mayo. Although, as the hon. Member opposite has said, the King of Greece is not without support, yet the vast majority of the Greek people, as the elections and every other indication have shown, are on the side of M. Venizelos, We are all conscious of the difficulty at such a time as this of discussing any matter connected with foreign policy, but I do not think the Foreign Office have any reason to complain of the way in which this House has treated this question.
Lord R. CECIL: Hear, hear!
Mr. McNEILL: I do not suppose that anything I can say is likely to do any harm, and therefore I may be forgiven if I express my view, which is one very commonly held both inside and outside this House. This situation in Greece is only one illustration of which we might produce a great number to show that all the troubles, disasters, and disappointments that we have suffered in this War are directly traceable to the continual blundering of our own Foreign Office, and the reason for that is to be found in the inveterate tendency of the Noble Lord who now controls our foreign policy to favour our enemies and to discourage our friends. The most conspicuous example of that at the present time is the treatment of M. Venizelos himself. I do not think any-

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thing could be more ridiculous than the attitude which the Government are taking up in this respect. What could be more absurd in a complicated and critical position than for the Government to come forward before all Europe and to acknowledge practically two Governments, one the de jure Government in Athens, composed of our enemies, and the other the de facto Government in Salonika, composed of M. Venizelos and his adherents. Then we are told in answer to questions in this House that the line of demarcation between these two authorities is that the King and the constitutional Government of Athens control old Greece whilst M. Venizelos and his Government control new Greece. No sooner is that laid down than numbers of districts in new Greece itself are subject to the persecution and terrorism of the Court at Athens and M. Ve|iizelos and his adherents apparently look in vain to His Majesty's Government or to any of the Allies for help and support. We have been told that new Greece is the part of the country where M. Venizelos is acknowledged and yet in Epirus and in part of South Macedonia districts which only a year ago in a constitutional election returned enormous majorities in support of M. Venizelos we find this persecution going on. I ventured in a question the other day to call the attention of my Noble Friend to a precedent in Greek history which seems to me to offer guidance to His Majesty's Government and to the Allies at this time. In the original Treaty, I think of 1834, the protecting Powers of Greece guaranteed to Greece an independent State.
Lord R. CECIL: And the Monarchy.
Mr. McNEILL: Nothing was said about the Constitution. In 1862 the then reigning King of Greece, a German Bavarian, King Otto, was deposed by the protecting Powers because he had overridden the Constitution guaranteed by them, and he was taken away from Greece on board a British ship. When I asked my Noble Friend the other day to instruct the British Minister at Athens to call the attention of King Constantine to this precedent, my Noble Friend, unduly flattering me, said that he thought my question would be a sufficient reminder to His Majesty. I wish my Noble Friend in some more formal manner than any question of mine would remind His Majesty of his duty in this respect and recognise the attitude that the Allies
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ought to take. I am fully conscious of the fact that on occasions of this sort the Government ought only to act in strict concert with our Allies, but I agree with my hon. Friend that it is the duty of His Majesty's Government also to give a lead to the Allies, and I find it very difficult to believe that the Powers of Russia, France, and Great Britain, in view of their antecedents with regard to the kingdom of Greece, are going to stand out against legitimate pressure by His Majesty's Government to do their duty by their friends in this time of War, even if it should be necessary to go to extremes against an unconstitutional King. I join in asking my Noble Friend to give a frank statement upon this subject. If the difficulty with which our Government are confronted arises from a disagreement among our Allies with regard to such a policy, would any harm be done by stating so? I do not believe that this House and the country would refuse to acquiesce in a policy distasteful to themselves if they were told that it was due to an arrangement with our Allies, but until we are assured that difficulties of that sort have arisen the dissatisfaction and indignation that are growing in this country will continue to grow, and will reach a pitch very dangerous to His Majesty's Government.
