Sitting of 23 July 1935

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

NATIONALITY OF WOMEN (EQUALITY OF RIGHTS).
Mrs. TATE: I beg to present a petition signed by 136 women representing 100 women's societies in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Bermuda, and Ceylon. The petition is based, first, on the fact that at Geneva in 1931 the British Government declared through its delegate, Dame Edith Lyttleton, that the British Government considered it right that all disabilities of married women in matters of nationality should be removed, and that in so far as nationality is concerned a married woman should be in the same position as a man, married or unmarried, or any single woman. Secondly, that the above declared policy is a just and right reform, and, thirdly, that four of the Dominions, by statement or action, have shown that they are not opposed to such reform. But the absence of any statement by the British Government that it is willing to give legal effect to the above declaration of policy is a difficulty in the way of the general adoption of this reform throughout the Dominions.
"Therefore, your petitioners pray the House of Commons to ask the British Government immediately to declare that it is willing to have legal effect given immediately to the above quoted declaration of policy, and to take all possible steps to secure the early passage of such legislation so that a woman, married or unmarried, shall have the same right as a man to enjoy independent nationality in her own person, and the same right to retain or change her nationality.
And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, etc."

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Boston Corporation Bill [Lords] (King's Consent signified),
Bill read the Third time, and passed, with Amendments.
Gelligaer Urban District Council Bill [Lords],
Port of London Bill [Lords],
Stoke-on-Trent Corporation Bill [Lords],
As amended, considered; to be read the Third time.

COLONIAL STOCK ACTS, 1877 TO 1934.
Copy ordered
"of Treasury List of Stocks in respect of which the provisions of the Colonial Stock Act, 1900, are for the time being complied with."—[Mr. Groper.]

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
  SCOTLAND.

    GENERAL BOARD OF CONTROL (MEDICAL OFFICERS' SALARIES).
    Mr. GUYasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether the salaries of the medical officers employed in the General Board of Control for Scotland are fixed irrespective of sex?
    The SECRETARY of STATE, for SCOTLAND (Sir Godfrey Collins): The answer is in the affirmative, with the qualification that the present woman deputy commissioner retains a personal salary until her appointment as commissioner takes effect in October next.

    MARR COLLEGE, TROON.
    Lieut.-Colonel MOOREasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether there is any likelihood that the Marr College, Troon, will be opened at an early date?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY Of STATE for SCOTLAND (MR. Skelton): Yes, Sir. I am informed that all arrangements have been completed for opening the College on the 2nd September, 1935.
    Lieut.-Colonel MOORE: Is my hon. Friend aware of the gratitude that exists in the West of Scotland over the continuous efforts that my hon. Friend and the Secretary of State for Scotland have made to bring this unhappy dispute to such a happy conclusion?
    Mr. SKELTON: I am obliged to my hon. and gallant Friend.

    EDUCATION.
    Miss HORSBRUGHasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he has been successful in securing the earlier issue of results of the leaving certificate examination which he had in view?
    Mr. SKELTON: My right hon. Friend has secured that the intimation of the results of the leaving certificate examination was completed some six weeks earlier than has hitherto been possible. The lists of successful candidates were issued to all schools on 13th June and the results in individual subjects on the following day.
    Miss HORSBRUGHasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what questions have been recently under the consideration of the advisory council set up under Section 20 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1918?
    Mr. SKELTON: The Advisory Council have at present under their consideration the following remit:
    "To consider the position of technical education in the day school system of Scotland and to advise as to developments which may be desirable in order to establish a closer relation between day school work and the industries requiring technical knowledge and ability."
    This inquiry is of the greatest importance both from the educational and from the industrial point of view. A report on a previous inquiry, namely, as to the training of the woman primary school teacher, has recently been published and has aroused considerable interest in educational circles.

    PUBLIC ASSISTANCE, GREENOCK (INQUIRY).
    Mr. MAXTONasked the Secretary of State for Scotland at whose instance the inquiry was held into the alleged excessive expenditure on public assistance by the burgh of Greenock; what were the findings; what was the cost of the inquiry; and by whom this cost falls to be defrayed?
    Sir G. COLLINS: Certain payments made by the corporation of Greenock formed the subject of an interim report by the auditor. It was my duty under statute to decide all questions raised by the interim report after such inquiry as I might think fit. With that object the Sheriff of Argyll was appointed by me to conduct a local inquiry into the matter. After careful consideration of the
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    Sheriff's report and after consultation with the Lord Advocate I issued my finding that the payments in question were not illegal. The costs incurred in relation to the inquiry amounted to £360 2s. 6d. and, in terms of statute, fall to be paid by the corporation.
    Mr. MAXTON: Will the right hon. Gentleman direct me to the particular Statute which imposes this injustice, that an inquiry ordered by him should be paid for by a council which is completely innocent of the charge of which he suspected them?
    Sir G. COLLINS: Section 93 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1889, provides that the expenses incurred in relation to such an inquiry fall to be paid by the corporation. If there have been any other Statutes on the point, I will communicate them to the hon. Member.
    Mr. MAXTON: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider whether some course is not open by which this corporation can be relieved of this unfair and heavy expenditure?
    Sir G. COLLINS: I am afraid that the Statute very clearly lays it down that under the terms of the Statute the sum must be paid by the corporation.
    Mr. NEIL MACLEAN: Does the right hon. Gentleman not consider it unfair to this corporation that the auditor should insist upon an audit being taken and the Secretary of State should order an inquiry to be conducted, and that after the corporation have been found innocent of the charges they should be asked to pay for the inquiry?
    Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is putting the same question over again.

  COAL INDUSTRY.

    TRADE AGREEMENTS.
    Mr. HENDERSON STEWARTasked the Secretary for Mines what has been the effect on the coal trade in the East of Scotland in terms of increased men employed, wages paid, coal exported and sold at home, of the various trade agreements made by the present Government; and whether he can supply similar figures for the county of Fife?
    The SECRETARY for MINES (Captain Crookshank): As the answer is long and contains a number of figures, I will, with my hon. Friend's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Mr. STEWART: Is the Minister not able to give the House a general idea whether a large increase has taken place?
    Captain CROOKSHANK: Yes, a very large increase has taken place. The increase in tonnage represents the working of approximately 1,280,000 additional man shifts. On the basis of the average earning per shift, it represents for Scotland as a whole in 1934 £560,000 in wages.
    Following is the answer:
    Coal exports from Scottish East Coast Ports to the countries with which trade agreements have been concluded making special provision for coal, namely, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Argentina, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Germany and France were 3,505,686 tons in 1934 as compared with 1,912,246 tons in 1931, an increase of 1,593,440 tons. This increase in tonnage represents the working of approximately 1,280,000 additional manshifts, and on the basis of average earnings per shift in Scotland as a whole in 1934, about £560,000 in wages. Similar information in regard to the County of Fife is not available and I am unable to give any estimate of the effect of the trade agreements on coal sold at home.

    GATEWAYS.
    Mr. TINKERasked the Secretary for Mines whether his attention has been called to the increasing lengths of coal faces that are machine holed and cut; and, in view of the distance between the outlets or gateways, whether he will consider laying down a maximum distance between the gateways so as to ensure a reasonable prospect of the workers on the coal face getting to safety should danger arise through the roof breaking down?
    Captain CROOKSHANK: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which my predecssor gave him in answer to a similar question on 2nd April last.
    Mr. TINKER: I would like the Minister to take an interest in this matter. Is he aware that there has been an alteration of from about 25 yards to about 300 yards apart? Will he in his new policy pay attention to this matter
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    and try to get a maximum distance fixed by law?
    Mr. PALING: In view of the enormous distances now under machine mining as compared with the old hand mining, is it not time to make an inquiry so as to lay down any new regulations that may be necessary for this kind of work?
    Captain CROOKSHANK: All that is dealt with in the reply to which I have referred. The Secretary for Mines may change, but the facts do not change.

    QUOTAS AND DISTRICT PRICES.
    Miss WARDasked the Secretary for Mines when the report on the working of the separation of quotas and the co-ordination of district prices will be available?
    Captain CROOKSHANK: The 1930 Act calls only for an annual report, but as important changes in the working of the schemes took place at the beginning of the year, I propose to publish an additional report dealing with the period 1st January to 31st March last. I hope that it will be available in about a fortnight.

    AMALGAMATIONS, LANCASHIRE.
    Mr. TINKERasked the Secretary for Mines how many colliery companies in Lancashire have amalgamated since 1931, the names of the two largest companies at present and the number of employés they have, and the total number of mineworkers in Lancashire?
    Captain CROOKSHANK: Since the end of 1931, seven colliery companies in Lancashire have amalgamated with or been absorbed by other companies. The two largest companies at present operating in Lancashire are the Manchester Collieries, Limited, employing 14,814 wage-earners, and the Wigan Coal Corporation, Limited, employing 9,930 wage-earners. The total number of wage-earners on colliery books in Lancashire for the week ended 13th July, 1935, was 59,641.
    Mr. TINKER: Is the hon. and gallant Member aware that these amalgamations cause a number of men to be thrown out of employment, generally the older men? Is his Department taking any steps to give compensation to the men who are thrown out of work because of amalgamations?
    Mr. PIKE: Is it not the fact that these amalgamations have created greater efficiency in production and distribution?

  TRADE AND COMMERCE.

    ANGLO-RUSSIAN AGREEMENT.
    Sir WILLIAM DAVISONasked the President of the Board of Trade the total imports from Russia into Great Britain since the signing of the temporary trade agreement; and what are the total exports of United Kingdom goods to Russia during the same period?
    The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Runciman): The temporary commercial agreement with the Soviet Union, although signed on 16th February, 1934, took effect from the 1st January, 1934. During the year 1934 the total declared value of merchandise imported into the United Kingdom and consigned from the Soviet Union amounted to £17,277,000 and of exports of United Kingdom goods consigned to the Soviet Union to £3,657,000. The corresponding figures for January to May, 1935, were £4,389,000 for imports and £1,410,000 for exports of United Kingdom goods. It should be borne in mind that the Agreement provides for certain prescribed balances of payments during calendar years and is not, therefore, confined to merchandise only. Re-exports from the United Kingdom to the Soviet Union are taken into account. The ratio of Russian payments to proceeds for 1934 was 1: 1.05, as against the ratio of 1: 1.7 prescribed in the agreement.
    Sir W. DAVISON: Having regard to the large discrepancy between the figures 1.7 and 1.1 and £12,000,000 and £3,000,000, can the right hon. Gentleman say the amount of the re-exports of primary products which pass through this country in order to arrive at the 1.7 to 1 percentage?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: It is not only the re-exports that are included in this total, but certain prescribed balances of payments which cover a very wide field. If the hon. Member would like the re-exports given separately, I shall be glad to consider what can be done.
    Sir HERBERT SAMUEL: Can my right hon. Friend say whether the agreement is working out according to expectations?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: So far, it has worked out rather better.

    SHIPPING INDUSTRY (ASSISTANCE).
    Miss WARDasked the President of the Board of Trade whether, for the purpose of obtaining assistance under the Government's tramp shipping scheme, the definition of operative applies to the National Maritime Board's decision to require three officers in the personnel of vessels over a specified tonnage?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: Yes, Sir. The doubt as to this agreement has been cleared up and in future claimants for subsidy must satisfy the Tramp Shipping Subsidy Committee that they have complied with the agreement in respect of the voyages for which subsidy is claimed.

    AEROPLANES AND ENGINES (EXPORTS).
    Mr. PALINGasked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the export of 408 complete aeroplanes and 583 aeroplane engines during the 12 months ended May, 1935, he will take steps to ascertain the types of such exports, distinguishing particularly between aeroplanes for military and civil purposes?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: Aircraft are not usually fitted with armaments at the time of their export, and I am advised that it is, in many cases, not possible to determine at that time whether any particular aircraft is intended for military or for civil employment.
    Mr. PALING: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in many cases it is an easy matter to distinguish them, and, in view of the position in which we find ourselves at the present moment, does he not think it is rather important that we should know to what purposes these aircraft which are exported are going to be put?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: No doubt some of the aircraft exported for civil purposes may be put to military purposes, but, as far as we know, when they are going out from this country, they are going to be put to civil purposes.
    Mr. PALING: In view of the situation which has now arisen in regard to aircraft and the military use to which they are put, may I ask whether the President will, in future, take steps to ascertain what types of aircraft are exported?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: No, Sir, it is impossible to tell, on export, to what use these aeroplanes will be put.
    Mr. COCKS: Will you then stop the exportation of all of them?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: No.
    Mr. PALINGasked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the statement of the Secretary of the Air Ministry, in his evidence before the Committee of Public Accounts, to the effect that it is quite conceivable we shall require the whole maximum possible output of all the firms in the aircraft industry to-day, he is prepared to prohibit the exportation of aeroplanes and aeroplane engines?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: The answer is in the negative.
    Mr. PALINGasked the President of the Board of Trade whether any of the 408 complete aeroplanes exported during the 12 months ended May, 1935, carried armaments; and whether any licences were issued during that time for the export of armaments used for aerial warfare, including bombs, and, if so, what was the amount exported?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: The information asked for in the first and third parts of the question is not available. In reply to the second part, I am circulating with the OFFICIAL REPORT a statement showing particulars of the aircraft armament, including bombs, for which export licences were issued during the year ended 31st May, 1935.
    Following is the statement:
    STATEMENT showing armament used for aerial warfare, including bombs, covered by export licences issued during the period 1st June, 1934, to 31 st May, 1935.
    Material.

    6 .303″ machine guns.

    1 .303″ machine gun.

    1 12.7 m.m. machine gun.

    100 8 m.m. machine guns.

    2 7.65 m.m. machine guns.

    100 8 lb. practice bombs.

    1 7.92 m.m. machine gun.

    1 set interrupter gear.

    12 .5″ machine guns.

    3,000 Prideaux links.

    1 lock for .303″ machine gun.

    24 extractors for .303″ machine guns.

    2 7.9 m.m. machine guns with two spare barrels.

    45 12½ Kg. bombs.

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    152 medium bomb carriers.

    1 .303″ machine gun.

    2 gun cameras.

    5 sets interrupter gear.

    10 sets armament fittings for aircraft.

    1 muzzle attachment sleeve for machine gun.

    12 sets interrupter gear.

    Spare parts for interrupter gear.

    4 .303″ machine guns with spare parts.

    Spare parts for machine guns.

    1 empty 8 lb. smoke practice bomb.

    1 aircraft gun mounting.

    3 7.7 m.m. machine guns.

    1 gun mounting ring.

    10 magazines.

    1 synchroniser.

    3,000 links.

    1 light bomb carrier.

    2 tripods for 7.9 m.m. machine guns.

    Bomb release gear.

    46 7.65 m.m. machine guns.

    2 7.65 m.m. machine guns.

    4 bomb carriers.

    2,000 7.65 m.m. Prideaux links.

    2 link loading machines.

    3 empty 8 lb. smoke practice bombs, fitted with detonators.

    1 .303″ machine gun.

    36 7.7 m.m. machine guns.

    1,000 7.9 m.m. Prideaux links.

    1 front cover for 7.9 m.m. machine gun.

    6 feed boxes for 7 m.m. machine guns.

    15 7.7 m.m. machine guns with ring and bead sights, and gun heaters.

    200 electrically fired cartridges for use with bomb release gear.

    34 machine gun mountings.

    34 cartridge cases.

    75 7.7 m.m. machine guns.

    2 7.7 m.m. machine guns.

    1 set armament fittings for aircraft.

    4 .303″ machine guns.

    28 7.7 m.m. machine guns.

    28 gun mounting rings.

    3 aircraft gun mountings.

    1 7.7 m.m. machine gun.

    4 machine gun mountings.

    4 sets interrupter gear.

    90 7.7 m.m. machine guns.

    2 7.65 m.m. machine guns.

    1 set interrupter gear.

    2 machine gun mountings.

    1 Wimperis bomb sight.

    4 bomb carriers.

    1 set 4/20 light bomb carriers.

    1 mounting for bomb sight.

    48 bomb carriers.

    1 set armament fittings for aircraft.

    Spare parts for 7.65 m.m. machine gun.

    4 machine gun mountings.

    2 sets interrupter gear.

    2 mountings for bomb sights.

    2 light bomb carriers.

    7 Wimperis bomb sights.

    20 empty 8 lb. practice bombs with detonators.

    1 gun mounting ring.

    3 4/20 light bomb carriers.

    52 torpedo release slips complete with cables.

    4 generators complete with pipe lines for interrupter gear.

    2 7.65 m.m. machine guns.

    76] Prideaux links for 8 m.m. machine guns.

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    4 sets of pipe lines and of generators for interrupter gear.

    10 sets interrupter gear.

    1,000 baby smoke bombs.

    10 baby smoke bomb containers.

    8 machine gun mountings.

    4 mountings for Wimperis bomb sights.

    4 sets interrupter gear.

    1 machine gun mounting.

    1 aerial and ground sight.

    30 machine gun mountings.

    10 sets interrupter gear.

    4 .303″ machine guns.

    22 sets interrupter gear.

    10,000 Prideaux links for 7.9 m.m. machine guns.

    50 25 Kg. G.P./H.E. bombs.

    400 baby incendiary bombs.

    400 smoke bombs.

    6 bomb containers.

    20 sets armament fittings for aircraft.

    2 7.7 m.m. machine guns.

    2 7.0 m.m. machine guns with spare barrels and drum magazines.

    25 1.8″ aldis sights.

    2 flash eliminators for machine guns.

    30 7.7 m.m. machine guns.

    8 machine gun mountings.

    1 machine gun mounting.

    6 machine gun mountings.

    2 sets interrupter gear.

    2 mountings for bomb sights.

    12 left hand feed boxes for ·5″ machine guns.

    8 7.5 m.m. machine gun barrels.

    25 baby incendiary bombs.

    1 trigger motor for .5″ machine guns.

    20,000 baby incendiary bombs.

    15 light bomb carriers fitted with mechanical release gear.

    10 bomb carriers fitted with mechanical release gear.

    15 light bomb carriers.

    10 bomb carriers.

    Bomb release gear.

    Aircraft armament comprising ammunition box, link chute, cartridge case chute and collector box.

    1 front cover for .5″ machine gun.

    175 7.7 m.m. machine guns.

    2 light bomb carriers.

    4 bomb carriers.

    1 bomb carrier for 6.5 kg. bomb complete with electrical release gear.

    4 7.5 m.m. machine guns.

    4 7.5 m.m. machine guns.

    20 7.92 m.m. machine guns.

    4 single and 8 twin machine gun mounting rings.

    100 8 lb. practice bombs with detonators.

    200 electrically fired cartridges for use with bomb release gear.

    Spare parts for machine guns.

    Mr. COCKSasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he can state how many ignition screens for aero-engines have been exported to Germany in the six months ended 30th June, 1935?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: I regret that the desired information is not available, as exports of ignition screens for aero-
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    engines are not recorded separately in the United Kingdom trade returns.
    Mr. COCKS: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that as many ignition screens as are required to equip 3,000 German aeroplanes have been sent from this country by one firm alone in the last six months? Will you stop that export?
    Mr. RUNCIMAN: No.
    Mr. COCKS: Does that mean that the right hon. Gentleman prefers profits to patriotism? If he goes on like that, he is acting like a traitor.
    Mr. SPEAKER: I think that finishes the question.

