Sitting of 28 February 1934

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.
PRIVATE BUSINESS.
  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (ACCRINGTON) BILL,
  "to confirm a Provisional Order of the Minister of Health relating to the borough of Accrington," presented by Sir Hilton Young; read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 67.]
  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (WATFORD) BILL,
  "to confirm a Provisional Order of the Minister of Health relating to the borough of Watford," presented by Sir Hilton Young; read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 68.]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  LIBERIA.
  Mr. MANDERasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the present position concerning the plan of assistance adopted by the League of Nations Council, on 13th October, for Liberia and the attitude of the Liberian Government thereon?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir John Simon): The final reply of the Liberian Government to the League's offer of assistance was not received in Geneva in time for the meeting of the Council in January. The Council therefore could only decide on that occasion that the whole question must in any case be closed at the May session. The text of the Liberian reply was only received in the Foreign Office yesterday, and I have not yet had time to study it. But it would not, I fear,
  1088
  in any case be proper for me to comment on a document which has not yet been considered by the Council of the League for whose information it is intended.
  Mr. MANDER: Will the reply be made public before the next meeting of the Council of the League?
  Sir J. SIMON: I could not say. That is a matter which would have to be decided by the Council of the League.

  EGYPT.
  Mr. MANDERasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he has any statement to make with reference to the present position in Egypt; and whether it is proposed to enter into negotiations for the reform of the capitulations as contemplated by Lord Cromer?
  Sir J. SIMON: No, Sir. I have no statement to make.
  Mr. MANDER: Is it not proposed to take advantage of the appointment of the new High Commissioner to go into the various matters that are pending between the two countries?
  Sir J. SIMON: I must repeat that I have no statement to make.

  GERMANY (PROFESSOR BANSE).
  Mr. MANDERasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if his attention has been called to the publication in this country of a book by Professor Ewald Banse, of the technical high school at Brunswick, and a member of the secret government committee of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Wehrpolitik and Wehrwissenschaft; and whether, in view of the fact that this book openly discusses the best method for the invasion of England, he will make inquiries of the German Government as to whether Professor Banse is to retain his official position and represents official views?
  Sir J. SIMON: I understand that on the 26th February a statement by the German Embassy was published to the effect that Professor Banse's books are the work of an irresponsible theorist and are in no way in keeping with the policy of the German Government. Further, the

  1089
  book in question appears to have been banned in Germany early last November. I hardly think it is necessary in these circumstances to adopt the hon. Member's suggestion.
  Mr. MANDER: Do I understand that the right hon. Gentleman is satisfied that Professor Banse is not associated in any way with the German Government?
  Sir J. SIMON: I am not going to make any statement on that subject, but it appears to me—and I am sure my hon. Friend will agree—that if anybody has any theories as to how to invade this country, it is as well to know what they are.

  ROYAL NAVY.

    ACCIDENT, PORTSMOUTH DOCKYARD.
    Mr. RALPH BEAUMONTasked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he can make any statement concerning the accident which occurred in His Majesty's Dockyard, Portsmouth, last Thursday, in which one man was killed and three injured?
    Mr. THORNEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he has received a report from the officer in charge of His Majesty's Dockyard, Portsmouth, in regard to the death of an employé caused by an accident when dismantling a set of iron sheers; and whether compensation is to be paid to the widow?
    The CIVIL LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Captain Euan Wallace): The Board of Admiralty very much regret the accident resulting in the death of one man and injuries to three others which occurred on Thursday last during the dismantling of a 70-ton sheer legs in Portsmouth Dockyard. These sheer legs had become obsolete on account of the installation of more modern lifting appliances and were in process of removal for subsequent disposal. The operation was carried out with every precaution, but unfortunately fractures of the metal occurred causing the legs to fall and resulting in the casualties described. An inquest has been held and a verdict of accidental death returned. Any claim by the widow for compensation will be dealt with under the Government scheme of compensation framed under the Workmen's Compensation Acts.

    ROYAL DOCKYARDS (CONTRACTS).
    Mr. PERKINSasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he will consider placing all future naval contracts only in Government yards, in view of the considerable body of opinion in this country that the manufacture of arms should be under Government control?
    The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Sir Bolton Eyres Monsell): No, Sir. The course suggested is impracticable. The principal function of the Royal Dockyards is the work of repairing and maintainting the Fleet. Even in normal times it would he impossible for the Royal Dockyards to build all the ships required. But even if this were possible, there would remain the fact that in time of emergency or pressure the necessary expansion would be utterly impossible without the assistance of the private shipbuilding yards; for this reason, apart from any other, it is essential that the skilled shipbuilders of these yards should be available for naval work. The Government's view on the proper method of controlling the private manufacture of arms have been stated on more than one occasion.
    Mr. RHYS DAVIES: Does the right hon. Gentleman imply that the Government could not in any circumstances provide all the arms that would be required by the State?
    Sir B. EYRES MONSELL: That is entirely another question.
    Commander MARSDEN: Is it not a fact that the Royal Dockyards are full of work the whole time on repair work?
    Sir B. EYRES MONSELL: That is so.

    OIL FUEL.
    Mr. ROBINSONasked the First Lord of the Admiralty how the use in the Royal Navy of oil produced from coal during 1933 compares with previous years; whether there has been any noticeable change in the proportion of oil from coal used as compared with June last; and what contracts for the supply of oil from coal have been entered into for the year 1934?
    Captain WALLACE: The quantity of oil produced from coal contracted for by the Admiralty for delivery in 1933 was 3,025 tons. The amount actually received during that year was about

    1091
    2,000 tons, and of this quantity only 330 tons has been used for trial purposes in the Fleet, compared with trifling amounts in previous years. The question of a further contract for supplies during 1934 is under consideration.

    MUI-TSAI SYSTEM.
    Mr. MALLALIEUasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what local Governments have been requested by him to supply a return giving the numbers of mui-tsai in their respective territories; when such requests were made; how many Governments have supplied the returns; and when he expects to receive the complete information upon this subject?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for DOMINION AFFAIRS (Mr. Malcolm MacDonald): I am replying on behalf of my right hon. Friend. The Governments in question were those of Hong Kong, the Straits Settlements, and certain Malay States. Hong Kong was asked in March, 1930, and the others in July, 1933. The Hong Kong returns have been supplied at six-monthly intervals beginning with June, 1930, and copies are in the Library. No returns have yet been received from Malaya, since in certain of the Malay States the registers were not closed until the end of 1933. It is expected that these figures will be available shortly.
    Mr. MALLALIEU: In view of the length of time which has elapsed since this information was asked for, will my hon. Friend do something to expedite it?
    Mr. MacDONALD: The answer made it clear that some of the registers were not completed until the end of 1933, so that there has not yet been time for the figures to be reported in London, and that is the cause of the delay.

    CEYLON (CONSTITUTION).
    Major-General Sir ALFRED KNOXasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will call for a report from the Governor of Ceylon on the working of the new constitution in that island, giving his opinion regarding the increased benefits to the workers which have accrued or are likely to accrue under the new constitution?
    Mr. M. MacDONALD: I anticipate that the Governor will in due course furnish a report on all matters relevant to the working of the Constitution.
    Sir A. KNOX: Will it be possible for this report to be made public, in order to correct some of the contradictory statements made in the Debate last Wednesday?
    Mr. MacDONALD: I could not make any promise with regard to that.

  ROYAL AIR FORCE.

    CONTRACTORS (SEALED CERTIFICATES).
    Mr. CHORLTONasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air if he is aware that it is proposed to have certificate forms for goods supplied to the Ministry by engineering and other firms sealed with a red seal, the cost of the die to be borne by the contractors; what will be the total cost of this; and what is the advantage to be gained over what has previously been standard practice?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for AIR (Sir Phillip Sassoon): Consideration of the proposal to which my hon. Friend refers is not sufficiently advanced to enable me to make any useful statement upon it at this stage. I should, however, add that the scheme is one which it is believed would be in the interests of the manufacturers concerned.
    Mr. CHORLTON: If my right hon. Friend had inquired sufficiently deeply into what is going on, would he not have discovered that the manufacturers object to this scheme?
    Sir P. SASSOON: As I have said, the whole scheme is under discussion, and anyhow at the outset it is purely voluntary.

    PILOTS.
    Colonel WEDGWOODasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he can give an estimate of the number of persons now in Great Britain and Northern Ireland of all arms, active reserves, and civilians able to act as pilots of high-speed machines in time of war?
    Sir P. SASSOON: There are at present some 3,200 regular and non-regular Air Force pilots at home able to fly fast modern service-type aircraft, which I presume the right hon. and gallant Member

    1093
    has in mind. As regards civilians, it is impracticable to estimate the number at all closely, but it is very limited.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that this figure is the test of the efficiency and strength of our Air Force, and can he see that a larger proportion of those enlisted in the Air Force are able to fly in these particular machines, so that this test figure may be made higher?
    Sir P. SASSOON: I do not altogether know what the right hon. and gallant Gentleman means. All those who are enlisted in the Air Force as pilots are, of course, able to fly.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: But of all those who are enlisted in the Air Force, only one-tenth or thereabouts are able to fly a machine. I want to know the number of people who can fly machines in the Air Force.
    Sir P. SASSOON: Yes, but there are in the Air Force, as in other Services, other duties besides flying.
    Colonel WEDGWOOD: But the real test is: How many fliers have we got?
    Sir P. SASSOON: I have just given the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the figure.
    Mr. PERKINS (for Lieut.-Colonel GAULT)asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he has any information as to the number of qualified air pilots, both civil and military, in France, Italy, Germany, and Russia, respectively, and what these numbers are?
    Sir P. SASSOON: I am not in a position to give any reliable figures, but the number may perhaps be taken, quite roughly, as about 3,000 in the case of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and between 4,000 and 5,000 in each of the other countries named.

    LUBRICATING OIL.
    Mr. ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air what proportion of lubricating oil used by the Royal Air Force during the last year came from Russia?
    Sir P. SASSOON: The proportion of Russian oil in the lubricating oil for aero engines used last year may be taken as about 50 per cent.
    Mr. ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: In view of the danger of being dependent on any foreign country, is my right hon. Friend not taking steps to increase the proportion that is obtained in this country?
    Mr. CHORLTON: May I ask my right hon. Friend if all this oil cannot be obtained from sources within the British Empire?
    Sir P. SASSOON: No. None of it can.

    STATION ACCOMMODATION.
    Captain HAROLD BALFOURasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air how many additional squadrons of the Royal Air Force could be accommodated as regards aircraft, officers, and other ranks in existing post-War built stations without extra extension building having to be undertaken?
    Sir P. SASSOON: Three additional squadrons could be so accommodated in this country.

    FAR EAST COMMAND.
    Captain BALFOURasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether it is proposed to increase the Royal Air Force Far East Command establishment at the Singapore base; and whether it is proposed to make this an Air Officer's command, so as to give the Royal Air Force commander equivalent rank to the naval and military commanders?
    Sir P. SASSOON: The establishment of the Royal Air Force Command, Far East, is at present under examination. The cognate question of raising its status must await consideration of the main question.
    Captain BALFOUR: Can my right hon. Friend say when it is likely that any decision will be come to, in view of the fact that this matter has been under discussion for several months?
    Sir P. SASSOON: I think, before very long.

    OIL FUEL.
    Mr. ROBINSONasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air how the use in the Royal Air Force of oil produced from coal during 1933 compares with previous years; whether there has been any noticeable change in the proportion of oil from coal used as compared with June last; and what contracts for the supply of oil from coal have been entered into for the year 1934?
    Sir P. SASSOON: Prior to 1933 only small quantities of petrol extracted from coal were used by the Royal Air Force for test and experiment, but during the major part of 1933 one home defence squadron flew solely on such fuel. In view of the very satisfactory results of this trial, a contract has now been placed to cover the requirements of seven squadrons.

    RUSSIA (AIRCRAFT STRENGTH).
    Mr. PERKINSasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air on what approximate date he received the information that the first-line aircraft strength of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was between 1,300 and 1,500; and whether he has any later information?
    Sir P. SASSOON: The figures quoted by my hon. Friend represent the latest information which was available towards the end of November last. Further information has now been received which suggests there has been an increase since that date, but I am not in a position to give precise figures.
    Mr. PERKINS: When will my right hon. Friend be in a position to give these figures? Is it not a fact that the latest figures indicate that Russia has now the biggest air force in the world?
    Sir P. SASSOON: My hon. Friend must judge from the figures.

    CIVIL AIR SERVICES (SUBSIDIES).
    Captain JAMES MacANDREWasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air what proportion the annual subsidies paid to air-transport companies registered in Britain hear to the paid-up capital of these companies?
    Sir P. SASSOON: The only company concerned is Imperial Airways, and I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to that company's published accounts and to Air Estimates, where he will find the subsidy payable under Vote 8.
    Captain MacANDREW: Does that include the entire subsidy received by Imperial Airways?
    Sir P. SASSOON: It includes all the subsidy.
    Captain J. MacANDREWasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air to what extent it is proposed to subsidise the new internal air services which are to be formed on behalf of the railway companies?
    Sir P. SASSOON: There is no proposal to subsidise the services in question.
    Captain BALFOURasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether, in view of the approaching termination of the present subsidy agreement with Imperial Airways, Limited, the subject of subsidies to any British air transport company has been considered by the Government; and whether the views of the various interested sections of the aeronautical community have been or will be invited regarding the policy which should govern the granting of any future subsidies?
    Sir P. SASSOON: The main agreement with Imperial Airways does not expire for a period of over five years. The further development of British air transport is, however, continuously under review by the Air Ministry and it is always possible that a scheme or schemes may eventuate which would render desirable some alteration in that agreement. The Society of British Aircraft Constructors has recently, at the request of the Air Ministry, furnished a written statement of its views on subsidy policy, and the other interests concerned are, of course, at liberty to take similar action at any time.

  TRANSPORT.

    ROAD SURFACES, YORKSHIRE.
    Mr. HEPWORTHasked the Minister of Transport whether any of the reports which he has received on surfaces of arterial or by-pass roads in Yorkshire indicate a tendency to facilitate skidding; and whether, in that case, he will state the districts concerned?
    The MINISTER of TRANSPORT (Mr. Oliver Stanley): No, Sir.

    TRAFFIC CONGESTION, WARRINGTON.
    Mr. GOLDIEasked the Minister of Transport whether any and, if so, what steps are being taken by his Department to remove the congestion of traffic now

    1097
    occurring at the Wilderspool Causeway and Chester Road level crossings in the borough of Warrington?
    Mr. STANLEY: These are primarily matters for the highway authority concerned and I await definite proposals from the corporation.

    TOLLS.
    Mr. HALL-CAINEasked the Minister of Transport whether he will take steps to set aside during this and future years some definite proportion of Road Fund money for the purchase and extinction of toll rights in this country until all remaining toll roads and bridges have been freed?
    Mr. STANLEY: I have notified the various highway authorities that I am prepared to give consideration to applications from highway authorities for grants for the acquisition of toll roads and bridges; but I do not think any useful purpose would be served by setting aside a definite proportion of the Road Fund for the purpose.

    HEAVY VEHICLES (SPEED LIMIT).
    Sir WILLIAM JENKINS (for Mr. DAVID GRENFELL)asked the Minister of Transport the number of prosecutions for exceeding the speed limit by drivers of heavy vehicles; and whether he has considered the recommendations of the Magistrates' Association with regard to the provision of time records or log books stating the distance covered and the time occupied by drivers of heavy vehicles doing long journeys?
    Mr. STANLEY: The latest figures available are for the year 1932 when there were 3,399 prosecutions in respect of passenger carrying vehicles subject to a speed limit of 30 miles per hour, and 26,145 in respect of goods vehicles. I regret that it is not possible to subdivide these figures between heavy and light vehicles. In regard to the second part of the question I would draw the hon. Member's attention to the provisions of Section 16 of the Road and Rail Traffic Act, 1933.

    ROAD MATERIALS (SEA TRANSPORT).
    Mr. D. G. SOMERVILLEasked the Minister of Transport whether, before approving grants for road improvements,
    1098
    he will insist in all cases where the necessary road materials are transported to the scene of operation partly or wholly by sea, upon British as opposed to foreign ships being used for the purpose?
    Colonel SHUTEasked the Minister of Transport whether, in making grants from the Road Fund, he will give preference to those public bodies and authorities which stiplate in their contracts for the carriage in British-owned and British-manned vessels of any material required by them whose delivery involves coastwise seaborne carriage?
    Mr. STANLEY: It is already a condition of all grants from the Road Fund towards road improvements that the materials used shall, so far as practicable, be of United Kingdom origin, and that failing purchase from sources within the United Kingdom, products of the Overseas Empire should be used if possible. I am sure that highway authorities generally will not be unmindful of the present position of British shipping and will, wherever practicable, wish to avail themselves of British shipping services.
    Mr. SOMERVILLE: The point of my question was not whether the goods were purchased abroad or in this country, but that where they had to be transferred by sea they should be transferred in British bottoms; and, while I understand that a clause cannot be inserted in the contracts, could not a Circular be sent to the local authorities?
    Mr. STANLEY: No doubt the local authorities will see this answer.
    Lieut.-Colonel SANDEMAN ALLENMay I ask the Minister to do what he can to see that the West Coast lines are protected from foreign competition in this way?

  TRADE AND COMMERCE.

    TURKEY (RUSSIAN LOAN).
    Sir PARK GOFFasked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the probable effect on British exports, he can make a statement with regard to the loan granted by the Russian Government and the provision of technical assistance to Turkey for the building of cotton mills?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Dr. Burgin): Reports have been received through His Majesty's Embassy at Angora as to the rumoured intention of the Turkish Government to establish cotton mills, partly with the aid of credit to be supplied by the Soviet Government. As my right hon. Friend has recently stated, the whole matter of Anglo-Turkish trade relations is under active consideration.
    Sir P. GOFF: May I ask if the agreement has been signed at Angora for £8,000,000, and, if so, whether the work has started? May I also ask if the Soviet Government have made similar propositions to Iraq and Persia?
    Dr. BURGIN: That is a separate matter. Perhaps my hon. Friend will put it down as another question. I know a little of the arrangements between Russia and Turkey, but not in sufficient detail to be able to answer those questions without notice.
    Sir A. KNOX: Will the hon. Gentleman say why, if Russia has sufficient money to lend to Turkey, it is necessary for us to give her credit?
    Dr. BURGIN: That is a matter of argument.

    ANGLO-RUSSIAN TRADE AGREEMENT.
    Duchess of ATHOLLasked the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs whether His Majesty's Government in Canada have been invited to say whether in their opinion Article 2 of the proposed trade agreement with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will enable His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom to take effective action, if necessary, to implement the clause in the Ottawa Agreement which requires action to be taken against any state-aided dumping in the British market which is frustrating the value of a preference given to Canada?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for DOMINION AFFAIRS (Mr. J. H. Thomas): It is for His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom to be satisfied that the provisions of the Anglo-Soviet Agreement are such as to enable them to carry out the obligations arising out of the Agreement with Canada entered into at Ottawa. They have no doubt that the provisions of the Article
    1100
    referred to by the hon. Member do in fact have this result. His Majesty's Government in Canada were, however, kept informed from time to time of the progress of the negotiations with the Soviet Union with special reference to the Article in question.
    Duchess of ATHOLL: May we take it that His Majesty's Government in Canada think the proposal that the Government should not be able to take action for three months in regard to dumped imports is at all satisfactory?
    Mr. THOMAS: No, I should assume that His Majesty's Government in Canada appreciate our care in seeing that there was no violation of the Ottawa Agreement.

    IRAQ (BRITISH COMMERCIAL ATTACHE).
    Captain CAZALETasked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department what representative, if any, is attached to the British Embassy at Bagdad for commercial purposes?
    Dr. BURGIN: At present a Commercial Secretary, Grade III, forms part of the staff of His Majesty's Embassy at Bagdad. On the transfer of this officer to Haifa as Commercial Agent in Palestine from 1st April next, Commercial Intelligence work in Iraq will be transacted by His Majesty's Consular officers in that country.

    PETROL DUTY (DRY CLEANING INDUSTRY).
    Mr. HENDERSON STEWARTasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is aware of the burdens imposed by the petrol tax on the garment dry-cleaning industry by adding 100 per cent. to the cost of the chief raw material of the industry; and if he will consider allowing a rebate on the petrol tax to this industry as was accorded to it before the War?
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Hore-Belisha): I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer given to a similar question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington South (Sir W. Davison) on 13th February.

    COAL INDUSTRY (HOMESIDE COLLIERY, DURHAM).
    Mr. BATEYasked the Secretary for Mines if he is aware that the Home-

    1101
    side Colliery Company, county Durham, have dismissed 60 young men, 20 and 21 years of age, and replaced them by younger boys, 14 and 15 years of age; and will he take steps to prevent any general adoption of this practice?
    The SECRETARY for MINES (Mr. Ernest Brown): I understand that the men concerned were employed originally as boys, and would normally have been absorbed in work proper to adults. Although there was no development work in prospect the company continued to employ them on work normally done by boys until they no longer considered the extra expense justifiable, when they were replaced by boys of the age usual for such work. As regards the second part of the question I have no power to intervene in the matter.
    Mr. BATEY: Are we to understand from that answer that there is no way in which we can remedy a condition of things like this, which makes coal-mining a blind alley occupation for young men of 21?
    Mr. BROWN: I would not commit myself as to that. In the short time I have had to make inquiries since Monday, I gather that the company have tried to mitigate the worst effects of a difficult situation by continuing the men for some time on work proper to boys.
    Mr. LAWSON: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, while this system has been going on in individual cases in the coalfield and in industry generally, there has been no instance of this kind in this class of colliery?
    Mr. BROWN: If there is any further information which the hon. Member wishes to have, perhaps he will put a question down and I will make inquiries. I had notice of this question only on Monday.
    Mr. T. SMITH: Will the hon. Gentleman consider sending down a conciliation officer as has been done on previous occasions?
    Mr. BROWN: I will consider that.

    WATER SUPPLY, MANCHESTER.
    MR. CHORLTONasked the Minister of Health if, in view of the
    1102
    continued water famine, with its ultimate effect on health, industry and employment, he will consider giving special assistance to the Manchester Corporation so as to enable them to complete the Haweswater scheme to the full capacity, in order to provide the additional supply to and render possible a general linking up of the towns and other water authorities in South Lancashire and the districts adjoining?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH (Mr. Shakespeare): My right hon. Friend has considered the suggestion of my hon. Friend. The Exchequer assistance provided for in the Bill now before the House is to meet the special needs of rural areas and would not be applicable to the case which he has in mind. In any event the full Haweswater scheme could not be carried out for some considerable time nor, according to my right hon. Friend's present advice, does it appear that the use of the scheme which my hon. Friend proposes would be the best method of meeting the problem to which he refers.
    Mr. CHORLTON: Why cannot help be given apart from the Bill to give assistance to rural water supplies that is now going through the House? Can the hon. Gentleman tell me why this supply cannot be used for that area, and what other scheme would meet it better?
    Mr. SHAKESPEARE: The short answer is that the boroughs in South Lancashire can get water at a cheaper rate than they could if this scheme were completed.
    Mr. CHORLTON: These particular boroughs have not got water. That is the reason for this scheme, and in the meantime Liverpool has to take water from the Manchester reservoir.
    Mr. RHYS DAVIES: In view of the ample supply of water in the Lake district and the fact that several towns on the way from the Lakes to Manchester have suffered from the recent drought, is it not possible for the Minister to take some action so that an ample supply will come to the towns there?
    Mr. SHAKESPEARE: There is no point in bringing water at such a high rate that nobody can afford it.

    BRITISH ARMY (1ST NORTHUMBER LAND FUSILIERS).
    Mr. LAWSONasked the Financial Secretary to the War Office why the 1st battalion Northumberland Fusiliers were not given better facilities to meet their relatives on their arrival at Southampton on their way to Egypt?
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Mr. Cooper): I understand that the arrangements made, with the assistance of the Southern Railway, gave great satisfaction to the troops. If the hon. Member is suggesting that the ship might have been detained longer, I must point out that, apart from any other reason, such a dislocation of the trooping programme is precluded by the expense involved.
    Mr. LAWSON: Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that it was well known that 700 wives, mothers and children were going from Newcastle to meet these men? Would it not have been possible to give them two or three days' leave rather than to make people go to the dock in comfortless conditions?
    Mr. COOPER: It would have involved very great expense to have given these men two or three days' leave and to have held up the steamer during this time; also to have provided for the men who did not want leave and to have made similar arrangements for other troops passing from one station to another.
    Sir A. KNOX: Is it true that the whole battalion was married?

    NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.
    Mr. DUNCAN GRAHAMasked the Minister of Pensions if he will consider the advisability of amending the regulations governing the payment of war pensions by which a man can refuse to permit any part of his pension to be paid to his wife, even though he has deserted her and she is in receipt of public assistance?
    The MINISTER of PENSIONS (Major Tryon): Legislation would be necessary to bring about the object which the hon. Member has in view, and I am not prepared to recommend that the House should adopt a course which would have
    1104
    the effect of limiting the statutory right of an ex-service man to the pension awarded to him personally on account of his war disablement.
    Miss RATHBONE: Will the right hon. and gallant Gentleman say whether the statutory right of an ex-service man really involves the right to desert his wife and throw her keep on to the public assistance authority, and will he not consider bringing in legislation to make such a thing impossible?
    Major TRYON: I am not prepared to deprive an ex-service man of the compensation paid to him on account of his wounds in order to maintain a wife with whom he is not living.
    Mr. GRAHAM: Does that apply in the case of a man who has deserted his wife?
    Major TRYON: In the case that the hon. Gentleman has put to me no part of that compensation is payable to the wife. The whole of it is payable to the man on account of his wounds and that wife is not entitled to any particular allowance.
    Mr. GRAHAM: Is not a man liable to support his wife under the law; if he is, is there any good reason why an ex-service man should be put in a more privileged position than an ordinary member of the community?
    Major TRYON: I think the wounds pension ought to be treated with careful consideration, and it is no part of my duty to deprive an ex-service man of a part of his income.

    FOOD AND DRUGS ACTS (PROSECUTIONS).
    Mr. GUYasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department the total number of convictions for contravention of the Food and Drugs Acts by sale of adulterated milk and beer, respectively, during the years 1932 and 1933?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir John Gilmour): I regret that the figures relating to prosecutions under the Food and Drugs Acts do not show separately those relating to milk and beer.

    RODEO (WHITE CITY).
    Sir ROBERT GOWERasked the Home Secretary whether he has yet considered the letter sent to him by the hon. Member for Gillingham (Sir R. Gower) calling his attention to the fact that it is proposed to hold at the White City, London, a world contest rodeo, and pointing out that in connection with this contest rodeo a large number of horses and steers will be employed, and requesting that, having regard to the fact that such exhibitions offend the public sense of decency, he will take the necessary steps to prevent this contest rodeo being held; and whether he has any statement to make?
    Sir J. GILMOUR: On receipt of the hon. Member's letter, I caused certain enquiries to be instituted. These enquiries have not yet been completed, and I shall be much obliged if the hon. Member will be good enough to repeat his question one day next week.

  UNEMPLOYMENT.

    UNEMPLOYMENT BILL.
    Mr. TINKERasked the Prime Minister is he is aware that when the closure was applied on Monday at 7.30 Clause 38 of the Unemployment Bill had not been reached; and will he consider re-committing it so that an opportunity can be given for its consideration?
    Mr. BATEYasked the Prime Minister if he is aware that, during the consideration of Clause 37 of the Unemployment Bill in Committee, there was no opportunity of discussing the needs test, nor the 50 per cent. of disability pensions and workmen's compensation; and will he arrange that Clause 37 be recommitted so that these important matters can be considered?
    The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Ramsay MacDonald): I would refer hon. Members to what my right hon. Friend, the Lord President of the Council, said on this subject on Monday last.
    Mr. TINKER: I have read the reply of the right hon. Gentleman, but I would ask the Prime Minister whether the Clause mentioned, which we did not reach, had not 23 Amendments down to it, and when that careful consideration is
    1106
    being given to this matter will more attention be paid to this Clause?
    Mr. LAWSON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Lord President of the Council simply referred us to his answers previously given in the House?
    The PRIME MINISTER: Therefore his answer was quite accurate.
    Mr. LAWSON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the means test was concerned in this matter, and that what happened caused great disappointment among all parties in the House, and will he not seriously reconsider the recommittal?
    The PRIME MINISTER: That point was covered by my right hon. Friend's answer.
    Mr. BATEY: Is the Prime Minister aware that the answer of the Lord President of the Council and the Prime Minister's former answers applied only to Clauses that had not been discussed? Clause 37 deals with the means test, but, though the Clause was partly discussed, the means test was never covered. What I am asking is whether the Prime Minister will put down this Clause again, so that we can have an opportunity of discussing the means test, which was the kernel, or ought to have been the kernel, of the discussion?
    The PRIME MINISTER: My hon. Friend may rest assured that what my right hon. Friend said covers that point.
    Mr. ATTLEE: Will the right hon. Gentleman go carefully through the proceedings on this Bill and the Order Papers and see the number of instances where important points of principle and points of administration have not been discussed, and consider whether it is not possible to arrange for the recommittal of certain Clauses or parts of Clauses which have received no proper discussion?
    The PRIME MINISTER: That is only a paraphrase of what my right hon. Friend said.
    Mr. HERBERT WILLIAMS: Is it not the case that some of the trouble arose because hon. Members opposite take so long to say what they have to say?
    Mr. BATEY: The right hon. Gentleman knows that is not true.
    Mr. PALING: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the only answer we have been able to get in the past has been that consideration will be given to the matter, and, in view of the fact that certain Clauses of the utmost importance have never been touched at all in Committee, is it too much to ask that he will now come to a decision and tell us that he will recommit the Bill?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I can only repeat that every consideration will be given to the matter.