Sir H. DALZIEL: I rise principally to urge upon my Noble Friend the extreme advisability of making a considered statement with regard to the whole question of Greece at the present time. I do not suppose that he is probably able to give us to-night that full and adequate statement which the House has a right to expect, but I think he ought to take into consideration the desirability of making a full and considered statement at the earliest possible moment. A considered statement ought to be made, because, in the first place, we have really had no information in regard to this matter at all. The House has been silent except for a few questions, and there has been no Debate. There is, however, real anxiety outside the House in regard to the whole matter, and therefore, if only in the interests of the Government itself, I think that statement ought to be made. It ought to be made because of our friendly relations, which we all hope will continue, with our Allies. The people of France have nothing but praise all day long for our efforts, but anyone who knows the big business men in Paris or in France knows that they entertain grave doubts

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about our policy in the Balkans. That is the impression, and it is overwhelmingly held in France. That is another reason why, if there is any misunderstanding or misapprehension on the subject, the Government ought to state their policy fully in this House and to the world. Is it surprising that there is misunderstanding and misapprehension? What have we been reading in our papers day by day almost for the last year? One day we refuse to recognise M. Venizelos' Government, and the next day we recognise it. Not only that, there is an announcement one day that M. Venizelos is going to be recognised, but he has never been fully recognised up to this moment. It is not at all surprising that there is real anxiety in the country with regard to our attitude towards Greece. We see, for example, Prince George of Greece coming over to this country and accepting of the country's hospitality. We see him visiting the Foreign Office, and a few days afterwards we see that he is received by the Kaiser in Berlin. That, surely, is a most suggestive state of things. The Prince, who is admittedly proGerman, comes over here and, having been received by our Foreign Office, rushes off to Berlin, is made a great fuss of by the Kaiser, and finally gets back to Athens. There ought to be some explanation given. Diplomacy ought to be carried on through the proper channels. Incidents of that kind give rise to misunderstanding and misapprehension. I therefore urge the Government to make a full statement. It would do a great deal to clear the air, and if the Noble Lord cannot make it to-night, I hope that he will make it with the least possible delay, and that it will be a full and adequate statement.
Mr. LYNCH: The House is face to face with one of the most amazing situations which has ever occurred during the progress of this War. Again and again we have seen this country presented with chances which seemed to open the very gates of victory, and again and again we have seen the Government throw away those chances by sheer incompetence. But here we have another element, and to that incompetence has been added something which I can hardly venture to characterise. It has been said by an hon. Gentleman that it is only a part and the minority of Greece which sympathises with the Allies.
Mr. HENDERSON: That is not exactly what I said. I said that there are a great number of Greeks who do not want to fight.
Mr. LYNCH: I will make a digression simply to say that since I nave been urging the recognition of M. Venizelos I have received expressions of approval from two influential bodies of men, the latest including the President of the Merchants Guild and all the members of that Guild at Athens itself. When I rose the other day in order to call attention to the extreme gravity of this situation, I pointed out what was happening in Roumania, and the few days which have intervened have only served to enforce my argument in a terrible manner. The very capital of Roumania is now in danger of falling into the hands of the enemy. The feeling of the masses is that this campaign in Roumania depends on the situation in Athens. That is right. I think I can venture to say that it was the strategic plan of General Sarrail at the very moment of the entry of Roumania into the War to make one of those bold strokes that tell in war, to seize the capital of Bulgaria, to join hands there with the Russians and Roumania, who would push from the other side. That would have been one of the greatest strokes in this campaign separating Turkey from Germany, obliterating Bulgaria, and opening up one of the paths to victory. That campaign has been hampered and baffled by the situation in Greece, and the full responsibility for that situation lies at the door of the Foreign Office. It has been put forward, I believe, that the Republic of France is at the bottom of this existing situation in desiring to keep on his throne a king who is one of the bitterest enemies of the Allies. I say that that is absurd, and although the Noble Lord may assert definitely that that is not the case I will say that I cannot accept his explanation, being sure that some quibble will underlie his negation.
The other day I spoke of King Constantine as an outpost of Germany-; but those words are not forcible enough to describe his real character. Greece, under the hands of Constantine, forms an enemy salient of a very dangerous character. The Front Bench in all its answers for the Foreign Office talks continually as if it were not in a state of war —as if there were not that wonderful electrical state which sweeps over every nation at times such as these, when every energy of the man is drawn out, when nations are transformed, when waves of enthusiasm sweep over peoples, when wonderful thoughts are conceived incredible in times of peace, when

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marvellous things are done, when the very air is electrical; yet in the midst of that atmosphere the Foreign Office have pottered and fumbled like pettifogging lawyers, unable to see the gravity of the situation and unable to grasp the situation until its character has been forced upon them. I want to drive one or two home truths—
Lord R. CECIL: I do not wish to interrupt the hon. Member, but I would remind him that there is only a quarter of an hour left me in order to deal with the questions raised.
Mr. LYNCH: I shall be as brief as possible. I want to point out the gravity of the situation not only for this country, but for our great Dominions, those great democracies. I wish to ask what answer can be given them when they demand to know what we are fighting for. Are these glorious ideals which sent a wave of enthusiasm to Australia, South Africa, and Canada when the flag of Liberty and Progress was held up, when they were spurred by one of those electrical movements, and by that spirit which in the early days of the French Revolution made men feel it was a good and noble thing to give their lives to uphold a great ideal that would shine in the eyes of the world and, immortal, live in history? But all that has been thrown away, and for what? To keep a King on his throne. And what sort of king? A German king? A German, for he is related to them, and is one of their bitterest and most desperate supporters. The whole policy of the Foreign Office has been directed to keeping that man upon his throne.