  BRITISH ARMY (EDUCATIONAL CORPS).
  Mr. OSWALD LEWISasked the Financial Secretary to the War Office when he hopes to be in a position to announce the decision of the Army Council with regard to the promotion situation in the Army Educational Corps, which was the subject of a committee of inquiry appointed nearly two years ago who issued their report as long ago as last March?
  The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Mr. Douglas Hacking): I am now in a position to make a statement. It has been found impossible to effect any marked improvement in the flow of promotion of officers in the Army Educational Corps without undue expenditure of money. The block which exists in promotion to Major and above is largely due to the fact that there are many officers in the corps considerably younger than their juniors, and it is impossible to rectify this irregular age distribution by the method of inviting officers to retire on special terms. The position is fundamentally different from that which existed in the infantry and the royal artillery where the block in promotion was largely the result of the abnormal numbers of officers given commissions during the War at much the same age. The prospects of the officers in the corps were much improved in 1931, when time promotion to captain was introduced, and the promotion position will be alleviated now to a certain extent by an increase of two which is being made in the establishment of majors.
  Mr. LEWIS: If the Financial Secretary to the War Office is not prepared to do anything more for these unfortunate officers will he publish the report of the Committee of Inquiry?
  Mr. HACKING: No. The Committee of Inquiry was a private inquiry and the report was made to the Secretary of State.

  UNEMPLOYMENT ASSISTANCE.
  Mr. BAILEYasked the Minister of Labour whether he will make representations to the Unemployment Board as to the undesirability of their continuing to make reductions in certain cases in the amount of unemployment assistance being paid to parents whose children are in receipt of free school meals?
  Mr. CHORLTONasked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that a deduction is made in certain districts from the unemployment allowance to parents if the children receive school meals; and what steps he proposes to take in the matter?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of LABOUR (Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead): The Board's practice in this matter was summarised in a reply which I gave to the hon. Member for Wavertree (Mr. Cleary) on 3rd July, of which I am sending copies to my hon. Friends. My right hon. Friend is informed by the Board that they are at present considering, in consultation with the Board of Education, whether any modification of their practice is necessary.
  Mr. BAILEY: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that this exemption is only given where there is malnutrition, and that only a fortnight ago the Government said that they were considering this matter. Can the hon. and gallant Member say whether we shall have an answer in time to give an opportunity of raising this matter in Parliament before the Recess if the answer is not satisfactory?
  Lieut.-Colonel MUIRHEAD: I cannot give any undertaking, but I can say that the matter is being considered as was promised, and is being considered as expeditiously as possible by the two parties principly concerned, the Unemployment Assistance Board and the Board of Education, who are in consultation.
  Mr. CLEARY: Is the hon. and gallant Member's Department holding an inquiry into this question?
  Lieut.-Colonel MUIRHEAD: We are considering it, but we await the result of the consultation between the Unemployment Assistance Board and the Board of Education, who are the two parties principally concerned.
  Sir PERCY HARRIS: Does the hon. and gallant Member realise the urgency of this matter, because children may be suffering because of delay in coming to a decision?
  Mr. BUCHANAN: Is it not the case that in districts where it was the practice of the Poor Law authorities to grant this exemption to children the children are receiving it, whereas in other districts where it was not the practice they are not receiving this exemption. Will the hon. and gallant Member take steps to see that by the end of the summer holidays when the schools resume all children will be placed on an equal footing and will be granted an exemption in this matter?
  Lieut.-Colonel MUIRHEAD: The Department, as I have said, is considering the matter in all its aspects, and we propose to pursue the question. I will see that the suggestion of the hon. Member is taken into consideration.
  Mr. GEORGE GRIFFITHS: Is it not the fact that the hon. Member who has put down this question voted in the lobby against us?
  Mr. BAILEY: I beg to give notice that, owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the answer, I shall raise this matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible moment.

  ROYAL AIR FORCE (COMMISSIONS).
  Mr. MANDERasked the Secretary of State for Air whether he will consider the advisability in connection with the present Royal Air Force expansion, of granting in appropriate cases permanent commissions to Royal Air Force officers who served in the War and now hold temporary commissions?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for AIR (Sir Philip Sassoon): I assume the hon. Member refers to a limited class of officers who were promoted from warrant rank on the establishment of the

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  Royal Air Force in 1918 and are still serving. The expansion arrangements include the extension of the service of selected officers of this class to age 55 under improved conditions as regards retired pay. They are in effect already "permanent" in the sense that they are pensionable.

  TRANS-ATLANTIC AIR SERVICE.
  Mr. HALESasked the Secretary of State for Air what progress has been made in the proposed trans-Atlantic air service; and whether he has secured suitable sea bases in Iceland and Greenland with a view to the use of the northern route?
  Sir P. SASSOON: I regret that I can as yet add nothing to the reply given to my hon. Friend the Member for Norwood (Mr. Sandys) on 3rd July.

  ROYAL NAVY (REVIEW).
  Mr. MANDERasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he has any statement to make with reference to the breakdown of the catering arrangements on His Majesty's Hospital Ship "Maine," on the occasion of the Royal Naval Review?
  The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Sir Bolton Eyres Monsell): I took the first opportunity of making what reparation lay in my power by writing to each of our guests, and I feel sure that the House would prefer to hear no more of the matter.
  Captain GUNSTON: Is my right hon. Friend aware that very many guests on the "Maine" very much regret the publicity given to this matter and the action of the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander) in putting this question on the Order Paper?
  Mr. HANNON: Would it not have been better, after the apology which my right hon. Friend so graciously issued to every guest on the "Maine," if this question had been at once removed from the Order Paper, and is it not the worst example of bad taste in modern times in the House of Commons?
  Mr. MANDER: Is it not a fact that the Admiralty is just as much subject to Parliamentary criticism as any other Department?

  TRANSPORT (HEAVY MOTOR VEHICLES: WEIGHING).
  Captain STRICKLANDasked the Minister of Transport whether his attention has been drawn to the conviction and fine by the Bletchley bench of magistrates of a road transport company for refusing to allow their driver to have their twin-tyred lorry weighed on a portable weighing machine not capable of taking both tyres at once, with the consequent risk of tyre damage, although the road inspector admitted that the driver offered to take his vehicle for weighing to a properly-constructed weighbridge; and whether he will take steps to provide for such procedure to be followed in any future cases of a similar nature?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of TRANSPORT (Captain Austin Hudson): My attention has been drawn to the case to which I assume my hon. and gallant Friend refers, but I must not be taken as accepting the statement that the inspector of the Buckinghamshire County Council admitted that the driver offered to go to another weighbridge. As regards the second part of the question, I am advised that the risk of tyre damage in such circumstances is negligible, and my right hon. Friend therefore proposes to take no action on the lines suggested.

  EDUCATION (SCHOOLS, OXFORDSHIRE: WATER SUPPLY).
  Mr. THORNEasked the President of the Board of Education whether he has received a report from the school inspectors about children attending Oxfordshire schools which are suffering from a shortage of water; whether he is aware that the children have to take water to schools in medicine bottles; and whether he intends taking any action in the matter?
  The MINISTER of EDUCATION (Mr. Oliver Stanley): No such case has come to the knowledge of His Majesty's inspectors. But if the hon. Member has any information on the subject, I should be glad to make further inquiries.
  Viscountess ASTOR: Will my right hon. Friend let us know how many schools there are throughout England and Scotland where there is no running water at all?
  Mr. STANLEY: If the Noble Lady will put a question on the Paper, I will give what information is available.

  AGRICULTURE (SCOTTISH POTATOES).
  Mr. THORNEasked the Minister of Agriculture how many tons of the 700 tons of potatoes recently consigned from Scotland to the London docks were sold; how many tons were sent to the Stepney refuse destructor; and how many carted to Edmonton?
  Major GEORGE DAVIES (Lord of the Treasury): I have been asked to reply. My right hon. Friend regrets that he is not in possession of the information required by the hon. Member.
  Mr. THORNE: If I send along the information, will the Minister examine it?
  Major DAVIES: Certainly.

  EGYPT (ITALIAN AIRCRAFT).
  Mr. MANDERasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, and, if so, to what extent, permission is still being granted for Italian military aircraft to fly over Egyptian territory; and how many have so passed in the last six months?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for LEAGUE of NATIONS AFFAIRS (Mr. Eden): As the hon. Member was informed on 30th May, requests for permission for Italian aircraft to fly over Egypt are communicated to the Egyptian Government through the diplomatic channel. This practice is still being followed, each case being dealt with individually. As regards the second part of the question, I regret that I am not in possession of any detailed information on the subject.
  Mr. MANDER: Do I understand that we are facilitating the passage of Italian military aircraft through Egypt at the same moment as we are withholding the issue of licences to Abyssinia, and is not this extraordinary discrimination in a case of this kind?
  Mr. EDEN: I am not responsible for the hon. Member's assumptions, but they are quite incorrect.
  Mr. MANDER: Would the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to say whether it is a fact that we are, and have been for some time, facilitating the passage of Italian military aircraft through Egypt to Italian territory on the border of Abyssinia?
  Mr. EDEN: No, Sir; our right to be consulted by the Egyptian Government in regard to such matters is based solely on our responsibility for maintaining and defending the security of Egypt, and that clearly cannot arise now.
  Mr. MANDER: I want only to get the facts. Do I understand that we do not exercise any pressure or control over Egypt in this matter?
  Mr. EDEN: Only in the sense in which I have defined it.
  Mr. PALING: Is it not possible that some of these Italian aircraft may be some of those exported from this country during the past year?

  SPAIN (BRITISH SUBJECT'S ARREST).
  Mr. RHYSasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any information regarding the reported detention in Barcelona prison of Miss Edith May Court, of West Clandon, Surrey?
  Mr. EDEN: Yes, Sir. Miss Court was arrested at Barcelona on a charge of insulting the Spanish Government. She was tried on 13th July and acquitted, but I learn from His Majesty's Consul-General at Barcelona that the Spanish authorities intend to expel her from Spain as an undesirable alien. His Majesty's Consul-General has been constantly in touch with the Spanish authorities with regard to this case and has rendered Miss Court all possible assistance.

  PUBLIC HEALTH.

    RESTAURANTS (DEFECTIVE EARTHENWARE).
    Mr. HALESasked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that large quantities of chipped, crazed, and cracked earthenware are in general use in hotels and restaurants throughout the country; and whether, having regard to the danger

    1651
    of infection by the use of this ware, he will take the necessary steps to prohibit the use of such defective pottery?
    The MINISTER of HEALTH (Sir Kingsley Wood): Apart from the fact that the legislative powers which my hon. Friend apparently wishes me to seek would be very drastic, I am advised that the danger of infection from damaged earthenware is negligible if it is properly washed, and I do not think it necessary, therefore, to take the action suggested in the last part of the question.
    Mr. HALES: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Australian Government long ago prohibited the use of this defective ware, that the medical profession are unanimous as to its dangers, and also that washing is utterly useless when the glaze has gone; and, in order that my right hon. Friend may be more conversant with the matter, will he examine this cup which I have brought to him for his inspection?

    MILK (PASTEURISATION).
    Mr. LEONARDasked the Minister of Health whether he will take steps to draw the attention of milk traders to the recent report issued by his Department on the supervision of milk pasteurising plants?
    Sir K. WOOD: This has already been done. Copies of the report were sent at the time of publication to a considerable section of the Press including all the principal dairy trade papers and this as no doubt the hon. Member will agree will have enabled milk traders to acquaint themselves with the report.
    Mr. T. WILLIAMS: Are the Minister of Health and the Minister of Agriculture taking steps to give effect to the recommendations of the committee?
    Sir K. WOOD: That is another matter. This simply deals with the question of the report.

  HOUSING (SLUM CLEARANCE: COMPENSATION).
  Miss WARDasked the Minister of Health how many local authorities have taken Advantage of the clauses which make compensation payable to shopkeepers possible under slum-clearance programmes?
  Sir K. WOOD: Complete information is not available, but at the 28th February last, the latest date for which information is available, 125 local authorities had either made grants to displaced shopkeepers or provided alternative accommodation or had applications then under consideration.
  Miss WARD: In view of the fact that a great many shopkeepers are unaware of the provisions of the various Acts which relate to compensation, would my right hon. Friend consider asking the local authorities, when slum clearance or overcrowding schemes are put into operation, to inform shopkeepers in the districts affected of their rights under the various Acts?
  Sir K. WOOD: I will consider that suggestion. Of course, the answer I have given may give some publicity in that direction.
  Mr. KIRKWOOD: As the shopkeepers are to get compensation as a result of slum clearance, what about the engineers and the miners when, as a result of rationalisation, they lose their employment?

  REGENT'S PARK.
  Sir CYRIL COBBasked the First Commissioner of Works whether he will now enter into negotiations with the organisations who are allowed to erect booths, platforms and other obstructions on the turf on the west side of Queen Mary's Garden, Regent's Park, with a view to relieving himself from these existing engagements, so that for the future the garden and lawns may be used exclusively, free from noise and litter, as a quiet retreat for the general public?
  The FIRST COMMISSIONER of WORKS (Mr. Ormsby-Gore): I would refer my hon. Friend to my reply to a similar question by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Burnett) on 18th July.

  TOWER OF LONDON (EXPLOSION).
  Mr. THORNEasked the First Commissioner of Works whether he can give the House any information in connection with the explosion that took place at the Tower of London; and what damage was done and if anyone was injured?
  Mr. ORMSBY-GORE: The explosion is believed to have been caused by a short circuit in the electric cable in the roadway between the Devereux and Flint Towers, and resulted in the manhole being blown up and the junction fuse boxes at the main gates being damaged. The outbreak was extinguished by the local regimental fire picket before the arrival of the London Fire Brigade. No one was injured.

  TREATIES (RATIFICATION).
  Mr. COCKSasked the Prime Minister whether the declaration made on 17th July, 1929, by the then Foreign Secretary that all treaties with foreign Governments would be laid upon the Table of the House before ratification still represents the policy of His Majesty's Government?
  The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Baldwin): In order to provide opportunity for Parliamentary consideration in ordinary cases, it is still the practice of His Majesty's Government to lay treaty engagements for 21 Parliamentary days before ratification in all cases when the continuance of the Parliamentary Session makes this course practicable. When it does not, or when considerations of urgency require ratification without this preliminary, action would be taken accordingly, and Parliament would be notified as soon as may be afterwards.
  Mr. COCKS: Does that represent a departure from the practice announced on 17th July?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I do not think so.
  Mr. THORNE: Is it asking too much to suggest that the Prime Minister should have all these treaties and obligations printed as a White Paper?
  Mr. JOHN WILMOT: Does what the Prime Minister has just said apply to the recent Anglo-German Naval Agreement?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The hon. Member should put any specific question on the Paper.

  GERMANY (BRITISH CREDITS).
  Mr. WILMOTasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he proposes to take steps to prevent credits
  1654
  extended to Germany by British finance houses being used for the purchase of war material?
  The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Chamberlain): I have no reason to suppose that any British financial institution has been or is likely to be asked to extend credits to Germany for the purchase of war material.
  Mr. WILMOT: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for that reply, may I ask him to observe that the question asks whether he proposes to take any steps to prevent such action; and may I ask him, further, whether he is aware that there is considerable apprehension as to whether credits which are being extended to Germany to prevent final default, are, in fact, being used for the purchase of war materials; and whether he appreciates how necessary it is that the public should be safeguarded against business operations being used to arm people—
  HON. MEMBERS: Speech.
  Mr. DORAN: Also in regard to Russia.
  Mr. WILMOT: —and to provide munitions which may be used against this country?
  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: As I have said that I have no reason to anticipate that any financial institution is likely to be asked to provide financial credits to Germany for this purpose, there seems no reason to take any steps to prevent such action. With regard to the second point, that seems to be a different question and, perhaps, the hon. Member would put it on the Paper.

  LAND VALUATION OFFICE, WREXHAM.
  Mr. ALED ROBERTSasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether he has considered the representations from local authorities in Denbighshire and Flintshire protesting against the removal of the land valuation office from Wrexham; and whether, having regard to the inconvenience which will result to the public and the strong feeling against the transfer of Welsh business to an English centre, he is prepared to reconsider his decision and to continue the arrangements which have hitherto subsisted?
  The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Duff Cooper): The closing of the Inland Revenue Valuation Office at Wrexham is part of a reorganisation of the Valuation Districts of England and Wales. This reorganisation is dictated by considerations of economy and administrative efficiency and has been so framed as to reduce to a minimum the possibility of inconvenience to individuals. The bulk of the work at present undertaken by the Wrexham Office will, for the reasons I have mentioned, be assigned to the office at Chester; and it is proposed for administrative purposes to include that office within the Valuation Division of Wales.
  Mr. ROBERTS: Will the Financial Secretary be prepared to receive further representations with regard to some portions of the district?
  Mr. COOPER: Yes, Sir.

  TAX OFFICES, MOLD.
  Mr. LLEWELLYN-JONESasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether he has considered the representations from the Flintshire County Council and certain of the minor local authorities in the county of Flint, urging that the Income Tax offices at Mold should not be removed out of the county; and whether, having regard to these representations and the general opposition locally to the proposal, he will now come to a definite decision to continue the present arrangements, which have given general satisfaction in the district?
  Mr. COOPER: The proposal to remove the income tax office at Mold is still under consideration in the light of the representations that have been made. It is not in any case proposed to make an immediate change in the existing arrangements.

  CIVIL SERVICE (MARRIED WOMEN).
  Viscountess ASTORasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury how many exemptions have been granted to women civil servants from the regulation made under Orders in Council in July, 1920, which requires them to resign on marriage; and what action he proposes to take in the matter?
  Mr. COOPER: The answer to the first part of the question is six, of which four have been granted since the adoption of new regulations in June, 1934. Applications will continue to be dealt with under these regulations which are based upon the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, 1929–31, and of the Committee of Official and Staff Representatives which reported in March, 1934. I am sending a copy of the regulations to the Noble Lady.
  Viscountess ASTOR: When do the Government propose to carry out the implications of the Sex Disqualification Removal Act, 1918; and does he not think that women have a right to expect from the Government the justice and equal treatment which were promised to them?
  Mr. GUY: Is it not now the policy of the Government that women should be retained in the service after marriage if their services are regarded as of special value?
  Mr. THORNE: Will consideration be given to the question of whether, when married women are retained in the service, their husbands are not undercutting anybody else in regard to income?

  SUGAR-BEET COMPANIES.
  Mr. LEONARDasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury what has been the total loss owing to defaults by sugar-beet companies under the Trade Facilities Acts; and what is the total outstanding liability of these companies to the Treasury under the Trade Facilities Acts?
  Mr. COOPER: A sum of approximately £160,000, in respect of a company which has gone into liquidation, is definitely irrecoverable. The Treasury has made payments in respect of loans raised by other beet-sugar companies, totalling £929,900, which sum constitutes a secured debt from the companies concerned to the Treasury.
  Mr. LEONARD: Has the hon. Gentleman seen a report of a speech by Lord Weir on behalf of the Anglo-Scottish company in which he indicates that the balance-sheets of the last two years show the assets of the company to have appreciated and its condition to be good; and, if that statement be correct, will he take

  1657
  steps to recover some of the £900,000 which the British Government have advanced to these companies?
  Mr. T. WILLIAMS: Can the hon. Gentleman tell the House how it is that those beet-sugar factories to which the Government have advanced money have been unable to make these colossal profits?
  Mr. COOPER: It was not anticipated that they would make colossal profits.
  Mr. WILLIAMS: In view of the fact that all the factories, except those to which money has been advanced from the Treasury, did make colossal profits, can the hon. Gentleman explain how it is that all the losses have been incurred by those to which money was advanced?
  Mr. LEONARD: If the company to which I have already referred is in such a good position as has been described, does not the hon. Gentleman think it is time that a start should be made with the repayment to the Exchequer of what that company has received?