    GOVERNMENT POLICY.
    Mr. EDWARD WILLIAMS (for Mr. MAINWARING)asked the Prime Minister whether the Government have decided upon any fresh action designed to solve the problem of unemployment?
    The PRIME MINISTER: It has been explained on a number of occasions that the general policy of the Government is directed to restoring industrial activity. This is the only effectual way of finding work for the unemployed, and the considerable improvement in the employment situation since January, 1933, is evidence of the success of that policy. The Government have continually under review further means of fostering the expansion of trade which is now taking place, and, as they have already shown in several instances, are prepared to take part in any well-considered measures to that end. As regards those who, unfortunately, remain unemployed, the Bill now before the House contains proposals which will improve substantially the provision hitherto made for them.

    NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL.
    Mr. HANNON: On a point of Order. Before the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander) presents his Bill, may I ask if it is in order for him to do so in this way, in view of the fact that the House had a very full discussion last Friday on a Bill dealing with joint industrial councils, and that that Bill was defeated by a vote of this House? Is it in order to introduce a similar Bill by Notice of Presentation?
    Mr. SPEAKER: I am informed that this is an entirely different Bill from the other.

    NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL BILL,
    "to establish a National Industrial Council, and for other purposes connected therewith," presented by Mr. Mander; supported by Sir Robert Aske, Mr. Bernays, Mr. Richard Evans, Mr. Dingle Foot, Sir Percy Harris, Mr. Granville, Mr. Kingsley Griffith, Major Lloyd George and Major Nathan; to be read a Second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 69.]

  STATUTORY POWERS (LEGAL PROCEEDINGS).
  3.21 p.m.
  Mr. DINGLE FOOT: I beg to move,
  "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the law with regard to legal proceedings arising out of orders, rules, and regulations made in pursuance of any Act of Parliament."
  This is a Bill which should commend itself to all sections of the House, with the possible exception of some Members of the official Opposition, because it provides that when a Minister makes any order, rule or regulation in pursuance of an Act of Parliament, such order, rule or regulation shall always be open to challenge in the courts for a period of 28 days, notwithstanding any provision to the contrary in previous legislation. That is a very modest proposal, but it embodies a principle of first-class importance because it is an attempt to clip the wings of bureaucracy, and to stem the advance of what the Lord Chief Justice has described as "the new despotism." In the ordinary way, as the House knows, when a Minister makes an order, in pursuance of any Act of Parliament, any person aggrieved by that order can go to the courts and can apply for a writ of certiorari, and, if the courts find upon inquiry that the Minister has exceeded the powers given to him by the Act, they will quash the order. In recent years there has grown up in some of our legislation the tendency to insert a provision of which the effect is, or may very well be, to oust the jurisdiction of the courts in these matters. That Clause generally runs like this:
  "The Minister may confirm the Order and the confirmation shall be conclusive evidence that the requirements of this Act have been complied with and that the Order has been duly made and is within the powers of this Act."

  1109
  The Donoughmore Committee—that is the Committee on Ministers' Powers on which Members of all three major political parties were represented—strongly condemned this Clause. They say on page 41 of their report:
  "The Clause is objectionable, and we doubt whether it is ever justified",
  and on page 65 they recommend that there should be a period of challenge in all cases of at least three months, and preferably six months. In this Bill, I am only asking for a period of challenge of 28 days. The House will recollect that this issue was raised on the Agricultural Marketing Bill of last year, and that a Clause of this kind was at first contained in that Bill, but, thanks to the vigilance of my right hon. Friend the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel) in this House, and of Lord Reading in the other place, an alteration was eventually made to substitute a period of challenge of 28 days such as I now suggest. On 16th July, that was confirmed by a great majority in this House. I am now asking the House to extend to other legislation the principle which was accepted by a large majority last July. To take only one example: The very words that were struck out of the Agricultural Marketing Act, 1933, still remain in the Agricultural Marketing Act, 1931. This issue has been given a good deal of prominence by the activities of the hon. and learned Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps). In his book, "The problems of a Socialist Government," he uses these words:
  "In the extended use of Ministerial orders for giving legislative effect to the general principles laid down by Parliament, one great change must be effected. At the present time it is left to the courts to decide whether these orders are within the powers given by Parliament. It is always possible for them to be challenged in the courts and to be declared invalid. This power must be taken from the courts, and the sole right to challenge such orders must rest with Parliament."
  When in their constituencies, many hon. Members spend a good deal of time in denouncing the hon. and learned Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps). It is no use hon. Members attacking him as long as they permit to remain in existence legislation the very principle of which the hon. and learned Member is so strenuous an advocate. The issue in this matter is perfectly clear. On one side are those who believe that the rights
  1110
  and liberties of British subjects are of far more importance than the mere administrative convenience of Whitehall; on the other side are those, to whatever party they may belong, who sympathise with the methods and aims of the hon. and learned Member for East Bristol. The hon. and learned Gentleman thinks that after the next General Election he will be able to say, in the words of Falstaff:
  "The laws of England are at my commandment … and woe unto my Lord Chief Justice!"
  The Bill does not involve any threat to administrative efficiency. It only means that Ministers shall not be allowed to do something that is ultra vires and which is outside the powers that Parliament intended to confer upon them. With the increasing volume and complexity of the business that has to be done and carried through by Parliament, it is inevitable that we should constantly fall back on the device of delegated legislation, that is to say, Ministerial orders, rules and regulations, but I submit that the greater the powers that we confer upon the various Departments the more necessary does it become jealously to preserve those safeguards which prevent such powers being exceeded or abused.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Dingle Foot, Sir Archibald Sinclair, Sir Arnold Wilson, Mr. Thorp, Mr. Croom-Johnson, and Colonel Wedgwood.

  STATUTORY POWERS (LEGAL PROCEEDINGS).
    STATUTORY POWERS (LEGAL PROCEEDINGS) BILL,
    "to amend the law with regard to legal proceedings arising out of orders, rules, and regulations made in pursuance of any Act of Parliament," presented accordingly, and read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Wednesday next, and to be printed. [Bill 70.]

    CHAIRMEN'S PANEL.
    Mr. William Nicholson reported from the Chairmen's Panel; That they had appointed Sir Ian Macpherson to act as Chairman of the Standing Committee on Scottish Bills (in respect of the Registration of Births, Deaths, and Marriages (Scotland) (Amendment) Bill).
    Report to lie upon the Table.

    MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
    That they have agreed to—

    Ministry of Health Provisional Order (Belper) Bill,

    Ministry of Health Provisional Order (North Buckinghamshire Joint Hospital District) Bill, without Amendment.

    That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to make better provision with respect to the Rectory of Somersham and the possessions and emoluments thereof; and for other purposes." [Somersham Rectory Bill [Lords.]

    SOMERSHAM RECTORY BILL [Lords].
    Read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

POPULATION OF EMPIRE.
3.30 p.m.
Mr. LEVY: I beg to move,
"That this House notes with satisfaction that the question of migration and settlement within the Empire is being carefully examined by a departmental committee and, in view of the importance of the problem, urges that the committee's report should be laid upon the Table of the House at the earliest possible moment."
I hope the House will agree that this matter is one of profound importance. Just as mal-distribution and the lack of co-ordination and of development of our natural resources created the water problem, so that simile can be applied to this problem. May I first examine the position as we find it at home? The National Government, I consider, has done marvellous work in reducing unemployment, but I am convinced that we shall all admit that, even under the most favourable conditions, we shall have 1,000,000 or 1,500,000 as a permanent unemployment figure in this country, especially when one takes into consideration the fact that approximately from 400,000 to 450,000 children of the age of 14 leave school and are put upon the labour market.
I am convinced that the inherited British characteristic of adventure in hundreds of thousands of young men and women in this country is not dead. One does not suggest that one ought to focus their minds particularly upon unemployment when thinking of emigration, but there is no doubt that a number of young men and young women who are now in employment, but who feel that they cannot make sufficient advance, would be quite prepared to go abroad, provided that the opportunities were available, in the hope of seeking their fortune in the same way as many of their forebears have done. Therefore, this problem becomes still more important. I know I shall be told that in the Colonies and Dominions there is still unemployment; I know I shall be told that nothing can be done until conditions improve very considerably out there. But in spite of that I venture to raise this question of oversea settlement, because, with great respect, I want to make a suggestion to the House and to the Inter-Departmental Committee which is now considering this matter.
In reviewing the various schemes of oversea settlement, it seems to me that
1118
they have rather lacked what I might call the business quality. That is not intended to be any reflection upon those who have helped to devise the schemes, but politics and business do not mix well as a rule, and it is not easy to eliminate or subordinate politics in considering any problem which has hitherto been handled by politicians. That, again, is not intended to be any reflection upon politicians; I suppose I am one myself; but, while I have a high regard for the competent statesman and his statecraft, I do not believe that he is necessarily the best man to direct, for instance, a jam factory. He may be able to make a verbal sweetness with outstanding success, but the material jam for the pot, for the table, and for the family, something you can feel and flavour in the mouth, and not an intangible verbal sweetness—that is another matter. As one who is not without a little business training and experience, I would invite the House to view the British Commonwealth as a great business enterprise, in which each of the Dominions is a working partner. There are possibilities of enormous development. New lands are waiting to be opened up and cultivated, agriculturally and industrially; in short, the business can be greatly expanded. We have the territories and the natural resources, we have good human material, we have the money for initial development. What use have we made of them so far? Very little. What use are we going to make of them?
The argument which I respectfully submit to the House, and to the Committee which is dealing with oversea settlement, is that the problem should be approached and examined from an Imperial business point of view. I want to suggest that Imperial commissions should be appointed to prospect on the spot as to the possibilities of each Dominion or Dependency. Each commission should consist, not of politicians, but of business men—farmers, surveyors, financiers, transport experts, and so on—and should investigate the potentialities of every area thought to be suitable from the point of view of produce, marketing, transport, building, finance, communal amenities and so on, and report to the Governments concerned. Each commission should prepare a scheme of settlement for the Dominion or any part of

1119
a Dominion which it investigated. There is no reason why two or three commissions—they might be sub-commissions of a main commission—should not be got to work simultaneously in various parts of the Empire.
I do not know how the Committee which is now sitting is doing its work, but it is essential that the problems of oversea settlement should be studied at first hand on the spot, and that such examination should be done by competent and experienced people, who would frame schemes based on first-hand knowledge and facts, and not on second-hand knowledge or theory. The cost of these commissions would be a matter of arrangement between our own Government and the Government or State concerned on the other side, but in any case it would be a minute fraction in relation to the valuable progress that should follow from such an impartial and exhaustive investigation. Recently my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for the Dominions said in this House that it was not the policy of the Government to hand out cut-and-dried schemes of settlement to the Dominions, and I agree that such a course would prejudice any scheme from the start; but that is really an argument for practical examination on the spot. Two or three travelling commissions would, I submit, help enormously in removing local difficulties, and would add greatly to the knowledge of all concerned. They would do their work free from political atmosphere, and on a basis of making the development of these great lands a good economic proposition, a means to the happiness of thousands of families, and thereby a mighty contribution to the stability and prosperity of the Empire.
The Agent-General for South Australia, Mr. Lionel Hill, made a statement a few weeks ago which I think reinforces my argument. He said that in Australia the administration of the migration laws rested first with the Commonwealth in the matter of immigration to Australia, and secondly, and by far the most important, the question of settlement rested with the Governments of the States. I do not know if the State Governments have been adequately consulted in previous discussions on settlement, but it is obvious that they ought to be. Is it not time that we genuinely got down to this problem, not by the methods of
1120
cumbersome Government negotiations—that would have to come later, of course, on broad principles—but by some such means as I have described, with personal examination of each problem in the areas reviewed. The world is hungry for expansion. It is weary of the suffering of restriction. If we do not try to develop speedily the resources of the Empire, other countries will want to do it. There is already jealousy in the world of the broad and potentially rich lands within the British Empire which await the transforming work of the settler. We must do it in order to safeguard our Imperial future. At present there is what I might call an ebb tide in migration. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade stated a few days ago that during last year the number of British immigrants into the United Kingdom from other parts of the British Empire exceeded the number of British migrants to those countries by nearly 24,000. That is reversing with a vengeance what ought to be the normal and proper process.
Under the Empire Settlement Act the Government is authorised to spend up to £3,000,000 a year on migration. It seems indeed a critical commentary on Imperial statesmanship that, when we are ready to spend the money, while we have these great virgin lands awaiting development and while we have a formidable surplus of population, we should be able to do little or nothing in the direction of co-ordinating all three for the common good. An immense reward awaits the British Commonwealth when this has been accomplished. Let us, therefore, examine the problem in detail as it is in every part of the Empire, for it is not a common problem. It varies. Above all, let us do it now and not be afraid to invest time, energy and capital in it for it is a gilt-edged security in which all the partners and the shareholders of the British Commonwealth Trust can participate.
Mr. HENDERSON STEWART: Will the hon. Member develop the concrete suggestion that he made about commissions. Who is to appoint them and to whom would they be responsible?
3.49 p.m.
Mr. LYONS: I beg to second the Motion.
This is the third time within the last three or four weeks that this matter has

1121
been discussed, and I think my hon. Friend need offer no apology for directing his Motion towards the considerations of this all transcending topic. Upon the proper distribution of the peoples of the Empire must depend the future prosperity of the Empire itself. The great problem which awaits us all, and to which consideration must be directed, is that of reconciling the possession of great congested cities with great open spaces; reconciling those vast opportunities in the far flung possessions of the Empire, all under the same flag, with the tremendous amount of energy which is now lying idle in great multitudes of our people, employed as well as unemployed. It is a very important matter which should not be regarded exclusively with the question of unemployment.
The settlement of our people in this country and in the Empire is a matter not only connected with unemployment, and we do not regard this and the way we seek to discuss our various schemes of settlement merely as a matter whereby we can divest ourselves of any of the unemployed problem as such. There is not the slightest doubt that the question which is now happily engaging the attention of the Government in this connection is one of the most vitally important of all the Empire problems which have to be considered. The peopling of gigantic empty territories containing hundreds of thousands of square miles, offering colossal opportunities to those who go on that great adventure, is a matter which must be worthy of the greatest care and the greatest discussion which this House and the Government can give it, because the solid fact is that those vast possibilities to all sections of the community are now going untapped for lack of population. Not one Dominion has the population that it needs to carry on its own overhead establishment and its own political, social and material institutions. It is not a question of the flow of British people going out. The tragedy to-day lies in the flow of people back to this country. In 1913, which was the last real emigration year, something like 285,000 people of British nationality went to various parts of the British Empire. It is an outflow such as this, and the growth of the self-governing parts of the Empire which justifies this country being called the "nursery of new nations."
1122
Many opinions are put forward, for social or economic reasons, why migration has gone down. We have to face the fact that the longer the lapse, the more urgent becomes the problem. I remember hearing it said by various people in authority at Ottawa last summer that the numerical preponderance of British stock, gauged by every piece of available evidence, is now steadily shrinking. When we think of the pioneer work that has been done by British people in British Dominions in years gone by and think of the state of affairs disclosed by that observation, it makes many of us think that for too long this very great and important question has been shelved by those who are responsible.
We are not dealing with an ordinary political assembly. We are dealing with an Empire the like of which has never been known before, an Empire flung all over the world, with illimitable territories, embracing a population of more than a quarter of the world's people under one flag. In those territories you have, for instance, the great empty North of Australia which various nations are watching with jealous eyes and teeming millions. We have opportunities for expansion in every one of the Empires which make our Commonwealth of British nations. We see a nation like New Zealand, one of our smallest Dominions. Its area is twice that of England. Yet it had a population at the last census of about 1,500,000 souls. The Dominion of Canada, territorially as big as, or bigger than, the United States of America, has a population of about that of Greater London. When we realise that fact, and how essential it is for the purposes of Empire trade and Empire unity, we see how necessary it is to keep the British Empire peopled with our own stock. I express the fervent hope that the Committee which has been set up, or is about to be set up by the present Government, will explore every avenue and examine with real endeavour every means of approach to embarking upon this great problem in a large and courageous way.
It is said that the time is not ripe for migration. I hope that this House will remember the statement which was made a short time ago by Mr. Beattie, President of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, an organisation which is the very backbone of the Dominion of

1123
Canada, and which has perhaps done more to develop that Dominion than any other institution has done anywhere else in the world. Mr. Beattie, with all the knowledge and authority he possesses, recently expressed the view that the time is now ripe for a policy of moderate, well-planned migration in the Dominion of Canada. Let us remember that Canada consists of a number of provinces each one having industrial and agricultural work. The Dominion has recently started upon a new main arterial road from the Atlantic to the Pacific. These are institutions with which we could associate ourselves, our people and our capital, if we could only probe into this matter and find out what it is that stops the migration of people from this country to this land of great promise. The first thing to remember is that if we get British stock into a new country that new population does not bring a liability to the country, but becomes an asset. Settlers of British stock in a British Dominion become consumers and producers and bring purchasing power into the country and increase the opportunity of that country to spend money with us.
There are many organisations which have done very good work in the cause of migration. My hon. Friend sitting below me just now asked whether my hon. Friend who moved the Motion would introduce one or two concrete schemes into the discussion this afternoon. Each one of those voluntary societies has had, in a comparatively small but successful way, a great deal to do with successful settlement. It is not long since we saw a scheme outlined by the Salvation Army, an organisation to whom we are glad to pay our tribute for the work it has done in other parts of the British Empire as well as at home. There is a movement known as the Big Brother movement which has been extremely useful in a small but efficient way. It has been circumscribed by circumstances, and has not been able to enjoy the scope which we should like for such a movement which has all the ideas, material and plant available to enjoy. No one claims to have an exclusive solution of the matter, but all those voluntary societies have done excellent work. We had a scheme superintended by the Overseas Settlement Board some years ago—the 3,000 family scheme. I believe that in Canada
1124
it has proved to be the most successful scheme of voluntary settlement the Dominion has ever known. One of the successes of that scheme was the settlement by families after really careful, prudent, rational selection by the board.
Another scheme of migration which was started with a great flourish of trumpets some years ago was known as the Quarter Section scheme in which the Government of this country and the Dominion Government in Canada took certain parts. It was a good scheme. It meant that each quarter section in Canada, inhabited by families, four forming a section, made a little township which began with four homesteads, and which invited the establishment of a little store, a post office, and a little filling station. I have been right through Canada and have seen how those little centres have grown into successful trading concerns. That alas is now at an end, and you do not come to any family quarter section settlement for a long time. To mention a few other schemes which have been universally successful, I would say a word about the Hudson Bay scheme whereby each man was trained, and, when considered efficient for Canadian purposes and work, was put on to his own holding in Alberta. The Canadian Pacific Railway had a similar scheme, and there was a scheme started for juveniles in Nova Scotia by two or three gentlemen of England who were full of public spirit. They had a farm on which they trained young boys who had gone there from blind-alley occupations in this country. They trained a few at a time under first-class conditions and with every care, and they became good Canadian citizens. I look back with pleasant recollections to the time when I stayed with those boys on the farm in Nova Scotia and visited two or three farms of men who had come from that training farm and had become good successful Canadian citizens. Those are examples of what can be done.
We ask ourselves what is the position? Why is it not done now? One of the reasons why I think there has been this lag in migration is the complete lack of social services in the Dominions as we know them in this country to-day. We can take pride in the fact that, having negotiated the most unexampled crisis that this country has ever known in its finances, we have continued at a higher social level than any other nation in the

1125
world. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Dominions was instrumental some years ago in an arrangement whereby certain pensions payable to British subjects in this country should remain payable to those persons if they chose to go with their families overseas. As far as I know—and I hope that my hon. Friend on the Front Bench will stop me if I am incorrect—the system obtains to-day whereby a pensioner may receive his pension if he is living with his family in one of the Dominions.
I shall never tire of saying, until it is proved to be impossible, that it is a thousand pities that some scheme cannot be effected whereby every insured man in this country, whether in work or out of work, who desires to go to the Dominions would be examined by a properly constituted board, with the personnel of which I will deal in a moment, and have the right to take with him a capitation or capitalised value of the benefit he surrenders when he leaves these shores. It is a very easy matter actuarially to settle in regard to the amount of his contribution and the amount which he has not drawn out to his general benefit, and to let the Treasury have a scheme on which the amount due to the man can be based. I do not suggest that it should be paid in cash to be lost perhaps the night before embarkation, but, if such capitalisation be made, and if the commutation be had of the benefits which he would be entitled to take with him, I have not the slightest doubt that the Canadian Government, in the case of an approved person would give some contribution themselves. The whole of the money, the Canadian grant as well as the amount from this country, could be taken to the Dominion, capitalised in value and administered by the Canadian Government, who would at once have him received as a capitalist in the new country. If so administered, and with the knowledge that those settlers would be properly looked after, you would have a very successful venture.
I indicate that as a scheme which I would like to see examined and criticised. I think that it is wrong to expect the most zealous in this country, whether employed or unemployed, knowing the responsibility of family ties and so on, knowing the benefits to which they can become eligible in days of difficulties, to give up all those rights and take the re-
1126
sponsibility of a gamble by going overseas where they know that no similar rights exist and where there are not the social services that we have in this country. It is a risk we cannot expect them to take, whatever the chance of success may be in the country to which they go. I do believe that if we could adopt some such principle, we should find that one of our great difficulties would be overcome.
The next thing we have to realise—and I want to repeat that, in my respectful submission, no part of this problem can be gauged from the one angle of unemployment—is that if you have a man with some such grant behind him, and some such opportunity awaiting him, you must not let him think, merely because he takes a trip across the Atlantic, that he will make a successful agricultural settler in a Dominion. That is a fallacy through which a great deal of money has been wasted and a great deal of misfortune caused. Perhaps I may be allowed for a moment to refer to a personal experience three or four years ago in the middle West of Canada. One of the most unfortunate and sad experiences I have ever had was when I had talks with a number of men who were in the migration hostel in Winnipeg awaiting deportation to England—men who had gone out with their families full of hope, ideas and ambition, ready and willing to work, having cost this country and the country to which they had gone, under the scheme then in existence, a good deal of money. And there they were waiting to return to this country. They had failed through no fault of theirs, and through no lack of opportunity, but because they were men who were never fitted for the work to which they had been sent. Those men would come back and spread among their friends in this country stories of failure in Canada, and of condemnation of the Middle West which were not justified. I tell that experience to my hon. Friends in order to make clear this point that, with the best will in the world, with the best scheme in the world, it is of no use unless you have a really good method of selection by somebody competent to select the right persons going to the right work in a Dominion.
I remember some years ago the Overseas Settlement Board started county

1127
migration committees under the county councils. I was asked to serve, and did serve on one of those committees. We did not get very far; I do not think they have had a meeting for the last two, three or four years. A body of men more incapable of making a selection of settlers for the Dominions I could not conceive. I would like to see, arising out of the Motion, an Empire Economic Council always in session, with a special committee charged only with the question of selection of migrants, with men on the committee who know the areas to which the proposed settlers would go and whence they came, and the kind of work in each one of those various Dominions, because when you are dealing with our Dominions you are dealing not with a small, compressed country like the North or South of England, or England itself, but you are dealing with large provinces in another country. There is as much difference between the West or the East of Canada as there is between any two other countries thousands of miles apart. It is not a bit of good unless you have proper selection, and I would urge that one part of the work of the committee now considering the whole of this scheme should be the maintenance of a committee charged exclusively with the very difficult question of selectivity. I believe that you could get proper support from steamship companies and from the Dominions, and I believe that you could get a small committee with expert knowledge to examine with the most meticulous care every person who, with or without any benefit, sought to become a settler in a Dominion, and so put an end once and for all to the idea that a trip across the Atlantic will make a first-class settler. That kind of idea does a tremendous amount of harm to migration as a whole.
Let me refer for a moment to the great work which most of us in this House know has been done in recent months by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft). No one has been more sincere, no one more zealous in his research in this great question of Empire settlement than my hon. and gallant Friend. A scheme has been submitted by him, and, those who have the privilege of being associated with him, for a chain of community settlements, and I do believe that, in addition to whatever may be the success of in-
1128
dividual migration, some chain of territorial or community settlements on the basis of the 3,000 family scheme to which I have referred must be a cardinal factor in any successful scheme of migration. There must be no chance of isolation. There is no life in the wilderness to which we point. In Canada science and invention have taken away the desolation of the wilderness. To assist people who come in mass migration there should be no suspicion of strangeness in a country with different habits from their own. That can be done. I believe that the Canadian system of after-care treatment is the most perfected in the world. The help given there by great organisations and by the Dominion Government is, and will be, of enormous use to anybody settling in that country. Once you do get families, sections and townships reestablished in those open spaces you will have solved the whole question of homesickness and strangeness which come to the new settlers and cause hesitation in their decisions.
I want to say one or two things from another angle. It is no good thinking of this as an agricultural matter only. It is not. There is not the slightest doubt that the Dominion of Canada, including that very part of Canada I have before mentioned—Manitoba, the stupendous farm of Empire, is opening up a new and industrial era. I believe that very much interwoven with this problem is the problem of British capital going to Canada. There was floated in this country recently a huge Canadian loan. It was a tremendous success, and it came after a period of years when Canada had not for a long time been connected with the City of London in a direct financial way. I would like to see in some of these secondary industrial institutions in the Dominion where they do not profess to lead in that particular industrial line, a great co-operation with finance and industry in this country, and I would like to see British capital go into Canadian organisations on the understanding, not merely implied but expressed, that this British capital will be taking with it so many Britishers straight to work, straight into industry to develop there Empire trade over a greater area. I believe that that is possible, and that the financial institutions of this country will never again be unwilling to go into Canada as an investment. There are tremendous

1129
opportunities in Canada already. It is said that it is over-railroaded. I do not know. It is a fact that a great deal of work can be done in the development of railways which men and capital from this country could greatly assist in executing. Financially and by man-power, I think we could have co-operated in the new arterial road from Atlantic to Pacific.
It is a fact that even in recent years large settlements of foreign stock in both industrial organisations and agricultural enterprises have sprung up in Canada, while we have remained stationary. It is, I think, very unfortunate that the replenishment of British stock in the British Dominions should have failed. I believe that in those countries with the same appreciation of liberty, freedom and loyalty, as we have, the greatest asset to those countries is an adequacy of British stock to carry on those inherent British characteristics. It is necessary from their standpoint that our union should be cemented. It is essential from the point of view of this country that we should be united with our Dominions by something more than a mere bond of sentiment. As long as they get a great development of population and capital from this country, so long will the bond which joins this country and the Dominions be strengthened.
I saw again last year some of the foreign settlements. I never desire to deny the great value of the Nordic races in the West of Canada. You see their work on every hand—good citizens, with good work for themselves and the country. Recently there has been a tremendous settlement in the far West of Canada—in British Columbia—of foreign stock. I believe that British Columbia has potentialities which are enormous. I expect that the great city of Vancouver will in a few years' time be at the cross-roads of the world's trade. Those foreign settlements are getting bigger in the far West of Canada. You see there the Nordic race settling in large numbers and doing very good work indeed in the Middle West of Canada, while our own numbers are in this lamentable position. It is not a question of who is going to be the author of a scheme which will be successful. This is a matter which transcends all other matters of Empire development at the present moment.
I believe that in this country and the Dominions we have the wit, the wisdom
1130
and the resources to carry out a scheme which is going to be satisfactory, which is going to swell the Empire and populate its open spaces. I believe that the spirit of our people is as great as ever it was in the days of early pioneering in the Dominions. What we have to do is to pull together on both sides of the Atlantic wherever the flag flies, by ranging ourselves side by side, considering every scheme that may have for its object the better population of the best part of the world, and in the treatment of those men we have to remember one thing. I do not know the terms of reference of the committee referred to in the Motion, but the Motion includes, according to my reading of it, a redistribution of people in this country as well. A great deal can be done by way of settlement and re-settlement in England. In the new orientation of industry trade, in my opinion, is no longer fixed in the North, but has a general trend to the South. Much, however, can be done in the direction of settlement in satellite towns, with new organisations to house the people who come from the North, where industry cannot, for economic and scientific reasons, now support the mass of people there. I believe that something could be done by way of resettlement in other parts of the country where industry is more attracted.
I welcome the width of the reference to the committee mentioned in the Motion. I am glad that my hon. Friend thought fit to bring the Motion forward for discussion, because I believe it is a matter upon which nothing can divide our minds. This is a matter far and away beyond any ordinary question of political controversy. It is political in the highest order. It is a matter not merely of first class national importance but of first class imperial importance. It is not to be passed over because you do not like this scheme or that scheme. It must be broadened and extended to take in its stride the best ideas, the best schemes, the best contributions of all sections of people on each side of the great oceans, which do not divide our Empire but unite it.
4.17 p.m.
Mr. MACLAY: It seems to me that one of the main problems of this country in dealing with a question like this is the