From my place in the House—and I believe my words will go to the ends of the earth—yes; I have had two cables since I last spoke on this subject, which show the importance of the situation—from my place here I will invite the democracy of the Dominions to appeal to the Foreign Office to know definitely what is the line on. which their policy has been based. What are the great cosiderations which present a situation which leaves them in amazement and despair. I will also appeal to M. Venizelos to electrify the world by one of those bold strokes which strike the imagination for ever in the annals to proclaim the Republic of Greece; thus to place this country and the Allies face to face with a situation which will demand that they shall choose between this great
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champion of democracy and friend of the Allies, and that representative of a tottering royalty, that champion of a vanishing mist, that brother-in-law of the Kaiser, that enemy King, that man more German than Germans—
Mr. SPEAKER: I have already pointed out to the hon. Member more than once-that he must not take advantage of his place in this House to denounce a King, who at all events is at present neutral, and who, so long as he remains so, must be treated as a Sovereign of a friendly State.
Mr. LYNCH: I will accept that. What I have said has sufficiently exposed the situation. That will speak for itself.
Lord R. CECIL: I fear that what I have to say can hardly be expressed within a quarter of an hour, but I will do my best. In the first place, I wish to make my acknowledgment in answer to an observation which fell from my hon. Friend the Member for the St. Augustine's Division (Mr. R. McNeill). The hon. Gentleman said, with great truth, that the Foreign Office has nothing to complain of in regard to the way in which these questions have been treated by this House. I hope that no words that may have dropped from me in Debate have ever given a contrary impression. I certainly have never intended that they should. I am personally exceedingly grateful to the House for the way in which it has treated me since I have had the honour to be connected with the Foreign Office, and I have no kind of complaint to make on this particular head. I wish once again to answer the hon. Member who has referred to a phrase of mine as if I denied the right of the House of Commons to inquire as to matters of foreign policy. What I said then, and what I repeat now, was that the House of Commons has its responsibility in regard to public matters and the Government has its responsibility, and the Government cannot put any part of its responsibilities on the shoulders of the House of Commons. That is all I have said, and I think it is a perfectly sound constitutional doctrine.
Several hon. Members, including the right hon. Gentleman who introduced this Debate (Mr. Ellis Griffith) have complained that the Government would not have a Secret Session. It is not for me to decide a point of that kind. But I do not understand that to be the attitude of the Prime Minister. I understood him to say that if he were satisfied there was a

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general demand for a Secret Session he would reconsider the question, but that he was not at present satisfied there was such a demand. That seems to be a reasonable thing to say. I know many hon. Members of this House do not think that a Secret Session would be a convenient way of discussing foreign affairs. They may be right or they may be wrong, but I think hon. Members who consider the course of debate on foreign affairs may feel no great advantage would accrue from the point of view of the. frankness that would be possible. So much for the purely Parliamentary aspect of this matter.
I want to say a word if I may about Allied diplomacy. It has been said more than once in this Debate, "we quite admit that the Allies must decide, but we think that the British Government ought in these matters"—and I quite admit there is a strong public opinion in favour of M. Venizclos—"to give a lead."What does that really mean? Suppose the British Government held a view different from one or more of its Allies. That must happen at times. Human beings cannot always be expected to think exactly alike. But suppose that does occur. Is the representative of the British Government to come down to the House of Commons and say, "We think so and so, but our Allies do not." Is that really what is suggested? Would that be fair procedure to our Allies? Would it be treating them honestly and fairly? Surely they would say, "By doing that you are changing the position. The discussion between us is no longer on equal terms. You are trying to force us by appeals to the public to change our opinions. That is not fair dealing. We do not do it with the British Government. We do not go to the Chamber of Deputies, or the Senate in France, or the Parliamentary Assembly in Italy, or the Duma in Russia, and say we want this, but the English will not let us have it." We ought not to put them in a position to say that. I cannot think hon. Members, if they reflect upon it, would wish that the British Government should behave in that way.
I quite agree that an alliance in war is. not an easy thing to carry on in any circumstances. This Alliance has been carried on with an amazing want of friction, with a smoothness and general agreement and want of dispute and quarrel which has no precedent in history, and we want it to remain in that condition. We do not want to take action which will cause friction and which will cause trouble to our Allies;
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therefore it is absolutely essential not only because of the ordinary reasons, which require discretion in the discussion of diplomatic affairs, but chiefly because of the fact that when we speak of diplomacy we speak not for British diplomacy only, but Allied diplomacy as a whole, and it is absolutely essential that we should show discretion and even reserve in dealing with every matter relating to diplomatic affairs. I say so much, and even what I have said now is capable, I am perfectly aware, of misconstruction. I do not want it to be understood for a moment that in this particular case we wanted any particular policy which the Allies would not follow or they wanted a policy which we did not think right. So far as I am aware, we have agreed on every point. I do not say that there has not been discussion; there has necessarily been discussion, but we have been absolutely agreed. I do not want the House or anyone else to think for a moment that there is any particular line of policy which this Government has pressed on the Allies and which has not been followed. My observations are general.