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Mr. LANSBURY: May I ask the Prime Minister how far the Government propose to go to-night; and also what business it is intended to take on Friday?
The PRIME MINISTER: With regard to to-night, we hope to get the Third Reading of the Cattle Industry Bill. On Friday we propose to take the Second Reading of the Cotton Spinning Industry Bill and the Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution.
Mr. LANSBURY: It is not often that we have to criticise very strongly the arrangements for the Business of the House, but on this occasion I must enter a very emphatic protest against putting down the Cotton Spinning Industry Bill at this stage. On many occasions, when we have been requested, we have done our best, by putting our Motions down on Supply days, to meet what we thought was the convenience of the House and the general desire to rise on 2nd August. But here within seven days of the end of this part of the Session we find this Bill being put down, although there is a considerable amount of other business to be transacted. There is the Report and Third Reading of the Restriction on Ribbon Development Bill; the
1658
Lords Amendments to the Housing Bill; the Lords Amendments to the India Bill; two days on the Appropriation Bill, and the Motion for the Adjournment. It is no use suggesting that there is not considerable and fundamental opposition to this Cotton Industry Bill as it now stands. At this period in the Session the Government ought not to bring forward a highly controversial Bill on a Friday afternoon especially as we know that we are coming back again and the Second Reading could be fixed for a stated day after the Adjournment. I ask the right hon. Gentleman and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury to reconsider this matter. I would like also to say that, while we do not wish to monopolise the two days set apart for the Appropriation Bill, we are very anxious, on one day, to have a discussion on questions connected with foreign policy. We do not want to put down the ordinary Motion of Censure, but we do want to discuss foreign policy and international economic policy before the House adjourns. The putting down of this Bill is likely to squeeze us into the position of having either to meet on a Saturday or to forgo discussion on a subject which I think the House and the country will regard as worthy of discussion.
The PRIME MINISTER: I will tell the right hon. Gentleman and the House, quite frankly, my object in putting this particular business down, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will at any rate give consideration to it. I readily recognise the help we have had lately, for the common good of the House, in trying to get up at the beginning of August. The business was arranged for Friday on a subject which unfortunately, to my regret, the Government are not quite ready to bring in. Therefore, this Friday unexpectedly became vacant. The Cotton Spinning Industry Bill is, as the right hon. Gentleman said, controversial, but it is, one way or the other, a Bill of great importance to Lancashire. It has been very warmly supported in certain quarters, and it is now being equally strongly opposed.
The House has had no discussion on matters connected with the Lancashire trade for some time, and I thought it would be a good opportunity—I should not think of asking the House to proceed further than this stage—to get out on a Friday the arguments on both sides so

1659
that people may know where the differences lie. I thought it might well be that if each side, both starting from the point that they are desirous of helping the Lancashire industry, were able to hear the arguments of the other, there would then be the Recess in which these points might be examined in Lancashire, and it might be possible, although this may be contrary to expectations, that a view might crystallise either in favour of or against the Bill. These were the objects which I had in mind when I put the Bill down, and I hoped that a discussion on the cotton trade, especially as it is affected by this Bill, would be a Debate of considerable value.
Mr. LANSBURY: I think the House will agree that we have never objected to a Debate of the kind that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned, but the question at issue here is a Bill, and, if the Government get a Second Reading, those who are opposed to it will be in the position of being able only to try to amend it in Committee. Our real objection, however, is on the question of time. We have looked at the programme that must be got through before the Adjournment, and we do not see how it can be done properly in the time if this Bill is taken on Friday. It may be done by our giving up the right to discuss important matters. I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman to reconsider the matter and let us discuss the Bill among ourselves during the Recess and be ready then for the Second Reading when the House meets again. In any case, I enter my protest against proceeding with the Bill in these circumstances. We are in the hands of the Government obviously, but I think that in common fairness they ought to meet us in a matter of this kind.
Mr. MAXTON: Does the right hon. Gentleman's answer which made a certain appeal to me, mean that only the debate on the Second Reading of the Bill is to be opened on Friday and that there is no intention of proceeding to a Division on the Second Reading?
The PRIME MINISTER: The hon. Member misunderstood me. I meant that we should not take any further stage on Friday. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition will be good enough to consult my right hon.
1660
Friend the Patronage Secretary, and we will give further consideration to the points.
Mr. CROSSLEY: May I ask the Prime Minister whether his decision that no further stages are to be taken before we adjourn is final? If it is, it will leave Lancashire trade in a difficult position for three months.
The PRIME MINISTER: It is impossible, even if the Second Reading were taken on Friday, to make any further progress at this stage of the Session.
Mr. CROSSLEY: Is the Prime Minister aware that there are many of us who will willingly sit up in order to pass this Bill?
The PRIME MINISTER: I think that that probably is the case.
Mr. LANSBURY: I am not willing to sit up, but I am willing to continue the Session. I do not believe in legislation in the small hours of the morning, especially this kind of legislation, and, if Lancashire Members can bring enough pressure to bear on the Governemnt to sit another week, we will sit another week with pleasure.
Ordered,
"That this day, notwithstanding anything in Standing Order No. 14, Business other than the Business of Supply may be taken before Eleven of the clock and that the Proceedings on Government Business be exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of the Standing Order (Sittings of the House)."—[The Prime Minister.]

NEW MEMBER SWORN.
Lieut.-Colonel Charles Edward Ponsonby, for the County of Kent (Sevenoaks Division).
BILLS REPORTED.

  RESTRICTION OF RIBBON DEVELOPMENT BILL [Lords].
  Reported, with Amendments, from Standing Committee A.
  Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  Minutes of Proceedings to be printed.
  Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be considered upon Thursday, and to be printed. [Bill 120.]

  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER CONFIRMATION (OXFORD) BILL [Lords].
  Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Order confirmed].
  Bill to be read the Third time To-morrow.

  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER CONFIRMATION (PWLLHELI) BILL [Lords].
  Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Order confirmed].
  Bill to be read the Third time To-morrow.

  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER CONFIRMATION (NORWICH) BILL [Lords].
  Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Order confirmed].
  Bill to be read the Third time To-morrow.

  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER CONFIRMATION (FYLDE PRESTON AND GARSTANG JOINT SMALL-POX HOSPITAL DISTRICT) BILL [Lords].
  Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Order confirmed].
  Bill to be read the Third time To-morrow.

  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER CONFIRMATION (OTTERSHAW JOINT HOSPITAL DISTRICT) BILL [Lords].
  Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Order confirmed].
  Bill to be read the Third time To-morrow.

  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER CONFIRMATION (WATFORD) BILL [Lords].
  Reported, with an Amendment [Provisional Order Confirmed].
  Bill, as amended, to be considered To-morrow.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to—
Harrogate Corporation Bill,
Blackpool Improvement Bill,
Croydon Corporation Bill,
London Passenger Transport Board Bill, with Amendments.
London County Council (Money) Bill, without Amendment.
Amendments to—
Chichester Corporation Bill [Lords],
London Building Act (Amendment) Bill [Lords],
Milford Docks Bill [Lords],
Stourbridge Navigation Bill [Lords], without Amendment.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
  WEIGHTS AND MEASURES BILL [Lords].
  Read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, and to be printed. [Bill 121.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  SUPPLY.
  [18TH ALLOTED DAY.]
  Considered in Committee.
  [Sir DENNIS HERBERT in the Chair.]

  CIVIL ESTIMATES, 1935.
    CLASS V.

      COMMISSIONER FOR SPECIAL AREAS (ENGLAND AND WALES).
      Motion made, and Question proposed,
      "That a sum, not exceeding £90, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1936, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Commissioner for Special Areas (England and Wales), and the Expenses of the Commissioner under the Special Areas (Development and Improvement) Act, 1934, including Grants in Aid."—[NOTE: £10 has been voted on account.]
      Whereupon Motion made, and Question, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again," put, and agreed to.—[Captain Margesson.]
      Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.

  INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION.
  3.38 p.m.
  Mr. ARTHUR GREENWOOD: I beg to move,
  "That, in the opinion of this House, the Reports of the commissioners for those areas which have been specially hit by the industrial depression expose the utter futility of the policy of His Majesty's Government, and this House therefore calls for measures which will not only bring immediate and substantial relief and the prospect of economic restoration but will deal fundamentally with the conditions which have crippled industry, destroyed the livelihood of large numbers of workers, and rendered whole districts derelict."
  We have sacrificed very important time in the House in order to get as early a Debate as possible on the reports of the Commissioners for the special areas. I think that all of us will agree that these reports are a complete vindication of the Prime Minister's statement that the Government have failed to deal with these districts. I think it is true that the
  1670
  two Commissioners have shown great courage in their reports. They provide us with a picture of two sincere men struggling with problems much too large for them and crippled by the limitations imposed on them by the Government in the legislation which the Government passed. There is no doubt that in spite of the speeches made when the Bill was passing through the House, giving the impression that the Commissioners would have a free hand, an impression which was given by all the Government spokesmen, the two Commissioners have been restricted in their operations by reason of the Act under which they were established.
  The Commissioner for the English special areas, in the first part of the report, which seems to me to be far more significant than his later suggestions, explains how he has to seek the Minister of Labour's sanction to all main lines of policy. He goes on to say that the Commissioner is as much subject to orthodox financial control as any Government Department. In other words, in spite of the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the two Commissioners have been put in the same subordinate position to the Treasury as even the most important or the meanest of His Majesty's Ministers. I do not follow all the criticisms in Mr. Stewart's report, but it is quite clear that this very public-spirited person finds himself, through no fault of his own, but through the deliberate action of the Government, unable to do the kind of work he would prefer to do.
  I often think that a large number of Members of this House and a large number of people in the country do not fully appreciate the tragedy of the depressed areas. I should say that perhaps two-thirds of the Members of this House have no knowledge whatever of the conditions of life in the depressed areas and in those areas which are depressed but which are not, for Government purposes, defined as special areas. A week ago to-day the benches of this House were very sparsely populated. A large number of Members and their friends were enjoying the hospitality of the First Lord of the Admiralty, enjoying the pomp and pageantry of the naval review. I have no doubt that it was a magnificent spectacle. I understood from the Press and from

  1671
  ample apologies that the victualling arrangements were not quite successful, and I should only hope that those unfortunate visitors to the "Maine" who suffered from the pangs of hunger gave a thought to the people in the depressed areas. I suggest that the Prime Minister, as head of the Government, should invite all those who enjoyed this pomp and pageantry and all the spectacular effects provided for them to go down to places like Nant-y-glo, to Ebbw Vale, Merthyr Tydvil and Cleator Moor and other areas, about which people know so little, in order that they may see the other side of this national picture, see something of the grimness of the situation down there. If all those who were gathered at Spit-head a week ago were to spend an equal amount of time, though I should prefer that it should be longer, in the depressed areas, it might perhaps shake them out of their complacency and out of that respectability of orthodoxy which kills the souls of men and of political parties.
  The situation in the depressed areas can be put partly in figures, but only partly. The figures, however, are sufficiently staggering. Since 1921 the population in the depressed areas in England and Wales has diminished by 97,000. In the coal mining industry in those areas, whereas in 1929 there were over 370,000 wage-earners in 1934 there were 293,000. That means that 77,000 workpeople have gone out of the coal mining industry in the depressed areas in five years, no less than 20 per cent. of its personnel driven out in five years. In Great Britain as a whole 30.7 per cent. of the unemployed have been unemployed for over a year. They are what we all agree is the hard core of the unemployment problem. But in the distressed areas the number of workless who have been unemployed more than 12 months amounts to over 51 per cent. Over half those people have been workless one year, two years, three years, perhaps even 10 years, nobody knows.
  Another set of facts which I think may be interesting to the House is that in 1929 the present depressed areas employed 44.1 per cent. of all the people in the coal mining industry. In 1934 that percentage had fallen to 42.9. In other words, in the coal mining industry the depressed areas are not keeping pace; they are, as a matter of fact, becoming less and less
  1672
  important in the coalfields of the country. Behind the facts of employment and production lie certain other facts. One of the most tragic of them is that whereas in England and Wales as a whole the percentage of the population which is under 15 years of age is 23.8, in the depressed areas the percentage under 15 is over 29 per cent. Those are the very areas where there is the least opportunity for youth. And it is not uninteresting that whilst according to official figures the infant mortality rate in England and Wales stands at 64 per 1,000 births, in Durham and on Tyneside it is 80.8 per 1,000, in South Wales 78.3, and in Cumberland, 71. It is true that the death-rate in those areas is only slightly higher than the general death-rate, but the fact that the new lives that are born into the depressed areas stand a smaller chance of life than those in other parts of the country—some of them very bad parts—is some indication of the real human tragedy which lies behind all the figures which have been quoted. Figures are cold. Behind those figures are people in whose mouths today lies bitterness and in whose eyes are despair and hopelessness. That is the problem with which we are faced.
  These districts have changed their name as time has gone on. When I first came into the House they were described as "necessitous." They ultimately became "distressed." Then, under the term used by this Government, they became "depressed" areas. Spokesmen of the Government on the other side have even called them "derelict" areas, but now they can rejoice under the name of special areas. On reflection, the harsh description of areas which are depressed or derelict offended the sensitive ears of the Government and of Members of the House of Lords, so the title of the Depressed Areas (Development and Improvement) Bill—the title is a mockery—was changed, and the accusing word "depressed" was deleted in favour of the neutral word "special." I am not sure that the term "special" is even neutral. It may have been intended to convey the same idea as a special prize at a show, to indicate that, on the whole, those areas are successful. The truth is that the Government have sought to bury the tragedy of these areas and their own consciences under an innocuous term; it is part of

  1673
  our object to-day to bring the House back to the realities of the situation and to the failure of the Government. You can call these areas special areas if you wish, but the stark naked truth is that they are the industrial slums of industrial Britain; they are just as much a disgrace to our national life as the slums of our cities or the slums of the sea.
  I am not going to say this afternoon what I said on the occasion of the Vote of Censure a fortnight ago, in criticism of the Government's policy. The Government have made one special contribution to this question; they have provided an infinitesimally small amount of sticking plaster to hide the gaping wounds of the distressed areas. They have provided £2,000,000, with a suggestion that if that little bit of plaster is not sufficient to hide the wounds, perhaps another £2,000,000 may be forthcoming. I should think the gods must laugh at the puny efforts of this Government to deal with the problem. The Government have no policy. Their only hope, which was made clear by the Prime Minister in his speech a fortnight ago, is to diffuse this problem all over the country, through a large scheme of transfer. The industrial districts which are distressed would then not look quite so bad. People who are the victims would be scattered throughout the length and breadth of the country, and the Government would then be able to point at the distressed areas as having improved; but any man who is taken out of a distressed area and sent into another part of the country steals a job—if he gets a job—from some native in the new area, unless there is an extension in the demand for labour.
  In the Censure Debate, I think Members on all sides of the House hoped to hear some statement of the Government's future policy. Some weeks ago places were shuffled in the Government. They are still continuing the shuffling process, but not with Ministers; they are shuffling by refusing to come to the House with a considered policy to deal with the problem of unemployment, and particularly with the distressed areas. The Prime Minister's speech a fortnight ago was a dreary recital of alleged achievement which shocked even his own supporters. He left the House in an atmosphere and, to quote the words of the late Earl of Oxford and Asquith, in a state of inspissated gloom, with no proposal of any
  1674
  kind. There might as well never have been a speech, for all the contribution that he made to the Debate. The Home Secretary, who had had six more hours in which to think about the subject, fell back on what we have often been told is what the attorney with a bad case always does, abusing the other side. His speech was a little titillation of the depressed areas on the benches behind him, but no comfort to the depressed areas in the country. His speech also might as well never have been delivered. Eight days later, after eight days of further reflection and after, no doubt, full consultation with the Board of Trade, he made a, speech at Luton, which, I suppose, the newspapers would regard as a reply to me. I shall be delighted to seek an opportunity to prove to him that that reply was no better reply than he made in the House of Commons a fortnight ago.
  On the occasion of the last Debate, two main Government speakers made no contribution to the future handling of the situation. A fortnight has now elapsed, and in that time perhaps Public Thinker Number 1 has been thinking his thoughts. I was interested to read, in the Government reply to the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), this statement:
  "They were elected as a Government of action. They have been a Government of action, and they are resolved to develop their action in the future."
  Actions speak louder than thoughts. I thought that it would be useful if we had some thoughts to-day, because action has proved so ineffectual to deal with the problem, and we ought at least to have come down among us from the Olympian heights this Minister without Portfolio who, strangely enough, is housed in the Ministry of Pensions, who has no staff, but who sits and thinks. We might have him descend from the mountain to give us in the House of Commons the result of a further fortnight's reflection. I would like to ask the Government whether they are going to tell the House anything to-day. It is very important to know. The House is to get up very shortly, and even supporters of the Government are entitled to a little comfort during the long Recess as to the policy of the Government. Judging by the long, able, but

  1675
  rather vague, statement issued to-day, to which I will refer in a few moments, issued by the National Publicity Committee—much good it will do them from the point of view of publicity—the Government have no reply to make to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs. I am not here to defend him, but, judging by their statement, there is very little that they have to say about these questions. There is one statement, however, which I have read and re-read, on which perhaps the Minister of Labour might throw light.
  "The needs of the special areas, which Mr. Lloyd George's suggestions do not really touch, are the subject of a series of experiments which, if they have not yet succeeded in solving the problem, will nevertheless afford a basis for further measures of a different kind, as experience is accumulated."
  With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I think this ought to be read again, in order that it may soak into the minds of hon. Members opposite, because this is a piece of subtle wisdom which ought to be translated into the vernacular when the right hon. Gentleman speaks.
  "The needs of the special areas, which Mr. Lloyd George's suggestions do not really touch, are the subject of a series of experiments which, if they have not yet succeeded in solving the problem, will nevertheless afford a basis for further measures of a different kind, as experience is accumulated."
  I think that the schoolboy's answer to that would be "a lemon." So far as I can see, there is no meaning to be attached to it, which only proves that the Government are still resting on their policy of inaction. The Government have not only turned down the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, but they have turned down their Commissioners, and they have turned down the proposals made by some of their own fervent supporters; indeed, they seem to have turned down all people with any kind of intelligence, and fallen back on this policy of complete inertia and self-congratulation. Mr. Stewart, in his report, refers to the raising of the school-leaving age. That has been referred to in this House on many occasions, and he puts a question to which the House is entitled to receive an answer from the Government:
  "What real justification is there for employing raw youth and the aged when,
  1676
  between these extremes, there is a vast number of unemployed from 16 years of age and upwards, single and married, daily seeking work? The first step is to take those of from 14 to 16 years of age out of industry, making their employment illegal."
  That has been proposed by a very large number of people, including my hon. Friends behind me. The Government's statement, in reply to the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, is that to a considerable extent they are in agreement. They have even gone so far as to take a step which might be quite irrelevant to deal with bad schools. We have never had a single word, and we ought to have it to-day, as to whether they propose to do anything about this question. The Commissioner for England and Wales also deals with the question of pensions. That has been referred to by many people of intelligence. He says:
  "I should, therefore, like to see an addition to the contributory pensions scheme so that the pension payable at the age of 65 would be increased to such a figure as would make retirement possible without dependence on other resources…… There are now nearly 700,000 people in work over the age of 65 and, if only one-third of these availed themselves of this inducement to retire, there would be a big field opened for the employment of younger people."
  What is the Government's answer to that? It is that this would cost money, that it would cost, if the age were 60, an additional £100,000,000. If that were true, we might have had a statement from them when this great nation, to whom financial considerations matter nothing now, according to their own statement, as to why they could not do this great act of justice to aged workers for whom there are no economic prospects in the future. On the question of working hours, and, indeed, of holidays with pay, I welcome this statement in Mr. Stewart's report:
  "Shorter working hours can clearly contribute to the reduction of unemployment."
  He goes on to say:
  "The workers do not wish for any reduction below 48 hours at the price of their taking home less at the end of the week. Their attitude is reasonable, and where standard rates of pay are in force, I see no justification for asking them to sacrifice their standard of living. Further"—
  and this is very important—