1131
difficulty of persuading the Governments of the Dominions to agree with our ideals. We know what we want and we can see what is the ideal, but to-day when one travels in the Dominions one finds a very different type of mind on this question than we should like to see. It would be very easy to lecture the Dominions on what they should do, but I appeal to any hon. Member who may speak to-day not to do that, or, if he does that, to do it very carefully, because if there is one thing that causes resentment in the Dominions it is that we are lecturing them as to how they should oblige us in disposing of our unemployed. That is how it appears to them. On the occasion when Canada tried to help us out of our difficulties, unfortunately, we sent over an enormous number of men totally unfitted for Canadian country life. That caused a bad impression, which still remains.
I should like the Under-Secretary of State or the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs to try during the coming year to get the restrictions on migration eased a little. To-day no man is allowed to go from this country to Canada to take work there, although we are told that anyone from the Dominions and Colonies can come into this country without the slightest difficulty and take jobs here. If Empire means anything at all, why cannot we step out into our great Empire? This sort of thing is very difficult to understand. I think it would be wise to ease the restrictions in order to help some of the schemes which the Department are trying to bring forward along the lines that have been mentioned.
I should like to give one specific case of how the restrictions operate in Canada. It is the case of an orphanage in this country which for many years sent out 20 or 30 boys per annum to Canada. Those boys have made good citizens but, owing to the agricultural depression, the sending out of boys has been stopped. I happen to be connected with that institution. Last year we had 20 boys waiting to go to Canada and the farmers had told us that they would take them. We stated that we would look after the boys if they became unemployed, up to the age of 21, and if need be we would bring them home again. Even in those circumstances Canada re-
1132
fused entry to the boys. I think that our Government ought to make some appeal to Canada to try and help us out. What is the good of our discussing these vaster schemes if in a very small case we can get no help at all, and not even one boy is allowed in? I think it is unwise on the part of the Canadian authorities. If they could help a little just now they would win the affection of this country, but I am afraid they are making us rather wonder whether the Empire is worth troubling about.
Vice-Admiral TAYLOR: Was any reason given why the boys were refused?
Mr. MACLAY: Yes.
Mr. LYONS: Can the hon. Member say which Province refused them?
Mr. MACLAY: It applied to the whole of Canada. They were refused entrance to the whole of Canada. The reason given was that there was depression in Canada and that by sending boys out from Great Britain they would be taking away work from boys who were unemployed in Canadian towns. We pressed our argument and pointed out that the Canadian farmers were willing to take these British boys, and that they had been taking boys for 20 or 30 years and had found them satisfactory, but, owing to the Government restrictions, they were not allowed to take them now. My principal object in rising was to give this specific instance of the difficulties met with in trying to encourage normal emigration. I appeal to the Under-Secretary to make representations as early as possible to the Dominions to help on such schemes as those which have been mentioned by the Proposer and Seconder of the Motion.
4.24 p.m.
Mr. DAGGAR: The Motion is evidence that the question of migration is attracting a considerable amount of interest. Whatever hon. Members opposite may say, we are bound to have regard in a discussion of this Motion to the question of unemployment in this country. Many hon. Members are taking a considerable interest in the question of migration. There is nothing new in the problem. It is the over-population myth in another form. Speaking for myself, I object either to wholesale or compulsory migration of our unemployed, because the alleged need for such a movement ignores

1133
the possibilities of this country and also the importance of creating a home market. It is not a new argument that we have heard to-day. We heard it in much more forcible language at a time when the facts referred to by the hon. Member opposite were not so much in his favour as they were when the observations were made by the Lord President of the Council. As far back as November, 1927, observations were made to the effect that new industries were doing well, more men and women were employed in the industries of this country than before the War, but in the opinion of the Lord President of the Council the increase of population had for the moment beaten us. The same argument in different language has been used to-day but coming from persons who are not to be considered as reliable authorities as the right hon. Gentleman.
That the population of this country has beaten us is to our standing disgrace and discredit. The argument that it need have done so is absolutely absurd. We have not heard this afternoon the very familiar argument as to the density of population in this country compared with other countries. I have been at some pains to ascertain reliable figures of the density of population from a small book written by a person whose views are shared by hon. Members opposite, entitled: "Is Britain over-populated?" The statistics in that publication are based upon figures to be found in the Statesman's Year Book, and I propose to use a few of them. The author says that the number of persons per square mile in Japan is 392, in the United Kingdom 481, and in England 701. Why he differentiates one part of Great Britain in making his calculation is a question that requires some consideration. I find from an article written by such an authority as Sir John Marriott, in the "British Empire Review" for September of last year, that the population of Japan per square mile is 320, in England 701 and in the United Kingdom 487. It will be rioted that the figures given by two different authorities agree with regard to the population of England per square mile.
There are scores of other countries in which the density of population is greater than ours, and they have precisely the same problem that we have in this country. There is no desire on the part of
1134
the Mover of the Motion that there should be emigration to foreign countries whether the density of population is either lesser or greater than in this country. Belgium has a population of 702 per square mile, or 221 more persons per square mile than in the United Kingdom. No one in this House would say that the conditions are any worse in Belgium than they are in this country because of that particular fact. In the United States of America the density of the population is considerably less than in Great Britain, and yet no hon. Member would assert that the Americans have not precisely the same problem to face that we have.
Reference has been made to the report of the Committee over which the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) presides. That Committee is known as the Imperial Development and Settlement Research Committee. It has recently issued its report, a study of which would prove of considerable value in a discussion of the subject before us to-day. In that report reference is made to the fact that since the War over £1,000,000,000 has been spent in keeping life in our unemployed—a very proper term to use, although we have not done that very well. In stating the case for migration the members of that Committee do not take into consideration all the facts necessary before arriving at their conclusion. They deliberately ignore essential facts in making out a case for migration. The report says that:
"In all over £200,000,000 has been expended in this manner"—
That is in providing schemes for giving employment to the unemployed—
"between 1920 and 1932. Had this vast sum of money been spent in mass settlement, 200,000 settlers with families of three, (wife and two children) or 800,000 souls, could have been settled permanently overseas with every hope that the total expenditure of £200,000,000 would have been paid back over a period of 30 years and that the whole, or nearly the whole, of this expenditure could have been provided by private enterprise."
I submit that in making this comparison all the facts have not been taken into consideration. It is easy to assert that you could provide employment in the Colonies for 800,000 of our unemployed at a cost of £200,000,000 and that the provision of works schemes for the un-

1135
employed would have cost £1,000,000,000, but the economic waste involved in maintaining such a large army of unemployed in this country has been ignored, it ought to have been taken into consideration in determining the difference between the cost of maintaining the unemployed and the amount of money necessary to settle people on the land in other countries. Since 1920 we have spent in unemployment benefit alone over £522,000,000. This Army of unemployed has averaged since 1920 1,500,000 and if we assume that the product of a man's labour is worth £200 a year we have lost during that period no less than £2,700,000,000. These are facts which should also be taken into consideration in determining the amount of money necessary to maintain the unemployed in this country and the cost of schemes to provide work for them in the Colonies.
There has been a lot of talk about the cost involved in providing employment for our people. Obviously it means money; and so does the settlement of our people in other parts of the Empire. I object to supporting any scheme to provide employment for the unemployed in other parts of the Empire when it is obvious that work could be provided for them in this country. It has been pointed out by many reliable authorities that to find work for the unemployed is a costlier business in direct and immediate outlay than to keep them in idleness. They would have to be paid more if they were at work, and there is the additional cost of the materials upon which they would have to work. On this principle it is always costlier to produce anything than not to produce it. It is a calculation which totally ignores the value of the product. But is it impossible to provide work for those who it is now proposed should be assisted to leave this country? I hold that it is not, and that an investment in this country is preferable to an investment in any other part of the Empire. That is not a statement that cannot be proved. An hon. Member opposite, the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Viscount Lymington) said on one occasion:
"By uniting livestock production with mechanisation of their food production Britain could find work for another 500,000 men on the land."
1136
That is much more economic and would be much more satisfactory to the unemployed than any scheme prepared by the hon. Member who moved this Motion or by the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth. It may seem strange for one who has always been a miner and who still has the honour of representing a mining constituency to assert that we have been so anxious to industrialise this country that we have neglected the basic industry of agriculture. Although I am a miner I have always interested myself in agricultural problems, because I hold that view; and it is amazing to find hon. Members advocating a scheme for migration when every reliable agricultural authority holds precisely the same opinion as the hon. Member for Basingstoke. There is not a single agricultural authority in this country who does not agree that it is possible to produce most of the products which are permitted to come into this country; all they disagree about it whether it is possible to place 400,000 man on the land or 2,000,000, the figure mentioned by Sir Charles Fielding, a man whose opinion deserves every respect. I object to assisting men to go out to any part of the Empire to cultivate the land when land is available at home. As to the question why people migrate, I propose to give a clear and, I think, satisfactory answer.
Captain CUNNINGHAM-REID: Will the hon. Member allow me?
Mr. DAGGAR: I do not propose to give way to anyone. I have been in this House long enough to know that while on many occasions humble back benchers on this side of the House give way to hon. Members opposite, that courtesy is rarely reciprocated. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] I submit that I know as much about that matter as hon. Members who divide their activities between this House and outside. On one occasion I was interrupted 11 times by hon. Members on the Front Bench, and when I got up to make an interjection I was told that the hon. Member had no time to give way and was anxious to conclude his speech. Sir Charles Fielding says that in his view it is possible to produce from the land food and raw materials to the value of £479,000,000 and manufactured goods to the value of over £200,000,000, which gives a total of £679,000,000. These authorities do not disagree on the ques-

1137
tion as to whether it is possible to put 500,000 people on the land, but as to whether it is possible to put at least 2,000,000 people on the land. The amount of money necessary to do it is considerably less than the figure of £200,000,000 suggested by the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth as being necessary to settle 800,000 people on the land in other parts of the Empire.
We are sometimes disposed unduly to emphasise the importance of our export trade. I realise that it is important and it is not my intention to under-estimate it, but there is a danger of exaggerating its importance to the exclusion of a consideration of the home market. A person who was a Member of this House at one time, and who is still regarded as a notable and reliable economist, Sir Leo Chiozza Money, has asserted that in 1930 the number of persons working for export, apart from transport and agency, was perhaps 2,500,000 or 12 per cent., and he says:
"I am quite sure that the general impression is otherwise. It is widely believed that a very large part, if not, the majority, of our people work for export."
It may be that hon. Members will question the accuracy of that statement. In that case, I would ask them to read the pamphlet written by Professor John Hilton who makes this statement:
"The declined fortunes of the export trade are repeated in the known or estimated facts of the distribution of the labour of our workpeople between the home and the export trade. Of all the workers in the 'productive' industries (whose products are for the most part capable of being transported to any market), the bulk are now engaged in working for the home market. Of the 8 million in such industries, the numbers working for export (including the transport and distributive workers engaged in handling goods for export) were in 1929 some 2,200,000. In the autumn of 1932, this figure touched a low record of 1,300,000, and is now about 1,450,000. This latter figure is about 18 per cent. of the 8 million engaged in the productive industries. It is only 8 per cent. of all persons 'gainfully occupied.' It is little more than 5 per cent. of all those, including the home-tenders, by whose labours we live."
There are enormous possibilities in the home market of this country. I will give one or two figures based upon the statement of Sir Leo Chiozza Money. He says that in 1930 we produced woollen goods in this country to the value of £112,000,000, of which £37,000,000 worth
1138
was exported. During the same period we imported foreign woollen stuff to the value of £14,000,000 and, therefore, the British consumption was only £89,000,000 worth. That is only equal to 40s. per head per year of the population. If you assume that there are 11,000,000 families in this country and that every family purchased £30 worth of woollen goods per year, we should get a home market for that article alone of no less than £330,000,000. He also points out that if you take the production of furniture of all kinds in this country, furniture for offices and for every conceivable purpose, it was only valued at £30,000,000 at place of production prices in 1930; that is equal to 54s. per home for the 11,000,000 homes in the country. If these 11,000,000 homes could absorb, each of them £300 worth of furniture, we should have a home market of £3,300,000,000. Take the question of coal which naturally interests me.
Mr. LEVY: May I ask what this has to do with the Motion on the Paper?
Mr. DAGGAR: It is obvious that the hon. Member was not present when I commenced my speech because I pointed out that there was danger in emphasising the importance of our export market to the detriment of realising the importance of the home market, and that instead of subscribing to a scheme of wholesale migration——
Mr. McGOVERN: On a point of Order, Mr. Speaker. For my guidance, I want to ask you on whose authority numbers of the public are being deprived of access to this House to-day, why various unemployed men who are desirous of interviewing Members of Parliament are being kept outside the House in the snow, while well-dressed members of the general public are being admitted? I want to know for my guidance who is responsible for this unfair treatment of the unemployed.
Mr. SPEAKER: I do not know exactly to what the hon. Member refers. As far as I am aware, there is no change in the ordinary rules that govern admission to the House. At any rate, whatever the rules are, at the moment I am entirely responsible for them.
Mr. ANEURIN BEVAN: May I call attention to a precedent for this matter? In the course of the last Budget Debate

1139
the Co-operative Society sent very large numbers of persons to this House and they were all admitted to the Outer Lobby without any difficulty. To-day, although there is plenty of room in the Committee Rooms upstairs and in the Outer Lobby, all these men, who are poorly dressed and underfed, are being kept in a long queue in the open air and snow. Is it not possible for them to be admitted into the Outer Lobby and there await the attendance of Members?
Mr. SPEAKER: I can make no alteration in the rules that are enforced.
Mr. BEVAN: Further to the point of Order. I am very anxious not to offend your Ruling. Are we not entitled to ask why the rules are different for poorly-dressed people as against well-dressed people? Why are these men being kept outside the House when well-dressed people are being admitted The Co-operative deputation was admitted, and ordinary people now presenting themselves at the entrance are being admitted.
Mr. SPEAKER: I am sure that there is no difference made in the application of the rules because of dress.
Mr. McGOVERN: I have been outside and know what is taking place. Every well-dressed person is being admitted to the House without question, but every one who is deemed even to look like an unemployed person is put in a queue which is standing outside in the rain and sleet. I certainly think that, if you have the power to order it, these men ought to be admitted. Surely if the men are not admitted to interview Members of the Government at least they are entitled to the ordinary decency and rights extended to the average person, to interview a Member of Parliament. I myself have had to go out with the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) and attempt to pick out certain people whom we had invited to tea in the House this afternoon. I think it is most unfair and a damnable outrage that these men should be asked to stand in the street.
Mr. SPEAKER: I cannot allow that kind of language to be used in the House.
Mr. McGOVERN: I want to protest against what is being done.
Mr. BEVAN: May I prevail upon you, Mr. Speaker? Last night the Prime Minister said, on the Motion for the Adjournment, that it was competent for any unemployed person to interview his Member of Parliament. If an ordinary member of the public presents himself at the strangers' entrance and says that he wishes to interview his Member, he is immediately given ingress. Why is ingress refused to the men who are standing in the queue? Why are they not permitted to come into the Outer Lobby and send green cards in to Members in the ordinary way? Because these men are being stopped the House of Commons is exposing itself, as I am sure you are not anxious it should be exposed, to the charge that poor persons are treated differently from persons who are apparently well off.
Mr. SPEAKER: I have already dealt with that point. There are certain rules that have to be enforced regarding admission to the House. Those rules have not been altered, and I do not propose to alter them.
Mr. McGOVERN: I want to point out this to you——
Mr. SPEAKER: There is really nothing more to say. I have heard the hon. Member's grievance.
Mr. McGOVERN: I want to put a new point to you. You say that there are certain rules applicable to persons who seek admission to the House, and as to that there might be general agreement. If the House was closed to the general public because of a thought or fear that something untoward might happen, one could understand it, but when we see discrimination taking place at the entrance to the House, so that well-dressed persons are being admitted and poor people are not admitted, we are entitled to expect that they should get ordinary decency.
Mr. SPEAKER: I have already dealt with that point.
Mr. McGOVERN: I want to demand their admission to the House. I think you have power to admit these people.
HON. MEMBERS: Order, order.
Mr. McGOVERN: To hell with you and order.
Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member must not use language of that kind; otherwise, I shall have to deal with him severely.
Mr. McGOVERN: I am not asking to be dealt with severely. I am asking for the admission of people who, I consider, have a right to be admitted, and I shall certainly not deviate from that view. I demand their admission.
Mr. SPEAKER: I have given my Ruling. I repeat that there are certain rules which govern the admission of people to this House, and those rules have to be enforced. There is certainly no distinction made between one person and another.
Mr. McGOVERN: But there is a distinction being made to-day.
Mr. SPEAKER: Mr. Daggar.
Mr. McGOVERN: But I am advancing reasons. I want to get admission for people who live in my division and who are here. They are unemployed. I want them to be admitted in order that they may see me. I am demanding that.
HON. MEMBERS: Sit down.
Mr. McGOVERN: I will not sit down. Leave me alone. I am demanding admission to this House of constituents of mine who are entitled to come within the precincts of the House.
Mr. SPEAKER: If the hon. Member continues I shall have to ask him to leave the House.
Mr. McGOVERN: If these people are not fit to be admitted I may as well leave the House—if they are to have no opportunity of coming in to see me as their Member.
Mr. LUNN: Further to the point of Order, Mr. Speaker. You say there is no distinction whatever made either because of dress or the appearance of a person who desires to enter the House. If it is the fact that ordinary citizens are outside in a queue and are not allowed in, and if it is the fact that there is no distinction made between one person and another, as you happen to be the guardian and the caretaker of the interests of citizens, will you tell us why it is that these people are not allowed to enter?
Mr. SPEAKER: I really do not know what are the circumstances to which the hon. Member refers. I have no reason to suppose that any but the ordinary rules of the House are being enforced. If a large number of people seek admission there must, of course, be some limit to the number admitted.
Mr. BEVAN: I was informed quite casually in the House that certain of my constituents were outside waiting to see me. I had to walk out in the rain and along a large queue in order to find the people who wanted to interview me. Should I be subject to conditions of that sort? Ought not my constituents to have access to me? There was only one man from my own town there, and yet he was not allowed inside the door. I had to fetch him in. Why is it that these men are not given access to the Members of the House?
Mr. SPEAKER: I have told the hon. Member that I do not know what the conditions are; but what rules there are must be enforced, and I am sure there has been no change in the existing rules.
Mr. BEVAN: Will you please——
Mr. SPEAKER: These questions cannot go on for ever. There is nothing more to be said. I have given my Ruling. Mr. Daggar.
Mr. McGOVERN: What are the rules?
Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member cannot go on with this all the afternoon.
Mr. McGOVERN: I am asking you a very necessary question. I am asking what are the rules that govern to the extent of excluding people who are poorly dressed and admitting people who are well dressed? That is obviously taking place. It is a discrimination that should not be allowed.
Mr. SPEAKER: I have told the hon. Member that there is no distinction made in the matter of dress.
Mr. McGOVERN: But it is taking place and I have seen it taking place. I only ask you to get the evidence of it.
Mr. SPEAKER: I have given my Ruling, and there is nothing more to be said.
Mr. McGOVERN: Will the men be admitted?
Mr. SPEAKER: I do not know the circumstances to which the hon. Member refers.
Mr. BEVAN: On a new point, will you inform me by what procedure I can direct the attention of the House to what is taking place in order that I may bring your Ruling into question?
Mr. SPEAKER: If the hon. Member has any fault to find with my Ruling he must put a Motion on the Paper. That is the proper way to do it.
Mr. BEVAN: I beg to give notice that I shall put such a Motion on the Paper in order to direct attention to the discrimination which is now taking place.
Mr. McGOVERN: Meanwhile people are standing out in the cold and wet.
Mr. SPEAKER: Mr. Daggar.
Mr. DAGGAR: I was endeavouring, when interrupted, to emphasise the importance of the home market. Let me give one more illustration of the point I was making. It is as to the small amount of coal consumed. We are producing now something like 200,000,000 tons of coal a year. We are exporting 30,000,000 tons. For home consumption there is the small amount of 157,000,000 tons. If the 11,000,000 households in this country were in a position to purchase only two tons of coal per month we should have a demand for home consumption of no less than 264,000,000 tons, as against 157,000,000. Finally, let us assume that the population of this country, or the surplus population, is redistributed over the Empire. The object then becomes one of trade and commerce, the exchange of products between the people of this country and those who have made a home in other parts of the Empire. But by securing contact between the unemployed and the raw materials in this country you secure precisely the same economic condition.
An hon. Member asked why people do not emigrate. The reply is very simple. Why should they emigrate? This country is the country they know best, and they are obviously anxious to remain here, and there is no reason why they should not be provided for in accordance with the suggestions I have made. Reference
1144
has been made to the report for which the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth is more or less responsible. The paragraph of that report to which I would direct attention is as follows:
"Settlers in each village will so far as is possible be drawn from the same locality and the village named after their borne town, for instance New Salford, New Oldham, New Derby, New Leicester with New Manchester as the centre."
The names given to settlements in those parts of the Empire will not be a sufficient attraction to induce people to leave this country. I look forward to another edition of the report when, probably in anticipation of the chairman of that committee migrating, one of these settlements will be called New Bournemouth. There is nothing in this scheme to which I personally am prepared to subscribe. I know that although the business of this House commences each day with the Lord's Prayer this is the last place in the world in which I should expect to find any consideration being given to the Biblical injunction, "Do to others as you would they should do to you." I suggest however to the Mover and the Seconder of this Motion that there is, after all, a possibility of example being more powerful than precept. If they are anxious to relieve an alleged excess of population in this country, those who are here ought to set an example by emigrating themselves in the first instance. If they are not prepared to set such an example, Members are not entitled to support schemes for the wholesale emigration of the unemployed or any other section from this country. Transportation, no more than sterilisation or pauperisation, will cure the economic evils of this country. Until every effort has been made to settle the people on the land in this country I shall be no party to any scheme of the sort indicated in the Motion now under discussion.
5.3 p.m.
Mr. HANNON: May I bring the House back to the substance of the Motion which is before us. I congratulate the Mover and the Seconder on the admirable speeches in which they have presented their case. With reference to the speech of the hon. Member for Abertillery (Mr. Daggar), may I say that his interest in agriculture is shared by everybody on this side of the House. Indeed for years

1145
we have been advocating that progressive policy in agriculture to which he has called attention, but we did not receive very much help from the party to which the hon. Member belongs. On the contrary every proposition submitted to this House for the last two generations which aimed at putting the agriculture of the country on a sounder economic basis was regularly and systematically opposed by that party.
The real object of the Motion is to ascertain from the Government what has been done in the last 12 or 18 months in connection with this great Imperial problem. On 7th December, 1932, my hon. Friend the Member for the Park Division of Sheffield (Sir A. Shirley Benn) submitted a similar Motion to the House. On that occasion the Secretary of State for the Dominions, apparently much impressed by the arguments submitted in favour of the Motion, undertook that the whole policy on this question would be investigated and the results of that investigation submitted to the House at, as we assumed, a reasonably early date. I wish to ask the Under-Secretary of State when that report will be presented and whether the committee which was charged with the consideration of all the elements entering into the preparation of that report, are doing something substantial towards the solution of this far-reaching Imperial problem. That objective was clearly and fully indicated by the Mover of the Motion. As has been stated, an admirable and comprehensive report on this subject has been prepared by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) and a number of other gentlemen many of whom have direct personal experience of migration problems. I commend that report to the careful consideration and sympathy of hon. Members. I believe that a copy of that interesting document is already in the hands of the Government and I hope the Under-Secretary will see his way to give expression to the views entertained by His Majesty's Government on the constructive proposals which are embodied in it.
There can be no sadder reflection, in considering this problem, than that over 600,000 persons of foreign nationality have settled in the Dominion of Canada since the end of the War, while during that period we in this country have had to
1146
deal with an increasing and expanding problem of unemployment among our own people. Is it beyond the resources of statesmanship to arrange with our Dominions so that such a state of affairs should not recur? Is it not possible to come to some understanding on this matter with the people of Canada? Could we not, as has been suggested this afternoon, have some arrangement in connection with the flotation of Dominion or Colonial loans on the London market and that schemes affording opportunities for the settlement of our people overseas would have special consideration from the borrowing Dominion or Colonial Governments in order to help us with the solution of our grave difficulties in this country? I wish to ask the Under-Secretary therefore what is actually being done by the committee to which I have referred and what has it accomplished. Has it examined witnesses; has it sent commissions abroad, and has it taken into consideration the various questions which were discussed at the Ottawa Conference?
Can the hon. Gentleman tell us exactly what has been achieved by the Government since the Ottawa Conference? This question of the distribution of the population of the Empire must have been present to the minds of all the statesmen at that momentous convocation. We all appreciate that the National Government has had a vast array of exacting problems to deal with but surely the question of immediate and practical steps for better distributing the population of the Empire and at the same time helping to reduce the burden of unemployment in this country, ought to have a foremost place in their continuous consideration. I also wish to know whether the Under-Secretary can say anything of a Bill which was introduced in the Canadian Legislature over a year ago——
Mr. BUCHANAN: On a point of Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member who is addressing the House, but I wish to ask you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, whether we can have any guidance from you in this matter. Some of us have visitors here, and those visitors are being kept outside because they are poor people, while other well-dressed people are being admitted. I wish to ask you, as Deputy-Speaker, whether there is any possible way in which we can ensure that these

1147
people shall receive equal treatment with other visitors of the House.
Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Sir Dennis Herbert): I have had inquiries made recently as to this matter, and my information is to the effect that nothing is being done beyond what is ordinarily done under the regular rules carried out by the police; that no discrimination at all is being exercised, but that they are, in accordance with their usual rules, preventing the entry of any further numbers into the passages and Lobbies so long as the passages and Lobbies are as full as the police allow. I am informed that there is no room for further people to be admitted until some of those who are now in leave.
Mr. HANNON: I do not in the least object to the interruption of the bon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan). I was asking the Under-Secretary whether he could tell us something of a Bill introduced in Canada over a year ago which contemplated further concessions to schemes of migration from this country. Can he say whether that Bill has become law and whether arrangements for new schemes enabling people from this country to enter Canada have since been completed? On the last occasion when the Prime Minister of Canada was in this country very interesting discussions took place on the future relations between Canada and ourselves, involving very large financial responsibilities on the part of this country. We should like to know whether the exchange of view covered the question of schemes for the settlement of large areas in Canada by people from this country? The hon. and learned Member for Leicester (Mr. Lyons) referred to the 3,000 families scheme, a most interesting and encouraging project of settlement in Canada. I hope the Under-Secretary will be able to give us some information as to how that scheme stands, whether it has been a success, and, if it has not been a complete success, to what extent have there been limitations and whether the Government in consultation with the Canadian Government are considering how it might be improved?
In view of the improvement in the economic situation in Australia I think we should be told whether there is not
1148
some hope of a practical exchange of views between the Government of this country and the Government of Australia on further schemes of settlement. It would be interesting to know whether the claims to repatriation which were so frequent in Australia some years ago have now ceased and whether the improvement in the industrial outlook in Australia is now such as to encourage people to remain there? I shall not refer to the lamentable schemes in relation to settlement in Victoria because they are a blot upon the statesmanship of the Empire, further than to express the hope that in further projects of migration some practical and businesslike elements will be introduced which will distinguish them from that deplorable example. If conditions in Australia are improving, as is indicated by the gratifying news which we get from Australia from day to day, what steps are the Government taking to put the question of migration to Australia on a different footing from that on which it has been in the last few years? I hope the Government are keeping that aspect of the subject constantly in mind.
Perhaps the Under-Secretary will also be able to tell the House something about the Victoria Colony Settlement in the Argentine. Has it been a success, and did its effective management enter into the recent negotiations with the Argentine Government when we were arranging the terms of our trade agreement?
Last year His Majesty's representative in the Commonwealth of Australia, Mr. Crutchley, came to this country and was in constant consultation with the Dominions Office on schemes of migration. Will the Under-Secretary of State tell us whether anything has happened since the return of Mr. Crutchley to Australia which would be useful to us in the consideration of further schemes of migration in this country? May I ask the Under-Secretary of State also whether he will tell us something about the Empire School Committee's work? That was a new feature introduced into the consideration of migration schemes, and it was referred to in the last report of the Oversea Settlement Department and I hope the hon. Member will tell the House what has happened to that important movement, which was calculated to do a great deal to awaken interest in our younger people in the possibilities of oversea development.

1149
Finally, is the Dominions Office, in co-operation with the Board of Education, taking active measures to bring before our elementary and secondary schools the possibilities of our Empire? Again and again in this House those of us who are concerned with Imperial questions and who have taken some part in Imperial development have impressed upon the Minister of Education and the Colonial and Dominions Offices the necessity of paying more attention, in our educational system in this country, to the meaning of our Imperial structure, its variety, possibilities, constitution, and its vast outlook for development. I hope the Dominions Office, which is particularly charged with the larger self-governing parts of our Empire, as well as the Colonial Office, is giving continuous attention to this great question.
I am grieved to think that a question of such great importance to us in this country in relation to the employment of our people, a question of such vital importance in the development of our Empire and the placing of our people overseas, is being discussed in this House with such a comparatively few Members present. It is a sad reflection on the interest which hon. Members of this House take in these momentous Imperial questions to find only a dozen of us sitting here during the Debate. I support the Motion, and I hope the Government will take it into serious consideration, and that this Debate will have some positive result, in contrast with what happened after the Debate at the close of the year 1932.
5.18 p.m.
Mr. MABANE: I think the hon. Member for Abertillery (Dr. Daggar) took exactly the wrong view on this Motion. He connected this problem of migration with the problem of unemployment, in the first place, and, in the second place, throughout his speech he spoke of migration as a kind of penalty which someone desired to impose upon people in this country. Surely that is exactly the wrong way of looking at it, and I would like to reinforce what was said by the hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Maclay) to the effect that it is important that we in this country should try to look at this problem of migration from the point of view of the Dominions. The hon. Member for the Moseley Division (Mr. Hannon)
1150
said, and rightly, that every Member in this House who is interested in the development of the Empire must be waiting anxiously to hear what the Under-Secretary of State will tell us about the proposals of the Dominions Office. Everyone who knows anything about migration must sympathise with the Dominions Office in the extremely difficult task which is before it of deciding how to approach the problem.
I spent a year, after being defeated in the 1929 election, going to have a look at the Dominions in order to study this problem of migration on the spot, and I was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the schemes which have been put into force since the War have unfortunately been almost exclusively failures. That was not due to any lack of good intentions, but to the fact that the problem had been approached from the same sort of angle as that of the hon. Member for Abertillery. It is so easy in this country to look upon migration as a way of solving our own particular difficulties. A specious appeal can be made on the following lines, and often has been made: We have 2,000,000 unemployed in this country; if we could only persuade 2,000,000 people to go to the Dominions, then, by a simple process of subtraction, we should have no unemployed at all. However attractive that might be as an argument, I think we ought in this country to remember that that is an argument which, even if it were true, and it is not, makes no sort of appeal whatever to the Dominions.
The Dominions have the utmost objection to being treated as an outlet for those who cannot find work here. It seems to me, therefore, that the problem before the Dominions Office takes the form of a dilemma. The Dominions want our best, and we do not want, in the ordinary way, to send them our best. That is particularly true of Australia, because Australia is conducting a most interesting social experiment. Australia is determined above all things to maintain the standard of living of the people of Australia. They approach the problem of wages not so much from the point of view of what the employer can pay as from that of what the employé needs in order to live, and anyone who has been to Australia must have recognised that the general desire in that Dominion is that above all things the standard of liv-

1151
ing of the Australian people shall be protected. Australia is not at all attracted by the argument of more population and is not interested by the question of whether or not Australia could support 100,000,000 people. She is more interested in securing that such population as she has is able to be maintained by the produce of that country on an ever-increasing scale of material well being. The Australians are in consequence tending to adopt the point of view that their population requirements can be fulfilled by the natural increase of those who are now there.
Let us be under no misapprehension. I would say that in no part of the Empire is there a more intense loyalty than in Australia, and I am satisfied that when the visit of a member of the Royal Family is made to Australia, people will come from all corners of the Dominion, at enormous cost and trouble, to pay their tribute to the Royal visitor, but although that may be so, the Australians do not like the British migrant, who is coming, in their view, to take their job. It is no use cloaking the fact that the British migrant who goes to Australia and drifts backs to the towns is often subjected to rather hostile treatment by the Australians. Indeed, there is a common phrase in Sydney that the only chance of employment for the Australian engineer is that he should act as labourer to the Scottish engineer who has come out from home. Therefore, we have to be very careful to appreciate that point of view in approaching this problem.
In Canada the attitude is somewhat different. Australia objects to cheap labour, but Canada rather likes it. The near example of the United States is there. I would in that respect ask a specific question of the Under-Secretary of State, because, in agreement with the last speaker, I have observed that since the War there has been a regrettable increase in the number of migrants into Canada from countries other than this country. It is, perhaps, true to say that Canada, desiring cheap labour, has been a little too much inclined to attract migrants from Central or Eastern Europe at the expense of migrants from this country, and I would like to ask the Under-Secretary of State if he will make representations to the Canadian Govern-
1152
ment to secure that the operations of that very powerful and principal recruiting agency, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, do not have the effect of recruiting too many migrants from Central and Eastern Europe at the expense of migrants from this country.
The two principal problems connected with migration are, of course, how to find employment for the people when they get out, and how to assist them to go out in the first place. In conclusion, I should like to say a word on the subject of assisted migration. It has been the practice of this country in the past to endeavour to induce the Dominions to take migrants from this country by a process of assistance to the migrants directly. In so far as I have had practical, direct experience of assisted migration, I am not impressed by the method. I do not think, in the long run, it produces the results that we want it to produce. In Australia I have seen people who have been induced to go there by forms of advertisement that can only be described as exaggerated, and who, when they get there, are bitterly disappointed at the results that they can achieve. In our efforts to induce people to go to the Dominions, not, as the hon. Member for Abertillery says, in order to get rid of them, but in order to induce them to adopt a form of life that is better in many respects than life in this country, we ought at all times to be careful in the methods that we employ. I have come across exaggerated forms of advertisement in connection with Australian migration, and equally in connection with Canadian migration. I have in my hand a booklet entitled "Boy Settlement in Canada," issued in order to induce boys to go to Canada, in which these words are used:
"It must not be supposed that farming in Canada involves a life of hardship and isolation. It is true there is hard physical work at certain seasons of the year, but with modern labour-saving machinery there is little drudgery. And isolation has disappeared with good roads, the universal use of the motor car, and the equally universal radio and rural telephone."
I hope the Under-Secretary of State will assure the House that that sort of propaganda will not be used in future to induce people, and particularly young people, to go to the Dominions. Let us tell the story truly and tell it carefully.