But in answer to the proposition that we ought to give a lead to the Allies, and I presume to state what that lead is to the House of Commons, I will try within these limitations to answer the particular questions put to me. In the first place, a good deal was made of the point that, whereas we recognised the de facto Government of Venizelos in the districts where it is established, we recognise the de jure Government of the King at Athens. In the first place, I wish to point out—and this really is the whole point— that M. Venizelos governs, as I understand, in the name of the King. All his acts are in the name of the King, and he is carrying on the King's Government. He is carrying it on on lines of his own, I quite agree, on lines he thinks ought to be followed for the whole of Greece. He is carrying on this Government in that part of Greece where he is established.
Mr. PRINGLE: Is the Declaration of War in the name of the King?
Lord R. CECIL: I do not know. But, that being so, it is plain the only de jure Government in Greece must be the Government of the King, and it is equally plain that we should not be recognising the facts as they actually are if we did not recognise the Government of M. Venizelos

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AS the de facto actual body which has the administration of the country in the districts which he controls. I do not really think, in spite of my right hon. Friend, that there is anything very subtle about that. It is the inevitable result, and I do not for the life of me see what other course is open to us. So much for that. I was asked about the neutral zone. I understand that what happened was this: The forces of M. Venizelos and the forces of the King came into collision at a place called Katerina. It was felt, and I think everybody will agree, that from every point of view there was nothing to be gained but very much to be lost by the outbreak of civil war in Greece. I think everybody will agree to that. The question was how was that to be prevented. The device was hit on—I do not say it was the only possible device, but it was the one hit upon—that a neutral zone should be established between the two forces and that neither of them should be allowed to enter that neutral zone.
Mr. McNEILL: Why could you not have said that you were going to throw your whole support on the side of M. Venizelos?
Lord R. CECIL: That would have been another policy. The policy the Allies adopted is the one I am trying to describe to the House. For the moment I am not discussing whether that policy was a good or a bad one. I am merely describing what the policy was. Having decided that this was the best way of avoiding a collision between the two forces, the Allies entrusted the French military authorities with the execution of that policy, and the French authorities have occupied this zone. I know it is said that some districts ought to have been included in the zone or ought to have been handed over to M. Venizelos which were not. I am not in a position to discuss that without further information, but, whether that is so or not, that was the way it was done. The matter was handed over entirely and necessarily to the French military authorities, and they were the people who carried out this (policy, which was the Allied policy. I have two other observations to make to which I think general assent will be given. It was said—I am bound to notice it, but I would rather not—that we were there for what are called "dynastic reasons," and that our policy was dictated
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by dynastic reasons. That is absolutely untrue. There is not a word, a particle, or a syllable of truth in it. The idea that we are bolstering the King for some private and personal reasons is absolutely untrue. So far as I understand the policy of the Alliance, it is simply to do what they think is best in their belligerent interests and in the interests of Greece and nothing else—absolutely nothing else! As for the idea that we are preparing or are willing to throw over M. Venizelos, that is equally untrue. We recognise the great service M. Venizelos has rendered, not only to Greece, but to ourselves, and we shall never abandon M. Venizelos.
Sir E. CARSON: Will the Noble Lord say will he also protect his friends, who are being persecuted by these others?
Lord R. CECIL: My right hon. Friend will recognise the difficulty I am in owing to the time. I have already said we have done a good deal to protect those friends. I am going to answer a question to-morrow. I have already assured the House that we do think it part of our duty to protect his friends from unjust and improper attacks. Of course when I say "we," I mean the Allies, not the British Government alone. We are all agreed. There is no doubt about that. All I can say in regard to the dissatisfaction and displeasure of the country is that I quite admit it is exceedingly likely to fall upon us, whether we are right or wrong. We must submit to it. It is part of the price we have to pay in war that the Government is always unpopular. I am quite aware of that. I do not say that the Government is perfect, but I do not agree at all with the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon) that it would be a good plan for the Government to take out of the hands of the soldiers the conduct of the War. Still less would it be a good plan for the House of Commons to do so. With all respect to him and to the House, I do not think it would be a good plan for the House of Commons to take out of the hands of the Government the conduct of diplomacy and negotiations connected with the situation and deal with them. We must each try to do our duty in the proper constitutional sphere allotted to us, and, having done it, we must try to put up with it whether we are judged well or ill by our fellows.
Question put, and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at Ten minutes before Eight o'clock.

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