  1677
  "so doing would bring about a reduction of spending power."
  What is the Government's reply to that? Even one of their own earlier Commissioners was in favour of it. The reply for their scandalous behaviour at Geneva on this question is that it really cannot be done without cutting down wages. In other words, irrespective of all the sociological results which would flow from this, they are taking their argument from the naked capitalist point of view, which says that, whatever happens, we cannot reduce hours unless profits remain the same. These proposals for limiting the available number of workers in the industrial field is, as I have said, supported by the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, by other Members in this House, by the relatively revolutionary wing of the Conservative party and by a large body of opinion otuside. But the Government remain cold on those three questions of the school age, pensions and working hours. The Government, in their own statement, have not a single word to say.
  Mr. Stewart makes other proposals. He even speaks of the State ownership of mining royalties. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, if I remember aright, in his excellent report on depressed areas, spoke a little more cautiously that Mr. Stewart, being a politician, of the unification of mining royalties. Have the Government any proposals to make in that direction? Both commissioners' reports speak of the importance of public work. In the Government's own statement—well it is not the Government apparently—the position is a little ill-defined; they will not take responsibility for their own statement but they farm it out to the National Publicity Committee—there is a long rigmarole which runs into two, three or four pages about public works, blowing hot and cold, for the nth time telling us that really they are in favour of great public works as shown by their greater London electricity scheme; but, on the other hand, blowing cold on public works as being no contribution to the problem. I think that the Government are really embarking on transference through organised effort, and through the despair of the unmployed in the distressed areas. They are relying also, I think, on the shifting of industries. In
  1678
  Northamptonshire, at Corby, we have had new iron works, and in the last few days a proposal for opening in Lincolnshire new tin-plate works. I understand from the Press that the Government are thinking about this question in all its aspects. I have no doubt that that will be another definite job for the Minister without Portfolio, and we may have, perhaps, some results of his mental efforts if he speaks in the Debate to-day.
  This transference of industries is being permitted by the Government, without let or hindrance, on what I might call purely capitalist grounds, irrespective of the general national well-being. No consideration whatever is given to human ties. No consideration whatever is given to the fact that people have been nurtured in an area generation after generation; and no consideration whatever is given to the millions of pounds of social capital which have been invested by our local authorities which have made these industries possible in the past. These areas are now special areas. They have spent scores of millions of pounds on water supplies, gas and electricity services, on their schools and their roads, on their health services, on main drainage schemes, on hospitals and in a thousand different ways. No consideration is given to them. Corby may be financially successful. Scunthorpe may be financially successful. But in doing that those companies have left behind them a trail of misery and social waste which is absolutely incommensurable.
  This is indicative of the Government's attitude towards the problem. Nearly all the money which the English Commissioner, at least, has spent has been spent on services which could have been provided by the local authorities had they had the finances. They have used the Commissioners to fill up the holes in the services left by the impoverishment of the distressed areas, and now, having spent a good deal of the £2,000,000 in reinforcing the social services, in increasing the social capital in these districts, they are going to engage on a policy of transference, on a policy of the diversion of industries which will make the expenditure of that money a national waste. Nothing could be more fantastic than that kind of policy. I think the House will agree that a policy of drift will not do. I know that the Civil Service can

  1679
  always find a hundred reasons for not doing things. They can always find reasons against every scheme that is produced. And the Government have been prepared to listen.
  The depressed areas, as I have suggested in this House before, cannot be dealt with alone. They are but the worst symptom of a general state of economic chaos. Proposals have been made of a purely ameliorative character, and everyone who explores the possibilities of ameliorative action is bound sooner or later to follow the path laid down by Labour party policy. Every constructive proposal of any value, including those of any worth that have been made by the Commissioners only a few days ago, is embedded in the national policy of the Labour party. And yet the Government and Government supporters call, for example, our schemes of economic development relief works and Poplarism. There is no worse offender in this respect than the Lord President of the Council. Schemes of economic development intended to provide the country with new and permanent assets are described by our political opponents as relief works and Poplarism. Every proposal that we make has been misrepresented, and that misrepresentation will go on. We have, in the words of a distinguished poet who is, I believe, a relative of the Prime Minister, to hear
  "The truth we've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools."
  Every time new evidence appears in support of our proposals, it is still treated with coldness by the Government. And yet more and more people are being persuaded to accept our proposals, not for the cure of this problem, but for its amelioration. But amelioration, like patriotism, is not enough. There can be no complete amelioration of the economic plight of the distressed areas along present lines, and we have to seek, therefore, a fundamental remedy. We would find it in something called planning. The sooner the House gets used to that term, the better. The Prime Minister does not like this idea of planning; he said so in his speech a fortnight ago. But I think it is obvious that co-ordinated and deliberately planned national effort to deal with a grave national situation is better than either
  1680
  inertia or a blind acceptance of old traditions, on which the Government seem to rely. I would remind them that the present Under-Secretary of State for the Home Office referred, in his report some months ago, to the need for national planning in words which perhaps all hon. Members would not accept, but which at least show that the germs of this dreadful disease of planning are now in the bosom of the Government:
  "It is suggested, therefore, that the time has come when the Government can no longer regard with indifference a line of development which, while it may possess the initial advantage of providing more employment, appears upon a long view to be detrimental to the best interests of the country; and the first practical step which could be taken towards exercising a measure of control in this direction would seem to be some form of national planning of industry."
  The report of Mr. Stewart envisages some sort of co-ordinated planning, and the report of the commissioner for the special areas in Scotland uses these words:
  "The field of economic planning and research is so important to the nation as a whole that it appears to me there may be room for an authoritative Scottish body with imitable experience and knowledge, equipped with an expert staff, financed by the Government, and endowed with powers to explore the industrial conditions, make recommendations"—
  and the last words are, to my mind, important, because I do not agree with the machinery set out in the first part of the paragraph—
  "and in general aim at introducing into our economic structure that element of orderly and planned development which in the past has in some considerable measure been overlooked."
  Even this wicked idea of organised planning is now being talked about outside the ranks of the Labour party, and the truth is being realised that, the old ways having been tried and not having been effective, we must turn to what the English Commissioner calls unconventional action. That means unorthodox action, action which will not inspire that confidence among the friends of the Government on which the greatness of this nation rests, but which will at least deal with the fundamentals of the situation; and hon. Members opposite—and I say this to them because they have used the term "shibboleths" very often against us—will have to abandon their old shibboleths and their blind faith in

  1681
  the motive of self-interest in the solution of human problems. Even if they do not wish it, they will before long be jolted out of the well worn ruts in which they have travelled for so long, because the world is not standing still. A leading article in the "Manchester Guardian" yesterday includes a quotation from Bacon which seems to me to fit the situation admirably. The language is archaic, but the passage is pregnant with meaning:
  "One suspects,"
  says the "Manchester Guardian,"
  "that the Government must be counted among those who, as Bacon said, 'find ease to be of the Negative Side. For when propositions are denied, there is an End of them; But if they be allowed, it requireth a New Worke. There is no decaying Merchant, or Inward Beggar, hath so many Tricks, to uphold the Credit of their wealth, as these Empty persons have, to maintain the Credit of their Sufficiency."
  The Government are engaged in an endeavour to maintain the credit of their own sufficiency, regardless of wider considerations.
  Let me in my last few words put the truth as I see it to hon. and right hon. Members. Disraeli's two nations still exist. Most of us on this side of the House were born in humble circumstances. We have honestly and sincerely tried to find a way out of the kind of lives that those people live. Hon. Members opposite have not all of them, not the majority of them, had that kind of experience. The other nation will not for ever tolerate the conditions under which it is living to-day. I am making no threat; I am merely saying that human nature and the sense of human decency and self-respect will drive men to revolt against the circumstances in which large numbers of our fellow-citizens are living, and something new has to be done. Will the Government take this question of the depressed areas boldly in hand, even from the point of view of amelioration? Will they do something towards reconstruction?
  The truth is that we have a whole series of depressed areas, some of which are not so scheduled. The city of Liverpool, the city of Sheffield, the town of Rotherham, and others, are the new depressed areas. They, perhaps, with adequate financial assistance from the State, might be able to rescue themselves from their difficult-
  1682
  ties, but the scheduled special areas have got to be dealt with as areas, and I am convinced that there is no escape from the present position without legislation which will create for those areas new regional authorities endowed with special powers, not to supersede the existing authorities, but to take the widest view of their problems as a whole. There are problems to-day in those areas, as elsewhere, which are not the problems of any single authority. Those problems have outstripped the largest local authorities in this country. I do not want to go into details on this question, but general economic planning, questions of communications, questions of water supply, at least might be dealt with regionally rather than on the basis of the parish pump. I am amazed, when I go into depressed areas, to see how owners of hitherto profitable property have left it as an eyesore to the people who must continue to live there. Derelict mines, derelict factories from which there is no hope of profit, and which therefore are valueless, are left there to litter and cumber the ground and make the district uglier than it was before. I think the new regional authorities might well have power to remove these eyesores from the landscape without any sort of compensation whatever. It would at least bring a little more decency into the worst of our derelict areas.
  But there is a larger question, with which such regional authorities, if they were established, could not deal effectively, and that is the question of the transference of industry. We assert that capitalist enterprises have no moral right to leave social capital derelict, and to leave workers hopeless and workless, while they take their capital elsewhere. I am not saying that I want, or that we want, to immobilise industry. We do not. But we say that in these difficult times none of these great patriotic employers ought to be allowed to walk away from a district and leave a trail of ruin behind them. We assert also that the Government should control the movements of capital in these days, and that it should—and this is implied in what I have already said—also control the location of industry. Indeed, we go further, and say, as we have said many times, and as bitter experience leads us to say even more definitely and sincerely than before, that the nation must now take courage

  1683
  to control its whole economic life. It is only in these ways that our people can be rescued from insecurity and their feet placed on the path to a new prosperity.
  Our opponents will continue to distort and to misrepresent our views—that we have been accustomed to for a very long time—but no amount of abuse of us will distract public attention from the futility of the Government in dealing with this matter, and the Motion has been put down quite deliberately to place the Government in the dock. We are not in the dock to-day. The movers of the Motion are the prosecuting counsel. It is so easy for hon. Members opposite—it saves the intolerable toil of thought—to spend their time in abuse of my hon. Friends and myself, but that does not happen to be what this Motion is about. The Motion is about the futility of the Government, and their complete incapacity to deal with this problem, and we have by this Motion put them in the dock. The Government are charged with culpable neglect of the poor and workless and of great districts in the country which in the past made a powerful contribution to our prosperity. In the opinion of my hon. Friends, there is only one possible sentence. That sentence is "guilty," and, when the appeal is made to the people of this country and the facts become known, this House will see the modern Bare-bones Government no more.
  4.33 p.m.
  The MINISTER of LABOUR (Mr. Ernest Brown): The right hon. Gentleman has just said that he is the prosecuting counsel. He has not only been the prosecuting counsel, but he has delivered the judgment, and it so happens that he is not the judge. In the terms of the right hon. Gentleman's speech or of his Motion, we shall be quite content with the verdict of the judge when the time comes. Certainly the House is much indebted, as is the country, to the Special Commissioners for the work they have done and for the reports they have given us, and, after the speech that has just been delivered, I have been thinking that we owe a special debt to the Commissioner for England and Wales. This is the first speech that the right hon. Gentleman has made on this subject for a long time in which he has not charged
  1684
  the Government with having done the meanest thing ever done. For that absence much thanks. From meanness we have got to futility, but examination of the facts will prove that the futility is not ours, for, when the balance-sheets are made up on this or any other issue, the fact is that the right hon. Gentleman and his friends saw this problem growing worse and worse, and when they ended their term all that was to be found on the balance-sheet was a series of debits. We have at least many credits on our side of the balance-sheet to show that the word "futile" in the Motion cannot be applied. I was amused at the right hon. Gentleman's poetry, for there is another line in that poem. The rhyme runs:
  "If you can keep your head
  When all about you are losing theirs
  And blaming it on you."
  It is a very simple task to blame it on to the other man, and we do not object to that. As a matter of fact, all who have sat in the House for many years and listened to scores and scores of these Debates know that this problem cannot be isolated in terms of a speech such as that just delivered or of any one speech. The issues are far too grave for manoeuvre, although manoeuvre is a part of political life, and no complaints can be made on any side if manoeuvring for position takes place. Nevertheless, the issues concerned in this problem are far too grave merely for words in Motions, or for manoeuvres of that kind, or for blaming it on to the other fellow. When the right hon. Gentleman says that he and his friends approach this question having come from humble homes, I would remind him that there are other people who come from humble homes, too, and, when he says that two-thirds of the Members of this House do not understand the problem of these areas, he does himself and the whole House far less than justice. If I were inclined to use strong language I could use much stronger language than that. The fact is that sympathy for the unemployed, a desire to relieve the distress of the special areas, and thought and action about the causes of the depression in the special areas are not a monopoly of any one section of the House or of any one individual in it. The Whole House would be only too glad if by some strange change of fortune the problem that has baffled every successive

  1685
  Government for the last 12 years could suddenly find a solution so simple that it could be called "fundamental." The trouble, when the right hon. Gentleman talks about "fundamental," is that directly he comes to translate the word into action he does not find it easy to grapple with the problem in terms of any particular fundamental theory. His whole speech was based on the idea of fundamentalism. There are fundamentalists in theology. Their view is that human nature is totally depraved. The right hon. Gentleman's fundamental plan for dealing with these areas is vitiated by the view that he holds that the social system is totally depraved. If that were an accurate view, the diagnosis might produce fundamental and practical remedies, but it does not happen to be accurate.
  I will apply myself to one or two things that the right hon. Gentleman said. He did not say much about the Commissioner's Report. He scarcely devoted one sentence to the ameliorative and constructive work that has been carried on for the last six months by the Special Commissioner in the area. I propose, among other things, to redress the balance. He talked about a fundamental plan. I ask the House and the country to consider what change of system within our control in this island is going to solve the problem which he hinted at, namely, the problem of the loss of the export trade in coal in a number of export markets. It has been my task to live with this problem for nearly three years. There is not a Member of the House who has applied his mind to the problem who does not know that the situation is not the same as in pre-war days. There are some who hold the view that you may save the export trade by a subvention of one sort or another, but no proper analysis of the problem will take that line, because the special examination made impartially by the League of Nations Economic Committee, not merely of our coal export problem but of the coal export problem of the world, shows that there are forces operating which no longer leave a full, free market for coal—I mean a market which can be got if you are content to cut your price to any level in order to get the business.
  That may have been so in pre-war days, but it is no longer true, for of the total
  1686
  export trade in coal a very small proportion is export trade to a free market. The other part of the market is in one form or another closed to the ordinary forces of competition, and, therefore, to talk about an alteration of system inside this island in order to meet that problem is to talk about a solution which does not fit the facts, for the facts are otherwise, and the words in the Motion will not solve the problem. The Commissioner had something to say about that, and I shall have something to say about it before I have done. It is one thing to propagate general ideas and another to translate them into action. One of the great values of this experiment of appointing Commissioners to make a general survey of these areas, to make an intensive study on the spot and to apply remedies, has been that there is the fullest opportunity for hundreds of people with schemes for solving the problem to bring their schemes forward. I should like to call attention to this passage in the report of the Commissioners:
  "It was clear that I had undertaken a task in which I had the good will of the entire nation, and throughout the last six months in all my dealings, whether with Cabinet Ministers, with Members of His Majesty's Opposition, with local authorities or with members of the public, I have continually found a willingness to co-operate and assist. The will to help is ever present. The difficulty is to find the means by which that willingness can be turned into practical channels of assistance. The suggested cures were also considered. Many had been made by enthusiasts"—
  I had almost said fundamentalists—
  "who felt that they had discovered a panacea for the evils of unemployment and industrial depression which had been afflicting the whole world. Most were unfortunately found on examination to have some fatal flaw, but all suggestions that merited examination were referred for expert advice and in a few cases profitable action has followed."
  I suggest that the House should weigh that passage in the report, for it brings to the touchstone of fact one of the difficulties in handling this problem. One of the difficulties in the last 12 years has been that there has grown up a vast literature of social discouragement which has brought in its train its own Nemesis. The Commissioner points out that, when he seeks to get people to go with new industries to these areas, that very propaganda has created an atmosphere which he finds hard to break down.

  1687
  I will apply myself now to the problem of these particular areas with heavy unemployment. There was made for the purpose of a survey by the Universities of South Wales and the North-East Coast an examination in the terms of industries as to the incidence of unemployment. I should like to give the House one or two facts about it. When we came to analyse the North-East Coast area—this was last December—we found that approximately one-fifth, 20.4 per cent., of all insured unemployed workers were in the mining industry, and that approximately another fifth, 20.6 per cent., were in engineering and shipbuilding. In South Wales we established these two facts among others—the survey area, I may add, included the special areas and one or two others—we found two facts, that approximately two-fifths, 39.2 per cent., of all insured unemployed were in the mining industry, while the shipbuilding and ship-repairing figure in that area was 1.9.
  That examination shows, and any analysis of the situation will reveal three facts. The first is that some of these tragic figures are due to causes outside the control of any Government here. The second fact is that more than one of these are due to causes outside our control but inside our influence, and that others—and I think that on, analysis they will be found to be the smallest circle of the three—are definitely within our control. No phraseology about fundamental plans will alter the conditions outside this island over which we have no control. Where we can use influence in regard to coal the House and the country know that the whole policy of the Government has been based upon a deliberate, and in certain markets successful attempt to increase our export market. The result has shown that it has not been as successful in other areas as it has been on the East Coast of Scotland or in parts of the North-East. That is part of the problem. It is because the particular export coal of South Wales, for instance, is concerned with markets where some of these factors are particularly intractable, and where, because the balance of trade is not stable between us and those particular countries, the influence we used in respect of Scandinavia and other countries is not so powerful. The House will want to analyse the conditions in the areas much more closely than it has done yet if it is to
  1688
  fasten on to what can be done by this country, and not talk about fundamental changes without relation to the causes of the difficulty and the actual facts in the international market and elsewhere.
  I should like to give the House one table of figures to show that even in the areas with which we are concerned the picture is not quite as hopeless is the right hon. Gentleman would have us believe. It is a series of figures drawn from the viewpoint of the Ministry of Labour in the month of June in every year from 1929 to 1935. The figures affect the special areas and all unemployed persons of the age of 14 and over on the register of the employment exchanges. Let the House note the figures. In 1929 there were 219,389; in 1930 315,642; and in 1931 484,410. The right hon. Gentleman and his friends saw the figure grow in that rapid way, and they know something of the causes outside this island that produced that drop, and inside this island, I may add. In 1932 we saw the worst of the depression in these areas, for the figure in June of that year was 548,034. In 1933 it had dropped to 522,990, in 1934 to 465,092, and last month the figure had dropped to 439,282. I do not quote these figures in any sense of complacency whatever. Complacency is a word which is on the lips of many people nowadays. There are no Ministers grappling with this problem who have any sense of complacency whatever. I quote the figures to show that even in the special areas the problem is not a static one. There are evidences there that things are not so desperate as the picture painted by the right hon. Gentleman. It is because we desire to stress those portions of the Commissioner's report in which he insists that there is very great need for initiative and effort there that I tall attention to the facts that we have seen the figures at their worst, and that, happily for the distressed areas and for the House, they now show a turn for the better.
  Let me turn to the report itself, and to one phrase which the right hon. Gentleman did not use. He did not use the phrase "stranglehold from Whitehall," which I have seen used outside, because he knew that there had been no stranglehold. The Commissioner has in his report called attention to the limitations of the Act under which he assumed his duties, and he has called attention to certain other limitations. The first limita-