1153
I am satisfied that if we represent the advantages of the Dominions, not in words of that kind, but in their true colours, we shall be representing a real attraction, and I ask too that we should, instead of assisting migrants individually and directly, induce emigration by development in the Dominion itself, in the hope that when the Dominions are developing and becoming more prosperous, then people will go out from this country, not as an escape from something which they do not like, but as an adventure into a new life that will almost certainly be a better one.
5.29 p.m.
Mr. BARCLAY-HARVEY: I have listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Mabane) with very great interest, because, like him, I have taken a recent opportunity of visiting some of the Dominions to learn at first hand some of their problems, and I can bear out almost exactly what he has said, with this slight modification: I think I was in Australia after he was, and I found a little more tendency to realise the urgency of filling up some of the great spaces in Australia by people such as they want, people of British stock—because there is no part of the world that prides itself more on the British nature of its stock than does Australia. If they want to maintain the purity of their blood, I think they have got to take steps to increase the number of British people in the large open spaces that still exist there, but I do not want to over-stress that point, because there is no doubt that in Australia there is a very strong feeling that the most important thing is that they should maintain the standard of living of the people who are there already. Anything that will threaten that will find no welcome there.
That brings me to the centre of what I want to say and the question I want to put to the Under-Secretary. Are the Committee and the Dominions Office consulting at every step they take with the overseas Dominions in order that it shall not appear that we are producing a cut-and-dried scheme for migration from this side but in order to show that we are realising the difficulties with which they are faced in the far parts of the world? One of the things that struck me most in
1154
my recent tour was the extraordinary similarity of some of the problems that they have to face in the Dominions with some of the problems that we have to face. There is exactly the same trend of people from the country districts into the great cities. Undoubtedly, one of the fears they have over there is that if we send some people out from this country they will not go and fill up the vacant spaces but will drift back to join the ranks of the unemployed in the cities. I was told in Australia that one of the difficulties they found was that when people arrive they go to one of the great cities like Melbourne or Sydney and are so struck by the possibilities of those places that they stay in the towns where they land. I am certain that is not what we want to see. I should like to see all British people in all parts of the Empire look upon the Empire as a great estate and realise that it is up to them to do what they can to develop it. That is an essential.
We must not look upon migration as a method of getting rid of people whom we cannot employ in this country. If we start on those lines it is fated that we shall fail. We want to look upon the development of the Empire from the point of view of the people in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa, and to realise their difficulties as well as ours. There is another difficulty which I think we must at all times keep before us. I do not want to exaggerate the amount of room there is in the Dominions to be filled up. Many people in this country make a mistake about that because there are vast areas both in Australia and New Zealand which are not fitted for inhabitants at all. We have to get out of our heads the idea that we have of these vast spaces. There is no doubt, however, that they can hold more people than they have, and, if we send people out, we have to be sure that they are not merely going to produce things of which there is already a glut in the markets of the world and for which there will be no market when they are produced. Therefore, if we are to deal with migration on a satisfactory basis, we shall have to cover it with some very well-thought-out planning of the Empire.
We cannot take one side of the development of the Empire and pursue it without at the same time considering the equally

1155
important problem of how to co-ordinate the products of the different parts of the Empire. The Empire might have to decide that the secondary industries in New Zealand or Australia or Canada can produce certain of their requirements and will look to this country for the rest. I am not laying down any law, but a carefully co-ordinated scheme will have to be prepared if we are going to make the fullest use of the resources of this country primarily and of the resources of the Dominions from the point of view of everybody who lives in the Empire. I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Abertillery (Mr. Daggar) stress the importance of increasing agricultural produce at home. No Member of the House is more anxious that we should do that than I am. The right co-ordination between the two sides of production at home and overseas is one of the most difficult problems we have to face, but face it we must, and I hope that when we hear from the Under-Secretary what steps are being taken, he will be able to tell us that that point of view is being considered in the problem of how to take people from one part of the Empire and put them down in another.
I would like to call attention to what I might call the human point of view. I believe that one of the reasons why previous schemes of migration have not been so successful as they might have been is that we have not always remembered that we are dealing with individual human beings. Conditions in this country are no longer what they were 80 years ago. It is no use asking people who have got accustomed to the conveniences which they find in Great Britain to-day to go out into the more sparsely-populated countries where they will not find the conveniences and comforts that they have in this country in the way that we could have expected people to go out 80 years ago from a land that did not contain those conveniences. In any scheme that is put forward—and it must be put forward in the closest consultation with the Dominions—that must be realised. The woman's point of view must also be realised. We cannot expect women to go out from a country where they have been accustomed to living in close neighbourhood with others of their sex, where they have every convenience, medical service, maternity
1156
welfare, insurance, amusements and all the other things to which they are accustomed in this country, and to settle in the remoter parts of the world where they will have none of them. Therefore, we must send people under a co-ordinated scheme in such a way that we can ensure to them some of the things to which they have been accustomed in this country. Unless we are willing to do that and to remember this very human side of the question, we shall not make a success of the scheme of resettlement of the populations of the Empire.
We must also remember that individuals in the Dominions have grown up in their own countries and that they have seen all round them a civilisation which they themselves have created out of nothing. I saw the other day a picture of a site on which a man not more than 70 years ago said that a convenient village could be put. That convenient village to-day is the city of Melbourne. Naturally, therefore, there is in the Dominions, where they have made enormous strides by their own exertions and endeavours in such a short space of time, a very proper local and national pride in what they have done and in the sort of civilisation which they have built up for themselves. It is for the people who go out there to respect those feelings. It is for the people out there to respect the feelings of the people who go out there and who have been accustomed to our own kind of civilisation. In the Empire we find great loyalty and affection for the old country just as we find great love of the Dominions in this country. We also find a certain difference of angle, a difference of point of view which sometimes makes for a lack of smooth working. Let us warn the people we send to respect the attitude they find overseas, and we expect the people out there to respect the attitude of the people who go to join them and who only want to help them in the work they have to do. This is one of the most important questions which we have to face.
I am not urging that we should send people abroad or encourage people to go abroad to-day. I should like to withdraw the word "send," because there are thousands of people in this country who are only too anxious to go if the opportunity is there. It is not a question of sending. I entirely disagree with the hon. Member for Abertillery when he

1157
speaks as if all we want to do is to get rid of people. We do not. We want to give them opportunities which exist abroad now and which exist owing to the efforts very largely of the people who went out from this country. We want to give them a right to the benefits which exist to-day and a prior right over many other nations which did not go and do the pioneer work. At the same time, if we are going to ensure those opportunities to these people, now is the time when we, in consultation with the Dominions, should get on with the work. We should get on with the job now of preparing a scheme, so that when the time comes people who want to go shall have a free access to the opportunities that exist overseas, and so that we shall be able, in consultation with our fellows out there, to produce a plan which will not fail, but will be a greater success than anything we have achieved before.
5.43 p.m.
Dr. WILLIAM McLEAN: Having had the privilege of speaking in the recent Debate on this subject, I intervene to supplement what I said on that occasion. As the hon. Member for Kincardine and Western (Mr. Barclay-Harvey) said in discussing the subject, we are very apt to forget the question of markets. They are the foundation of the whole structure of Empire development, and of the consequential question of labour requirements which may involve migration. Let us consider how markets may be extended and created. The present situation appears to be that the Dominions have industrialised themselves, so that it is no longer a question of complementary trade between us in which they supply us with raw material and we send them manufactured articles in return. The situation, I believe, is gradually becoming worse and a solution more difficult. Industries which were started during the War and have been developed since, but are not really economic in a particular Dominion, owing largely to the limited market, are being continued behind high tariff barriers. The result is, of course, that the purchasing power of the overseas market for such a Dominion is reduced, and this has produced a very serious situation in several cases.
Fortunately, to counter-balance this, we have a great Colonial Empire, which provides complementary trade not only
1158
with us but also with the Dominions. It provides the system of triangular trade of which the House is already aware; it creates markets and stimulates development. For example, as the result of preferences and agreements we send sugar machinery to the West Indies; the West Indies, as the result of similar arrangements, send the sugar to Canada; and we, as the result of other arrangements, take wheat from Canada—which completes the triangle. The Ottawa Agreements and the change in our fiscal system have made it possible for our Government to assist in making trade agreements with Empire Governments. It is obvious that the initiative must come from the business men of the Empire. They will need to organise on an Empire basis. By this I mean that they will need to come to some understanding as to the lines of production and development in commodities and manufactures which are best suited to, and most economic in, each Empire country, so that the maximum inter-Empire trade may be the result. If it is agreed that the creation and expansion of markets is the necessary foundation for economic development and settlement overseas, then I submit that this can only be done by the business men getting together in the future more than they have done in the past. No democratic Government can take the lead and do everything in this matter. Let the business men of the Empire take the initiative, therefore, and give guidance to such Government action as may be necessary. Without this I believe there can be no Empire Development Plan of economic expansion and consequent re-distribution of the population.
5.49 p.m.
Captain CUNNINGHAM-REID: I should like to approach this Debate at first from a somewhat different angle. I suppose that war and emigration would at first sight be regarded as two subjects which are the poles apart, but it so happens that they are connected in a very close manner. Germany, Italy and Japan are at this very moment crying out for lands to which to send their surplus populations. Their narrowing gaze is in our direction, is towards the British Empire, and that gaze is intensifying. We who have more places for this purpose than we need, and presumably—that is to say, presumably from the

1159
foreigner's point of view—are taking no advantage of it, are considered, to put it mildly, to be dogs-in-the-manger. This is the stuff of which wars are made, and this is the fundamental reason why, eventually, we may require real air defence instead of the air defence that we have at the moment, which is nothing more or less than a mockery.
I presume that it is a platitude to say that the two evils most dreaded by any nation are, first, war and, second, unemployment. The cessation of emigration has assisted in creating unemployment—I only use the word "assisted"—but its continuance is nothing more or less than a war incentive. In fact, the question of the redistribution of our population is at the root of all our troubles. It is a most vital subject, and yet it is a subject which, to all intents and purposes, is ignored and overlooked, except by very small sections of the community. One has only to look at the interest taken in this subject in this House to-day. Why, even the public in the Galleries take more interest in it than Members of Parliament. What enthusiasm can this subject raise on a public platform, or, for that matter, in the Press? None whatsoever. Why is it that a question of such importance as this is ignored? Can it be that politicians are frightened of this subject? The fact is that Empire settlement is an unpopular subject and, as is shown by the lack of interest on the Opposition benches and on the Liberal benches, it is not a vote-catching subject. If anything, it is a vote-losing subject; and it has no news value.
Naturally it is unpopular to suggest that men or women should leave their homes, however humble, leave the districts in which they have lived all their lives, and go overseas to some unknown place that may be anywhere within one third of the world's surface. "Why do you not emigrate yourself?" is the retort that one sometimes receives if one advocates this at public meetings, and though the answer to that is, "I happen to have a job, and you have not," one does not like to put it in that way. This is the first stumbling block we are up against when considering this matter, and the second stumbling block is that the Dominions do not desire those whom we desire to send. This was put in an excellent manner by the hon. Member
1160
for Paisley (Mr. Maclay) a short time ago.
Like several other Members who have taken part in this Debate, I have recently visited the Dominions, and I studied this question. In spite of anything that is said to the contrary, there are only two classes of immigrants that are required by the Dominions to-day. The first is the settler who comes over with at least £1,000 of capital—at least; and the second are those women who are prepared to go over there for domestic service. I believe there is also a category in which are included those women who are prepossessing enough to be marriageable. But these are all people whom we want in this country. We desire members of the community who have £1,000; any country would welcome a man or woman with that amount of capital. We certainly require domestic servants, and we also desire ladies who are marriageable. Therefore, we come to a dead-end, and it is no good putting forward schemes at this juncture, because until conditions improve within the Empire very little headway can be made, unless of course we can prove to the Dominions that our proposals are not the spasmodic, happy-go-lucky proposals which some have been in the past, but are of such an economic character that they would definitely be of advantage to the Dominions.
Presuming that, sooner or later, the Dominions will require settlers, we are now confronted with a new fact. There is a growing suspicion in this country, created to a great extent by the miserable fate of those Australian settlers whom we have again heard about in the Debate this afternoon. It has also been created by the ominous lull there has been in emigration during the last few years. It is being said with some reason "Why with an excellent system of unemployment relief in this country and no equivalent security overseas"—because there is no unemployment relief in any of our Dominions except, I believe, to some slight degree in the State of Queensland, in Australia—"Why," they say, "should we go out there to something that is uncertain and leave a certainty—especially when we remember the fate of those Australian settlers only a short while ago?" This suspicion is growing—I have met it all over the country—and if it becomes chronic I believe there will

1161
only be one thing for us to do in order to overcome it, and that is for this country to guarantee for future new settlers overseas the same unemployment benefit as they are entitled to here. It strikes me that that question is full of complications, but, nevertheless, I think it will have to be tackled if we hope to persuade likely settlers to go overseas. Anyhow, at present the whole system of emigration is far too vague, too far away, for the ordinary man in the street to be able to appreciate or comprehend it.
For this and other reasons I am inclined to believe that the plan most likely to succeed eventually—and we must have a plan ready—would be group settlement, combined later on with a system of nomination. This is also the opinion of General Hornby, that pioneer of post-War migration; if anyone's opinion is worth while it is General Hornby's. I understand that the Government have a committee who are dealing with this matter. I shall be most interested in their findings. No doubt they will put forward some excellent scheme, but until we know what that is I am inclined to lean towards group settlement. By "group settlement" I mean that the migrant can look forward to joining people who have come from his own district at home.
I was interested in such a scheme in 1922, and my recent visit to Canada, Australia and New Zealand—I was fortunate enough also to be able to visit most of the Colonies and Mandated Territories—fortified me with the belief that the group settlement scheme was best, considering, among other things, what different conditions exist now from what existed before the War. The most successful emigration has undoubtedly been that of the Irish to America. After the first Irish settlers had arrived in America, it was generally found that assistance for the passage of others came from those who were already in America rather than from any body or Government at home. The Irish emigrants had not the same reluctance in leaving their country. They knew that they were going to join friends. I understand that their reluctance of late—during the last year or so—has been diminished even more. The same system of group settlement was applied to the old Scottish settlements in the Maritime Provinces. Theirs were practically the original settle-
1162
ments in Canada; they have been most successful and are still in existence and flourishing.
I would like to make it clear at this juncture that I am not one of those who claim that if our emigration had kept up to pre-War standard we should to-day, by a simple sum in mathematics, have no unemployment. I do not subscribe to that, because it is ridiculous. If we had sent our people out at the same rate as we sent them before the War, it stands to reason, considering the times, that the majority of them would have come back, and that we should be no further. But had migration been continued during the last few years, the situation would undoubtedly be easier to-day. I do claim though that our most urgent task is to get that flow of emigration going again; otherwise our great efforts for national recovery will be crushed by a deadweight of surplus population.
At one time or another, most Ministers of this Government have stressed the importance of the redistribution of our population, and some have been brave enough to admit that our future economic stability will largely depend upon the successful solution of that problem. If they mean what they have said, and if they were not just giving lip-service, why is it that the solution of this problem, which they admit is one of the most important, is not put at the forefront of their programme? If only the Government and the Press would co-operate in a crusade! The popular Press are more patriotic than some of us give them credit for being. It is a mistake for the powers-that-be always to take the assistance of the popular Press for granted in times of crisis, and during the intervals to ignore those organs of the Press altogether. Everybody is human, and I submit that that is a definite strategic mistake.
A great campaign is necessary to educate the nation to the importance of providing an outlet for the dangerously bulging sides of the mother country. I was in Russia five months ago, and I found that in that country they had a very simple system of dealing with their surplus population. They allow them to starve to death. If anyone doubts my word, I would point out that I went into this question very carefully while I was there. I was able to obtain information

1163
from all quarters, and I discovered—this was a conservative estimate—that during last year it was claimed that at least 3,500,000 people in Russia died of starvation. By starvation I also mean the various diseases that can be brought about by insufficient nourishment. We in this country are perhaps a little old-fashioned, and, so far as this problem is concerned, we still cling to the solution known as Empire settlement, but it is rather ironic that, in spite of the realisation of the Russian way, Empire settlement is not popular in this country. A campaign, therefore, is doubly essential in order to allay suspicion here, and in the Dominions in particular.
At one time, neither we nor the Dominions liked the idea of Empire economic unity, but both of us have been taught. This country did not like the idea of tariffs, we set our face against tariffs for generations, but we have now been converted. Tariffs and Empire economic unity have only come to stay if they rest upon a sound economic basis. There can be no sound economic basis until we get our population adjusted. Surely if this is the case, this is a real national policy appropriate for a National Government. Would it not be possible for us to concentrate our efforts, and a considerable amount of our finances, on this momentous question?
6.9 p.m.
Mr. LUNN: This is the third Debate we have had upon Empire migration within the last month, and in another place within the last week they have had one lasting for the greater part of a day. I have not heard one practical suggestion that could be put into immediate application, in the speeches in any of the Debates, although I have heard every Debate and every speech. Interest in this question is shown by the attendance in the present House. There are 550 supporters of the Government, and there are more hon. Members in the House, although their number is not 30, than there have been in any of the Debates. That shows the interest that there is in this question. There is a danger to the overseas Dominions and to our own country in having too many Debates on this subject at this time. There is a danger of creating the false impression in the Dominions that this House is in a
1164
panic to shovel its people into the various Dominions, and that it is enthusiastic on the subject.
The speeches are becoming a little wild. I could have agreed with almost every word of the first part of the speech to which we have just listened from the hon. and gallant Member for St. Marylebone (Captain Cunningham-Reid), but the second half of the speech was a change and represented a different opinion altogether. One remark made by the hon. and gallant Member will, I hope, be taken note of in the Debate to-morrow. It had nothing to do with overseas settlement, so far as the British Empire was concerned, but contained a statement that the surplus population in Russia are allowed to die. I do not know whether that is a fact or not, but it is a very daring statement for an hon. Member to make in a Debate of this sort, and I hope that it will not pass unnoticed.
There is a danger in this country, from this Debate. We have more than 2,000,000 unemployed people. We have had a diversion in this House since this Debate commenced, because there are hundreds of unemployed men at the door. We are debating a subject in which nobody can make a practical suggestion as to what can be done, and the unemployed men will carry away from London into the country an impression of the waste of time that is going on in this matter, when there are, or ought to be, far more important and vital subjects for us to discuss, concerning the welfare of our people. They will be propagandists even against the continuance of this House, after they have heard a Debate of this sort that has no practical value.
I say that as one who is interested in Empire migration, has been concerned with it for 10 years, and is as anxious as any other hon. Member that schemes should be adopted and that co-operation should be established with the Dominions. In the speech of the Mover of this Motion it was stated that the Empire Settlement Act and the application of that Act had no business qualities. I make the challenge to those who have their pet schemes of migration that not one suggestion has yet been made which would carry out such schemes as efficiently and as carefully, and at so little cost, as the schemes are carried out under the Empire Settlement Act.
Mr. LEVY: Will the hon. Gentleman pardon me for interrupting? I am sure that he does not want to misrepresent me. I did not mention the £3,000,000 at the beginning of my speech. The only remark that I made with regard to it was that the Empire Settlement Act provided up to £3,000,000 per annum for this purpose.
Mr. LUNN: I am not dealing with the latter part of the speech, and if the hon. Member has his speech in his pocket and will look at it he will see that what I am suggesting is the fact, which is, that he alluded to the business qualities that should be brought into this matter.
Mr. LEVY: Not in connection with the £3,000,000.
Mr. LUNN: Some of us have been here a long time, and I cannot say that we carry away a good impression of those who have wanted business Governments and business men in the House. With that, I think, all sides of the House will agree. We have not seen much to encourage us in that idea. Then the hon. Member suggested that we should start a number of commissions roaming over the Dominions to make inquiries as to what should be done. Last week, however, we listened to a very strong speech against commissions being appointed at all. I admit that commissions can do good work, and even in Australia there was a development commission, presided over by, I think, Sir Herbert Jack, which did remarkably good work in producing information regarding possible developments in Australia. I agree that there will have to be co-operation of some sort, but the hon. Gentleman wants business men on these commissions. I do not know where they are. He does not want Governments to interfere at all. Who is to find the money; to whom are these commissions to report; and what responsibility are they to have?
The Seconder of the Motion took up quite a new attitude—that we should be able to commute all the benefits that we give to people in our social services, and that that amount should be carried overseas for the purpose of settling them there. But, if you take the Unemployment Insurance Fund, there is nothing in it. We cannot take anything from that; it owes £115,000,000, and the House has decided that those who are to contribute
1166
for the next 40 years have to pay it back. Therefore, there is not much there. Moreover, there are many people who are not insured, and the type of people who, it is suggested, would make the best settlers overseas, are the people who are not in unemployment insurance. That, therefore, is a very ridiculous proposition, which I think examination by any responsible committee would show at this moment to be impossible. Unfortunately, in the Dominions there are no social services similar to what we have here, and, although hon. Members may agree with the idea that a widow's pension should be paid to her if she goes to any of the Dominions, I do not think that many of them would agree that all the social services should be capitalised to the individual concerned, and that he should carry the amount with him overseas. When this question was being debated a week or two ago, and a committee was suggested and a scheme put before the House, I said, and I stand by it:
"I am not opposing this Motion"—
I am not opposing the present one; it is a very harmless, pious Resolution, even more so than the last one—
"for one reason because I want the committees that are in existence or which may be called into existence to consider migration and co-operation between this country and the Dominions, and I hope that whenever the opportunity for migration does come advantage will be taken of it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st January, 1934; col. 490, Vol. 285.]
I said also that I agreed with the Secretary of State for the Dominions that there must be an opportunity for a livelihood for those who go, but there must be no compulsion, there must be no shovelling them over. The impression is being produced, however, as a result of these continued Debates, that that is what is in the minds of some Members.
I would ask hon. Members, where are the opportunities for our people to go overseas at the present time? Which is the Dominion that wants miners? In 1932 as has been stated in this Debate, 33,000 more people came from the Dominions than went to the Dominions. Last year the number was 24,700, and, from a statement in the speech of the Under-Secretary in the last Debate on migration, it would seem likely that there will be many more coming back this year.

1167
In that speech, on the 31st January, the hon. Gentleman said:
"We know that for reasons of policy, into which I will not go now, we are asking Dominion agricultural producers to restrict their supplies of certain kinds of agricultural commodities, and it would be quite unfair for us even to ask Dominion Governments, at a moment when they are being invited to ask their existing population to restrict supplies, to accept new migrants producing exactly the same things which their existing producers are being asked to restrict."-[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st January, 1934; col. 499, Vol. 285.]
I think that that quotation, if it be the fact—and the hon. Gentleman would know quite well before he made the statement—that we are restricting supplies from the Dominions as he says, through the Ministry of Agriculture, shows that we may expect a much larger number of people to return as a result of that policy than has been the case during the last two years. As a result of these continued Debates, the Prime Minister of Australia has declared within the last few days that Australia does not want migrants of this kind, that she has plenty of her own difficulties.
The hon. Member for Moseley (Mr. Hannon) called attention to the case of the Victorian settlers. This morning I had a telegram from these people in which they urged that the question of a British Government grant to augment the Victorian Government's grant should be decided and settled now, because they are being pressed unduly to accept what they feel is not satisfactory. I think it is time we came to some satisfactory decision on this matter, because the problem of these unfortunate people, as long as it exists, will be a discouragement to any scheme of migration to Australia. It is a sore in the whole question at this moment so far as any migration between this country and Australia is concerned. We know also that there is no possibility of migration to Canada. They have an unemployment problem which, if not in numbers equal to ours, is quite as vital to them as ours is to us, and they would resent anything in the way of migration to Canada.
Vice-Admiral TAYLOR: There is no migration to Canada taking place now.
Mr. LUNN: In another place last week this question was Debated, and the Mover
1168
of the Resolution there—a man whom I know very well as an enthusiast on this subject—said that he had no desire to send people overseas at the present time, and that if we did it should only be in co-operation with the Dominion Governments. They, he said, have their difficulties, but we should see to it that when an opportunity came advantage should be taken of it. That is where I stand. When there is the possibility, and our people choose on their own account to go, I have no objection whatever, but I do not want to give any impression, or to see any impression carried into the country, that this House desires them to go as a result of any scheme whatever. We are dealing with human beings, not with cattle. We ought to be very much concerned about their welfare, their maintenance and their care, and there is need for a good deal of co-operation with the Dominions before we take any steps. I do not know that I should object to co-operation with the Dominions at any time now, or to discussing the matter. I think it is a matter that might be considered by the Secretary of State for the Dominions, and that there should be discussions between this country and the Dominions, so that we should understand each other's position. If we are to be practical in this matter, we must be able to understand their point of view, and they must be able to understand ours.
But why is so little said in these Debates about settlement at home? My hon. Friend the Member for Abertillery (Mr. Daggar) made a striking speech this afternoon, in which he dealt with the possibilities of settlement at home, putting forward very good arguments as to the importance of home supplies and home industry, and the possibility of doing a great deal more in this country in the way of settlement than we are doing at the present time. If we have millions to spare, either to back up a scheme like the one placed before the House a few days ago, or any other scheme for sending thousands of our people overseas, why should we not spend that money for the purpose of settling them in this country on the land? I should like to call attention to a speech made the other day at Preston by the Lord President of the Council. In the "Times" report of the 15th February I noticed these words:

1169
"The reason we have brought forward as yet no fresh legislation with regard to settling people on the land is that we want to develop first of all our existing agricultural policy until we are satisfied that a man can get a living out of the land."
I agree that a man should have the opportunity of getting a livelihood if he is to do work, but I had no knowledge that the Government had such a policy, that they were intending to settle people on the land, and I should like to ask if we are going to hear something about that scheme of land settlement at home, because this country is a part of the Empire, and ought to be considered in these discussions. Now that the right hon. Gentleman has suggested that this is possible, and that the Government have it in view, I want to know if there is anything in the suggestion, and this House has a right to know. With regard to the request contained in the Motion that the Committee's Report should be published as early as possible, I am afraid, knowing as I do the circumstances, that hon. Members will be disappointed when they get the report. How could it be otherwise, with economic conditions as they are in the Dominions and in this country? But we could begin at home, and I think we ought to begin at home. The Labour party will welcome an opportunity, which has not been provided yet, of discussing settlement on the land at home. If the Government have a scheme, as is suggested in the speech of the Lord President of the Council, for settling people on the land at home where they can earn a livelihood, I would urge that that scheme should be brought before the House as something in the nature of a practical programme, rather than the unpractical programme to which we have been listening this afternoon. If we can give our people the certainty of earning a livelihood, that is what millions of people are wanting to do, and, if there are these opportunities of settling them either here or in the Dominions, my support would be given to it under those conditions.
We do not object to the Motion at all, and we do not object to inquiries, because we believe that nothing can be done unless there is co-operation between us and the Dominions, but I object to these suggestions that they should be done outside the House by private enterprise. I know that they will not be done by private enterprise. Again to-day, as in the
1170
last Debate, the only scheme which is praised, as the best at all events, is the 3,000 family scheme which was arranged between the Governments of this country and of Canada and carried out by them. I am convinced that, in considering migration or the resettlement of our people on the land, or, as the Motion says, distribution, we should distribute our population at home on the land and we should never discuss this matter separately from that when it comes before the House.
6.32 p.m.
The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for DOMINION AFFAIRS (Mr. Malcolm MacDonald): We all know what a keen supporter of the idea of Empire migration the hon. Gentleman is, and, therefore, the cautious speech that he has just made is all the more significant and with, at any rate, a great deal of what he said as regards the present situation I am certain that the whole House would agree. I have been asked a very large number of questions in the course of the Debate. Indeed the hon. Member for Moseley (Mr. Hannon) treated it almost as a question time all to himself. He is not in the House at the moment but, no doubt, he will scan the columns of the OFFICIAL REPORT very keenly to-morrow, so I will do my best to answer his questions. He asked whether I could say anything about a Bill introduced into the Canadian Parliament about a year ago to encourage new migrants to go to Canada. No such Bill was introduced so far as I know. I think that the Bill to which he is referring must be one introduced to relieve existing settlers in Canada of some of the burden of debt that hangs upon them during this grave economic crisis. The news about that Bill is that it was passed through the Canadian Parliament and its provisions, which are giving some relief to existing settlers, are in force to-day, but no measure inviting new migrants to Canada has been discussed in the Canadian Parliament at all. He asked whether we had had any discussions with the Canadian Prime Minister on this question of migration when he was over here recently. We did not discuss the question with him while he was here, because the time for the discussion of migration between us and the Dominion Governments will come a little later.