  1689
  tion is that of area. The House will know that everything in this report will receive the most careful consideration of the Government, and where action can be taken it will be taken. The Government will do what they have continuously done about this problem and will take the necessary action. But when we talk about the limitation of the areas the House knows quite well how it arose. It arose in an arbitrary manner because some commissioners had made inquiries in certain areas, and, as the House also knows, wherever lines are drawn there are bound to be difficulties. More than that. It was felt, and it was explained in the Debates on the Bill and accepted by the House, that this experimental and intensive effort in areas made by the special Commissioner, who gave his whole time to the effort, should not be distributed over too wide a, field.
  He has also drawn attention to the limitations of the Act, and I should like to say a word or two about the matter. These limitations have been interpreted in some quarters to mean that in some substantial way the Government have prevented the Commissioner from carrying out instructions that Parliament assigned to him. That is not so. When the Commissioner's comments are related to the original conception of his duties and powers and to the Act, they will be reduced to their proper proportions. Indeed, the limitations in some important respects are either specifically, or by inference, approved by the Commissioner himself. Let the House make a close examination of the report and the enumeration of these particular limitations. Let me mention one or two. The Commissioner states rightly that he was subjected to the general control of the Minister of the Crown. That he understands, and the House understands, was specifically imposed by the Act because he acts under the general control of the Minister of Labour. The Commissioner says that he is as much subject to orthodox financial control as any Government Department. But the House will understand and recognise that that does not hamper the Commissioner's freedom as regards making proposals for the economic development of social improvement of the special areas under his care. He says, however, that the control restricts his powers to carry out certain proposals.
  1690
  I can only interpret that as meaning that Parliament has not given him a completely free hand and put him into a position of independence which no Minister or official concerned with the expenditure of public money has ever had or ever can have under a parliamentary democracy. The Government are not aware of any substantial measure which the Commissioner could undertake and which the Minister could defend in Parliament which has failed to receive the Government's approval. The control which the Minister has exercised has been for the purpose of securing that work should not be done by the Commissioner which could be done under existing powers by Government Departments and by local authorities generally, or that in particular cases he did not embark upon activities, had he been so minded, which the Minister would be unable to defend in Parliament. I repeat that this control is laid down in the Act and is a constitutional and necessary control to safeguard the rights of Parliament. This is a control to which the Commissioner or any other Minister or official or servant of the public dealing with public money is bound to be subjected.
  The scond limitation is one to which Mr. Stewart himself draws attention, namely, that he is not charged, in his own words:
  "With the duty of relieving unemployment by the provision of work."
  This, as the House knows, was in proper harmony with the general policy of the Government, and the Commissioner himself has two passages about this which I need not read to the House, one of them taking a very strong view about it and the other making certain suggestions on the other side. The third point is that he cannot except in regard to the provision of small holdings supplement a specific grant made or offered by a Government Department. The reason for this restriction of the Commissioner's power was stated by my predecessor on 7th December in the House of Commons. It was that the Government did not intend to use the Commissioner as a round about method to increase the normal sums made to local authorities to carry out their normal duties. My predecessor made it clear that, if the giving of bigger subsidies or larger increases of assistance to local authorities is good policy, it is not necessary to bring it

  1691
  within the scope of the duties of the Commissioner. It can be operated through the normal departments and through the local authority. I have mentioned these three of several limitations to show that they are based upon reasons given to the House and reasons which the Government can sustain.
  I should like for a moment or two to return to the report itself and to point out to the House that it falls into two parts. Part No. 1 deals with a whole series of recommendations of a nature wider than anything contained in the special areas. They may arise out of conditions in the special areas, but they are of a much wider significance. Let me remind the House of some of the recommendations—the nationalisation of mining royalties, reorganisation of sales and machinery for the coal industry, large scale operations of the application of inventive genius to the extraction of derivatives from coal, the reorganisation of the steel industry, the maintenance by the Government of the central bureau of information, the production of licences for new industries with regard to the location of industries, industrial conferences between industrialists on both sides in regard to apprenticeship, the question of the methods by which boys and girls can be taken out of industry, extra pensions at 65 on voluntary retirement, shorter working hours in some industries with a tapering subsidy—there are not so many cheers there—and a full week's holiday with pay for all workmen. It will be obvious that within a week of the publication of this report it has been impossible for the Government to have given consideration to all these matters. From his point of view, the Commissioner has made his proposals, and in these proposals what matters is not the phrase used but the method of applying the proposals, and the Government are entitled to ask the Commissioner for the data upon which he himself has made his proposals if these proposals are wider than the special area basis.
  I will only take one point in order to show how necessary it is to examine not merely the words in the report, but the method of applying them. I would point out that paragraph 228, on pensions, appears to be based on the figures set out in paragraph 229. If the figures here
  1692
  given were intended to relate to pensioned insured persons—and I know of no others who are "at work" in the pension sense of the term—the Commissioner has been seriously misinformed. Instead of the number of such persons being nearly 700,000, it was in 1931 about 350,000, of whom not more than 200,000 were estimated to be in the trades insured against unemployment. I have succeeded in tracing the 700,000. They come from the census of 1931 as representing persons in work aged 65 and over. Of this total 272,000 persons are classified as in managerial capacities or working on "own account." Very few of these are insured. The balance of 421,000 described as operatives in work is the figure to compare with the 350,000 pensioners. The discrepancy of 71,000 is presumably due to persons out of work, and to some who have given up work, putting themselves down to the occupation which they followed formerly, and leaving it to be inferred that they were still working. Some of this class have also been traced to insured persons over 65 who for one reason or another were not drawing pensions. I give that illustration, because I wish the House to see the force of the point I was making just now, that what matters in all these proposals is not the terms in which they are set down in general phraseology, but the method by which it is designed to apply them and the basis on which the calculations are to be made.
  With regard to one or two of the other problems, there is more than examination required. The House will already be aware that certain of the major propositions have been for some time under the active consideration of the Government, and again I would warn the House and the country that it is one thing to put a policy down in a phrase, a speech, a headline, a leading article, or a book, but it is an entirely different thing to work out the implications of that particular phrase in terms of a great industry like the coal industry. I go a little further. I notice that the right hon. Gentleman, while paying a good deal of attention to some of these proposals, some of which are new, some of which are old, said very little about the actual actions of the Commissioner himself in the special areas, and it is to that point that I would wish to draw the attention of the House. The

  1693
  House can see that a great deal of activity has been done inside the terms of the Commissioner's reference. So many references have been made to the limitations on the Commissioner's powers as to obscure what he has done, and may I point out what the Commissioner reports, choosing some of the more important items of the programme which he has carried out as follows:
  With a view to the eventual establishment of new industries in South Wales, he has offered £9,500 to the South Wales Industrial Development Council for a special investigation into the treatment of coal and the production of oil from it, for making a special survey of the area, and for general purposes connected with the collecting of information as to the industries and resources of the area, and for publicity. With regard to the North-East, he has promised the North-Eastern Development Board £9,500 for an industrial survey of the area and for other general purposes. On the subject of what are called "public works," the Commissioner expresses the view that there is no justification for spending money without resultant economic value merely to provide employment. He has, therefore, assisted only such works as could be definitely shown to have value in facilitating the economic development or social improvement of the areas. He gives in his report a list of 53 schemes to be paid for by wages and to be undertaken by local authorities in these areas towards the cost of which grants have been provisionally approved. The total estimated cost of these works amounts to £900,750. Since the report was issued 72 further schemes to a value of £135,405 have been provisionally approved. They fall into two categories. They are either amenity schemes having an economic value, or they are public health schemes.
  Let me give a few examples. There are 128 acres of grounds on the bank of the River Tyne at East Gateshead at present covered with the remains of demolished buildings, and another 35 acres at South Shields. Slag heaps are to be cleared and levelled and a great improvement made. In certain localities, such as West Hartlepool, sea fronts are to be improved and protected, and numerous sewage and water schemes are being assisted. Open-air swimming baths are to be constructed, and a grant is being given to the Gla-
  1694
  morgan County Council for the construction of an up-to-date hospital of 300 beds at an estimated cost of £250,000. The Commissioner is to pay for the dredging of Maryport Harbour at a cost of £4,000. He also reports that he has made offers for the provision of a deep-water quay on the south bank of the River Tyne as a substitute for the Jarrow slake scheme, and for the improvement of Whitehaven Harbour. The House can read the reasons he gives why his offers have not been accepted. He has taken steps to commence providing opportunities for unemployed persons to cultivate the land, and he has assisted, or is about to assist, four types of schemes, namely, small holdings, group holdings, allotments, and subsistence production schemes. Before I say a word about them, however, I think the House is entitled to have his word of caution, which is to be found in paragraph 83 as follows:
  "Land settlement. It is indeed sometimes advocated as the main solution for the unemployment problem that though within certain limits it offers possibilities which ought to be tried out to a greater extent than has hitherto been the case, economic conditions in this country will not, in my opinion, enable very large numbers of workers to be taken out of the field of industrial employment."
  That word of caution has to be borne in mind. As to small holdings, he is assisting the Durham County Council to operate small holdings at two schemes, involving over 600 acres. He has made arrangements with the Land Settlement Association whereby that body will settle six groups of 40 families each on small holdings, the Special Areas Fund bearing one-third of the cost. Further, he is arranging with the Land Settlement Association to undertake 20 further schemes of 40 families each outside the special areas, the Special Areas Fund to bear the whole of the cost. Again he is co-operating with the Land Settlement Association and the Cumberland County Council to undertake five schemes of 40 families each for settlement on small holdings in Cumberland. He hopes also to make arrangements on similar lines in Northumberland, and he reports that negotiations are in progress for setting up a Welsh Land Settlement Trust to undertake a variety of experiments in various forms of land settlement in Wales. The Commissioner estimates his

  1695
  commitments for these schemes at £800,000.
  As to group holdings, which were originally started by the Society of Friends, he has already made a grant to the Durham County Council of £11,765 for the purpose of inaugurating 38 new centres and extending the 13 existing centres. He has promised further financial assistance if necessary. He has also given assistance towards the establishment of new centres or the extension of existing ones in Cumberland and Northumberland, where the Society of Friends remains responsible for developments. In Wales, I understand, the necessary machinery has been created and the establishment of centres is expected shortly.
  As to allotments, the Commissioner addressed allotment authorities in the special areas very shortly after the passing of the Act, offering to make grants towards the purchasing of land for allotments. I am sorry to say he expresses himself as disappointed with the response received, but he has made five grants to local authorities and 35 grants to allotment societies. As to the fourth method of operation and experiment, the subsistence production schemes on the lines of the Upholland experiment, the Commissioner has agreed to make a grant up to £12,000 towards the establishment of a similar scheme in South Wales which is hoped to cover 500 families. Already 140 members are at work. The Commissioner estimates his commitments on subsistence production schemes at £16,000. He has also taken certain action about housing. The report shows that he is taking steps to organise a public utility society, which he will finance, for the purpose of providing more houses to be let at low rents in the special areas on the North East Coast.
  With regard to local amenity schemes, Members will find in the report a list of 24 voluntary local amenity schemes in South Wales and in the North-East, to which the Commissioner has made grants, and the statement that others, including some from West Cumberland, are under active consideration. They include the levelling of ground for games, the making of gardens and recreation grounds out of waste spaces, the provision of swimming pools, and other amenities. He says one
  1696
  other thing about constructive work, the actual constructive work which the Commissioner is doing and will go on doing, with the Government and the Department behind him. He refers to his duty of facilitating measures for the social improvement of the areas, and states that the provision of social services must play an important part among such measures. With the aim of avoiding overlapping he decided to adopt the policy of centralising grants for such purposes through the National Council of Social Service. He has accordingly already allocated to the Council grants amounting to some £152,000. I need not detain the House longer to describe these details. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] I am sorry to have got that cheer, because it is so easy to use general phrases and astronomical figures, but so hard to work out these specialised details of valuable constructive work, and if that ironical cheer meant anything, it meant that Members would rather not have this done or that they would rather not have it stated. Any fair-minded citizen who reads this section of the report will, I believe, come to the strong conclusion that the experiment of setting up Commissioners for this purpose of aiding economic development inside the areas on the one hand and of assisting social amenities on the other has already been abundantly justified. More than that. The Government policy in choosing a successful business man to go down and view these questions on the ground, without prepossession, to make his own proposals, analyse his schemes, and apply those he thought were fulfilling the purpose, will, I think, get a great deal more support in the country than some of the more general phrases which, when worked out, are found to be empty of meaning for the men in these distressed areas who are suffering the disabilities which I outlined in the earlier part of my speech.
  Let me say one other thing. The House will find in the Commissioner's report a most admirable exposition of the policy of transference. I had intended saying something more about that, but I have already taken up a lot of time. You may face these problems with three ideas in mind, namely, (1) the revival of industry in the area, (2) to bring new

  1697
  industries to the area, and (3) to take the people where the industry is. There can be no doubt whatever that all three are wanted and necessary. With regard to transference, it is very interesting to find that the latest figures are most heartening. They show that the general policy of the Government, realising that this cannot be isolated from the general movement and the whole course of trade in this country, and of industrial activity, has been justified. As the House knows, there was a heavy slump in transference in 1930 and in 1932–33. Let me just detain the House with these latest figures. In 1933 the transfers of adults were 7,971, in 1934 the figure was 9,506, and in 1935, in the first five months, 6,423 persons have been transferred. With regard to the juvenile transference, one of the most successful branches of the transference scheme, I am glad to say that, with the assistance of the Unemployment Assistance Board, we shall now be able to tackle the problem of juvenile transfer in order to move not merely the juveniles but the families, which has been the real trouble behind many of the difficulties of transference in days gone by.
  In politics, passion and prejudice are most potent to obscure the intellect. The right hon. Gentleman opposite was very much troubled last week about our posters. They will go on troubling him, because they are based on facts. To-day, he is troubled about thought. If it be true what Robert Louis Stevenson said about his own area, there can be no finer justification than the state of the special areas for the Government taking every action that is possible, which can be based upon the continuance of the sound policy which has brought partial recovery to the rest of the nation. In doing this the Government have a firm intention to neglect no methods of assisting the special areas which are likely to be effectual. To that end they will give the most earnest consideration to the recommendations to the report of the Commissioner, especially those recommendations which have a direct bearing upon the areas. The whole House owes the Commissioner and his excellent staff the most hearty thanks for the great efforts that they have made in the last six months.
  5.16 p.m.
  Mr. HARCOURT JOHNSTONE: The right hon. Gentleman appears to have wholly misunderstood the purpose of this Debate. The purpose of the Debate was not to extract from him a defence of what the Commissioner has done, since we all know that the Commissioner could have done no more than he has. He was bound by the terms of the Act of Parliament. The object of the Vote of Censure was to extract from the right hon. Gentleman some indication of what further policy the Government have. I have listened to every word that the right hon. Gentleman has said and I could not glean from it even that he proposes to continue the financial aid which has been given to the Commissioner by Parliament up to the present time. The sum is exhausted. When is the next sum going to be voted? When is the next Vote going to be asked for?
  Mr. BROWN: The answer is that the Commissioner has never been held up for money and will not be held up for money for purposes inside the Act. That has been made clear from the very inception of the scheme, and it is clear to-day. The Commissioner makes it clear in his report and it will continue to be clear to all except those who wish to misrepresent the position.
  Mr. JOHNSTONE: That is so much sound and fury, but it does not meet my point. When is Parliament going to be asked to vote further money after the £2,000,000 is exhausted? On what scale does the right hon. Gentleman expect the Commissioner to work in future within the confines of the Act? Is the expenditure during the next six months to be £20,000,000, £2,000,000 or £500,000? What does the right hon. Gentleman envisage the Commissioner doing during the next six months? He has devoted himself to a wholly unnecessary defence of what the Commissioner has done. We do not complain of what the Commissioner has done. He has done what he could. Surely, the right hon. Gentleman must have some idea of the sort of things that the Commissioner is going to do in the future. When I remember the past of my right hon. Friend, who was perhaps the most active and ingenious opponents of the scheme contained in what he christened as The Golden Book, he was rather more imaginative than anything that we have heard from him this afternoon.

  1699
  My point is not what can be done within the framework of the Act. My point is this, and I think it is the point of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway, that the report of the Commissioner for the six months proves that the Act is and must be ineffective to tackle the problem. What we want to know, and what hon. Members in all parts of the House want to know from the right hon. Gentleman, is whether he has any answer to give to the suggestions of the Commissioner which cannot be carried out by him within the framework of the Act. He gave a list himself of the kind of suggestions that have been made. The only one that he took up for any detailed analysis was the proposal of increased pensions at 65 under a contributory scheme. He took the opportunity—an opportunity which I should have thought he might have taken in private, before the report was published—to tear the figures of the Commissioner to pieces. That was rather an ungracious act, it seemed to me.
  As to the other proposals, many of them have been before the country, before this House and before the right hon. Gentleman for years, some of them for 10 years. He asked us to excuse him this afternoon because the report had only been in his hands and in the hands of the Government for a short time. The proposal for nationalising, call it whatever you like, mining royalties has been before the House and the country for 10 years and more. The right hon. Gentleman had nothing to say on that point. He had nothing to offer on what he himself admits is the principal problem of the distressed area, the coal trade. I had hoped, considering the office which my right hon. Friend held before his present appointment, that we should have had something illuminating from him on what he proposed to do to relieve the difficulties in the coal mining areas. The Commissioner, who has made a moderately phrased report, if I remember aright, lets himself go on one subject, and that is the iniquities of the present Coal Mines Act. My own view is that that Act needs very much modification. What is the view of the Government? My view is important to me, and it may be mildly important to my constituents, but it is the view of the right hon. Gen-
  1700
  tleman which is important to this House and the country. I hope that when the Minister without Portfolio (Lord Eustace Percy) comes to answer on the Debate, he will make that position a little clearer.
  What about the other matters which the right hon. Gentleman read out, affecting the position of the special areas, which are not within the competence of the Commissioner to deal with? The right hon. Gentleman above the Gangway quoted replies made to the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) about raising the school age. The reply was that in some respects they were not in disagreement with the proposal. That is not the kind of thing that will be appreciated in the special areas. I do not propose to go into any review of the position, because it is well known to hon. Members. The people in the special areas will not appreciate the indefinite language of the right hon. Gentleman. They will want from him proposals far more definite and far larger than anything that he has spoken about this afternoon. He has confined himself simply and solely to giving general approval on behalf of the Government to the action which the Commissioner has taken, but he has not gone one single step further than that.
  Let me suggest one or two things to him. I rather regretted that in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman above the Gangway there was not some constructive suggestion. I agree with hon. Members above the Gangway when they refer in their Vote of Censure to the futility of the Government's policy. Nevertheless, there are practical suggestions that can be made which ought to be answered and discussed, and which ought to be dismissed if they are unsound, on the Floor of the House. Take the case of shipbuilding and ship repairing. The House has made itself responsible for a subsidy of a sort to the shipbuilding industry. Some shipbuilding areas are more hardly hit than others. Would it not be possible to see that the building of the new ships which are subsidised under the scrap and build plan are evenly distributed? It often happens that an undue proportion of orders goes to one firm. The policy of the Government surely ought to be as far as possible to distribute employment evenly over the special areas, and I suggest that where

  1701
  they are giving a subsidy Parliament should have some right to call a bar or two of the tune and to see that the new building as a result of the subsidy is distributed in the wisest possible way in the shipbuilding areas.
  In regard to shipbuilding, there is the question of steel. I suppose the Government would claim that protection for steel has not in fact raised steel prices, but that is not going to be necessarily the permanent condition. We are all well aware that in the ship repairing industry the price of steel plates is immensely important. It may mean the whole difference between a large number of contracts either going to the northeast coast or the Clyde or going to Amsterdam or Antwerp. I hope the Government will promise that should any rise occur in the price of steel they will consider measures for freeing from duty steel used for shipbuilding and ship repairing. Should the price of steel rise and no such steps be taken, ship repairing will I fear fly more and more to parts abroad.
  Mr. PIKE: Will the hon. Member tell the Committee, because it is very important to the steel industry, what justification he has for stating that the price of steel will rise?
  Mr. JOHNSTONE: I said, "should it rise." Let us look at another form of industry which is touched upon, but not very fully, in the Commissioner's report—the building industry. What is the attitude of the Government towards the special building scheme for the distressed areas? How large a sum do they think—has the Commissioner told them?—will be needed to set that special scheme going? Do they propose that the Commissioner should be allowed to finance it wholly himself? Is it to be done by Government credit? How is the money to be obtained? Is it to be borrowed in the market? Will the right hon. Gentleman who is to close the Debate tell us what he envisages as the special scheme for building in the special areas? If there is such a scheme, we do not know how far it has gone, how much it will cost, nor what the Commissioner anticipates will be the estimated rent from houses built under the scheme.
  Then there is the question of agriculture. It is clear from the report that the
  1702
  principal thing which the Commissioner has at heart is the transference to wholesome and profitable agricultural life of as large a proportion of the population in the distressed areas as possible, and the Government can take some credit that this transference has now been made as easy as possible, financially and administratively. But I am not sure that publicity in regard to the possibilities of agriculture has been adequately explored. In my own constituency nine men out of 10 would not know the opportunities there are for them on the land; they have not been properly explained, and it would be a very useful work if the Commissioner could carry out a publicity campaign to show young men, who may be fit to undertake this kind of work, the opportunities which are offered. There is a general misconception in some of the distressed areas as to what agricultural life means. It is generally considered, I fear, as being hard and unprofitable and difficult; that it takes a great amount of training and is likely to result in failure. The amount of pessimism which has been thrown at us during the last 10 years about the agricultural industry as a whole has tended to make men think that in entering upon an agricultural career they are entering a blind alley occupation which may come to an end not very long after they have entered upon it. A sane publicity campaign would be of real use amongst the urban population for whom these schemes are largely intended.
  Then there is the question of public works. I understand that the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs is going to speak and, therefore, I will not trespass on what seems to be his special area, but there is this much to be said about the Act, that it has unduly circumscribed the possibility of the Commissioner undertaking small public works and making grants for them. The possibilities of useful public works in distressed areas have not been adequately examined, let alone exhausted. If you take schemes for the development of land for industrial purposes the great difficulty which special areas have to face is the drying up of old industries, and the fact that new industries have not come along to take their place. This is due to a variety of causes which are explained in the report of the Under-Secretary of State to the Home Office and in the report of the Commissioner. The only

  1703
  temptation to industrial firms to take their industry to a distressed area is some inducement which they cannot find elsewhere, sites which are unusually favourable, or some form of cheap borrowing of capital from the Government which would give them a slight pull in distressed areas as opposed to areas like the London area. What is the attitude of the Government on that?
  The Commissioner in the preparation of these sites is fatally handicapped by a dual, sometimes a treble, control which is exercised over these schemes. In my own constituency there is an excellent scheme which the Commissioner is assisting to some extent. It involves, in addition to the clearance of the site and the building of a sea wall, road construction and rail construction, if it is to be wholly effective, and when you get a proposal like that you get several authorities. I hope the Government will tell us that it is their intention by legislation at an early date to simplify the functions of the Commissioner. In the special case in which I am interested the Commissioner has only been able to give a grant for a portion of the work, the rest will not be done at all or not for a long time to come. That must be occurring in other areas.
  I have come to the conclusion, after taking a great deal of trouble to investigate the problem from the point of view of what the Commissioner is doing in the North-East area, that his work has now ended its useful stage and that new legislation is necessary before anything really useful can be further attempted. The report proves that when Parliament passed the Act it gave the Commissioner insufficient powers. It did more than that; it reversed the ordinary channel of procedure and made it necessary for the drive to come from the bottom instead of from the top. The Ministry of Labour is in general responsible to this House for the actions of the Commissioner. The Minister of Labour is many things, but he is not Minister for the distressed areas only, and I am convinced that until there is some Minister with Cabinet authority, who is able to put real drive from the top into dealing with the distressed areas, the best commissioners in the world cannot carry out the work. The House would be willing to give to
  1704
  such a Minister much greater powers than it has been willing to give to the Commissioner. I am in favour of the existence of the Commissioner, but his report makes it clear that local commissioners are necessary. I agree with the system, but at the same time I think that the Commissioners should have an official head in London of Cabinet rank who can press their schemes from the top, so that they will not feel that they have to struggle on through three or four Ministries before they can get anything desirable adopted.
  Finally, I want to say a word about transference. For many years to come it is unlikely that the whole industrial forces of the distressed areas will again be engaged in the front line, and, therefore, it is only natural that part of the plan for dealing with these areas should include transference to other areas. But the Government will make a mistake if they dwell too much upon transference. In the first place, the numbers which can be dealt with can only be small and, in the second place, it is not the kind of thing which is much appreciated in the areas themselves. The Government must recognise that without the collaboration of local authorities, very often bitterly hostile to them politically, and of the distressed populations themselves, no scheme can be finally successful. They must not only be sound, but they must make an appeal to the people for whom they are designed. I do not think that transference as at present managed—it is pretty well managed at the moment—and as it is envisaged by the people for whom it is intended, is likely to be a great success. You will have some success, but it will be small, and I hope that on future occasions when right hon. Gentlemen speak they will not give the impression which the Prime Minister gave the other day, that they rely principally on transference for a solution of these difficulties. Transference will not solve this problem for the Prime Minister or far anybody else.
  There is not much more that I want to say about the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour. I had hoped that it would be a very thorough survey of the whole problem and that before the holidays he would have given us some guidance as to the Government's intentions for dealing with this problem.

  1705
  He said literally nothing as to the Government's intentions. As far as we can make out, all he proposes is to leave the Commissioner to struggle on in very adverse circumstances, recognised by the right hon. Gentleman as being adverse, trying to do something which he cannot do because of the Act, that is, to solve the problem of the distressed areas. In his report the Commissioner said that it was not his business to deal with unemployment, to put men into employment. If that is not the Commissioner's business, then it is the Government's business to see that it is somebody's business. I should have thought that the most appropriate person to deal with this problem was a member of the Cabinet. It is of sufficient importance to merit that attention. It has been described as the one problem which has baffled all the good intentions and schemes of the Government.
  This afternoon we have had nothing from the right hon. Gentleman to lead us to suppose that all the reports of his colleagues, of commissioners for England, Wales and Scotland, district and otherwise, that all that mass of information and suggestions, have conveyed anything to the Government as to what their future policy should be in regard to the special areas. They are content, apparently, to go on this year, next year and the year after, if the Act is still to be carried out, in the very limited way which the Act allows. If this be the final word of the Government, I am certain that not only the distressed areas but Members of all parties in this House who take an interest in this question and who are deeply moved by the problem of these areas will not be satisfied. It may perhaps take a great deal to arouse the conscience of the House of Commons on a problem which has been before it for so long. The right hon. Gentleman has a chance which none of his predecessors has had, the advantage of an enormous majority and a series of investigations which were not available either to the Labour Government or the previous Conservative Government. If the right hon. Gentleman is not going to take any more advantage of that chance than appears from his speech this afternoon, I regret to say that, friendly as my personal feelings are to him, I shall have to write him down a failure.
  5.45 p.m.
  Sir ROBERT ASKE: I feel sure that every representative of a depressed area in this House must agree with what the last speaker said, that we are disappointed that we have not yet had from the Government some indication of their future policy with regard to these special areas. This is a terribly anxious matter for every representative of a depressed area. These special areas have amongst them 340,000 unemployed. That represents in men, women and children, the unemployed and their dependants, more than a million people. Of the men who are unemployed about half have been out of work for over 12 months, and many scores of thousands have been out of work for many years. In these circumstances we feel that the Government have a very special responsibility to these areas. That responsibility is in a very large degree due to the nature of the events which have caused the depression, and also very largely to the character of the trades carried on in these areas.
  This report of the Commissioner might be termed, "The Confessions of a Disappointed Man" — disappointment because he has found the problem to be extraordinarily stubborn and difficult to deal with, and regret because his powers have been so limited in their scope. Many of us here agree with his expressions of regret. But this fact undoubtedly remains: Here is a report studiously moderate and well informed, and it calls upon the Government for a thorough reconsideration of the question of the special areas. It shows that the efforts which have been made in the past have not been adequate. I do not think that "futile" is a proper expression to use with regard to the efforts which the Government have made. I recognise with gratitude what the Government have done, not merely for the country in general but for the special areas in particular. There can be no doubt that in these respects the Government have done far more than any previous Government. The very fact of the passing of the special areas Act is an indication. There was nothing of the kind done before. What has been done on behalf of the iron and steel trade, which concerns many parts of the special areas, is another indication. The subsidy which the Government made towards the shipping industry, with the

  1707
  object of inducing a revival, is a further indication. All these are efforts which have been made with the direct object of helping these special areas. One has to recognise and appreciate that fact. To term these efforts "futile" is not doing justice to the Government.
  The point on which every representative of a special area is agreed is that all these measures are grossly inadequate, and the question now is whether the Government will take into consideration once more the whole problem and tackle it on a bold and definite basis? Obviously it has to be done on an infinitely larger scale than anything attempted so far, because the results of the special areas Act of last year are extremely small when they are all added together and consolidated. This is the point on which I press the Government. Have they got a policy or not? If they have, will they take this House into their confidence and let us know what is to be expected? If nothing is to be expected, it is only fair that the people living in those areas should know, because one leads them on from one hope to another as each Measure comes along, and in the past, in the main, they have been foredoomed to disappointment. That makes the depression amongst our people worse than ever. We want to avoid that.
  The whole problem comes back to one of purchasing power. That is obvious. That is what our areas are suffering from in essence. As the Commissioner very clearly points out in his Report, there must be a continued and determined effort made to maintain the morale of the unemployed. He says that there is something definitely wrong, that the unemployed in these areas are seriously suffering. I hope the Government appreciates that fact. What is the Government proposing to do in order to remedy the matters which the Commissioner from his own observation suggests? It can only be done by the increase of purchasing power somehow or other amongst these people, and that can be brought about in only one of two ways—by giving them work on the one hand or by giving them money on the other. What we are suffering from at the present time is a shortage of both. I know how very sincerely the Minister of Labour appreciates these matters, and how anxious he is to
  1708
  do what he can for the unemployed. The latter point, I know, is occupying his attention now particularly, namely, that the amount being distributed in these areas ought to be increased.
  That is the first thing. That increase, percolating through the areas, would stimulate the areas. The second question is, what can be done with regard to the provision of work, not merely provision of work by the Government, but by the Government inducing work into the areas? It may be that the Government will have to dive deeper still. I think it will have to do so. One of the great troubles that we are suffering from to-day, and from which we are going to suffer infinitely more in the future, due to the increase of the scientific mechanisation of industry, is not a reduction of the unemployed but an increase in the number of unemployed, and it may be necessary to adopt schemes that are new to this country, and new to every country, with regard to our monetary system. That may have to be undertaken. The Government ought to be considering these matters and dealing with them.
  I want to mention one or two things which the Commissioner directly suggests in his report with a view to benefiting the special areas. The first is that Government Departments should place their contracts, wherever possible, having regard to price and quality, in the special areas. Are the Government prepared to do that? Are they prepared to adopt that recommendation which would cost the country nothing? It is obvious that the Government, having this special responsibility, ought to place their orders, wherever they can, in the special areas. An outstanding fact is that the percentage of unemployment in these areas is twice as large as in the rest of England and Wales. Obviously it is the bounden duty of the Government to reduce the gap between these areas and the rest of the country as far as possible by means of the provision of Government work. I put that question to the Government. It applies not merely to Admiralty work and to the work of the Air Department, but to all the Departments of the Government.
  With regard to Admiralty work, I represent one of the Tyne areas. We have a

  1709
  distinct grievance against the Government. We receive now about half the percentage of Admiralty work that we received before the War. Why is that? It is one of the direct causes of depression on the Tyne. The Government themselves have reduced the percentage of Admiralty work which they have given to our area. Are they prepared to rectify that? My next point is one to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Johnstone) alluded. In my view it is one of the important recommendations made in the Commissioner's Report. It is that new industries and the expansion of existing industries could be effected in the special areas if capital were provided. The Commissioner suggests that many instances have come to his notice of industries not having come because of want of capital. He says that he is making investigations in order to find out whether there is a sufficient demand, and if there is a sufficient demand he proposes to ask the Government to put the national credit at the back of enterprises which are proposed to be set up in these areas. That is a direct recommendation of the Commissioner. I ask the Government, Are they prepared to adopt that recommendation?
  We often hear from the Treasury Bench how national credit has been restored. It is no use having national credit if it is not used, and it cannot be used to better effect than in assisting those parts of the country which are the least prosperous. I suggest that instead of the Government waiting until the Commissioner has pursued his investigations, which must be difficult at the best, they should come forward and announce that they are prepared to put national credit at the back of any enterprise in need of capital—any enterprise which they are satisfied is sound and which is proposing to start in the special areas. If the Government would do that they would be helping these areas in a practical way. If the offer were not taken advantage of, the hands of the Government would, of course, be free. What the Commissioner is really suggesting is an extension to these areas of some of the principles which are at present adopted under the Export Credits and Trade Facilities schemes. The Government might be inclined to "shy" a little at that pro-
  1710
  posal, but I hope they will not be influenced by what Walter Bagehot termed:
  "the instinctive hatred with which we are wont to meet a new idea and the terror with which we approach the mere contemplation of one."
  It is a new idea but, as the Commissioner says, the problem is one which cannot be successfully solved without the application of some unconventional principles and I hope the Government will approach the matter from that point of view. The third matter to which the Commissioner refers is the question of rates. It is true that three-quarters of the rates on industrial hereditaments are already taken off but as regards the quarter which remains upon our industries the Commissioner correctly appreciates the value of this item when he says that it has a psychological effect far more important than the amount of the rates themselves. When people propose to set up a new industry in one of these areas, the first thing they look at is the amount of rates in the pound and if the amount is high, very often they do not consider how much, in pounds, shillings and pence, the actual rates would amount to in the case of that particular industry. I invite the Government to say whether they are prepared to accept this recommendation of the Commissioner and relieve industries in the distressed areas, such as the shipbuilding industry and the mining industry, from the balance of their rates.
  The fourth recommendation which the Commissioner makes is of importance. It is that there should be a Government grant to local development councils. That again is only a small matter as far as money is concerned but it means a great deal in its practical effect. The local development councils which exist in many parts of the special areas have always been crippled for want of money. Their object is to make surveys of industry as a whole and to conduct investigations with the idea of attracting new industries to the area. That work needs money and the Commissioner recommends that grants should be made for that purpose. Are the Government prepared to accept that recommendation? I suggest to the Government that instead of controlling such grants themselves, they ought to give power to the Commissioner to make the grants and treat this as one of his optional matters.

  1711
  The fifth matter dealt with by the Commissioner is the question of land settlement. I regard it from this simple standpoint. Either land settlement for the people in these areas is sound, or it is unsound. If it is unsound, the Government ought to announce that it is unsound and drop the whole thing. Then we should know where we are. If land settlement is sound, it seems obvious to any business man that schemes ought to be undertaken on a scale infinitely greater than anything which comes within the compass of this report. The Commissioner thinks that it is sound within limits, but obviously the way in whch it is being dealt with under the powers given by the Special Areas Act can only produce results which are more or less negligible compared with the size of the problem. If the Government are satisfied that land settlement is sound—and they must be, because they have ratified what the Commissioner has done—they ought to tackle the thing as a big job, take a bold and courageous line and, instead of dealing with a few groups of at most 40 men, take thousands of men and get land settlement going on a scale which is commensurate with the size of the problem.
  If, on the other hand, the Government are not satisfied either that land settlement is sound for this purpose or that it is unsound, if they think that it is questionable, then, surely, instead of bandying arguments about it from one side of the House to another—arguments which many of us are unable correctly to appraise for lack of experience of land settlement—the way of dealing with the matter is by tackling it on a large scale, experimentally. Surely, to put some thousands of men on the land, under the best conditions and with the advice which the Government or the Commissioner think best, is the proper way of finding out whether land settlement will be successful or not. That would satisfy us. It would take away some thousands of men and provide the Government with definite data to go upon in the future, instead of having these arguments in which one side says that land settlement is no good for these areas, while the other side claims that it is, at any rate, one solution of the problem. The only way to determine the question is by practical experiment on a
  1712
  large and bold scale. The Commissioner also deals with the question of overcrowding. In the Tyneside area we suffer from this evil as much as any part of the country and more than the great majority of other areas. Obviously, what is required is to speed up the provision of housing in the affected areas, and I ask the Government whether they propose to use their utmost efforts to do so.
  Lastly, there is the question of public works. As I understand it the people in the areas affected do not want to be put into work which is of no use to anyone, but we feel that if there are works which can be undertaken with advantage to the community—and we all know that there are plenty of such works in these neighbourhoods—they ought to be undertaken now. The Northern group of Members of Parliament, which includes a large proportion of the representatives of the Northern areas, put forward a plan to the Government with regard to public works. I invite the Government to say whether they approve or disapprove of that plan. The Commissioner, at the conclusion of his report, says:
  "Some of the measures advocated will call for considerable expenditure. How otherwise is relief to be afforded?"
  Everyone who has studied this question with practical knowledge of these areas must realise the importance of those words. The problem of the Government is: Are they prepared to provide that money which the Commissioner says is essential in order that relief may be afforded? I invite the Government to take the House into their confidence as to what they propose to do and to tell us, the representatives of these areas, whether there is any hope for us in the future and, if so, in what direction we may look for that expansion, the means of which we feel we ought to expect at the hands of any Government.
  6.10 p.m.
  Mr. MAINWARING: The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour found himself to-day confronted with a difficult task, and I think he is entitled to a considerable measure of sympathy. In my judgment and no doubt in that of other Members, he had placed upon him the impossible task of defending the indefensible. But we must ermember that the policy which is now being tried is

  1713
  the Government's policy and that whatever limitations have been imposed upon the Commissioner have been deliberately imposed by this Government. It is no use for the Minister to enumerate the difficulties of the Commissioners without at the same time accepting responsibility for those limitations. The reports that are now before the House have been awaited with considerable interest and, I may add, anxiety. People everywhere have been asking whether it was possible that these reports would contain some hope. Would they merely repeat what is already known and perpetuate the uncertainty which, at present, covers the lives of so many of our people, or were they going to bring even the merest ray of hope? We have not under-estimated the task of the Commissioners nor are we concerned about blaming the Commissioners unduly for the failure indicated in the reports. As I say that is not the failure of the Commissioners but the failure of the Government behind them.
  Now that the reports are here we have to examine them, the conclusions which they contain, the advice which they tender, the recommendations, the hopes and the fears for the future which they present. Those are matters that we are entitled to discuss. How do the reports and conclusions affect the special areas? Do these reports meet the situation? Do the recommendations, the possibilities outlined, the propositions implied in one sentence but withdrawn two or three sentences later—do all these mean anything? Do the reports produce the slightest promise for the future of the so-called special areas? We have all a natural tendency to view these problems from the angle with which we are particularly concerned, and the House will bear with me if I take that line on this occasion. I am not concerned particularly to-day about being a politician or about defending my party. I am not concerned about attacking the Government. But I am concerned about the people whom I represent. Here, this afternoon, I speak with their voice, and I want to give the House a picture of my area.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) suggested that the vast majority of Members had as yet failed to realise what this problem is. I join with him in that view, and
  1714
  there may be an advantage in the fact that in presenting the circumstances in my own area I shall be speaking of the worst special area of all the special areas in this country. Several places have been mentioned, but I say without the slightest fear of being questioned that the worst area in Britain is the Rhondda Valley. There is nothing to touch it in the whole of Great Britain, and I hope to prove that. The reports of the Commissioners endeavour to place the position in the most favourable light for the Government. They have produced tables of figures with the intention of showing that, despite the failure of the Government's policy in general, somehow, owing to some act of Providence rather than to their own, the figures of unemployment are seemingly falling. Carefully prepared tables are given in order to give some measure of encouragement. Let me satisfy the House on that score. In dealing with the falling population in the special areas, the Commissioner refers, among other places, to South Wales, and points out that in 1921 there was a population of 1,052,000. By the middle of 1934 it is estimated that the population had dropped to 973,000—a fall of 79,000 for South Wales as a whole. The two constituencies in the Rhondda Valley represented by my hon. Friend the Member for West Rhondda (Mr. John) and by myself will not be far short of having contributed a half of that loss of population.
  The Commissioner has been good enough to place the population in age classes, and he compares the position in the special areas with that of England and Wales in general. The population of the country under 15 years is 23.8 per cent. of the total, and in South Wales 29.3 per cent. Those between 15 and 50 are 53 per cent. in the whole country and 51.6 per cent. in South Wales. Those over 50 are 22.7 per cent. in the whole country and 19.1 per cent. in South Wales. Some profit might result from the study of those three categories. Transference due to men and women finding work elsewhere reduces the middle group, and in consequence of that reduction the other two groups ought to rise in proportion. That explains the 29 per cent. as compared with 23 per cent. in the younger age group, but what is to account for the 19 per cent. for the group above 50 as