1171
The hon. Member asked what had happened to the families who had gone out to Canada under the 3,000 family scheme, a scheme which has been much commended by many speakers in these Debates, quite rightly, because on the whole, having regard to the fact that the economic depression hit a good many of those settlers before they got properly established, it has not been unsuccessful. The facts are that 3,346 families went, and about 2,000 of them are remaining on their settlements. Emergency assistance has been given where necessary, and all the settlers have enjoyed the amount of relief that has been given to all settlers in Canada under the Act to which I have referred. The hon. Member asked about the school Empire tours. The Government does not give any financial assistance to those tours, but we are represented on the committee which organises them. We regard them as doing exceedingly valuable work in bringing some of the younger generation into touch with conditions in the Dominions. The position with regard to those tours is that already about ten have taken place. I think that all the Dominions have been visited now on one or more occasions by these tours of schoolboys.
The hon. Member also asked whether we were doing anything in co-operation with the Board of Education to improve knowledge concerning the Empire among students in elementary schools. We do what we can. Among other things we arranged, and very largely financed, the first tour of headmasters, and afterwards of headmistresses, to Canada, so that they will certainly come back to their schools with a very vivid and first-hand impression of conditions in one of our great Dominions. Finally the hon. Member asked whether I could say anything about the Victoria settlement in the Argentine. We have no official connection with that settlement. We are watching the experiment that is being made with very great interest, but it has not been established long enough for any final judgment to be reached as to what lessons it may teach regarding settlement on the land. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Mabane) pointed out that some, at any rate, of the propaganda that has been issued to possible migrants in the past has been very misleading, and he asked whether the Government in
1172
future would do anything they could to prevent misleading propaganda being issued. Certainly we shall do everything we can to achieve that end, because we have no doubt that propaganda like that has led to false hopes in many cases, which have resulted in disillusionment and failure.
In regard to the Motion in general, I should like to thank the Mover for the friendly terms in which it is couched. He made certain proposals and raised a number of points, and I can assure him that they will be borne in mind by the Departmental Committee which is examining the whole question. A great many questions have been asked about that Committee and I will repeat what I said when we discussed the matter a month ago. We are practically all agreed that conditions in the Dominions now are such that the Governments cannot be expected to welcome new migrants at present. But that does not mean to say that we expect that state of affairs to continue for ever and, therefore, my right hon. Friend considered that during this period of lull we should be using our time very profitably if we examined the experience of the past, looked into the whole question of migration very carefully, and made up our minds as to the best principles and the best machinery for promoting migration again when it becomes a practical proposition. With that purpose in view, he appointed some 12 months ago this informal Committee to examine the whole question and to advise him as to the principles and the machinery which would be best for encouraging and promoting migration within the Empire when that starts again. I think I had better say, because of one or two remarks that have been made, that the Committee has nothing to do with land settlement at home here, and, if my hon. Friend wants to know what are the Government's plans with regard to that proposition, he must address a question to the Minister of Agriculture.
This informal Committee is simply devising a policy for the settlement of migrants from this country in the Empire, and the inquiry is simply the first stage in the working out of the policy. As soon as the Committee has finished its work, it is the intention of my right hon. Friend to circulate its report among representatives of voluntary societies and

1173
other experts, so that they may make their observations and comments upon it, because my right hon. Friend is naturally exceedingly anxious to know the views of those people before he makes up his own mind as to policy. The report would have to be discussed with the Dominion Governments before any policy was finally concluded. The Committee has held eight more meetings since we last discussed the question a month ago. I think it will not require more than six or seven further meetings to complete its work altogether, and the report should be in my right hon. Friend's hands within a few weeks. It will immediately be circulated to the voluntary societies and experts and people interested, and their comments will be invited and, after that, we shall get into discussion with the Dominion Governments concerned.
To-day I can only say, as I said a month ago, that I am not in a position to discuss proposals or recommendations which will be contained in a report which is not yet itself completed, nor can I make any definite promise as to when the report or Government proposals will be laid on the Table of the House. It might be desirable, for instance, not to publish anything until we have got into discussion with the Dominion authorities concerned, but there will be no unnecessary delay in laying the report or proposals before the House so that hon. Members may see what it is proposed to do, and have an opportunity of discussing the proposals. I can assure the House that we are anxious to press ahead as quickly as we can with the drawing up, the discussion and the conclusion of an agreement upon a policy for promoting migration from this country to the Dominions as soon as that becomes a practical proposition once more.
I would like to emphasise this point because my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Mabane) and other hon. Members have emphasised it. I would like to make it clear that in drawing up our proposals we are not attempting to arrive at suggestions which will lay down the law in this matter of migration. We are simply drawing up at this stage a series of proposals for discussion with the Dominion Governments. It will be open for alterations to be made in those proposals in the course of those discussions, because we have to get the
1174
point of view of the Dominions, and we have to get their minds. We have to recognise the conditions which they have to face in their own countries, and what we are seeking is an agreed policy between them and us. It is obvious that no migration is going to be a success unless it is a co-operative effort entered into with good will between the Dominion authorities and the authorities at home.
We believe in migration, and we urge it not simply because a certain redistribution of the wide population of the Empire will be of benefit to us in the United Kingdom, but also because we believe that such a redistribution, when economic conditions make it possible, will be of economic and political advantage to the Dominions themselves, and also to the Empire as a whole. It is in that spirit that we are examining the whole question. We are as anxious as any Member of this House that, when conditions improve again, the numbers of migrants shall be large, and that as many people shall go to the Dominions as can be satisfactorily settled there. How are we to promote that migration of people who can be absorbed in the Dominions? That is the problem which we have to face. What can we do as a Government to facilitate that natural flow of migrants who have the prospect, and, indeed, a strong likelihood, of satisfactory settlement in the Dominions.
When we discussed this problem a month ago I ventured to express some personal views upon that question of method. I said that, in my view, in the future as in the past, the great majority of migrants going out would not consist of people in organised groups going to settle in brand new communities, but would consist of individual families, individual men, individual women, or individual juveniles, going in hundreds or in thousands, but as individual families or individuals, and settling here, there and everywhere wherever they can fit in, by a process of what I called infiltration in already existing communities. I think that the emphasis which I laid on that last time led, no doubt entirely due to my own fault, to a certain amount of misunderstanding, and I should like to make it quite clear that when I said that I thought that settlement by infiltration was going to be the greatest part of the work, I did not intend to exclude com-

1175
munity settlement or the possibility of community settlement. If a case can be made out for any particular plan for a new community, and if it can be shown that that will allow for efficient and economic and satisfactory settlement, then let us have that settlement as well as settlement by infiltration. The one method is not necessarily exclusive of the other, but I express it as my own personal view that the great bulk of migration is going to be migration not to community settlements in the sense that we usually understand community settlements, but to settlement by infiltration.
I have been the subject of a certain amount of criticism on that account. It was even suggested in another place that it would not be inappropriate if I were put across the parental knee and chastised for having thrown that douche of cold water upon migration. But it is not a douche of cold water at all. It has been said, for instance, that the people who have been putting their faith chiefly in settlement by infiltration are contemplating only "a thin trickle" of migration, but that is not so. Let us get to the facts in this way. For instance, my hon. Friend the Member for Moseley asked me whether I could say what the Government thought of the scheme which had been drawn up and published by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft). I do not want to enter into the merits of that scheme this afternoon, because the scheme was only presented to us about 10 days or a fortnight ago. It is being examined very carefully by the Inter-Departmental Committee, and it is much too early to pronounce a judgment on the scheme. But I should like to refer to one feature of the scheme in order to illustrate my point that people who advocate settlement by infiltration are not advocating a slowing down or "a thin trickle" of migration.
What are the comparative prospects of community settlement and the other kind of settlement as regards placing large numbers of people in the Dominions? My hon. and gallant Friend gives certain figures in his proposal for community settlement. He suggests that it will be possible to settle 40,000 families in 10 years under this proposal. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about the cost?"] The cost is another matter. I do not want to
1176
be drawn into the merits of the cost this afternoon. The facts are being considered very carefully. He contemplates that the scheme of community settlement will settle something like 40,000 families in 10 years. That works out at about 160,000 individuals in 10 years, as a contribution towards migration by this community settlement proposal. What is the comparison between the figure of 160,000 persons in 10 years and the actual figure of the people who have been settled by infiltration in practice in two sets of 10 years?
Take the 10 years immediately before the War. During those 10 years not 160,000 persons but 2,168,507 persons proceeded from this country to Dominions overseas, and practically all of those were settled by what can be called the infiltration process. Take the 10 years immediately following the passing of the Empire Settlement Act after the War. The figure is 1,801,924, scarcely any of those being settled in brand new communities. Practically all of them went out as individual families or individual men or women and settled here and there, wherever they could fit in in existing communities. Therefore, I would urge hon. Members to disabuse themselves of the idea that people who advocate Empire settlement by infiltration are lukewarm about the idea of migration and are going to encourage only a very thin trickle of people from this country to the countries overseas. I believe that by far the most important thing that we can do, if we are to contemplate considerable migration movements in the future, is to decide what facilities we can give in order to encourage the flow of individual families and individual men and women going out to settle under that kind of condition.
There is one other point which has been raised again during the Debate this afternoon, and for referring to which again I make no apology, because it is extremely important. It is the question of markets. It is true that in some parts of the Empire the conditions may make possible the establishment of small, self-supporting communities, but, apart from that possibility, the vast majority of migrants going out, when migration can start again, whether they settle in communities, or groups, or as individuals, will require some market external to

1177
their own community in which to sell their produce. The question of markets is fundamental to the whole question of migration. If the demand for Empire goods can be increased, it will be the excuse far encouraging more producers to go to the Dominions to satisfy the demand.
Those hon. Members who say that the Government have done nothing about migration during the last few years forget the fact that the Government went to Ottawa in 1932 in order to try to do something about the problem of markets, and that at Ottawa we were tackling one of the problems which is fundamental to the whole migration problem. That is why before we started to talk about migration seriously we went to Ottawa in order to try to get agreements, and create conditions which would encourage a greater demand for Empire goods in Empire markets. The efforts which were made by our delegates and the delegates of the Dominions there to increase the sale of Empire goods in Empire markets was not unsuccessful. For instance, in the year 1933 we increased our imports from the Dominions over our imports in 1932 by the value of more than £7,500,000, or 13.7 per cent. The Dominions in 1933, compared with 1932, increased their purchases of goods from us by the value of over £8,000,000, or 14.4 per cent. That is one of the signs that it may be not in the very distant future, but in the comparatively near future, that migration from this country to the Dominions will once again become a practical proposition. At any rate, the Government will keep the whole question very closely in mind, and will pursue their examination and their discussions of the question as rapidly as they can, and, on behalf of the Government, therefore, I very gladly accept the Motion.
7.0 p.m.
Sir FRANCIS FREMANTLE: May I ask the hon. Member, before he sits down, one point which seems to be germane to the discussion but which has not been very clearly mentioned? He talked about the infiltration method, with which he has proved his case, but he stressed its value in facilitating the movement outward of the people. Is it not equally important to facilitate the movement backward as well as the movement outward, and, in considering it, to consider
1178
not simply a system for that movement, but also whether it is not possible to provide a King's Highway of absolute free passage under certain conditions, so that people may be able to migrate forwards and backwards? It is essential to all parts of the Empire; that is the way in which filtration has taken place between Scotland and England during the last 200 years. We should have some system corresponding to that all over the Empire, and in that way we should provide some kind of means which would involve a subsidy to tramp shipping and be at the same time of value to the shipping of the Empire. I want to know whether that is being considered a possibility: the driving of a free highway over the Empire.
Mr. M. MacDONALD: The question of passage rates is one of the matters being considered by this Committee, and which certainly has not escaped notice.
Sir F. FREMANTLE: I do not simply mean reduction of passage rates, but I ask whether it is possible to consider a free highway.
7.2 p.m.
Mr. ANNESLEY SOMERVILLE: I was particularly glad to hear my hon. Friend deprecate the idea that migration by infiltration and migration by community settlement are mutually exclusive. Before the War there was no State-aided migration; the Dominions were prosperous, and in prosperous times there is always a much better flow of migration. After the War there was still prosperity; there was State-aided infiltration and infiltration that was not State-aided. The present position is that all the infiltration has ceased, and those of us who look to community settlements for the re-start of migration do so hoping that this country, when forming a community scheme, will supply the capital for that scheme. If we supply the Dominions with capital and with the right kind of migrants, and if we include a repatriation clause in the scheme, then I venture to think that everybody will be ready to welcome such a scheme. That is the point with regard to community settlements: you can, if you have a well-supported, well-thought-out community scheme, begin almost at once. The Dominions are against infiltration at the present time, but, of course, infiltration

1179
and community settlement will help one another, and an infiltration scheme may be the means of starting a number of community settlements.
Question put, and agreed to.
Resolved,
"That this House notes with satisfaction that the question of migration and settlement within the Empire is being carefully examined by a Departmental Committee, and, in view of the importance of the problem, urges that the Committee's Report should be laid upon the Table of the House at the earliest possible moment."

MENTAL DEFICIENCY.
7.5 p.m.
Mr. MOLSON: I beg to move,
"That this House considers that the facts set out in the Report of the Departmental Committee on Sterilisation indicate a state of affairs calling for action, and respectfully requests His Majesty's Government to give immediate consideration to the unanimous recommendation of the committee in favour of legislation permitting voluntary sterilisation in certain classes of cases."
Eugenic sterilisation has been discussed in this country and elsewhere for many years past, but it has only recently become a question of practical politics owing to the publication of the report of the Departmental Committee upon this subject. I should like, if I may, to congratulate the Minister of Health on the foresight he displayed in setting up that committee and in securing the services of such distinguished men and women to serve upon it. What, however, is most remarkable is that this committee has presented a unanimous report upon what is admittedly a most controversial subject, although unanimity among medical persons is not very common.
The report unanimously recommends that voluntary sterilisation should be legalised subject to certain safeguards. The persons who may be sterilized are first, either mental defectives or persons who have suffered from mental disorder; secondly, those who suffer from some grave physical disability which has been shown to be transmissible; and, thirdly, persons in whose case there is evidence that he or she is likely to transmit mental defect or disorder. Sterilization in these cases is to be permissible, in the first place, if the patient makes applica-
1180
tion for it; secondly, if it is recommended by two medical practitioners; and thirdly, if the Minister of Health, after considering their certificates, gives his approval.
In this House we are divided into parties, largely because we disagree among ourselves on what kind of social and political organisation is most likely to reduce the amount of human suffering in the world. This afternoon we are discussing the question of those who come into the world and start life without the normal equipment with which most men and women are endowed; people who would not be able to live a normal life in any conceivable organisation of society, however it might be reformed and improved. We are discussing to-night the question of those of whom it might be said,
"Good were it for that man if he had never been born."
The first point which I wish to establish is that mental deficiency or disorder is to a large extent hereditary. There is already a great volume of evidence both in this country and abroad which tends to show that there is a likelihood of mental defect being transmitted. In view of this evidence it is not surprising that all the witnesses who appeared before the Departmental Committee were of opinion that heredity was an important factor in bringing about these conditions. Certain researches have been made in foreign countries, and I will quote a couple of examples. At Rostock in Mecklenburg it was found that 67.6 per cent. of the inmates of an institution had one or two parents mentally defective. At Renton, in the United States of America, out of 1,000 cases of mental deficiency, only 350 had both parents normal.
Not satisfied with this, however, the Departmental Committee made an investigation itself, one which was of special interest because most of the researches that had been made before had investigated the parentage of mental defectives. This research was carried out through the agency of local authorities in England, who investigated the children of mental defectives, and produced some figures which are of extraordinary interest. A group of 3,733 parents investigated had 8,841 children. Of these no less than 2,001, or 22.5 per cent., had died. If I may make a slight

1181
digression in passing, apart from the question of mental deficiency, we find among the children of mental defectives this abnormally high rate of mortality. Of those who survive, grouping together defective and retarded children between the ages of 7 and 13, the percentage of sub-normal children was 40.4 In the group of children over 13 that proportion had risen to 45.4 per cent.
It may be said that all this evidence only goes to show that in point of fact a large proportion of the children of mental defectives are themselves mentally defective, and that it does not prove that it is due to heredity. The suggestion may be put forward that the condition may to some extent be due to environment. In the first place, there is no antithesis at all between heredity and environment. It is recognised that in the majority of cases there is some predisposition which has been acquired by heredity, and then, where the environment is unfavourable, complete mental deficiency occurs. Drs. Penrose and Turner made a special investigation of a number of cases and found that in their opinion 9 per cent. only were defective for purely environmental reasons; 29 per cent. were defective for reasons of heredity only, and the remaining 62 per cent. were mentally defective on account of a combination of heredity and environment.
Heredity and environment go hand in hand. The child is born with some predisposition to mental deficiency, and then the sordid, the squalid, in many cases the appalling environment of a house looked after and kept by a mentally defective woman or man results in a child being stunted in mind as well as in body. It is therefore a part of my case that even if it were not the fact—which, I think, I have shown—that mental deficiency is largely hereditary, it would still be undesirable for mentally defective persons to have children. Upon this point the Report of the Board of Control for the year 1928 is almost conclusive:
"It can hardly be denied that the 200,000 defectives who must remain in the community are wholly unfitted for parentage. Though it does not necessarily follow that the children of defective parents will themselves be defective, they are liable to be exposed to the miseries and hardship of being brought up by a mother or father incapable of self-control, who will almost certainly neglect them and may, by reason
1182
of mental instability and ungovernable temper, aggravate by cruelty the results of ignorance and neglect."
I claim that it is right that the State should not only enable but encourage parents of that kind to refrain from incurring the responsibility of having children.
Perhaps I might give one striking case where environment and heredity have gone hand in hand. I will quote from the memorandum submitted to the Committee by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. In this case the family consisted of mother, father and six children. The mother was mentally affected and also two of the children, and a boy aged 13 and a girl of 11 were mentally deficient and suffering from paralysis. In the case of the boy the society was able to put him into a home and the result is that he has improved both mentally and physically. No home could be found for the girl and the result is that she has grown steadily worse. She is now almost completely paralysed and has become practically an imbecile.
Although it is not part of my case to prove that mental deficients are more fertile than other people, perhaps I might be allowed to quote the case of a family where there was a strong taint of mental deficiency, insanity and epilepsy. The mother had 17 children. The first two, who were illegitimate, died of convulsions in infancy. The third, a daughter, was mentally deficient and is now in an institution. The fourth, a son, was certified as an imbecile and died at the age of 11. The fifth was a son, certified as a mental defective and is now in an institution. The sixth was a daughter, an imbecile. The seventh was a daughter, who died at the age of 11 months. The eighth was a son, certified as an imbecile. It is only at the ninth child that we find the child living and in service. The tenth child died in infancy. The eleventh child is of low mentality, the twelfth is of average intelligence, the thirteenth is now in an institution, the fourteenth is in an institution, the fifteenth was recently admitted to an institution, and the sixteenth and the seventeenth children are so small that it is not yet known whether or not they are normal.
Apart from the strong tendency to mental deficiency, it is from these same stocks that there come those who com-

1183
pose our social problem group. They not only contribute to those who are filling our mental homes, our asylums, our hospitals, our infirmaries, our gaols and our workhouses, but they are also contributing a large proportion of the criminal element of the population, especially of those who are charged with offences most repellent to ordinary people. Of the cases of criminal and indecent assault dealt with by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, about one-half of the girls involved were feeble-minded, while in the case of the males it was exactly one-half. As will be recognised by anyone who has sat on a public assistance committee, it is these stocks which contribute a vast quantity of the unorganised, unskilled casual labour which is so often upon the rates and which so often undercuts a higher, more skilled and better type of labour. So much for the question of mental deficiency.
Cases where the mind and the intelligence have fully developed raise an entirely separate question. I mean cases where the mind has developed normally up to a certain point and then has become disordered. In this class there are two particular forms of insanity, both of them fairly common, in which it has been almost proved—I do not wish to overstate my case—that the taint is hereditary. In the case of schizophrenia, in Bavaria 5.8 per thousand of the population are affected, and it has been shown there by figures that where one parent is affected 10 per cent. of the offspring are insane and 34 to 40 per cent. are mildly affected. Therefore, half the offspring of one single person suffering from schizophrenia are to a greater or lesser extent affected, and these in turn are likely to transmit the taint to another generation. In the case of another common form of insanity, manic depressive insanity, the proportion is slightly less, but still high, 4.1 per thousand. Sixty to 66 per cent. of the children are likely to be affected if one parent suffers from this form of insanity, but if both are affected probably 100 per cent. will be affected.
Let me say a few words about the giving of valid consent on the part of the patient. In the case of manic depressive insanity there is, first of all, mania, then acute depression, and then a normal and
1184
lucid interval, during which time there is no question that the patient is able fully to understand what is involved by sterilisation, and in such cases perfectly valid consent could be given. In the case of schizophrenia it is not suggested that any sterilisation could take place to the person actually suffering from that disease. It can only be when such person can be safely released from the institution that the question of a voluntary operation for sterilisation will arise.
I have referred to cases of mental deficiency and insanity, but there is a third class of people concerned, and I am not sure that they do not present the strongest case of all for legalising sterilisation. I refer to the carriers who, in the words of the report, are "persons whose family history gives reasonable grounds for belief that they may transmit mental disorder or defect." Those are the same people in whose family there is some taint of insanity. Carriers are probably 10 times as numerous as affected people. In their case there can be no question of the reality of consent. The safeguard that a certificate of two medical practitioners is needed will make certain that it will not be undue sensitiveness on the part of these persons which causes them to apply for sterilisation. I have no doubt that most hon. Members know of cases of people, perfectly normal and perfectly sane, who refrain from marriage and from having children because they know that some parent or some uncle or other relative has suffered from insanity, and they feel very strongly the responsibility and the danger of transmitting to offspring the misfortune that they have seen in their parents or relatives. In regard to people with so high a sense of civic and parental responsibility, who do not desire to have children to whom they might unwittingly transmit so appalling an affliction, are we justified in refusing them the right to save themselves and their possible children from any such danger?
There is also the question of physical infirmity—deaf mutes and blind persons. I went over a school for deaf mutes and discussed this matter of sterilisation long before the Report of the Commission came out, with a gentleman who had given up the whole of his life to devoted service in the interests of one of the most unfortunate communities in our midst, and he told me that, from his own

1185
personal experience and observation, he thought the danger of these disabilities being transmitted was very great and that he was strongly in favour of legalising sterilisation. My hon. and gallant Friend who will second the Motion, if time allows later in the evening, will deal in some detail with the procedure recommended by the committee and the safeguards against abuses.
I see that on the Order Paper, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Mile End (Dr. O'Donovan), there is a reasoned Amendment which suggests that what is needed is a further Departmental Committee to investigate the present legal position in regard to sterilisation. I could have wished and expected that my hon. Friend's Amendment would be less timid than it appears to be. Whether one is opposed to the principle of sterilisation or not, I cannot see that any good purpose would be served by having a further inquiry, more particularly as there will be no chance of that inquiry being conclusive. Whether voluntary eugenic sterilisation is legal or not is not known, because there is no decided case upon the subject. Therefore, no inquiry could make the law on the subject certain. If we are in favour of eugenic sterilisation, let us legislate and make the law certain. If we are against it, then let us equally legislate and make the law certain.
In the Motion which my friends and I are putting before the House we do not put foremost in our arguments the consideration of the cost to the community of the increasing number of mental defectives and insane persons, great as that burden is. The capital cost of a bed for each person in one of these institutions is about £400 and the weekly cost of maintaining them there is 25s., or more than an unemployed man and his wife cost. The cost of mental deficiency service last year was over £1,800,000 and of mental hospitals over £8,000,000. Important as that point is, we do not over stress it. Nor do we emphasise over much the position of the potential parent. We are not in any way seeking to restrict the right of the individual to parenthood, much as we may desire them to regard it less as a right than as a responsibility. Rather we make our appeal to the House in the name of the children, the unborn children. We ask that an operation,
1186
which even now is legal and not uncommon, if the purpose of it is to prevent danger to the life of the mother, should be equally made legal if the purpose of the operation is to prevent the danger of being born to the afflicted and unwanted child, whose whole life in this world must be one of misery and humiliation.
7.29 p.m.
Wing-Commander JAMES: I beg to second the Motion.
The tremendous interest which has been aroused by the publication of the report has been exemplified by the amount of Press comment, and the amount of discussion throughout the country. In order to discern something of the public feeling I have taken a great deal of trouble in going through Press cuttings from all over Great Britain with regard to the work of the Committee. From that study and from conversations I have had with many people in many walks of life I have come to the conclusion that the objections which will be advanced against this report——
It being Half-past Seven of the Clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS under Standing Order No. 6, further Proceeding was postponed without Question put.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

  MANCHESTER EXTENSION BILL (By Order).
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
  7.33 p.m.
  Mr. LEES-JONES: I beg to move, to leave out "now" and at the end of the Question to add "upon this day six months."
  I want it to be clearly understood that this is not a fractious opposition nor is it the case, as has been stated in many quarters, that those hon. Members whose names are down to the Amendment opposing the Bill have been got at by private owners in various areas of the existing city boundaries. We oppose the Bill entirely on its merits, and for the

  1187
  reasons set down in the second Amendment which says:
  "That this House declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill which would enable the Corporation of Manchester to further expend the resources of the ratepayers upon adjacent rural areas whilst continuing to neglect the redevelopment of the central area of their district, and the rehousing of the overcrowded sections of the population."
  The Manchester Corporation say that by this Bill they are merely giving themselves a locus standi in opposing a Bill promoted by the Stockport Corporation. They say further that they do not want the area of Cheadle and Gatley, but immediately go on to give reasons why Manchester should have the area. In considering this Bill I think we are entitled to look at the reasons which the Manchester Corporation put forward as the basis of their case. All their reasons are based on the services which are at present rendered to the area of Cheadle and Gatley. In the first place, they say that they supply gas. The Manchester Corporation makes a profit of about 10 per cent. over and above the profit which it makes from the present citizens of Manchester. They are in receipt of a good income from a sound proposition. They also say that they supply this area with electricity. They do, but Cheadle and Gatley have the right, on giving notice, to get their electricity from the grid if they so desire, and I fail to see how Manchester can claim that they have a monopoly of the supply. They also say that they have agreed to take the sewage from this area. When the Manchester Corporation presented a Bill some time ago to acquire another area, Wythenshawe, a bargain was made with Cheadle and Gatley that if that area withdrew its opposition to the Manchester Bill Manchester would take the sewage.
  They also say that they do the major portion of the transport between Manchester and Cheadle, but that reason does not hold water because the Manchester Corporation supplies 40 per cent., the North Western Omnibus Company 40 per cent., and the Stockport Omnibus Company 20 per cent. of the transport, and there is no doubt that the North Western Omnibus Company would have supplied much more of the transport if the Manchester Corporation had not opposed, before the Traffic Commissioners, licences
  1188
  being granted to private firms who for some time had been supplying the district with all the transport needed. There are in addition, of course, the railways. The corporation also make the point that they are supplying education and hospital treatment to residents in this area. They do the same thing for other areas which they have tried to absorb but where they have failed. On looking through all these services I do not think that Manchester can lay much claim to a very deep interest in this area, except from the point of view of getting a very good profit out of it.
  What benefits are likely to accrue to Manchester if the area comes in? It is a well known fact that in every absorption by the Corporation of Manchester there has been no relief whatever to the ratepayers. On the contrary, extra chages have been put upon the citizens of Manchester and also upon the people of the areas which have been absorbed. Longer distances have had to be travelled by people going to and from their work, fares, of course, are thus greater, and working people have to spend more time in travelling and less time at home. They have been sent into areas where the cost of living is higher than it was in the areas from which they have been taken, with the result that although their needs have remained the same they have had less money to spend upon them. The Manchester Corporation also say that the only chance of extension is on the south side. That is true. They have tried on the north but this House has not permitted an extension in that direction. But while they say that the south is the only area where they can extend in the same breath they say that they do not want to extend. The reason for this is not at all clear, but there is no doubt that in spite of their assertion that they do not want the area of Cheadle and Gatley in actual fact they do, and that belief is given some credence by a statement in a letter written by the Town Clerk of Manchester to the Town Clerk of Stockport in which he suggested that if Stockport would withdraw their proposal in regard to Cheadle and Gatley, Manchester would do the same. A little further on in the letter there is a most significant sentence which reads:
  "It may be in the future that circumstances will arise which will make it essential that a decision should be made."