  1715
  compared with 22 per cent. for the whole country? Will the Minister of Labour and will the social service people consider why there are only 19 per cent. of men over 50 years of age in South Wales? I can inform the House. It is because they are dying of broken hearts. Since 1921 in the Rhondda men over 50 by the hundred have been growing older and older as the only means of moving themselves off the live register of unemployed and breaking their hearts in the process.
  Even these figures do not give the full picture. The position in the Rhondda is very much graver than they indicate. Take the numbers of registered unemployed. The Commissioner has been so kind to the Government as to give the figures. The registers of unemployed in South Wales this year for January, February, March, April and May disclose a constant and continuous fall. Beginning in January with 140,000, they steadily fall until in May there are 135,000. That is the figure put down for South Wales, and if it were necessary to include figures for the whole of Wales in order to show the same encouraging feature it would have been done, but it was found to be all sufficient to deal with South Wales by itself. Turning to the Rhondda, I will take the figures for March in each of the three preceding years of applicants for insurance benefit and unemployment allowance. They were: in March, 1932, 17,796; March, 1933, 19,788; and March, 1934, an encouraging drop to 18,254. In June, 1935, however, the number was 20,453. While however, the figures which I have given for March of the three preceding years included females, the figure for June of this year covers only the males. There we have a situation which gives no relief and is constantly getting worse.
  I will give the percentages of insured workers who are out of work in June. In the country in general it was 15.4, and in South Wales 37.5 Let the House look, however, at the figures for the four exchanges in the Rhondda. They are: Ferndale, 79.9; Porth, 45.1; Tonypandy, 46.5; and Treorchy, 36.4. In addition, we have to bear in mind that there are large numbers of people, masses of men and women, who cannot be in these figures. They are unregistered either having never been insured workers or having lost their
  1716
  insurance rights during that period of horror when the Government so generously treated them by turning them off by the hundred because, presumably, they were not looking for work. That mass has remained uninsured and not accounted for. Neither the Employment Exchanges nor the area offices of the Unemployment Assistance Board recognise these people either as dependants or claimants in their own right. Nevertheless, they are part of our unemployed army.
  The Minister of Labour quoted figures about the percentage of the unemployed in a given area being attached to the mining and other industries. In the Rhondda it can be said that there is only one employment, and that the social employment in the area is negligible. The mining industry in the Rhondda in 1920 provided work for over 50,000 people. In June of this year it provided work for 16,000 people. As a matter of fact, the men at work are, in the main, worse off than the rest of the 50,000 owing to short-time work. In South Wales, 51,000 men have been idle for under 12 months; in the Rhondda there are 9,700. Those who have been unemployed over 12 months in South Wales number 56,000, and in the Rhondda 10,700. In other words, one-fifth of the total depressed classes of South Wales are in the four exchanges of Rhondda. The figures are again misleading, because everybody who has received a job in the last 12 months for one week or more is removed from the class of those who have been unemployed for more than a year. There are thousands of men who are stated to have worked in the last 12 months who have been idle for 10 years. The figures are misleading as to the exact position. The terrible thing in the mining areas—and this is true of Durham and other places—is that these masses of men who are unemployed are not unemployed as if they were in an area like London. It is an unrelieved mass of unemployment. There are no other industries to take them and no relief of any kind, but it is just one great black mass smudged together.
  I will complete the picture. It is not the great mass of unemployed who are maintained by Employment Exchanges. There is a great mass who must go to the public assistance committees, and the

  1717
  figures with reference to them may perhaps complete the picture. In the Rhondda the number of families relieved in the year ending March, 1933, was 349,731; 1934, 359,477; and 1935, 387,523. The cost for the year for the Rhondda alone rose from £208,000 to £238,000. The average number of families per week rose from 6,900 in 1934 to 7,400 in 1935. The actual number of persons relieved for 1934 was 747,500 and in 1935 798,000—an increase in one year of 52,500 people. Ten per cent. of the population of the Rhondda are maintained by public assistance at one-third of the total burden of the cost of the administrative county of Glamorgan. That is the picture of the Rhondda. What does this report promise us? What do the Government say to a community which within the last month or two has, probably to the extent of 75 per cent., drawn its sustenance from public funds in one form or another—unemployment assistance, pensions and the public assistance committee?
  It is in the light of the needs of that special community that I want this report to be judged. Does it offer the people there anything at all? It is the sheerest folly to talk about what percentage of men over the whole country have been unemployed for three months. It does not matter to us in the Rhondda whether 1,000,000 men elsewhere have been unemployed for three months. What matters to the Rhondda is that people there have been unemployed for anything up to 10 years, and in the main those men, once out of work, remain out of work, and the only thing that takes them off the live register is advancing age. Says the Commissioner—and I wonder whether those in South Wales and elsewhere who read it will not see something of a mockery in his words:
  "We must plumb the depths of despair before lifting our eyes to hope."
  In all reverence and sincerity I ask this House, How long, O Lord, are we to go on with this suffering and tribulation? Are there any further depths of tribulation for the people in South Wales to plumb? Is our sin so great that even our pits are not deep enough to plunge us into? The Commissioner tells us of his experiences—yes; of the obvious sympathy of people to whom he has talked—yes. Is there anything else? He hopes to see a factory started somewhere. When that factory is finally
  1718
  located I seriously suggest that the Commissioner should have a wall built around it, as the one factory which he has been able to introduce into the distressed areas of this country.
  He tells us of schemes which have come to nothing. His efforts, he said, included writing to 5,800 firms in this country to ask whether they had considered opening a factory or workshop in the depressed areas, whether they were prepared to consider it, and so on. Of those 5,800 firms only 1,711 sent replies, and of the 1,711 replies 1,651 were wholly negative. Seven firms were prepared to consider—to consider—going to the special areas. One firm out of the 5,800 replied in the affirmative. There is organised capitalism in this country. There is the Federation of British Industries. All the employing classes were applied to and they failed, and failed miserably. In face of this proof that private employers are not prepared to go there, what do the Government propose? Does it not show that the responsibility for doing what private capitalism has failed to do must devolve upon the Government?
  The Commissioner goes on to describe why capitalists cannot go into the depressed areas. There are difficulties in raising capital, and in the case of the Rhondda particularly he remarks that even if capital were prepared to go there, there are no available sites. That criticism of the topography of the area does not merely apply to the Rhondda, but applies with equal force to all the other mining valleys in Glamorganshire, Monmouthshire and elsewhere in South Wales. In the considered opinion of the Commissioner there are no available sites, and no capital is ever likely to go there. Therefore, I suppose, we are to be left to ourselves to find some way out of our difficulties. He takes care also, to remind us that there is too great a tendency to look to the Government. In Heaven's name, to whom are we to look? If the 5,800 members of the Federation of British Industries fail us, to whom are we to look, and have we not a right to look to the Government?
  The Commissioner suggested a survey of the special areas and that excess burdens of the areas should be covered or taken over by the Government. I hope the Government will ponder what

  1719
  I have told them about the Rhondda, and take over all the excess burdens which the Rhondda carries as compared with Westminster, for example. He is in favour of raising the school-leaving age; he is in favour of raising the permissible age for night work; in favour of a retiring pension; half-heartedly in favour of a shorter working day. The Minister of Labour said this afternoon that the Government will consider all the recommendations made, especially those that apply only to the special areas. In other words, it is doubtful whether the Government will consider raising the school-leaving age, because that would affect places other than the special areas; and it is doubtful whether, for the same reason, the Government will consider pensions, a lowering of the retiring age and so on. The promise is that they will seriously consider those suggestions which affect merely the special areas.
  The Commissioner has mentioned a number of things, and among them a Welsh subsistence productive society, with a hope, I suppose, that the land of our fathers will some day become the land of our children. When analysed, that proposal means simply a form of Communism based upon poverty. It is a system of industrial Chelsea pensioners. Related to that there is some policy or system of adoption. This is a relic of a wartime psychology—the adoption of poor devils in a worse condition than ourselves. Here we have a dual policy of creating in the depressed areas cities of refuge for the industrial pariahs and a policy of adoption, a soul-satisfying system for the philanthropists of this country. That is about the picture of what is offered to the Rhondda.
  The young and the middle-aged are to be transferred—if they live long enough and if they do not grow old too fast. If we take the rate of movement for the first six months of this year, which is 6,000, and make it 12,000 per year, how many years will it take to transfer this population? It is to be remembered that it is a population which is being added to year by year by the children coming from school. How many thousands of children have we in the Rhondda waiting for jobs. The younger and the not-too-middle-aged will be transferred, and the old and the physically handicapped will remain where they are. There would be cities of refuge
  1720
  for the older, and transference for the others.
  But these people may not be willing to volunteer for transfer. They may weigh up unduly the chances of failure in going abroad, and after past experience they would be fully justified in taking that into account, because tens of thousands of men in South Wales lost their jobs and lost their unemployment benefit by going abroad to look for work. But to encourage them the Commissioner has propounded a new theory, that population creates work. Why does he suggest transference if he believes that? Why does he not bring them all back home? If taking our people in tens of thousands to London is going to make work in London merely because they come here, why does he not reverse the scheme, send tens of thousands back to the Rhondda and see the work following them? What a hopeless mass of bankrupt notions to put in a report. Population creating work—what a mockery.
  With regard to the mining industry, the Commissioner has some wonderful disclosures to make. Very practical suggestions here! Why he makes them I do not know. Perhaps it would be unfair to ask the representatives of the Government to explain why these observations about marketing schemes and quotas in South Wales are found in the report. What he hopes to achieve no one can guess, but what he does say is, that, looking to the future, he sees increased mechanisation in the mines, more pits closing and increased unemployment. Why, we do not know, only that he says it will be so if the quota system is discontinued. He says:
  "If the present quota system and marketing scheme in South Wales is abolished we are going to have increased mechanisation, more pits closing down and increased unemployment."
  Having said that, he goes on to explain what effect the quota system is having when it operates. First, he says what will happen when it does not operate, and when it does operate this follows: It cramps development, it prevents the cheaper winning of coal, hinders the return of healthier conditions, is an obstacle to better wages and bolsters up inefficiency. Having unbosomed himself of all this, he sums it by saying:
  "The quota system is vicious and futile."
  It certainly is if it can do those two things together. Why in the wide world he ever

  1721
  put that in the report no one can possibly guess. If he has not got forethought, he has a considerable amount of hind-thought, because he says that had we adopted a sound policy with regard to the mines some years ago there would have been a flourishing district, there would have been more profits than now, in fact, so large profits that the coalowners could have afforded to compensate every miner who lost his job. That is a remarkable statement to come from a simple Commissioner out on a job of this kind, only, unfortunately, he has made the discovery 15 years too late. As to the present position, he says the outlook is not bright. If only he had been given this job 15 years ago to save the mining industry, how different everything would be. All we have to do now is to face the discouraging economic facts and bring them home to the unemployed themselves. All he has to say to them is: "The hope lies in yourselves and not in the Government, and not in anything that I can do. You must create a psychology of help and encouragement among yourselves. If any of you start a little industry in your area, buy all the products yourselves at any cost and at any price, but if the Government should at any time consider buying any of your products you will have to give them to the Government at the normal cost of production. Among yourselves you must encourage each other to do that sort of thing."
  We, too, believe that the only hope of the workers lies in themselves. The derelict areas of the country must refuse to accept the fate to which they are now condemned. It is a condition in which children are a curse instead of a blessing; where the parents suffer constantly a horrible nightmare about the future of their children; where those who were children at the commencement of the depression are already adults becoming parents without having done a day's work. I know of women who have been married for eight or more years, and who have never known their husbands to earn a wage. For how long is this physical, moral and spiritual degradation to go on? That is the question to which the Government must reply. In South Wales—indeed throughout Wales—the people are aroused. The right hon. Gentleman, our Welsh colleague, the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) is attempting to put himself at the head of
  1722
  a great spiritual revolt against those conditions, for that is what it amounts to. The charge comes to this Government, and not to the Commissioner. It is not as though nothing could be done. There is land that can be utilised and that can be reclaimed, despite what the Commissioner says. There is practical possibility of many coal utilisation schemes, and there are schemes for other industries ready in several parts of the country whereby existing resources could be applied and added to.
  There is great material poverty in this country, among the unemployed and the employed members of the community, but greater than that material poverty and suffering are the spiritual suffering of our people and their sense of injustice that, in the land of their birth, they are, generation after generation, denied the right to work. I have seen one generation passing from childhood to adult age and themselves bearing children in the Rhondda. If God wills, I shall be there to see the grandchildren repeating the same old process and bringing into the world a generation of people fated to be parasites on their fellows. Is that the picture which this House is prepared to allow to continue in the Rhondda and in the special areas of this country? I want to lay that charge against this Government, and whatever other Government may take its place at any time. The great thing that is required to be done in this country is to use the resources that are there. Appoint men with vision and imagination at once, to apply our financial resources in order to create work and save our people physically and morally.
  6.51 p.m.
  Lord DUNGLASS: The hon. Member for East Rhondda (Mr. Mainwaring) made one of those moving appeals on behalf of his district to which the House will always listen with attention and sympathy, and he used all his skill to paint a picture of the poverty of that district, in order to impress upon hon. Members how serious is the condition. We may be sure that every hon. Member is fully alive to the seriousness of the position, but we think that there is very little use in continuing merely to explain how great the poverty is, without producing constructive proposals with which to solve it. He said

  1723
  that there was need for a great spiritual revival in those districts and he cited the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) as being the likely leader of that spiritual movement. I think the whole House will be pleased to see the right hon. Gentleman here, and will be delighted that there is still a David available to offer himself to deliver his people. They will be still more delighted to see that his skill with the sling is as great as that of his predecessor ever was. The only difference is that the heads of the giants seem to be harder—or perhaps he would say thicker. The explanation may be that there were so many Scotsmen sitting on the Cabinet Committee which considered his proposal. I propose to amplify that description a little further. The proposals of the right hon. Gentleman and the Government's answer to them remind me of Daniel shoving his head into the lion's den and getting away unscathed. When I read the answer, I thought to myself that the old Limerick which begins by saying:
  "Daniel went to, the lion's den,"
  and ends up:
  "He didn't care a damn for the lion,
  And the lion didn't care a damn for Daniel,"
  is probably a fairly apt description of the meeting between the right hon. Gentleman and the Cabinet Committee.
  Every speaker on this subject has said, in one form or another, that unemployment in the distressed areas is concentrated in certain industries and focussed in certain districts, and that the problem will not yield to any one spectacular remedy. You will have to mobilise your remedies, if you are to attack the problem, and the attack must be sustained and delivered along three or four different channels at the same time. There is, first of all, the suggestion which has been made that you might transfer large numbers of people from the distressed areas to the more prosperous areas. Secondly, there is the suggestion that you might put large numbers of people to work on the land. There is the third alternative that you might attract industries to settle in the distressed areas. I find myself on this subject in fundamental opposition to the hon. Member who has just spoken
  1724
  and to the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. H. Johnstone), who spoke earlier in the Debate. I want to begin with transference, because of the part which I believe it can play in helping to solve the difficulties of the distressed areas. I am in complete agreement with Mr. Stewart when he says in his report:
  "Transference of individuals and families out of the special areas must be regarded as one of the essential measures of relief."
  During the last two years, the Ministry of Labour have achieved great success in transferring people out of those areas to other employment. I am going to suggest to the Minister that the experience which has been gained by his Department will justify a large-scale experiment in transference not hampered by some of the conditions which have previously been insisted upon. I want to put before the House the problem as I see it in those areas. A small village or town is concentrated around a pit where the coal has been worked out. There is no possibility of employment coming to that area, and there is no justification for bringing it there. The area is truly and absolutely described as derelict, and there is only one thing that can and should happen, and that is that the people must go.
  I see here a great danger of confusion of policy between two Government Departments between which there is the need for the closest identity. The Government are at the present engaged in a housing drive which includes slum clearance and the decrowding of tenants from congested areas. The local authorities in each of those areas have either passed their plans for rehousing or are in the middle of producing plans. Every house put back in that area or replaced in that village, and every penny that is spent out of the rates on a school, a road or a social amenity, means fixing on the men a village for which there is no possible future in the economic life of the country. Worse than that, you are condemning their families to a life without opportunity and without hope. Everything that has happened since I last spoke on this subject has only gone to confirm my conviction that the Government must have a definite policy on this subject.
  My proposals are these: A Commissioner should be instructed, in collaboration with the local authorities, to classify

  1725
  the villages in his areas which definitely have no industrial future. That would not be difficult to do. Anybody who knows his own district could tell the Commissioner and give him guidance; the local authority should, in the meantime, be instructed not to rebuild in those areas except in the most exceptional circumstances. A process of decanting should begin at once, and it should not be limited, as previously the Minister of Labour has limited it, to individuals for whom there is an alternative job in the area to which they are going. Decanting should be done by groups of families. I know that that is a new proposal, and that it is a serious departure from practice, but I am convinced that the problem of the isolated village around a dead pit must be tackled in that way if you are ever to solve it, and if people are ever to be taken away from the misery in which they exist to-day. You have to overcome the prejudice of the people whom you want to move out, and you have to overcome the prejudice of the areas into which these people are to go. [An HON. MEMBER: "Where are you going to house them?"] I would re-house them in those areas where there is a low percentage of unemployment—they exist in this country—and where industrial prospects are most favourable. I am aware—and hon. Members must face up to it—that this is an innovation. I am going to read what Mr. Stewart said about it in his report, because I think he puts it as well as it can be put:
  "At the worst it is a choice between a rather more intermittent employment for certain groups of workpeople in prosperous areas, and the virtual condemnation of whole communities to complete idleness."
  I think that that is true, and that we can appreciate that it is so.
  Mr. MARTIN: May I ask the hon. Member, does he link up with his proposal that the houses vacated should not be re-inhabited by people from other areas?
  Lord DUNGLASS: Most certainly. The whole of my argument is directed to moving a village, which is at present clustered round a dead pit out of which the coal has been worked. Certainly, these villages should be wiped off the map, because they have no economic future. If the country can be persuaded of the necessity of that, and I think it
  1726
  can, I believe it will admit the justice of the claim. I ask the Minister of Labour to give serious consideration to this question of increasing transference experimentally on a large scale, and I believe that he will have the co-operation and the good will of the country.
  I should like to approach two other aspects of this problem. The House, I take it, is agreed that if we could remove the surplus labour which will never be absorbed again, out of these small villages or from the larger villages, then the rest of the depressed areas is worth preserving. Capital has been sunk there in buildings, municipal and transport services and other facilities. It is the obvious desire of the whole country that these districts shall be revitalised. The first criticism that has been made of the Government from the Opposition benches is that, if an industry wants to change its locality, the Government should prevent it from doing so. If an enterprise by changing its locality can cheapen its raw material, if it can achieve a greater demand and lower cost, then I state deliberately that for the Government to step in and prevent it from doing so would be a case of national injury. The hon. and learned Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps) shakes his head, but surely our position in the world's markets to-day depends on two things—on efficiency of production and the quality of goods produced. If any Government comes along and prejudices the position of any goods which are to be exported, and places them at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world, it is going to react most unfavourably on those people who have aroused our sympathy, and whom we are trying to help by administrative and legislative action. There is one suggestion I would like to make. If industry moves, I hope the Minister of Labour will apply his mind to see whether he cannot ensure that the employer, when he leaves his factory, takes with him, or agrees to employ, a high percentage of the people from the area from which he has moved.
  In preserving these areas we must try to attract and develop the industries that are left. Sir Arthur Rose, even in the six months at his disposal, has made some interesting proposals—the proposal, for example, of a gas grid for the whole of the West of Scotland which, if it could materialise, would be of the utmost value