  1189
  That I think speaks for itself, and it will no doubt be much appreciated by Manchester if they can get Stockport out of the way, as then they would have a far clearer run of getting this area, which they say they do not want. Have they considered the wishes or the desires of residents in Gatley and Cheadle? If they are going to promote a Bill to take in the area the first decent thing to do is to ask the residents in the area whether they want to be absorbed or not. From the result of a poll which was held a short time ago, when over 90 per cent. of the residents polled, there was an overwhelming vote against joining either Manchester or Stockport. In this matter Manchester has acted in a high-handed way. They have abrogated to themselves the right to say who shall and who shall not absorb any other area without considering the interests of the citizens or the area which they hope to take in. If in fact they do not desire to take in this area one is bound to admit that they are acting like a dog in the manger; if we cannot have it we will take care that you do not get it.
  What benefit are the residents of this small area going to get from absorption? Undoubtedly the rates will go up in Cheadle and Gatley. The difference in the rates to-day is about 5s. in the £. The value of existing property will be reduced, and the amenities of the area will not be considered. We have had experience of other areas in Manchester where the amenities have not been considered for a moment. Corporation property has been put up side by side with property which has been built by private individuals in areas where the amenities have been improved out of recognition by the industry of the individuals concerned, not by the corporation, and the result of putting up corporation houses alongside these dwellings has been that the value of such property has been materially reduced. I do not say for a moment that the working class should not have decent areas in which to live, I do not say that they ought not to go into residential areas, far from it, but I do say that there should be some demarkation between corporation houses and other houses which have been in existence in order to keep up the values which already exist and that corporation houses should not be put in alongside, immediately reducing the values all round.
  1190
  I know that we shall be told that we are in the wrong in opposing this Bill, because it has received the overwhelming support of the members of the Manchester City Council. But I have had correspondence with many who supported that Bill in the council and who now realise what it will mean if the Bill goes through. They are now against the Bill for which they originally voted. There is also opposition in Manchester from people who have not got votes. I am referring to members of huge concerns, limited companies, who by virtue of their companies being limited companies have not got votes. Their desires have not been considered in the least. They merely have to pay and to receive all the good things that are supposed to come from the corporation.
  We shall be told probably that we are entering into a sort of political blackmail, that the Motion which originally stood in our name has nothing whatever to do with the extension and that we are trying to get something to which the Bill does not relate. I do not know who made the charge of political blackmail or bribery, but I do consider that the Manchester Corporation cannot throw bricks at us on that score. I mentioned earlier that in order to reduce the opposition of Wythenshawe to the Bill a bribe was given to Cheadle and Gatley in the form of offering that area to take all its sewage if it would drop its opposition. That opposition was dropped. Now we hear that the Manchester Corporation, which has got a Second Reading for its general powers Bill, has had to stoop to making an arrangement with some members who are against local option being granted to municipalities on the licensing of dog-racing tracks—an arrangement has been made with them whereby the Clause in the general powers Bill shall be struck out in exchange for the support of those members to the Manchester Corporation Extension Bill. If a Corporation has to stoop to such tactics in the promotion of the Bill it cannot have very much opinion of its own Bill and it has not very much of a case.
  We say that the first duty of a municipality is to do right by its citizens and to supply services as economically as is possible, commensurate with efficiency, and we say that the Manchester Corpora-

  1191
  tion is not carrying out that duty. Vast areas in the City require redevelopment and reconstruction, but by a recent acquisition the more valuable built-up areas have been sadly neglected, and the more we increase the size of the City the more the central part of the City will be neglected. We say that for administrative purposes the City is quite big enough, and that instead of using the time and energy of the officials of the Council on the planning out of new areas and finding more jobs for more officials in still further areas, they should pay more attention to what they have already and make a good job of that.
  7.50 p.m.
  Captain FULLER: I beg to second the Amendment.
  I am going to approach this question of the Second Reading of this Bill in my own way. I make no excuse for that. First I would like to deal with the surprise which has been expressed in some quarters that we Members who are opposing the Second Reading of the Bill should have taken the action that we have taken. We have been told in the Press and elsewhere that many people are shocked to see broken what they have called the old traditional continuity of practice, meaning by that, I suppose, that they are shocked to see that some Members of Parliament have refused, in this case at any rate, to take instructions from their own local authority. It seems to me that it would be a sad day for the country if this idea is to be fettered on to Members of Parliament, and if the freedom of opinion which we claim is not to be granted, not alone to us who have the honour of representing various divisions of Manchester, but to every other Member of this House. If such a course were followed it would mean nothing more than the establishment of an electoral college which, however relevant it might be to the establishment of a new Oriental Constitution, would be quite out of tune with the democratic ideas and practices which are still mercifully preserved to us in this country.
  In regard to this Bill, I would say that ever since my first contact with the Ardwick Division of Manchester, which I have the honour to represent, I have been
  1192
  greatly concerned with the housing conditions in many parts of my constituency. I have from time to time with other hon. Members, without any fuss or show, endeavoured to find out what steps have been taken in the past, what steps are being taken and what steps are contemplated for the future, in regard to the conditions which prevail there. On 18th February of last year I wrote to the Town Clerk to ask him as to housing schemes, which would have a peculiar bearing on this problem, and of course I had in mind also the provision of work for the very large number of Manchester unemployed who were connected with the building industry. I was informed that certain schemes were in hand. They affected the Blackley Division and the Clayton Division which adjoins my own, but especially was the answer in regard to the Wythenshawe Estate, which attracts very few people from my constituency, for the simple reason that it is some miles away from the city, that the rents there are higher than these people can afford, and there are other incidental expenses which are too heavy for them to bear.
  Following that, in March of last year I asked the Minister of Health a question in regard to slum clearance schemes. I asked him to state how many slum clearance schemes had been submitted by the Corporation of Manchester since 1922, how many had been completed, the number of houses affected, and whether any such schemes were then before him for approval. The answer I got was to the effect that one scheme affecting 199 houses had been completed, that in July, 1931, the corporation made a declaration that another area was a clearance area within the scope of Section 1 of the Housing Act, 1930, and that the corporation had not as yet submitted to him either clearance or compulsory purchase orders for dealing with this area. Following that I was attracted by an announcement which appeared in the "Daily Dispatch" of 6th April of last year, by the chairman of the Town Planning and Buildings Committee. Among other things he said:
  "Two years ago the medical officer reported that there were 30,000 houses in Manchester below a reasonable standard which ought to be dealt with in the next 10 years. We have done nothing about it."
  In regard to that I again approached the Ministry of Health, and I received a reply, the relevant part of which I will read:

  1193
  "It is unfortunately true that much slum clearance work remains to be done in Manchester. I enclose copy of a recent circular, 1331, issued by the Minister about slum clearance. I am afraid that the responsibility for any failure to deal with unsatisfactory housing conditions in Manchester must lie with the city council. At no time has any obstacle been placed by the Minister in the way of their providing houses to meet the needs of persons of the working classes in their area, and I trust there will be the fullest co-operation of the city council in the policy laid down in the circular."
  Having been asked to support the present Bill I made further inquiries as to overcrowding, and the answer seems to me to be fairly conclusive. On 8th December last I asked the Minister to state what schemes, in addition to slum clearance schemes, had been submitted to him by the Manchester City Council for dealing with overcrowding in areas which were not necessarily slum areas but in which clearance would need to be carried out for the erection of more commodious buildings on the spot. The answer was that no definite schemes other than those which provided for the clearance of slum areas had been submitted. Later on in the month I had some correspondence with the Ministry in regard to representations which had been made to me from various people in the West Gorton area of my constituency, one of the clearance areas which the corporation is undertaking to clear, and I was informed that no application had been made then to the Ministry for a compulsory order.
  I believe that three schemes are contemplated, and in the West Gorton area of my constituency one of the scheme affects some 400 houses. I am bound to say in all fairness that that scheme gives me a certain amount of personal gratification, and if the corporation, as they assure me is the case, intend to house the inhabitants on the spot in reasonable and respectable dwellings and intend to treat all parties concerned in this clearance with justice and equity, it will be a matter for congratulation to them, as far as I am concerned. But apart from this, no further move seems to be contemplated, in spite of the most sordid and distressing conditions under which many people live especially in the New Cross area of my division. I do not wish to weary the House with quotations, but I should like to give two which may help to indicate to hon. Members the conditions which prevail. I quote first from an extraordinarily
  1194
  interesting social study by a group of the Manchester University. This is what they have to say in relation to this area:
  "There are no gardens or trees—nothing to relieve the deadly monotony and greyness of its mean streets—except perhaps the massive shapes of its gaunt factories and canals now black and strewn with rubbish. Plants will not grow in this district which owing to smoke"—
  I do not blame the Manchester City Council for that—
  "receives only about 42 per cent. of the light received seven miles away. Small wonder that the infant mortality rate was 125 per thousand in 1928 as compared with a national average of 65."
  We are further told that many of these houses to which I have referred were built between 1740 and 1790. It seems high time that they were scheduled as ancient monuments rather than as unsatisfactory dwellings for the working class. The efforts of the people who are asked to live under these conditions have been most praiseworthy, as I myself can vouch and as this report testifies:
  "It is wonderful how clean many of the houses are and what infinite trouble is taken to 'beautify' crumbling walls and defective woodwork."
  But there has been very little willingness on the part of the people to move from that area to other housing estates where accommodation has been available, and especially the Wythenshaw area, for the reasons which I have already indicated. Ever since I have been in a personal tough with this problem I have endeavoured to find out what has been done and what can be done to alleviate the lot of these people. I am bound to say that I do not consider the answers which I have received to my inquiries, both from the Ministry and the corporation, as in the slightest degree satisfactory, and that is one reason why I object to the Second Reading of the Bill. While a well-known hymn says:
  "The soul in contemplation utters earnest prayer and long."
  Along comes the Bill which we are considering to-night for a further extension of the boundaries of the city of Manchester, and we have been urged to support it, almost at the eleventh hour, because, we are told, the city of Stockport is after the same area. It seems to me that in this case the spoils are to go to whoever is able to get there first. In the preliminary stages of the preparation of this Bill we have been studiously

  1195
  ignored, and I suggest that if the Manchester City Council objected to the City of Stockport Bill they could easily have approached us and asked us to object in the ordinary way. I consider that they would have been on much stronger ground had they done so. It is suggested as an argument in favour of the Bill that Manchester supplies gas and other services, and as a consequence has a right to the area. But the Bill is not being preferred on those grounds at all. We are told that it is preferred because the city of Stockport has a Bill asking for the inclusion of this area within their boundaries. For my part I am prepared to support the city of Manchester in the defence of its own interests, but that question does not arise on this Bill because the Manchester City Council have told us themselves that they would be satisfied with the status quo. I find it difficult to get away from the conclusion that the city of Manchester contemplates further development in this area in the future and a further extension of its own boundaries. The statement circulated in support of the Bill indicates that because paragraph 2 states:
  "Except the southern part of the city, which is being rapidly developed, the city is already largely built up, and, as it is surrounded by built-up areas on all sides except the southern side, all future extension must take place in that direction."
  That paragraph seems to admit the intention of the corporation to use this area as a jumping off ground for further extension. It is because of this desire to extend; because I feel for the housing conditions of the people whom I represent and for whose relief the acquisition of this area will do nothing at all, and because there seems to be no other plan for them, that I object to the Bill. It seems to me that the situation and the outlook to-day are much as they were in 1894 when Frederic Harrison, in one of his charming essays, wrote of this problem as follows:
  "Manchester (and others) have enlarged their boundaries so rapidly and so entirely under the dominant passion of turning over capital and increasing output, that beauty, dignity, culture, social life have been left to take care of themselves and the life of the labouring masses (for the well-to-do protect themselves by living outside, and reducing their city life to works and an office) is monotonous to all and to many almost bereft of physical comfort and moral elevation."
  1196
  I do not want to perpetuate that state of affairs. The proposal for the acquisition of Cheadle and Gatley by Manchester passes this problem by on the other side. I submit that a city ought to be a place to dwell in and not a place from which men are anxious to escape, if they can find any other place to which they can escape. The problem, as I say has been passed by in these proposals. Those who undertake it can be certain that they will be unpopular. But I think they can be assured of this—that they will have earned the greatest reward which a man in public life can expect and one which he is entitled to cherish and that is the heartfelt thanks of the people on whose behalf he has laboured.
  8.10 p.m.
  Mr. FIELDEN: We have heard two interesting speeches in opposition to the Second Reading of the Bill. I have only one criticism to make with regard to the speech of the Mover of the Amendment. He referred to the question of blackmail but did not make any specific charge. I very much regret that that line should have been taken without a specific and definite charge against somebody. I have been wondering for whom the Mover and Seconder of the Amendment have been speaking. I know they represent divisions of Manchester but from their speeches one would gather that they were speaking for ratepayers in Cheshire. Apparently no representative of the Cheshire ratepayers is taking part in this Debate and in the absence of such a spokesman I can only assume that these hon. Members feel that they cannot allow the hardship, as they put it, caused to an urban district in Cheshire, to pass unchallenged.
  Captain FULLER: I never mentioned Cheshire or the urban district.
  Mr. REMER: May I point out as representative of a Cheshire constituency that my name is down to a Motion for the rejection of the Bill and I only gave way because I wanted Manchester Members to deal with the matter?
  Mr. FIELDEN: Be that as it may the argument so far seems to have been addressed to the interests of Cheshire rather than to the question which the Bill puts forward, namely, the extension of the City of Manchester. Personally I believe in local government. I am a Member for one of the divisions of Manchester

  1197
  but I do not represent the local government of Manchester. That is represented by the town council and the town council, which has a very large proportion, I believe a majority, of members who hold my political opinions, have put forward the proposition that this urban district council should be absorbed into the city. There was no opposition in the town council and as a representative of Manchester I feel that it would be unseemly of me to oppose the wishes of the ratepayers of Manchester as expressed in their own council chamber.
  The proposal is that the City of Manchester should be allowed to absorb the urban district of Cheadle and Gatley. It is said that this urban district ought not to be absorbed, but apparently there is no reason why it should not be absorbed into some other city. If the time has come for the absorption of this urban district into one of the big cities adjacent to it, surely it is only right that that question should be settled after hearing evidence and cross-examination before a Committee upstairs. The whole question that is for consideration, all the pros and cons, all the arguments on one side and the other, should be threshed out before a Committee upstairs. The Corporation of Stockport Bill has had a Second Reading and, therefore, will go before a Committee upstairs, where the question will be argued out, where Cheshire can offer reasons against it, and where Stockport can put forward reasons in favour of the absorption, but Manchester would have no locus standi before that Committee, and I submit that when you have a locality lying between two great cities and the question is whether it should be absorbed by either, and if so by which, it would be very unfair that one of those big cities should be excluded from putting its case before the Committee. It is on that ground, and that ground only, that I would ask the House to deal with the question.
  A good deal has been said in the two speeches that have been made with regard to housing in Manchester, and that is not in the Bill, but I should be very sorry if any hon. Member went away with the impression that Manchester had not been dealing with its housing problem. Manchester has spent over £13,000,000 recently in building 21,000 houses.
  Mr. LEES-JONES: Over what period?
  Mr. FIELDEN: Over a certain period; I am not sure what period. Since the Town Planning Act was passed recently, Manchester has taken up the question of town planning and has in preparation or under consideration the building of an additional 30,000 houses, 15,000 to be built within a few years. Whether the plans that have been approved by the town council are the best, or whether others could be produced which would be better, is a matter on which I have no knowledge, but I do not want hon. Members to go away with the impression that the Corporation of Manchester has been neglectful with regard to the question of housing.
  I have only one other point to make. The question of Gatley and Cheadle being absorbed into one or the other is a question of which corporation supplies most of the services to that population. Manchester supplies electricity, Manchester supplies gas, Manchester supplies sewerage, or will do shortly, and Manchester supplies a very large number of things, such as hospitals, libraries, and educational facilities, which it is impossible for Stockport to supply. Therefore, there s a very great deal to be said in favour of Manchester having the preference in absorbing this urban district, if it is to be absorbed by either. I trust that the House will come to the decision that this is a matter for consideration by a Committee upstairs, which will be able to sift all the evidence, and then I am satisfied that it will come to a proper decision.
  8.20 p.m.
  Mr. S. HOPE: This is the first time that I have addressed the House, which will, I am sure, show me the indulgence which is always shown to hon. Members who are speaking for the first time. I rise as a Cheshire Member to support the Amendment for the rejection of the Bill which has been moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley (Mr. Lees-Jones). Under this Measure the Manchester Corporation proposes to extend its boundaries, not in the county in which it is situate, namely, the county of Lancaster, but in the neighbouring county of Chester, and I submit that such an extension should only be agreed upon in very exceptional circumstances, which certainly, in our view, do not exist in this case.

  1199
  What are the reasons put forward by the Corporation of Manchester for the introduction of this Measure? In the first place, they say that they need the district of Cheadle and Gatley for future development. In 1930 the Manchester Corporation acquired a part of the county of Chester which is now known as Wythenshaw, and which, along with Cheadle and Gatley, lies to the south of the city. A part of the Wythenshaw estate has been developed, but there is sufficient land left for any developments that may be deemed necessary in the future. It has been said that Wythenshaw is not a suitable district in which to erect working-class houses, not only because of the fact that those who reside there can hardly afford to pay the rents, but also because of the additional expense of going daily to their work in the City of Manchester, which is some six or seven miles away. If the district of Cheadle and Gatley is included, the position will be the same because it is about the same distance from the centre of the city.
  A second reason put forward is that many Manchester people have now gone to reside in Cheadle and Gatley. I cannot see that that is any good reason for the extension of Manchester's boundaries, because probably those people are only too pleased to get out of the city. A third reason advanced is that the corporation are providing certain public services. They may provide those services, but they only provide them because they are paid for, and it is possible that they are making some profit out of the people who use them. We are also told that the Manchester Corporation provide travelling facilities for the people who live in Cheadle. I know of a private company which, before the Road Traffic Act came into operation, were willing to provide travelling facilities for the residents of Cheadle from that place to Manchester, but the Manchester Watch Committee refused to grant the company a licence to carry passengers out of the city although the company was prepared to give an undertaking not to pick up or set down passengers within the city area. The Manchester Corporation made it impossible for the company to give the residents of Cheadle travelling facilities which were very much desired by them. The Cheadle and Gatley Urban District
  1200
  Council were favourably disposed towards the company in question, and, in fact, granted the company a licence for the running of public service vehicles within their district. Again, the Manchester Corporation provide these facilities because it pays them to do so, and they would very much resent the suggestion that some other authority should be allowed to provide them in their place.
  This Bill is being opposed by representatives of five of the divisions in the city of Manchester and I feel that they are taking a proper course. I doubt whether the Manchester Corporation have the support of their ratepayers in introducing this Bill. Some time ago the corporation promoted a Bill which, among other things, provided for the acquisition of further land at Wythenshawe by compulsory powers. A poll was taken and a very large majority of the Manchester ratepayers decided against such a proposal. What do the residents of Cheadle and Gatley think about this matter? My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley referred to the poll that has recently been taken in Cheadle. The figures are very interesting. The total number of local government electors in the urban district is 10,581. The total number of votes recorded was 9,735. The number of voting in favour of remaining as a urban district was 9,604; in favour of Manchester 89; and in favour of Stockport 42. There was 98.66 per cent. of the votes recorded in favour of remaining as a separate urban district. Of the figure of 10,581 electors, 528 had left the district at the time of the poll, and 75 had previously died, leaving a total effective local government electorate of 9,978.
  That vote shows conclusively that the ratepayers of Cheadle very strongly resent the advances of the Manchester Corporation and are desirous of remaining as they are at present. They are satisfied with the efficient way in which the urban district council of Cheadle and Gatley is looking after their interests. I reside very near Cheadle, and from personal experience I know that the council is very progressive. I know of no council that has done more to improve the amenities of the district and to provide its ratepayers with such efficient services. The present council is composed of men who live in the district. They are proud of the district, and they

  1201
  love it. That spirit cannot continue if their district becomes part of a big city. Manchester Corporation, however, do not suggest that the district is not efficiently administered. The sole reason for the promotion of this Bill, they say, is that Stockport Corporation has brought forward a similar measure. Why should the Cheshire County Council and the Cheadle and Gatley Urban District Council be put to the expense of opposing two Bills? For my part, I can see no good or proper reason. The Manchester Corporation are responsible at the present time for the administration of an area which is far too extensive without any further additions, and if this Bill becomes law the representatives of the Cheadle and Gatley area will have little voice in the administration of their district. I submit that in considering a Bill of this kind, one should ascertain what is the best course to take in the interests of those who reside in the district affected. In this case, I submit that Cheadle and Gatley should be allowed to remain as a separate authority. That is the desire of the people, and in my opinion it is in their best interests. For these reasons, I support the Amendment for the rejection of the Bill.
  8.34 p.m.
  Mr. RHYS DAVIES: I feel sure that Members of all parties in the House will wish me to congratulate the hon. Gentleman the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. S. Hope) on his very excellent speech, which was delivered with good temper, splendid diction and a generous vocabulary. We wish him well in taking part in our Debates in future. The Manchester Corporation have been able to do two or three things in promoting this Measure. First of all, they have divided the Tory party definitely, and, so far as I am concerned, that is all to the good. But they have done something else, and that is that for probably the first time in recent Parliamentary history we have had the remarkable spectacle of men representing a city failing in that local patriotism which is common to us all. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Well, a strong voice will not stop me speaking. I speak for myself as a Manchester man, and I am afraid that some of the gentlemen who are interrupting me know nothing at all about Manchester, except that they were
  1202
  elected to Parliament for the city at the last election. I have lived in the city for 25 years and had the honour of spending 10 very pleasant years as a member of the Manchester Council, and consequently I am happy to support this Bill.
  Let me, however, put the case as I see it. First of all, Stockport Corporation produce a Bill and it secures a Second Reading. Under that Bill it proposes to extend its boundaries to include, among other districts, let it be remembered, the urban districts of Gatley and Cheadle. I suppose that if the Manchester Corporation had had the slightest hint that the Stockport Corporation were going to do that, they would have been in the field first. The Manchester Corporation is now put in this position, that unless it puts in a claim for these two urban districts it will have no standing at all in its opposition to the proposals of the Stockport Corporation.
  We have the amazing spectacle to-night of hon. Members representing the city of Manchester standing up and suggesting that this House of Commons should not even allow this Bill a Second Reading and to be examined upstairs. I venture to say that if the House declines to allow this Bill to be examined in Committee upstairs it will be an act that is almost unprecedented. For that reason I want to support the Measure. The hon. Member who moved the Amendment made one or two observations with which I wish to deal. He is unwilling that suggestions should be made that this proposal emanates from property owners, and he disavowed association with that group of people. Let me remind him of the old Shakespearean saw—"He sometimes protesteth too much."
  Mr. LEES-JONES: Does not the hon. Gentleman believe me?
  Mr. DAVIES: When I come to deal with the cost of land in slum clearance areas I shall be able to prove that property owning has something to do with the opposition to this Bill, and if the hon. Member wants to know it he had better get it here and now. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Manchester Corporation could have proceeded to do all that the hon. Member ever suggested

  1203
  in clearing their slum areas were it not for the price asked for the land by the property owners.
  Mr. LEES-JONES: No.
  Mr. DAVIES: The hon. Member will better understand when I tell him what it all means. When the Manchester Corporation proposed to clear the slums in Hulme the property owners asked the Corporation to pay as much as £9,000 per acre for the land. I ought to say that the whole of this issue to-night may be determined more or less on that proposition—that the property owners would compel the Corporation to pay £9,000 per acre for land.
  Mr. CHORLTON: I protest against that. I have nothing to do with that in any way, and I represent the biggest area.
  Mr. DAVIES: I am not touched one bit by the protestations of hon. Members. This is a free assembly, and I can speak of what I know, and I think I know Manchester better than the hon. Member.
  Mr. CHORLTON: I do not think you do.
  Mr. BAILEY: I would like to ask the hon. Member one question. Does he—or does he not—know that the opposition on the part of individual Members for Manchester is in any way inspired by the property owners? I was not concerned with that point. I was not speaking for the property owners. If he is making the suggestion that anyone of us is taking that fact into consideration in our opposition will he specify which Member or Members he makes it against?
  Mr. DAVIES: I have never suggested that an hon. Member in this House was a property owner and that he was asking for this £9,000 per acre—[HON. MEMBERS: "That is not the point!"] What I have said is that the battle over this Bill in Manchester between the property owners and the corporation is known to all.
  Sir JOSEPH NALL: I do protest against the hon. Member making these accusations. He has mentioned the Hulme clearance. I will deal with that, if I am fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but I think the hon. Member ought to withdraw the suggestion that anyone in this Debate is actuated by motives relating to property owners.
  Mr. DAVIES: I have never made such a suggestion at all.
  Mr. FLEMING: I took down the remarks of the hon. Member. He said "property owners are behind this opposition." What I should like to know is, Does he say that any property owner is behind me?
  Mr. DAVIES: Surely, it is a common thing in this House—[HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw!"] It is a proper thing in this House to say what are the reasons why Bills are opposed in Parliament. I have seen railway companies opposing Bills, we as trade unionists have opposed Bills here, and if the property owners think that they have a good case against it they are entitled to oppose the Manchester Corporation Bill.
  Sir J. NALL: Will the hon. Member take it from myself and from the others that we are in no way concerned with the property owners?
  Mr. DAVIES: Yes. I never suggested it, and I accept that statement. The question concerning the Manchester Corporation in connection with slum clearance in Hulme is as stated the problem of the price of the land, after they have cleared it of slums.
  Sir J. NALL: That is not true.
  Mr. DAVIES: If the hon. Member wants to pursue that point let me put this to him: How can anyone pay £9,000 per acre for a plot of land and build working-class dwellings on that land to be let at modest rents? Let us leave outside the question whether the property owners are behind this Amendment. It is a fact that no contractor would ever build houses for the working class on land which costs £9,000 per acre. I put that point without any spleen against the property owners. I am stating a simple fact. Let me put forward something else. We have to remember that the Manchester City Council were very nearly unanimous in support of this Bill. As an hon. Member has rightly said, the Conservative party are in control of the Manchester Corporation, and have been for years. Among all the political parties the only division on this Bill, strange as it may seem, is not between the several political parties on the Manchester City Council but between Conservative Members in this House of Commons representing the city. That is an astonishing

  1205
  feature, because, if I remember aright, the voting in favour of this Bill in the City Council was 106 for and 8 against. One cannot secure absolute unanimity on any body. We cannot get it here. Sometimes they cannot get it among the Tory party in the House of Commons; and I am certain they cannot get unanimity in the Liberal party—not in any one group of that party.
  Mr. GRAHAM WHITE: On this point, what about your party?
  Mr. DAVIES: At the moment we are united. I ought to add that we are united to-night in favour of Manchester Corporation, and that is more than the Tory party can say about themselves. Let me pass on to another consideration. As I have said, I do not like this lack of patriotism among hon. Gentlemen who represent the City of Manchester. It is a new feature of Parliamentary life, so far as I can gather. I have noted in the past that when Members of Parliament have not liked what their Corporations have done in promoting Bills in this House they have at any rate remained silent. They have not come out into the open and opposed their Corporation or their township; but hon. Gentlemen to-night have gone beyond that. Not only have they opposed their own city, but they have actually championed the cause of Stockport against their own city—a most amazing spectacle indeed.
  An hon. Member said something about taking people out into Cheshire to live when they ought to be housed near the centre of the town. Let me give him some figures. I do not know whether he has ever seen them. The Corporation of Manchester recently made a survey in regard to slum clearance. I am delighted that the Manchester Corporation has been able by this Bill to turn some of the most reactionary Tory Members of Parliament into champions of slum clearance and decent housing. One would have imagined that the hon. Member for Blackley (Mr. Lees-Jones) and the hon. and gallant Member for Ardwick (Captain Fuller) were pioneers of slum clearance and decent housing in this country. I hope that their spirit in that direction will not wane after this Debate. The hon. Member for Blackley made an extraordinary observation. This is what he said in effect: The more you extend the
  1206
  city boundary, the more you neglect the centre.
  Mr. BAILEY: Hear, hear!
  Mr. DAVIES: After the applause from the hon. Member for Gorton (Mr. Bailey) let me tell him that that is contrary to all the philosophies of Tory Imperialism, which has always said that the more you extend the Empire the more you improve the centre; that the pillars of the Empire at home will be best strengthened by extending it into foreign parts. The hon. Member must be a little more accurate in his political philosophy—if he has any at all.
  I was going to give the House certain figures upon this point, because it is one of the issues upon which the House has to make a decision. As I stated, the corporation took a survey of Hulme. I will remind the House again of what was said by the hon. Member for Blackley, which was that the corporation should not extend its boundaries into Cheshire; that, in fact, the corporation had made a mistake already in going out to Wythenshaw, Cheshire, and that what they ought to have done was to clear the slum areas, pay £9,000 per acre for the land, and rehouse the people there, and then all would be well. I suppose that the hon. Member would not abolish a single public-house in doing so. I will now read the result of the Hulme survey taken by the corporation, and I should like hon. Members to follow the figures in order to see what would happen if the Hulme area were cleared. This document is headed:
  "Particulars of certain principal wage-earners' places of employment based on the survey forms of the area."
  It states that 133 families would be nearer to the work of their principal wage-earner if rehoused on corporation estates; 87 families would be about the same distance from their employment on being rehoused on corporation estates; 21 families whose principal wage-earners were employed outside the city entirely, would, through distance, be unaffected either way. This set of figures will naturally interest hon. Gentlemen.
  Sir J. NALL: Those are repudiated.
  Mr. DAVIES: There are 160 families obtaining all their income from unemployment insurance, public assistance or

  1207
  pensions, to whom it would be no greater hardship if they were re-housed on prewar or post-war housing schemes. Those figures rebut the argument of the hon. Member for Blackley that people would be too far removed from their employment. The hon. Gentleman does not understand that, in all great cities, when you extend your boundaries for certain purposes you push some of your factories out as well. One big Manchester firm took its works out into Cheadle Hulme before the corporation started to build houses on some of its big estates in Cheshire.
  I hope that hon. Members will have seen that their arguments are of no avail, and that they will do Manchester a very great disservice indeed in continuing their opposition to the Bill. I agree with the hon. and gallant Member for Ardwick that Members of Parliament ought to be entitled to say what they think, even against their own local authority, but I agree also with the hon. Member for the Exchange Division of Manchester (Mr. Fielden) that it is very inadvisable and unseemly that they should do so in public. One might have a quarrel at home, but it is very unseemly to take such differences out into the street. That is exactly what hon. Members have done in this Debate.
  There is one thing that I hope they will not do; I sincerely trust, for the sake of decent local government, that they will allow this Bill to have its Second Reading so that it can go upstairs to be examined by the proper Committee. If Manchester Corporation cannot then prove its case, hon. Members will have won the day. I am satisfied that Manchester, which is hemmed in on all sides but one, has no chance of clearing its slums unless it secures power from Parliament to extend its boundaries still further out into Cheshire. We should not attempt to re-house the people on the basis of 40 or 50 houses to the acre. I hope that the majority in this House, whatever their opinion may be of the Bill, will at any rate give it a Second Reading, and let it be examined by the Committee upstairs.
  8.53 p.m.
  Mr. CHORLTON: I must begin by taking some exception to the remarks of the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr.
  1208
  Rhys Davies) about my knowledge of Manchester. I know that he has been in Manchester for a long time, but I think that originally, a number of years before that, he came from Wales, as we know by his flowery form of oratory. I am not saying that with any intention to give offence. I had the good fortune to be born near to Manchester, and for as many years as the hon. Member has known Manchester I have been in connection with the district about which I am going to speak, and to which I shall very largely confine my remarks. I am glad to learn that he agrees that hon. Members should be able to discuss these matters openly, even if they disagree with their own city. That is valuable, because I should be doing entirely wrong if I did not dissent when I thought that Manchester Corporation were doing wrong.
  There has been a great tendency in modern times for cities to expand by ring development. I think it is an exaggerated tendency, without sufficient regard to the centre of the city or those parts lying near the centre of the city. Despite the extent of the majority of which we have heard, there is little doubt that councils are frequently led by extremists, who in another branch of politics are called dictators, and those councils are swung out of the courses which quiet and conservative people—I do not mean necessarily Conservative in politics—would take. This reaction in Manchester, speaking generally from my own knowledge, has arisen from an exaggerated tendency to go out into the country and build there without any regard to the working people who live in the city itself. I feel that we have an example of that in the present case, and that, even if we had no special conditions to consider such as those which were dealt with by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ardwick (Captain Fuller), it would still be proper to bring the subject before the House in order that this aspect of city development may be properly considered.
  Manchester has all along been going in for this policy of expansion, but do those who are looking after the city really consider the state at which we have arrived in Lancashire? Do they really know their own minds in the course that they are taking? Are they taking account of the tremendous shrinkage in

  1209
  the cotton trade, and its immeasurable effect on Manchester? What force is there in trying to extend the city further when the future is so dark, and the chances of this great trade recovering are so remote? It seems to me that the whole of their efforts should be concentrated upon improving the districts already under their care, and particularly the poorer districts in the centre of the city itself. In some parts of Lancashire we already have the problem of a falling population, and all these public utilities and many of these extensions will be millstones around the necks of those who have been concerned with them. We have an example of that in Manchester in the great water scheme, and I think there is a great gasworks also. Those were built on the idea that we were all going to extend in Lancashire, but now we are brought up short, and I think that this is a case in which the Members for the city—those far-seeing Members who really understand the situation—would be guilty of a dereliction of duty if they did not bring the matter before the House as we are doing to-night.
  I come now to my own particular case. My hon. and gallant Friend has dealt with the West Gorton area in his Division, and I now come to the case of Collyhurst. Collyhurst is the largest clearance area that has been scheduled in Manchester. It has 1,800 houses, and 2,019 families. A decree has gone forth to regard this area as a slum, and to turn practically half the people out of the district when re-housing takes place. I would ask my hon. Friend the Welsh-Manchester man to give his particular attention to this case, and to note that there is no question here of the property owners or landowners bargaining with the corporation. This is a clear case in which it is proposed to tear out from the city, and from my particular Division of the city, an area with a population almost equal to that of a small town, to split them up, to send half of them into any district where they can find houses that have been built, and to re-house the other half inside.
  We have to remember that in all cases like this, where housing is thus disturbed and where a large proportion of the population are turned away, inevitably many of them return, and there is then over-
  1210
  crowding in the surrounding districts. It is therefore necessary, if there are occupations which cause people to live in these districts, to provide housing, because otherwise there is overcrowding after the clearance has been made. It has been said also that we represent vested interests, in the sense of property owners—that those property owners are behind us. I am surprised at the hon. Member for Westhoughton saying that. Speaking for myself, I do not know a single property owner in the district with which I am concerned. I know nothing about even their names. Nobody has ever said a word to me in that regard; I am acting purely on my own initiative for the benefit of the ordinary poor working people who live in the district, and the small shopkeepers who are going to be dispossessed; and I resent it very strongly that, because we have dared, if I may so put it, to stand up against this Bill, it should be said that we have been "got at" in that way.
  As soon as this area was scheduled, I put myself in touch with the people whom I have mentioned; or rather, it took place the other way about, for many of them came to see me. At that time I thought that the only thing we could do, it having come as such a great surprise, was to register our position with the city council, who were good enough to accord us a hearing. I went on the deputation to them. It was a curious experience for me—and I have had a good many curious experiences. We went into the room, and the lights went out, but the Alderman who is the chairman of that particular committee told me to get on with it without the lights being on; so I had the peculiar experience of making my opening remarks to people whom I could not see and whom I did not know. They thought, I believe, that we were not making very good progress, and the lights went on again; and then—hon. Members will hardly believe it—as soon as I began to get into my stride the lights went out again. That was my first experience of the sympathetic way in which the city council were receiving our representations.
  The essence generally of what was being put before them was that they should, in the arrangements made, endeavour to do the maximum amount of re-housing. Nobody was taking any line in the direction

  1211
  of resisting the clearance of a slum area, but it was urged that, for the benefit of the people who were in the area, there should be the maximum amount of re-housing. I am sorry to say, however, that in spite of our deputation very little progress has been made in that respect, and I would urge that a great deal more should be done. It is natural that we should expect, when the council concerned with the affairs of the city knows what is taking place in other parts of the world, and in our own country also, that we should get more attention, instead of the attention of the council being spent on getting this extension Bill. We also heard that another alderman had advised those concerned to send postcards to their Member asking him not to resist the Bill. So far, however, I have had no postcards, so evidently that has fallen flat.
  I should like now, before proceeding to details, to make a personal reference. It came to me as a very severe blow to be told within a little over a year of my representing the Division that it was to be declared a slum, and the biggest slum in Manchester. Not a word was ever said to me. The feelings of the Member for the Division were not considered. I have walked about the district from end to end, I do not know every house but I know every street. What are you going to say to people when, without the slightest warning, they are told that it is proposed to make their district a slum? For over 25 years it was represented by a well-known Member of the Labour party, Mr. Clynes, and as soon as his back was turned they made it into a slum.
  Mr. DAVIES: Does the hon. Member really suggest that the local authority should be asked to acquaint its Member of Parliament when it schedules a district as a slum?
  Mr. CHORLTON: I think it is only courtesy. I think this was an unkind reflection upon the care that Mr. Clynes exercised in the 25 years that he represented the district. When this thing began, in my frequent journeys up and down the district I had a canvass made, apart from my own personal canvass, and here are some of the results. The general tendency of the inquiries made is that they are more than pleased that something is being done to represent their case. I am afraid there will be serious
  1212
  trouble when the notices to quit are served. Many of the occupants are prepared to resist the order and chance the consequences. They wish to live in the locality. If the attention of the city council had been concentrated on ascertaining the desires of the citizens in that area, better steps would have been taken. There is conclusive evidence that the inhabitants are almost unanimously opposed to the scheme in its present form.
  Here are some of the cases. There are a husband and a wife both employed at works in the neighbourhood. To remove elsewhere would mean seeking other occupations. There are a widow and three children. It is impossible for that household to live elsewhere and retain their work. An ex-soldier named Butterworth has invested all his money in a shop. He has no other income of any kind. If the scheme goes through, he cannot see anything but public assistance. Compensation has been mentioned. I am determined to do all I can to see that they get something reasonable. If a shopkeeper depends on those living around him, and those people are taken away, it is impossible for him to go on. I have case after case of small shopkeepers and others showing how they are affected by this. I beg the city council to consider how much more they can do to help the re-housing question. I have several further examples of shopkeepers, including a small greengrocer, a tripe shop and a lady's outfitter. These are very hard cases.
  Sir WALTER GREAVES-LORD: Is my hon. Friend complaining that the city council are doing too much re-housing or too little? How does he propose to re-house anyone unless he pulls down the house first in order to rebuild?
  Mr. CHORLTON: I do not follow my hon. and learned Friend.
  Sir W. GREAVES-LORD: I am trying to follow my hon. Friend.
  Mr. CHORLTON: I am trying to show that these people, if dispossessed and sent elsewhere, will lose their livelihood. The re-housing proposed is insufficient. These are all people who will be put out of work through it. I am trying to show how this area is neglected and attention is being given to outside areas. Here is another important point which shows

  1213
  how little consideration has been given. There are around the district, and in one or two cases within it, churches, and non-provided schools connected with them. They are affected in the sense that the population will fall by 40 per cent. How is it possible for them to be carried on? If the religious and school side of the re-housing question were tackled by the corporation, the present resistance to the order would be almost done away with. The suggested density in the Collyhurst area is 41.5. If the re-housing in that area were done properly, with proper concern for the people who live there, the ordinary householders and the small shopkeepers, and the churches and schools in the district, they ought to have 85 per cent. re-housed. When this question was likely to come on I made many trips on the Continent to different towns, Copenhagen, Vienna, Prague, Berlin and Stuttgart, to see flat dwellings.
  I am convinced that this work can be done, and the figure which I have mentioned achieved. There are special difficulties. There are the difficulties of cost, but, if Manchester takes pride in her achievements as she used to do, it does not seem at all impossible for her to overcome the difficulties which others have had to face. I have endeavoured to show that the attention of the corporation, as indicated by this Bill, is on the ends of the earth and that a portion of the city has been neglected. I have endeavoured to show that the poorer people, at any rate those in the Collyhurst district, have received no help or consideration, or we should have seen an entirely different way of tackling the problem from that which has been adopted. Until some fair and definite indications are given that the wishes of the people in these districts are to be considered, I shall consider it my bounden duty to oppose anything in the nature of the extension of the boundaries of the corporation of the city of Manchester.
  9.18 p.m.
  Mr. FLEMING: It is rather sad for me to find myself in the position of opposing our highly respected senior Member for the city of Manchester who represents the Exchange Division (Mr. Fielden), but I am afraid that on the question of the Extension Bill he has not been fully informed of the wishes of the people who, after all, will be most concerned with any extension of the boun-
  1214
  daries of the city of Manchester. I ask myself what is the reason for seeking to extend the present boundary of Manchester? The present boundary on the south side is the boundary of my division. It is the River Mersey, the natural boundary. It is the boundary line of the county of Lancashire, and I ask myself why there is this sudden urge on the part of the authorities of the city of Manchester to go over the natural boundary of Lancashire into the county of Cheshire? I think that anyone who seriously considers this matter would like to be furnished with some solid ground for wishing to go beyond that river. In the Bill itself, naturally there is nothing said as to why this desire is so strong. It merely says that it is expedient to alter and extend the boundaries of the city so as to include the urban district of Cheadle and Gatley. But the people of Manchester who are most concerned in this matter, that is, the ratepayers of Manchester, the business men who have eventually to foot the bill, would like to know more specifically why this sudden urge to go over the River Mersey.
  There is a reason given in the Memorandum issued on behalf of the promoters of the Bill. The only reason given is that if Manchester had not promoted a Bill, Stockport would have been left alone in the field. That may be a sufficient reason in the opinion of the Manchester City authorities, but the ratepayers who have approached me want a stronger reason than that. They want something more than a mere dog-in-the-manger attitude as regards Stockport. If I am asked my personal opinion as regards the area which is sought to be included—Cheadle and Gatley—I say frankly that my preference, if that urban district council is to be absorbed, is to say let it be by Manchester. But when you come to look at it, as this House ought to look at it, from the point of view of why the extension is sought, and certainly from the point of view of those who are living in the area which the city of Manchester is seeking to include, there seems to me to be little case indeed for the extension, although I am personally very proud to think that Manchester has grown in the way she has grown in the past, and, when the time is opportune in the future, I hope to see Manchester growing greater still. The opinion of those who have approached me in my divi-

  1215
  sion—and they are people of substance in the city of Manchester, the people who pay rates in that city—is that the time is not opportune for this extension. This House ought to give some consideration to those people, in spite of the fact, as has been pointed out by more than one speaker in support of the Bill, that the majority of the city council are behind this Bill, as very often happens.
  What do the ratepayers of Manchester think of this Bill? Some of them have written to those of us who are opposing the Bill, and some have approached us, but not one of them has said that we were doing anything wrong in opposing the Bill, not one in my case. All I have had consists of three stereotyped postcards, written in the same style as the postcards we received in thousands when we discussed the taking of a penny off the Beer Duty, asking me not to oppose the Bill. That is after it had been urged publicly on behalf of the promoters of the Bill that the citizens of Manchester should bombard their representatives who were opposing the Bill. What a bombardment. In my case three postcards. As to the people who sent those postcards I could gather nothing, except from the address, because I happen to know the locality very well, as to whether they were what I would call people of substance in the city, by which I mean large ratepayers. They certainly were not. On the other hand, I have a letter from a partner of a very big firm in Manchester connected with the most important industry in Lancashire, the cotton trade, and he puts his case on a broader basis.
  That is why I take the stand I have taken as regards this Bill: we must at this time consider the question of the extension of Manchester, with perhaps its consequential increase of rates, on a bread-and-butter basis. These men engaged in the cotton trade in Lancashire cannot think of any further increase in the rates of Manchester. They are hoping and praying for, as all of us who live in Manchester or work there know very well, some decrease in the rates of Manchester to help their businesses. They dread the possibility of anything occurring through this Extension Bill to make those rates go up. If the promoters of the Bill can give me the assurance that by this extension which they seek to bring about in the boundaries of the City of
  1216
  Manchester there will certainly be a fall in the rates of the city, I shall instantly withdraw my opposition to this Bill.
  There is another point of view. Hon. Members, like my hon. Friend the Member for Platting (Mr. Chorlton) speak of their own districts as regards slum clearance. I am making no attack whatever on the City of Manchester as regards its slum clearance. I admire the corporation for what they have done. I am going, however, to put before the House the views of some of those people who, through these slum clearances which are taking place, have been moved from certain areas, for example, the area that is represented by my hon. Friend the Member for the Hulme Division (Sir J. Nall), and have gone into a new housing estate in my own Division. They have spoken of the effects as regards clearance, and I am now able to give some particulars at first hand of those who have been removed to a better district. I want to make it clear that I am completely in favour, and always have been, of moving the working man from any slum area into a better area.
  I admire the Manchester Corporation for what they have done and for what they are attempting to do. But I have come up against another phase of the problem of the transference of population with which, before I came to this House, I had not come into contact, and that is the man himself and his family. After they have been transferred from what is called a slum district to a better-class area, this has been the effect. These men tell me of cases where they are earning 38s., £2, or £2 5s. a week and, being moved so many miles further out from the centre of the city, they have to spend more in travelling expenses than before. In some instances their families have been transferred into my Division, and they tell me that the difference comes to as much as 6d. or 7d. a day. One man is earning 38s. a week, and when he asked me how he could possibly afford to pay these expenses, I was bound to agree that is was not possible. Nevertheless, I agree that it is better for the men, as is stated in a Memorandum on behalf of the supporters of this Bill, to move them into healthy surroundings. I agree with that, and I think that everybody does. But you are bound to consider at the present time, with unemployment as it is, with wages as they are, the extra cost to the

  1217
  man when you have moved him to this ideal area, this little paradise on the outskirts of Manchester.
  If the idea of this extension of the city boundary of Manchester to take in Cheadle and Gatley is not for purposes of rehousing these people who are going to be displaced from other areas, for what on earth does the City of Manchester want that urban district council? Is it possible, as a legal friend suggested to me, that they are looking at the rateable value? It may be so. Surely the real basic reason for extending city boundaries ought to be, if it is not, the provision of greater space for the population within the old city boundary. I heard the suggestion—I do not know whether it was inspired or not—from my hon. Friend the Member for Westhoughton (Mr. R. Davies), who happens to be living in my division, that there was a possibility, once the population was moved—I take it he meant to Cheadle and Gatley—of the mills following to Cheadle and Gatley. I hope that suggestion becomes very well known in the district of Manchester, because, so far as the speakers have gone to-night, I think I am the only one, with the possible exception of the hon. Member for Rushholme (Mr. Radford), who has lived in that area which is now the bone of contention between Stockport and Manchester. I have lived in Bramhall and have relatives still living in Cheadle, and I know it very well. Of one thing I am positive, that if the question of the extension of the city boundaries were left entirely to the inhabitants of Cheadle and Gatley, there would certainly be no extension on the part either of Manchester city or of Stockport borough.
  I am certain of that because, when the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. S. Hope) gave the figures of the electorate as 10,000 odd, I do not think that all hon. Members of the House heard that the net electorate, after allowing for deaths and absent voters, was below 10,000—something like 9,000 odd—and that the actual numbers of electors who polled a few weeks ago on this question of being included in Manchester city or Stockport borough was 90 odd per cent. of the roll of electors. If you subtract from the roll those names which belong to people who are now dead and to absent voters, you must come to the conclusion to which I have come, that there
  1218
  was almost a 100 per cent. poll, as nearly as could be expected, against the extension of the Manchester city boundary or the Stockport borough boundary to include that urban district council.
  On the other hand, as has been pointed out by the promoters of this Bill and their supporters, it is not my job to plead the case of the Urban District Council of Cheadle and Gatley. The hon. Member for Westhoughton actually used the phrase "local patriotism." I was so amazed to hear those words from my international Friend that I put them down. It is seen how other considerations cut across the course of politics. How many of my Labour Friends are supporting those working men who have shown quite clearly that they are opposed to the movement, though perhaps for nonsensical reasons and against the interests of their own health? From inquiries in which I have taken part I have found them bitterly opposed to being moved from those areas, but where are their Socialist friends, to support them? The defence is left to the Tories, at whom they scoff on grounds of Imperialism, saying that they are trying to make Manchester the centre of the universe.
  We are now trying to keep Manchester within reasonable bounds. We certainly want Manchester to be developed, but we do not want it to develop on the lines of middle-age spread. We want to develop upwards. We know what can be done in the areas that are being cleared. We know what was done in Liverpool. We know what our Socialist friends told us when they came back from Vienna. There were pictures in the Manchester newspapers of the Karl Marx homes, which have been recently shelled. These pictures were shown to us so that we might see what was being done in Vienna for the working classes. What has been done there can be reasonably done on some of the sites that have been cleared in Manchester.
  That would help the people in my division who have been forced to come into Withington, who have been taken two or three miles further from their work and put to the extra expense of travelling, besides the loss of time morning and night. One man put the matter to me in this way. He previously lived in Hulme, and he told me that whenever

  1219
  he got wet on his job he could run home and get a change. "Now," he said, "whether I am wet or not, in order to get home I have to travel in an omnibus, three miles." If the man had not mentioned that to me I should not have thought of that side of the housing problem.
  I am in favour of schemes of rehousing and of putting people into the best surroundings, because it has always been my ambition to live as far as possible from the centre of a city. I hate cities and love to live out in the country. I would much sooner have the country lanes such as we have in Cheadle and Gatley than any of the broad arterial roads running through Manchester. The lanes of Cheadle and Gatley appeal to me. I recognise, however, that progress must take place, and I recognise also the benefit that accrues to the people who are removed from slum areas, but I think that Manchester should get down to this problem and rehouse the people in the cleared slum areas, instead of leaving those areas, as they are in some districts, derelict and an eyesore.
  9.38 p.m.
  Mr. RADFORD: My hon. Friends by their opposition to this Bill have created a position which is without precedent in my five years' experience of the House. It is unusual to object to the Second Reading of Bills of this kind, and when one sees six of the Conservative Members for the City of Manchester opposing the Bill and the other three, who are well enough to be present, supporting it, it assumes very much the appearance of a family quarrel. It must be embarrassing to the unwilling witnesses of such a family dispute. I am inclined to think that those of us who are supporting the Bill would have shown good generalship had we arranged for some hon. Member to get up and make a vitriolic attack on Manchester. That would probably have resulted, as very often happens in a family dispute, in reconciliation, and we should then have had the pleasing spectacle of my hon. Friends asking leave to withdraw their Amendment.
  My hon. Friends put their Amendment on the Order Paper, but, when the Debate began, instead of moving it they moved the one standing in the name of the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr.
  1220
  Remer). I think we may take it that the terms of their Amendment, which is a much more detailed one, although they have not formally moved it, represent their objection to the Bill receiving a Second Reading. Their reasons, as stated in the Amendment, are:
  "That this House declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill which would enable the Corporation of Manchester to further expend the resources of the ratepayers upon adjacent rural areas whilst continuing to neglect the redevelopment of the central area of their district, and the rehousing of the overcrowded sections of the population."
  Therefore their objection to the Bill comes, broadly, under two heads: (1) They object to the city of Manchester squandering its money on the acquisition of this outlying area; and (2) that the city has failed to go ahead with housing within its present boundaries. A definite contradiction can be given to both those suggestions. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley (Mr. Lees-Jones), who moved the Motion, referred to the rates for Cheadle and Gatley being 5s. in the £ less than those in the city of Manchester. Other hon. Members who have spoken in opposition to the Bill have referred in sympathetic tones to the hard lot of the ratepayers of this small urban district when there is a possibility of them being devoured either by rapacious Manchester or rapacious Stockport. They cannot have it both ways.
  If the Urban District Council of Cheadle and Gatley are so much more favourably placed from the rating point of view, then the Manchester Corporation, if it were allowed to absorb them, would only be expending its money in the same way that a young man might do if he were buying an engagement ring for an attractive and wealthy heiress. I agree with the hon. Member for Withington (Mr. Fleming) as to the wishes of the people of Cheadle and Gatley being considered. I lived in that area from the age of 3 months until I was thirty and if I still lived there I should be very anxious to be assured that the area would not be absorbed either by Manchester or Stockport. But does not my hon. Friend agree that if he is anxious that Cheadle and Gatley should be allowed to retain the independence for which their ratepayers voted by such an overwhelming majority—I think 98 per cent. voted that they should retain their independence—by granting a Second

  1221
  Reading to this Bill and thus enabling the Manchester Corporation to be represented on the Committee which is going to consider Stockport's application, would be the way to secure the probable safety of Cheadle and Gatley from absorption. To allow without opposition the Second Reading of the Stockport Corporation Bill and that they should be allowed to absorb Cheadle and Gatley and certain other areas adjacent thereto, and then to refuse a Second Reading to the Manchester Corporation Bill will take away the greatest safeguard of Cheadle and Gatley when the Committee upstairs considers the rival claims of Stockport and Manchester, or the claim of Cheadle and Gatley to remain outside both of them.
  On the question of Manchester having failed to embark on the necessary house building schemes within its present boundaries for the rehousing of its population, the facts are absolutely to the contrary. As the hon. Member far the Exchange Division (Mr. Fielden) says—he did not give precise figures—Manchester during the last 14 years has done a tremendous amount of building within its present boundaries. Since the Housing Act of 1919 came into operation Manchester has built within its present boundaries 29,967 houses, 892 are now in course of erection, and in addition about 7,000 houses have been built by private enterprise, with financial assistance from the Manchester Corporation. The hon. and gallant Member for Ardwick (Captain Fuller) said that when he inquired of the Minister of Health, within the last year, what house building schemes Manchester was now undertaking, or had asked permission to undertake, the reply was that the number of houses was comparatively negligible The answer, of course, is that Manchester has already performed her housing duty. She has already built, or has assisted in financing, no less than 28,000 houses during the last 14 years, and, therefore, I am sure that hon. Members will be satisfied that the second part of the charge laid against the Manchester Corporation in the Amendment on the Order Paper absolutely falls to the ground.
  It may be that the various services which Manchester claims she renders to the area of Cheadle and Gatley will be regarded by the Committee upstairs as an adequate justification for the absorp-
  1222
  tion of Cheadle and Gatley, but, at any rate, it is clear that as the corporation of Manchester does supply this area with gas, with electricity in bulk, attends to the whole of the sewage and the bulk of its transport, and also provides hospital and education facilities, she has as good a right to be considered when any question of absorption comes along as Stockport. In addition, the Manchester Corporation has a common boundary with Cheadle and Gatley for a distance of over 8,900 yards, whereas Stockport has only a common boundary with Cheadle and Gatley of 5,600 yards. In every direction it is clear that the case for Manchester is at any rate entitled to equal consideration with that of Stockport.
  The hon. Member for Withington (Mr. Fleming) referred to the difficulties of working men going to and from their work if they were moved to these other areas. His figures in that regard are absolutely groundless, otherwise why did the Manchester Corporation, on the 6th December, 1933, write to the Stockport Corporation agreeing to withdraw her claim to absorb Cheadle and Gatley if the Stockport Corporation would agree to the exclusion of Cheadle and Gatley from their scheme? Does that look as if Manchester had ulterior aims with regard to Cheadle and Gatley? No, Manchester was content to let Cheadle and Gatley remain as an urban district council, and would allow her to continue as such, but when she saw another municipality step in and attempt to absorb the area, only then did Manchester commence to promote the Bill which the House is now considering. I say with great respect that the House would do a grave injustice to the city of Manchester if, having granted without opposition a Second Reading to the Bill promoted by the Stockport Corporation, it declined to grant the same privilege to the Manchester Corporation.
  9.50 p.m.
  Mr. REMER: There is one aspect of this question which has not been touched upon, and that is the question of economy. I remember some 10 or 12 years ago learned counsel addressing the Committee upstairs for 29 days on a Bill to extend the borough of Birkenhead. This is an aspect of the problem which we must take into serious consideration. It was a Joint Committee of both Houses, with the Earl of Kintore as the chair-

  1223
  man, and as a result of a rider which the Committee passed an attempt was made to cut down the expenses of inquiries into extensions. In the first place the local inquiry has been cut out, and in the second, and far more important, an alteration was made in the Local Government Act of 1929 which provided expressly that within five years a county council had to make provisions as to the areas within their boundaries. In this particular case the Cheshire County Council have indicated their view that the area of Cheadle and Gatley should continue as an urban district. When the Stockport Corporation tried to incorporate the area in an extension Bill it was only then that the Manchester City Council suddenly promoted the Bill which we are now considering. If only on the grounds of economy I think we should prevent the Manchester Corporation wasting their ratepayers' money, as they will be doing by coming to this House, in legal expenses.
  The hon. Member for Rusholme (Mr. Radford) has said that the Stockport Bill has already gone upstairs, therefore, why not allow the Manchester Bill to go up with it? There is a good reason why. The Cheshire County Council have said to Stockport, not to Manchester, that it is for Parliament to decide on the Stockport Bill, as Parliament has set up its procedure to deal with the matter. The case of Manchester was only thought of at a later date. Three or four years ago Manchester endeavoured to extend its boundaries over the River Mersey into the County of Cheshire, but Parliament threw out the Bill. Next year they came along again, and another Parliament gave them that extension. The hon. Member for the Exchange Division (Mr. Fielden) made a great cry about the town planning that the Manchester Corporation have undertaken. They attempted a grandiose scheme of town planning dealing with the Wythenshaw estate, and if it had not been for the intervention of the Minister of Health, who caused an inquiry to be made into the scheme, market gardeners who had been in that district for many years and who have supplied the Shude Hall market in Manchester, would have been turned out of their holdings without any compensation. That is what town planning
  1224
  by the Manchester City Corporation would have done but for the wise action of the Minister of Health.
  I entirely agree with an hon. Friend who said that the River Mersey is the natural boundary for the City of Manchester. Though Manchester has unfortunately come over that boundary into the County of Cheshire, we should not allow it to do so any more. This is neither more nor less than a petty local quarrel between the Borough of Stockport and the City of Manchester. It is a petty quarrel which will go upstairs and cost the ratepayers of Manchester a great deal of money. I believe it is our duty to see that that spendthrift Council, as I feel it is, is stopped on its wayward path and is prevented from wasting the money of the ratepayers any longer in this way. I believe that this Bill coming to the House is a waste of Parliament's time and a waste of the ratepayers' money. I refer to the ratepayers not only of Manchester, but those of Cheadle and Gatley and Stockport, the Cheshire County Council and all the other people who are vitally interested. Therefore I beg the House not to give a Second Reading to the Bill.
  9.57 p.m.
  Sir W. GREAVES-LORD: My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Remer) seems to be for once rather keen on the question of economy. He says that a great deal of Parliamentary time is being or is likely to be wasted. I cannot help thinking that in one sense it is true that a certain amount of Parliamentary time has been wasted—time that could have been saved if the proper course had been taken with regard to this Bill. The hon. Member for Macclesfield seems to think that the position of Manchester in this matter is trivial. I do not intend to go into the merits beyond saying this: Manchester, as everyone knows, is in an area which is rapidly becoming enclosed. Its chances of expansion, as has been pointed out, are practically nil in every direction except the South, because the districts are already built up. No council which adequately looked after the interest of Manchester could stand idly by and see taken away those districts in which are its only chances of expansion. But that is not a matter that can be debated in this House by assertion and counter-assertion across

  1225
  the Floor. It is a matter which requires evidence, and to-night we have had a number of admirable instances of the sort of evidence that may be given. That evidence would be extremely valuable if it could be brought forward and examined into and cross-examined into, so that it could be sifted, and so that a committee may come to a judicial conclusion upon it.
  All that has happened is that Stockport, having declared that it intends to jump a claim with regard to these areas, Manchester, which has a very large common boundary with these areas and supplies a great many services, naturally feels that in the interest of its own citizens it has a right to have its voice heard and its evidence taken by a Committee of this House when the matter is being considered. In order to get that opportunity it is essential that Manchester should bring before this House a Bill competing with that of Stockport. So far from its being a waste of money, it is an essential expenditure. There are some people who talk a great deal about economy. Some of their ideas of economy are mere cheeseparing. When a city is bound to incur expenditure for the purpose of preserving the amenities of its ratepayers, no one can say that that is wasteful expenditure. It is the truest economy, because it is looking forward to the future when the interests of its citizens may require development in an area. All of these are matters which must be dealt with upstairs.
  All that those Members for Manchester who oppose this Bill are doing is trying to deprive their own citizens, and those who for better or worse are the people chosen to carry out the local administration of their own city, of an opportunity of having their voice heard on a matter which vitally and intimately concerns the welfare and the future of the city that they pretend to represent in this House. Then there is the other matter out of which those hon. Members seem to have got a certain amount of satisfaction. They have got out a quite considerable grouse against the city that they represent. I do not know what pleasure a man has in decrying his own constituency, but at any rate Members from Manchester seem to think that it is a pleasurable occupation.
  Mr. CHORLTON: We do not.
  Sir W. GREAVES-LORD: Frankly I do not think it is pleasurable to decry the government of one's own city.
  Mr. CHORLTON: We did not decry our constituencies.
  Sir W. GREAVES-LORD: If it be the fact that the administration of Manchester is so bad, why on earth should that justify depriving Manchester of doing its duty for once? That is the line that some Members are taking. They say that Manchester is not housing its people within its own boundaries. But they all agree that Manchester must look to the future. One hon. Member, I think it was the hon. Member for Withington (Mr. Fleming), seemed to think that the only way for Manchester to expand was to build higher and higher. I do not know. The clouds are quite near enough to the earth in Manchester from time to time without going further up into them. I should not think that that was a good way of expanding.
  But, after all, how is this grouse with regard to housing germane to this Bill? It is simply an attempt on the part of some Manchester Members to say, "Well, you must rebuild, it is true, but you must rebuild in our constituency." Then one hon. Member spent a long time in pointing out the great difficulties that would be caused by turning out of their present houses the people who live in his constituency. But even if they are going to be re-housed in his constituency the re-housing cannot be done while those people are still living in the houses. I do not know where he proposes that they should live in the meantime. But how is that germane to the question, the sole question, whether Manchester's voice should be heard or not? That is the sole question at issue.
  The other matters which have been raised in this Debate, such as the question of Manchester housing, might be made the subject of inquiry. They are important matters, but how on earth do they affect the question of Manchester protecting the interests of its own people by seeing that a possible chance of extension in the future is saved for its citizens? I fail to understand how housing has the smallest relation to it. In the old days we had on these extension questions inquiries up and down the country, and I agree with those who say

  1227
  that such inquiries very often led to a great deal of needless expense. They had to be followed, if the application in the original inquiry was successful, by Provisional Order Bills which had to go through Parliament and which caused further expense. We have done away with that type of inquiry, and we have prevented that expense. But if the procedure of the House is to be used to prevent Bills of this kind being examined by Committees of the House then there will be no examination at all in the future, and the time will come when there will be a demand that these matters should again be committed to inquiries in the country. Thus you will incur a large expenditure again which will be far worse than leaving these questions to Committees of the House.
  My contention is that instead of doing democracy a service those who are supporting the Amendment are depriving democracy of its proper rights to have questions of public administration examined as they ought to be examined by Committees of this House. Some of those who now oppose this Bill have on other occasions taken a line with which I entirely agree, that Private Bills ought not to be opposed on Second Reading, unless some vital question of general principle is involved and that Bills which are based upon details ought to go to a Committee where the evidence can be examined and a judicial decision given on the questions involved. How hon. Members who have expressed those views from time to time can now try to prevent the operation of the very system which they have applauded astonishes me and gives me a profound distrust of their consistency or reliability in public affairs. I hope that the House will not continue this "grouse" upon matters which have nothing to do with the Bill, but that they will allow the Measure to go upstairs, so that questions which are vital to the people of Manchester may be properly investigated and a proper decision given upon them.
  10.10 p.m.
  Mr. THORP: As the Member for Nelson and Colne, I venture to put before the House what my constituency thinks about this Bill. There is, I think, an air of insincerity about this Debate. Apparently, the House is considering, not
  1228
  the merits or demerits of this Bill, but merely tactics of procedure which will enable the Manchester Corporation to be represented in Committee upstairs in their opposition to the Stockport Bill. With regard to the speech of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Norwood (Sir W. Greaves-Lord), the House has long been aware that what Manchester says to-day the rest of the world says to-morrow, but his argument apparently is that what the Manchester City Council says to-day this House ought to say the same evening. I do not think the mere fact that the Manchester City Council has made up its mind, too late, that it wants to take over this property, is any reason why the House should afford it opportunities for standing in the way of the legitimate efforts of Stockport.
  My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Norwood, who is, I believe, Recorder of Manchester, advanced the theory that as Manchester may want this property to-morrow, we ought to prevent Stockport getting it now. One could imagine a dishonest person saying, "I shall want that property to-morrow, therefore I propose to steal it to-day rather than afford anyone else the opportunity of taking it." It is true that Manchester may wish to extend. It would not be right at this juncture for me to attempt to prognosticate whether Manchester will have any need to extend in the future or not but it may happen before very long that Manchester will seek to contract rather than to expand. But I submit that the House itself is absolute on this question. The Committees upstairs merely provide a convenient procedure for the examination of details. Is Manchester afraid of submitting to this House the case that it would put upstairs? I have heard nothing in this Debate which has made out any case whatever with regard to the bona fides of Manchester's contention. As I say it would really appear that Manchester's position is simply this: "We may want this property to-morrow, therefore, nobody else is entitled to have it now." I think the City Corporation of Manchester have quite enough on their hands at this moment with regard to the difficulties in the cotton trade, and that they would be well advised to let Stockport proceed with its Bill and take in this area.
  10.13 p.m.
  Mr. LECKIE: As one not connected in any way with Manchester, I hope I may be pardoned if I barge into what looks very like a private fight. We have had Members from Manchester and district pro and con. on this question, and I hope I may be forgiven for adding a few words as one who is keenly interested in municipal development. One of the speakers to-night has said that there is an increasing tendency to extend the boundaries of our cities and towns. That is so; it is an irresistible tendency, and it would ill become this House to try to stop that tendency. We are living in new times. During the last 25 years motor transport has completely revolutionised our former ideas of what the limits of a town should be. The motor car and the omnibus have opened up the country round about the towns, and it is only right that under these conditions we should permit towns and cities to extend their boundaries in a reasonable way. Until recently nearly everyone lived in the town in which he or she worked, and that was the regular thing, but now everyone who can afford to run even the smallest car or a motor cycle is looking to get out into the country and the fresh air, and we must remember that the wage-earners, the small shopkeepers, and the foremen have as much right to the amenities of living in a country district as the wealthier members of the community. Therefore, I feel that the opposition to this Bill is unwise.
  Most of the arguments against the Bill have been points that could very well be put in Committee—some of them very good points, but Committee points nevertheless—and I hope they will not influence hon. Members at this stage. It would be a great mistake for the House of Commons to stand in the way of progress in municipal development. We do not bind ourselves by giving the Bill a Second Reading in regard to any of the details. All that we do is to send it upstairs for detailed examination, and then, if we are not satisfied when it comes down for Third Reading, we can take such action as we consider best. Debates such as this, it seems to me, are stretching the Rules of the House with regard to Private Bills. Only a week or two ago we spent two hours and more on a similar subject, and to-night we are spending almost a whole evening on what
  1230
  is, after all, a parochial matter; and I do not think a discussion such as this redounds to the credit of the Mother of Parliaments. I hope the House will take a strong action to-night and by a large majority send the Bill upstairs for proper consideration, and so we shall get a considered verdict.
  10.17 p.m.
  Mr. BAILEY: Those of us Manchester Members who oppose this Bill are doing so after the most careful consideration and with a full sense of responsibility. I can only regret that there have not been more Members present to listen to our arguments, so that the vote, when taken, would reflect the merit of the arguments rather than other matters. It may possibly be a reason why this matter got so quickly through the Manchester City Corporation that a great many members of the corporation knew very little indeed about the question until after it had slipped through, and I say that with no disrespect to anyone. If this were a Bill in which there were any merits at all, we should all agree that it ought to go to a Committee for consideration, but it is a Bill which has no merits at all, in my submission, and which, of it is allowed to go up to a Committee, will be an encouragement to persons who ought not to be encouraged to carry on with a policy in regard to housing which has not got the citizens of Manchester behind it and to which as a whole they are opposed.
  The whole case for the corporation was put, and put very well, from the benches where I should expect it to be put well, namely, from the Socialist Benches by the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Rhys Davies). He rejoiced in the Bill, and I can understand anyone with Socialistic leaning rejoicing in it. He twitted us, in passing, with a lack of local patriotism. As a matter of fact, local patriotism is all on the side of rejecting the Bill, because if you are a local patriot, you respect the local patriotism of others, and we who oppose the Bill respect the unanimous local patriotism of the inhabitants of Cheadle and Gatley Then he sought to teach us a lesson in Imperialism. He said it was a habit of Imperialism to extend, and he referred to our Empire. Wherever Imperialism expands, however, it gives self-government. That is what Cheadle and Gatley have got and what

  1231
  they ought not to have taken away, and, in considering which a Committee of the House of Commons ought not to waste its time.
  What is the solid argument against this Bill? The Manchester City Council come forward and say: "We are simply putting this Bill forward as a dummy Bill in order to enable us to spend a great deal of the ratepayers' money to oppose Stockport." If that be their only motive, why did not they ask their Members of Parliament to oppose the Stockport Bill? They were as quiet as mice when that Bill was before the House. If they only wanted to oppose Stockport, why select the most expensive way of going to work and ask for a thing that they do not want because they do not want anybody else to have it? Why could not they have approached their own Members in common courtesy and have asked them to oppose the Stockport Bill? I admit that they would not have selected the present time for bringing forward these demands unless Stockport had done so, because they are unlikely to get them granted. It all rests on the fact that on the Manchester City Council there are a great many squandermaniacs who in no way represent the opinions of the citizens of Manchester who, on the last occasion when the citizens had a chance of judging their proposals, turned them down by a 10 to one vote. The working people of Manchester do not want to be turned from their homes and have to start in many cases in middle age away from where they work and have lived for many years, away from their friends, away from the schools where their children learn, and away from the churches where they worship. It is cruel and brutal, and in the case of Manchester absolutely unnecessary.
  That is why we so strongly oppose this Bill. At Wythenshaw the rents are expensive and people are always appearing in the county court because they cannot pay them; the work is too far away; there are practically no factories about; there are unemployed people who cannot afford to go five or six miles into the city to find work; and a derelict area is being set up seven or eight miles away from the factories to please the grandiose ideas of certain members of the council and the officials of the Ministry of Health, who know nothing whatever about the
  1232
  real interest and the welfare of the people. It is because we who live among them do know that we are opposing this Bill. There is ample scope within the city, whose business is unfortunately contracting, to rehouse adequately in decent conditions the whole of its population. If you took a vote of the wretched people about whose destinies you are arbitrating as to what they want—and if democracy means anything it means that people should have a voice, especially as to where they should live—they would be overwhelmingly on the side of the hon. Member for Hulme (Sir J. Nall) in his fight to prevent them being driven like cattle from the homes in which they have lived all their lives.
  The hon. Member for Westhoughton apparently gave himself and his party on the city council away. They believe in great garden cities and grandiose schemes with back gardens where all the rubbish will be chucked, where people will live away from their work. They will turn a decent residential area into slums—because that it what it will mean—instead of putting up houses nearer the work of the people. We have an extravagant enough council as it is; do not encourage them to be more extravagant. Give to the people what they want—flats near their work. If you do that you will be doing what the democracy in Manchester wants. Therefore, we ask that the House should not allow the time of the Committee to be wasted by long arguments from counsel and long consideration of a Bill which nobody in Manchester desires except the town clerk and certain misguided members of the corporation.
  10.26 p.m.
  The MINISTER OF HEALTH (Sir Hilton Young): I have felt some hesitation during this lively and interesting Debate as to whether it was possible for me to be of assistance to the House. Dangerous as is the situation of him who interferes between husband and wife, the situation of a Minister who interferes between a group of Manchester Members and the Corporation of Manchester on an issue which, as we have seen, so vitally affects the most intimate local circumstances of that city, may be even more dangerous. My duty is to offer the House such observations as I may upon the very unusual Debate which we have had to-night—full of interest but most un-

  1233
  usual; because it is unusual for the House to be asked, on the Second Reading of a Private Bill, to pass judgment upon what is obviously an uncomposed difference between a group of its own Members associated with a city and those responsible for the conduct of that city's local affairs. I am sure the House wishes very much that things might have been otherwise, and that some of the matters discussed with a certain amount of intensity to-night could have been composed in those preliminary stages which sometimes take place; but we are now left to give a decision as a House upon most interesting and in many respects most important matters which have been laid before us.
  In this difficulty, I feel that what I can best do for the assistance of the House is to recall to our memories what I believe all will agree is the ruling principle which always guides the House on occasions of this sort—the consideration on Second Reading of an important Private Bill. I think that ruling principle is to ask ourselves: Is there any important question of public policy which will be decided "yea" or "nay" by passing the Second Reading of the Bill? If that be so, of course we must vote upon the Second Reading with that issue of public policy in our minds, and our votes must be decided accordingly; but if there be no great principle of public policy bound up with the Second Reading, then I think it is our habit, based upon very commonsense reasons, when such interesting matters of detailed controversy are discussed as have been discussed to-night, to say that this House, between the hours of half-past seven and eleven o'clock, has not time enough or evidence enough to arrive at a decision, that procedure by Committee is the right procedure and to refer the merits of the Bill to Committee upstairs.
  I think that the Debate to-night has been rather an illustration of the wisdom of that procedure. I have felt that there was something rather unfortunate in our proceedings. We have heard strictures upon part of the administration of the great City of Manchester, and very able speeches in vindication of that administration have been made by the hon. Members for the Exchange Division (Mr. Fielden) and for the Rusholme Division (Mr. Radford). I am sure that they would be the first to agree with me that it is only the Corporation of Manchester who
  1234
  can adequately reply to the criticisms that we have heard to-night. If the House desires to obtain the full and adequate reply of the Corporation of Manchester, that reply can be obtained only in the procedure before the Committee. I am rather forced to the conclusion that if we reject the Bill and refuse to the Corporation of Manchester the full right of dealing before the Committee with matters that have been advanced in the Debate, we shall not be dealing with the situation quite satisfactorily to ourselves.
  I am trespassing rather further upon the merits of the matter than I intended, but I would like to be allowed to say that I do not at all agree with many of the criticisms that have been advanced, sometimes in terms that I have surprised me, upon the administration of Manchester. I cannot think that the House will consent, by rejecting the Bill, to endorse the proposition of the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Remer) that the corporation of Manchester are a spendthrift body. Such words as those are not likely to be approved by this House. I reject them myself from my own experience of the administration of the city, and I believe that the House will be most reluctant, after such words have been used, to come to a judgment which does not allow the fullest ventilation of any matters that might be advanced in support of such a startling proposition.
  Let me now examine the reasons that have been advanced for the rejection of the Second Reading. I desire, in a most impartial manner, to see whether anything has been advanced by way of such a general consideration of public policy as to make it right for the House to reject the Second Reading. I think that two reasons have been advanced. The first was the criticism by the hon. and gallant Member for Ardwick (Captain Fuller) of the administration of Manchester in respect of slum clearance. No cloud is without its silver lining, and I am most delighted that even a by-product of the Debate should have registered once more the profound interest taken by this House in the active conduct of that work. The hon. and gallant Member for Ardwick quite unintentionally did an injustice to the Corporation of Manchester in some of his observations, because in the facts which he quoted, he was dealing with a period before the initiation of the great effort which is now being undertaken by

  1235
  the corporation to bring the work of slum clearance into accord with what is required by the conditions of the city and by the intentions and the desires of the nation. Since those times to which my hon. and gallant Friend referred, the Corporation of Manchester has made three Orders in respect of the Hulme area for the clearance of slums which will ensure the re-housing of 4,400 persons, and there are nine further Orders under the immediate consideration of the corporation, involving 15,700 persons in 3,600 houses. These areas have been declared since the period to which my hon. and gallant Friend referred, and the whole programme of the Corporation of Manchester for dealing with these slums, as communicated to me and accepted by me, involves the very large effort represented by the clearance of no fewer than 15,000 houses in the course of the five years' duration of the slum clearance programme.
  What other general public grounds have been advanced for the rejection of the Bill? I have followed most carefully the general public grounds put forward in the arguments against the Bill, in order to form my own judgment as to whether or not we were on grounds here which made it necessary to vote against the Second Reading, and in order to enable me to correct the general purport of the observations which I am now offering to the House. The second general ground which I have found in the arguments directed towards the rejection of the Bill has been that, as regards the matter of re-housing in Manchester, the corporation has not been sufficiently active in providing accommodation for the slum dwellers and others dispossessed on the site or in the neighbourhood of their original homes, and that it has followed a wrong policy in providing too much of its alternative accommodation at a distance from their original homes. Let us remember, again, that the House has not heard the technical evidence on this subject which it would desire to hear from those who are best acquainted with the conditions of Manchester. We have had extremely able speeches for the prosecution, but we have not yet heard the evidence for the defence.
  Mr. FLEMING: There is none.
  Sir H. YOUNG: My hon. and learned Friend says that there is no evidence, but it would be a very curious proceeding in a court of law if counsel for the prosecution were allowed to forbid the defendant to call his witnesses. My hon. and learned Friend is much better acquainted with legal procedure than I am, but I am sure he will realise the force of my observation. Apart from the fact that the House has only heard one side of the case, I should like, if I may strike a personal note, to mention an impression that has been made upon me. We have had raised one of the most interesting, important and vital of the practical factors which underlie the whole housing problem of the country, namely, the question whether there shall be re-housing on the site or re-housing on the circumference, and what proportion should be kept between the two. That is a problem with which one lives day by day in the march forward in the provision of alternative accommodation to reduce slum clearance and overcrowding.
  I know that there are some very special conditions in Manchester. I do not know enough about the situation to pass judgment upon the able arguments produced by Members who have urged their objections to the Bill on this basis, but I know that there is a most powerful case to be made upon that, and that the House, before passing judgment upon it, ought to hear the case that is made by the Corporation of Manchester. Hear the other side before you make up your mind.
  I have been led a little aside from what I think is the relevant consideration. After all, if you take such questions of overwhelming interest as that of an adequate slum programme and that of policy as between re-housing on the site and re-housing elsewhere, what have those two questions to do with the decision on the Second Reading of the Bill? You are not deciding them by accepting or rejecting this Bill. It involves totally different issues. When we come down to earth, we realise that it only involves the question of the propriety and the desirability of the extension of the boundaries of one city or another over the adjacent areas. I listened with the closest attention to the speech of the hon. Member for Blackley (Mr. Lees-Jones), who opened the case against the Bill, and who is, no

  1237
  doubt, looked upon by the House as representing the bedrock case against it. I followed his argument with the greatest interest. I thought to the onlooker it was full of force and most relevant, but he was arguing on such grounds as these that, when Manchester says the services as regards gas, sewage, electricity and transport ought to be extended from Manchester to Gatley, there are good, practical, local reasons to those who know all the circumstances. I said to myself, "I really cannot imagine an issue more characteristic of the sort of issue which ought to be left to a Committee to decide and which it is difficult for the House to decide. When we come down to the question of the merits of the Bill, may we not look at it a little from the outside and say to ourselves: "Here is precisely the sort of issue which this House has found so much difficulty in the past in adequately dealing with in the course of a Second Reading Debate that it has invented the Committee procedure to assist it in its deliberations?" I do not know if hon. Members are able to make up their minds on the rights and wrongs of a rating question by listening to a single speech, but I know that I should not be able to do so. We should probably all require to be allowed to cross-examine and ask questions before we could make up our minds.
  My final observation, if I can be of any assistance to the House in deciding this question, would be this. We are confronted here with a decision as between Stockport and Manchester as to which should extend its boundaries over the area of Cheadle and Gatley. Apart from these interesting questions to which I have referred, there is the question that merits consideration of the local circumstances, the local services, the burden of local rates, and so on. This House has already passed the Second Reading of the Stockport Bill and sent it up to a Committee. If we now rejected the Manchester Bill and refused the Committee the opportunity of hearing the case of Manchester against the case of Stockport, we should be producing a rather ridiculous position. My hon. and learned Friends who took part in the Debate will realise that we are, unlike a court of law, hearing the case of the prosecution but denying the de-
  1238
  fendants a right to present the case on their side of the action. It is really an issue between the two, and I am inclined to think that, having sent the Stockport Bill to Committee, in justice to our own Committee and in order to enable them to perform the functions placed upon them, we ought to let the case for Manchester go forward also.
  Regarding the wider issues which have been raised to-night, I would only say that I believe that an injustice, unintentionally, was done to the slum clearance effort of the city of Manchester in ignoring the intense effort which they have made in the last nine months. But the wider issues will not be decided by the Bill. These issues and particularly the issue between central re-housing and re-housing on the circumference, are questions of policy in which there are important local conditions which we ought to take into account. Personally, I am confident that the House will agree with me, and that they will not approve of any harsh strictures upon the conduct of the services of the Government of a great city when those strictures are based upon statements to which the party accused had no chance of making the full and adequate reply which it ought to have an opportunity of making.
  10.47 p.m.
  Sir J. NALL: I would like to say, and I am sure my hon. Friends will agree with me, that we fully appreciate, and, in general, entirely agree with the general sentiments and principles which the Minister has just stated. It has been said in the course of this Debate that we were taking up the time of the House with a purely parochial matter—a sort of family quarrel—which ought to be settled upstairs. I venture to say that we have achieved much more than that, and the speech of the Minister has shown, if nothing else has shown, that we have raised, and purposely intended to raise, matters of first-class importance affecting the policy all over the country in this matter of re-housing the people.
  The one point in the speech of my right hon. Friend with which I personally do not agree was that in which he said that Manchester has made tremendous efforts towards slum clearance. My view is—and a great many people in Manchester hold the same view—that all schemes for slum clearance are bound to break down unless

  1239
  the question of re-housing on the site or in the immediate locality is tackled on a proper basis. That is the great complaint we have against our city council, and it is on that aspect of the matter, that these proposals for slum clearance will inflict grievous hardship not only on the 4,400 people to whom my hon. Friend referred, but on many more thousands of people under the further schemes now under consideration, simply because a predominating majority of those people desire and have expressed their desire for re-housing in the locality to which they belong. It is the one fundamental point in the speech of my right hon. Friend with which I entirely disagree. Even the medical officer of health has admitted in public that when 200 houses were cleared in 1923 in a similar locality, not 25 per cent. of the people concerned availed themselves of the alternative accommodation in the housing estate which at that time was not as far away as the alternative accommodation which is being proposed in these present schemes.
  I would mention one or two other matters to which I think we should reply. The hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Rhys Davies) dealt vigorously with what he said, or implied, was a sort of property-owners' stunt. Our agitation on this matter of re-housing has nothing whatever to do with the property-owners' case. There is a property-owners' case which can be very strongly stated at the proper time, but that relates to the general law of the Housing Acts and has nothing to do with this Bill or with our attitude towards it. If my hon. Friend—if I may call him so—wants some authority to indicate that this matter of clearance schemes is neither a property-owners' stunt nor a political stunt, may I quote to him the words of a former hon. Member for the Gorton Division of Manchester, Mr. Compton, who two years ago, on 28th January, 1932, was good enough to come and speak in my Division, on the same platform as myself, on this very question, and who was reported as saying:
  "The futility of slum clearance, if it means taking displaced people to housing estates miles away from their work, was stressed by Mr. Compton, who suggested the building of light, airy tenements on the Continental plan."
  1240
  The hon. Member for Westhoughton at least will not question these words, reported in the "Daily Herald," a paper which he will regard as his political Bible, of a man who takes the same stand and says practically the same thing that we have been saying for the last three years on the matter of re-housing in Manchester. Perhaps he will appreciate that this is neither a property-owners' nor a Tory party stunt.
  Mr. RHYS DAVIES: Will the hon. Member tell the House how it is possible to re-house the people on the site in view, when the corporation is called upon to pay £9,000 per acre for the land?
  Sir J. NALL: That is the next point with which I have to deal. I am not fully acquainted with the negotiations that have gone on about the land, but I know that nothing like £9,000 has been asked for. The last I heard of it some weeks ago was that they were asking something like £5,000, to which were being added queer figures for the removal of gas-pipes, cables, drains and sewers which I suppose made up the aggregate about which the hon. Member was talking. As I say, I am not aware of the progress of the negotiations and do not know to what stage they have reached, but my recollection, on the last information I have, is that something like £5,000 is being asked for these sites. But whether that is right or not, the hon. Member did not say, and no one stating the corporation case has said, that there is ample provision in local law and general law for the compulsory acquisition of these sites. That is the whole trouble and the whole problem in this matter. They have drawn up an elaborate scheme for dealing with it—the Collyhurst scheme, but there is no kind of certainty that they will proceed with it.
  I have said enough to show that the hon. Member for Westhoughton has been very badly misinformed on the question of re-housing on those sites. On the main question of this Bill, whether the city of Manchester should be extended into these councils' areas, I wish the House to observe that it is a matter of public policy. In days when the decentralisation of industry and of population is to be desired on every ground of social amenity and local economy, it cannot be right to go on extending the great urban areas. A halt must be called in that

  1241
  that extension. We have it in its worst form in the Wythenshaw Estate. In that case, having arranged to dump a large body of population at the far end of the estate, seven miles from the main part of Manchester, the corporation are now proceeding to subsidise local industry in order to find the people some work to do, because they know they cannot afford to travel to their work.
  As soon as it is realised that it is a locality for industry, industrial organisers who want factory spaces need not go to the corporation for subsidies within the city, because they can get land far cheaper in the further part of Cheshire, with rates less than half the city rates—I mean the rural parts of Cheshire—and call upon that great reservoir of labour which Manchester will have dumped on the edge of the city, subsidised by the rates of the city. Can economic madness go further in crazy ideas of development? Let us have garden cities of the Letchworth and Welwyn type, by all means, but are the ratepayers of Poplar, Stepney and Shoreditch asked to subsidise the development of Welwyn or Letchworth? The thing is perfectly impossible. If this kind of clearance goes on, and if the old rateable—revenues for the old urban areas are abolished, who is ultimately to pay the bill for the exterior development of the fringe of the urban areas?
  One thing that has astonished me more than any other in this Debate is that my hon. and learned Friend who holds the office of Recorder of Manchester should have seen fit to come to this House, holding the office that he does, and say that my friends and myself, by our action in raising a matter of first-class public importance in this way, give him cause to distrust our consistency as Members of this House. I am entitled to say that his action gives me cause to distrust his impartiality as a judge.
  Sir W. GREAVES-LORD: What I said was, that those who have always preached what I think is a right doctrine, that a Second Reading should be given to Private Bills, should not turn round and take the other view on a matter of this kind.
  Sir J. NALL: While I accept that correction by the hon. and learned Member, it does not alter the fact that, hold-
  1242
  ing a judicial office within the city, he has gone out of his way, he alone of all the hon. Members who have spoken against us, to use terms which were at least discourteous. I can only say that my friends and myself in raising this question as we have done desire to draw the attention of the House and the Government to the acute feeling which exists in our city on this matter, and having done so we are perfectly content to allow the Bill to take its normal course.
  Question, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question," put, and agreed to.
  Bill read a Second time, and committed.

MENTAL DEFICIENCY.
Postponed Proceeding resumed on Question,
"That this House considers that the facts set out in the report of the Departmental Committee on Sterilisation indicate a state of affairs calling for action, and respectfully requests His Majesty's Government to give immediate consideration to the unanimous recommendation of the committee in favour of legislation permitting voluntary sterilisation in certain classes of cases."—[Mr. Molson.]
10.59 p.m.
Wing-Commander JAMES: I think there is clear evidence that public feeling is in favour of a permissive Bill on this subject being passed into law. A study of the Press reports for the last few weeks gives a very clear indication of the interest taken in this subject in the country. It does not matter what Press you take, lay or medical, Conservative, Liberal or Socialist, you find that the leading articles on the report have been universally favourable.
It being Eleven of the Clock, the Debate stood adjourned.
The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

MENTAL DEFICIENCY.

  ADJOURNMENT.
  Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Captain Margesson.]
  Adjourned accordingly at Eleven o'Clock.

TRANSPORT.
  ROAD BRIDGES.
  ROAD BRIDGES.
  MOTOR CAR MUDGUARDS.
  MOTOR CAR MUDGUARDS.
  SUBWAY, ENFIELD.
  SUBWAY, ENFIELD.
NATIONAL FINANCE.
  OIL DUTY.
  OIL DUTY.
  WAR LOAN CONVERSION.
  WAR LOAN CONVERSION.
  FORTIFIED WINE (DUTY).
  FORTIFIED WINE (DUTY).
  IMPORT DUTIES ACT, 1932 (REVENUE).
  IMPORT DUTIES ACT, 1932 (REVENUE).
TRADE AND COMMERCE.
  CHILE.
  CHILE.
  TIN PRODUCTION, FRENCH INDO-CHINA.
  TIN PRODUCTION, FRENCH INDO-CHINA.
  COAL INDUSTRY (OIL EXTRACTION).
  COAL INDUSTRY (OIL EXTRACTION).
  BRITISH SUBJECTS, COLONIES (REPATRIATION).
  BRITISH SUBJECTS, COLONIES (REPATRIATION).
  UNEMPLOYMENT (BENEFIT).
  UNEMPLOYMENT (BENEFIT).