  1727
  to that district, and especially the glasshouse industry. If it is agreed that you cannot force an industry into a district and cannot prevent it from going from the district, the only thing that remains is to try to make that district attractive for industry. There are two things I would mention in this connection. The first is rates. The question has been mentioned over and over again, and the answer is that the Government have derated three-quarters of the rates which have to be paid on the productive machinery of buildings. But the quarter remains and this fact remains, too, that if you are choosing between two districts in one of which the rates are 8s. and in the other 4s., a quarter of 8s. is 2s. and a quarter of 4s. is 1s. You cannot expect the industrialist to choose the one in which the rates are higher.
  There is something more than that. There is the attitude of local authorities to these depressed areas, and the fear of the industrialist that they will go on pushing rates up, and up and up once they have established their industries there. The Government should give much more serious consideration to the complete derating of industry. There is also the fear of industrialists that labour in these districts will be intractable. I have the greatest respect for the hon. Gentlemen who sit below the Gangway, but I do not think I have hidden from them the fact that I am certain that their propaganda in the district which we both know has been largely responsible for the fact that works have not been brought into that area. Their influence is far greater than they know. We understand them. We know that they are harmless, but you cannot expect the employer—
  Mr. MAXTON: The poor stupid employer.
  Lord DUNGLASS:—the poor stupid English employer from round about the London district to understand that all that the hon. Gentleman says is just words. I would make the suggestion to the trade unions and to hon. Members opposite that they should try as far as they possibly can to persuade people in this country that labour is not intractable in these areas, as we who live in them know.
  1728
  An appeal was made by the hon. and learned baronet the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East (Sir R. Aske) that the Government should put thousands of people on the land as an experiment, to see if they succeeded or failed. I can give him the answer straight away. If we put thousands of men on the land to-day we shall fail. The experiment has been made before. In 1919 in Scotland a land settlement programme was carried out. The land was given to ex-servicemen irrespective of their qualities to cultivate it. The land was bought at the highest price and stock was taken over at ridiculous prices. The result has been that we have very nearly sickened Scotland of any experiment in land settlement. Land settlement can be of value. There must be careful selection of tenants and of land, and a careful study of the available market. It will interest the hon. and learned Member to know that we are settling some 300 people a year in Scotland on holdings for intensive cultivation. That is no mean achievement. Every one of these families moved makes room for someone in industry. I am not so pessimistic as hon. Members opposite. I believe the experiment of putting this Commissioner in the area has been justified. We shall await his further report with the greatest interest, and I hope that the Government will give consideration to the points raised, and the wider issues which the Commissioner has raised, and which are outside his ability to deal with.
  7.10 p.m.
  Mr. BUCHANAN: I came into this Debate with great fear and trembling for the Minister of Labour. When his appointment was made it was glorified by every Conservative and National Liberal in the House. It was said that we had got a swashbuckler who could marshal the ranks and not be browbeaten, and who could state the Government's case. I am glad that it has been exposed that he can do none of these things. I have heard many Ministers, and I say quite franky that his performance to-day is the weakest of any Cabinet Minister yet. I could have understood him if he had said, like the late Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland, that the nation's income was limited and in spending money on such things as raising the school-leaving age, pensions and

  1729
  work schemes, you have to consider whether in the long run you would not do more injury than by not embarking upon them at all. If the Minister had come to us and said, "We have examined these things, and have come to the conclusion that the spending of money on development will do more harm than good," that would have been the Treasury position and the position of the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. But what does he do? He says "We have got a report from our Commissioner, and we have not had time to examine it." I think he should take some lessons from the late Prime Minister. When people attempted to sneer, his invariable reply was "We will set up a Committee." The Minister's answer to-day is, "we will examine it; in fact it is under active consideration."
  Is there one of the proposals in this report which has not been under active consideration for years? I do not want to be ultra-critical of the Commissioner, but there are ten good civil servants I know at the Ministry of Labour who could have written that report better. If I had wanted a better report, without all this talking tinsel, I would have gone to Ramsay Muir, and G. T. H. Cole. They are the people to write reports. I hope I have not paid the hon. and learned Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps) any miscompliment, but Ramsay Muir and Cole can produce good reports, well-written and well-documented. They have done it for years. They have dealt with the school-leaving age, the pensions business, the reduction of hours, and so on. Then we come here to-day and we are told that the Commissioner's report has just been given to the Ministry, and they have to consider it. It is like a football team playing in a Cup tie, and kicking the ball about to play out time. The tragedy is that behind the kicking of the football are human souls.
  I could understand the right hon. Gentleman coming to this House and saying, "We cannot find a remedy. The problem has baffled us; it has beaten us. If we reduce hours it puts up costs; if we increase pensions it will add to the national taxation and do more harm than good." I could understand that, but it is contemptible and low and mean to say you are considering the thing when you know you are going to do nothing—
  1730
  nothing about pensions, nothing about raising the school-leaving age, nothing about hours. If the right hon. Gentleman could have announced to-day that the Government were doing something, no one would consider that he had failed, but the measure of his failure is his inability to do anything. That is why he has failed to-day. Everybody on that side of the House knows that he has failed miserably and meanly.
  The hon. Member for Lanark (Lord Dunglass) spoke about transferring people from a particular village, and said that we had something to do with industries not going to the Clyde. But take the case of the North-East Coast, which is mainly represented by Tories and Liberals, with very few Labour Members except my good friend the hon. Member for Spennymoor (Mr. Batey), who is one of the very best, and the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson). Neither of these hon. Members comes from a shipping district; they both come from mining districts; and yet the shipbuilding districts of the North-East Coast are worse off than the Clyde. Gorbals was depressed long before I ever saw it. I was born there, and it was already a depressed area. The division was represented by the late Mr. Bonar Law, and it was just as poverty-stricken then as it is now—indeed, in some ways, worse; and yet we hear a member of the nobility of Scotland talking like that about this problem, which is so serious, and treating it with a flippancy with which he has no right to treat it.
  Lord DUNGLASS: I am sure the hon. Member does not want to do me an injustice. What I said was that I have never disguised the fact that I think that the political views of the hon. Gentleman and his friends, and also of hon. Members on the benches opposite, have been responsible for the avoidance of those districts by employers.
  Mr. BUCHANAN: Let us face the facts. Let us take the Noble Lord's division and mine, and test them. Take South Lanarkshire. I know it. There are lead mines in the place—it is called Leadhills—which are derelict, smashed. Who chased that industry away, and who keeps it away now? The landlords of Scotland have had more to do with smashing that industry there than any

  1731
  10 of us. The Noble Lord cannot point to one item where that has taken place. Take South Wales, and substitute for the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. A. Bevan) any member of any noble family in Britain. Will that bring a single factory to the place? The hon. Member for Stockton (Mr. Macmillan), who, to give him his due, has fought this problem in his own way, knows that it is not a question of individuals being good or bad. The hon. Member for Lanark may sneer, but I have worked for my division, and no one has tried more than I have to do my duty to the poor people I represent. We are faced here to-day with facts which are far more serious than that.
  Take the question of land settlement. I have here a report on Inverness, where they have many advantages over Glasgow and the North-East Coast, and where no one is far away from the land. This report refers to the plight of the smallholders and the petition addressed to the Secretary of State for Scotland in May, 1935: "For God's sake take us off the land." And smallholdings are not a question of a week or a month; it, is a matter of years. Only last Friday we had to vote a subsidy to the Minister of Agriculture in order to keep skilled agriculturists on the land. We have been pouring out millions for beet and wheat, in order to keep them going, and yet you talk of putting on the land a few miserable shipyard workers who have been out of work for 10 years, and think they can get a job where skilled men have failed. As I see it, the Government are not going to move either on the question of hours or on the question of the school-leaving age, and, indeed, whenever they take a step, instead of easing the problem, they intensify it.
  Take transference. What does that mean? It only means that in many cases the districts are left in a worse condition than they were in before. Moreover, what happens when we transfer people to London? Does my hon. Friend know anything about the lives of the poor? I have seen them come here, workmen in my trade—and I am chairman of a union. They get six weeks' work and then they are out. At Dagenham we put them where they get eight weeks' work, and then they are out. Does the hon. Member know what it means to be out of
  1732
  work in London without comradeship? There is great comradeship among the poor. It is not so bad to be out of work in Glasgow, because there you have the comradeship of the other poor, but it is hell to be out after eight weeks' work in London. And yet you are proposing to plant a man in London to go through that hell without even his ordinary comradeship; you are proposing to take even that from him. Why is it that transference is not carried out? You do not need Government schemes for transference. In every trade in the engineering industry transference has gone on from time immemorial. All that is necessary is that the employers should offer decent wages and constant work. What is our problem when men are transferred from Scotland? Men come down here, get five weeks' work, and then go to the place where they came from, and, although they are perfectly good tradesmen, everybody in the town thinks they are defective, because they could only get five weeks' work. It is said that the unemployment will be spread by transference, but surely we are not here to see London growing out idle at the expense of Glasgow or Newcastle.
  Lord DUNGLASS: May I ask the hon. Member what he would do in the specific case of the village which I said was economically derelict?
  Mr. BUCHANAN: Taking the case of Leadhills, is the hon. Gentleman quite sure, in the first place, that it is derelict? I do not take the view that all these places are derelict. I am perfectly certain that in many cases, if we had decent landlords, they could still be developed, and it is only the fact that they are hidebound by landlords that keeps them back. But, even assuming that they are derelict, where are you to take the people? Are they to be brought to London, where they will be more miserable still? You do not give people jobs by transferring them unless you can by some means or other increase the sum total of work to be done. Indeed, you make them more miserable still; you ruin whatever social sense they have. Imagine what it means to plank a man down without any comradeship in a district where he cannot get a chance at all. I have stood in the Lobby and interviewed constituents who have come to London to search for work, and more miserable creatures you could not meet. In Glasgow, where they

  1733
  have the comradeship of the poor and are among their own people, they are not half so miserable, and yet it is suggested that they should be planked down here to take part in this terrible scramble for jobs.
  The English people are at least to be congratulated on their Commissioner, who is trying to tackle the problem with some sense of proportion, who is dealing with it as a live issue, who is making some attempt to examine the problem. The Scottish Commissioner is going about handing out gifts like candy to children. This is becoming a serious problem, and in my view something ought to be said in Parliament about it. It is almost a form of bribery and corruption when a man can walk through a district and say, "I will give you £20,000," "I will give you £50,000," "I will build you this," "I will build you that." What right has he to go about like a fairy godmother? Why have not the proper people—the local authorities—the right to do the things that they should do?
  I can see little hope from this Government, or from any Government. My view is that we are living in an age when mankind is being more rapidly displaced than ever before. We are living in a mechanical age, in an age of rationalisation, an age of intelligence, an age in which mankind is a more intelligent animal than ever before. Mankind is capable of producing wealth in greater abundance than ever before. I do not take the view that the people in the depressed areas are in the least inferior. There are people in my Division who have been unemployed for eight or 10 years, but they will compare with any other section of the community throughout the country. My view is that to-day, try as any Government will, there are bound to be rising unemployment figures. There may be temporary periods when the figure is less, but, whenever machinery is improved, the figures go up again. I will tell the House what I claim to-day, in the modern conditions of society. I am prepared to give the Commissioner all his plans. I am prepared to give the right hon. Gentleman time, and again more time, to think. I am prepared to give him all his committees and all his plans, to double his staff, and so on. But in the meantime, while he is playing, while he is doing nothing, while he and his Government go on tinkering, millions of human beings are not receiv-
  1734
  ing the food, clothing and shelter that they should receive. This country has wealth almost without limit, and can produce goods in super-abundance. All that I claim is that, in this great rich country, nobody should be without an ample provision of the good things of life.
  7.30 p.m.
  Lieut.-Colonel Sir CUTHBERT HEADLAM: I sympathise with a good deal that the hon. Member has said, but he has not offered really any constructive scheme to meet the present situation. Admittedly there is a great deal of unemployment throughout the country, but this Debate refers to areas where the unemployment is excessive and is out of all proportion to unemployment generally. We are dealing, therefore, with a special case for which I maintain we must, have a special remedy. The national urgency of the position has been amply proved by the action of the Government. It first of all instituted an investigation, and long and valuable reports were furnished by the investigators. Then Parliament passed the Special Areas (Development and Improvement) Act, and Commissioners were appointed in this country and in Scotland to solve the problem and to administer a fund.
  May I first of all say something about the general remedies that have been proposed to solve the unemployment problem. There is the raising of the school-leaving age; pensions at an earlier age, and shorter hours of labour. It seems to me that there is something to be said for all these proposals, but they would refer to the whole country and not specially to the special areas and, therefore, the situation would be very much the same as regards them as is the situation at present with regard to de-rating. The burden taken off industry by de-rating applies to the whole country, but it applies equally to the whole country and, therefore, we, in places where rating is high, are always at a disadvantage compared with those who live in places where the rates are not so high.
  This matter has often been discussed and opinions vary as to how much high rates affect industrialists when setting up new industries in any area. It seems to me that what my Noble Friend the Member for Lanark (Lord Dunglass) said is true. If you have to choose between a

  1735
  place where rates are low and where rates are high, you naturally go where the rates are low. Therefore, I do not anticipate that the suggestions, although they may be desirable in the general interest of the community, for raising the school age, lowering the age for pensions, and shortening hours of labour are going to solve the problem of the North-Eastern area. If you are going to raise the school leaving age, I think it is infinitely better to raise it to 16 than 15; I very heartily commend, therefore, the suggestion of the Commissioner that the training during the extended period of two years should be vocational, because one of the great dangers that I see at present, certainly on Tyneside, is that apprentices are becoming fewer, and anything which could in any way assist to promote apprenticeship or assist in the regeneration of Tyneside would be highly valuable.
  With regard to the recommendations which the Commissioner makes, and which were also made by the Government's investigators, with regard to the coal industry, admirable though they may be, I do not believe that they are really going to increase employment in the mining industry. There may be a great deal to be said for the ownership of mining royalties by the State; there may be a great deal to be said for the provision of better selling facilities for coal, but I do not see why either of these Measures should necessarily add to the numbers of those employed in the mines;—and that is the matter we are considering to-day.
  It seems to me that on the whole the Commissioner has made a sensible report and has done the best he could with the money at his disposal and so far as his powers permitted him. I think he has been considerably cramped by the attitude of the various Departments. The late Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour stated while the Special Areas Bill was being debated in this House that:
  "There are in this country a large number of people who have valuable ideas, but it is very difficult to put them into practice if you go through the elaborate procedure of Government Departments to make sure that every single thing you do will stand the criticism of the Public Accounts Committee of this House and questions across the Floor. We believe that
  1736
  it is possible to cut that procedure short and to go behind a good deal of red tape. It is precisely to enable experiments on a very large scale of every sort and kind to be made in the depressed areas with a view to solving these very problems that we have set up these commissioners."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th November, 1934; col. 2291, Vol. 293.]
  I find it very hard to reconcile this statement with the remarks of the Commissioner, who says:
  "The Commissioner for special areas in England and Wales acts under the general control of the Minister of Labour. He has, therefore, to secure the Minister's sanction to all main lines of policy. The Minister of Labour is responsible to Parliament for the way in which the money voted is expended, and the permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Labour, as accounting officer, will have to answer for the Commissioner to the Public Accounts Committee. These limitations are, no doubt, necessary in order to conform to Parliamentary practice."
  It seems to me that the Commissioner has been unduly handicapped in his work by the departmental control to which he has been subjected, and I honestly believe that this control has militated greatly against the psychological effect of the bestowal of this large sum of money in the special areas. Wherever I go, in the North-East of England, I find that people are sceptical about the Commissioner and his work. They say, they suppose the poor man is doing his best but he does not seem able to do very much. This view of the position, in my opinion, is largely due to the fact that he has been so much tied and bound by departmental control.
  As the result of all these inquiries and investigations by the Government's investigators and the Commissioner, it seems to me that there are two alternatives before the Government. Either they must try to revive industrial life in the special areas and make every effort to attract new industrial enterprises into them in order to maintain the present industrial population, or they must devote their whole energy to transferring the population of these areas to other and more prosperous parts of the country; and they should endeavour, too, by every means in their power to come to an agreement with the Dominions for some properly regulated and systematic form of emigration. Emigration is a point which I have not heard alluded to tonight, but it is one which we must always bear in mind. There have been similar

  1737
  economic difficulties in the past as exist to-day, not of course on the same large scale, but there have been times when industry has moved away from one part of the country to another, when there have been great transference of labour. What happened in those days? Some of the population in the area where the industries had existed moved to the part of the country where the industries went, or work was to be found; others emigrated and the remainder were left to fare for themselves; they were not looked after by the State as they are looked after at present.
  It seems to me that the Commissioner's report bears out my own conclusion that the Government must combine both methods of dealing with the problem of the special areas. In the part of the world where I live, where the population has so long been maintained by the coal industry, coal will never again be able to support the number of people that it has supported in the past. Even if oil from coal, and other by-products, are produced commercially to a greater extent, it does not alter the fact that mechanical processes are rapidly taking the place of man power in the actual working of the coal, and that competition against our coal on the Continent and elsewhere is much greater than it was in the past. There are many pits, too, certainly in Durham, which are not as good as they were, and some are completely worked out.
  It seems to me, therefore, that there much be places in this North-Eastern area which can never be revived—villages such as the Noble Lord alluded to where the pits are closed and where there is no chance of their being opened again. The only possible method by which such places can be dealt with is to transfer their inhabitants elsewhere so that gradually they will pass off the map. I appreciate what such a policy means to the inhabitants, but I also know what it means to them if they have to stay where they are and have no work to do. I think that it is far better that they should move away and I am alluding to the younger inhabitants, for I know by experience how hard it is to find work for the older people elsewhere nor can they be moved so easily as can the younger people. They will have to stay on in their old homes and everything that is possible must be done for their welfare. Some of them can work on the land, but
  1738
  a great number of people cannot be put on the land—not nearly so many as some experts would have us believe. A certain number of carefully selected people can make good on the land; a certain number of families may do well in suitable places and the amenities of the villages can be assured.
  There is one village in my county where most of the younger people have gone away and the older people are left. This village has been taken in hand by private persons and is being run more or less as a village community. It is a fairly prosperous place of its kind and the inhabitants, I believe, are pretty well reconciled to their lot. I have been there, and I see what is, I think, a real village community, where the inhabitants work the whole body corporate and strive to improve the amenities of the village. I believe they have now an understanding that, as families die out, the houses in which they have lived will be destroyed and so gradually the place will pass away. But I warn the House against the idea that large numbers of people can be placed on to the land with any hope of their being successful.
  But, in addition to these really derelict places, we have a different problem in the North-East—the problem of those places which are not derelict, which have a future before them, such as Gateshead and other towns along the Tyne. It would be an enormous social and industrial waste if these towns were allowed to decay still further. These are the places in which it is essential that the Government should take action. There is no doubt that the problem is an extremely difficult one. It is easy to suggest that the Government should do something. It is much more difficult to suggest what they should do. At any rate, they have an opportunity now which I hope they will accept. It is constantly said that industry should be planned and localised. That policy is advocated by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) to a large extent, and to a lesser extent by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. Macmillan), both of whom are rather apt to give the impression that nothing is being done in this matter at the present time. Actually this process of planning and localisation of industry is going on all the time. The

  1739
  Government rightly hold that it is a task which industry should do for itself, rather than that the Government should take steps to make the industries do it. The fact must be faced by those of us who live on the North-East Coast that the planning and localisation of industry will not necessarily help us. Indeed, I think that it might have the contrary effect. It does not help the steel people of Middlesbrough or of Stockton to establish steel works in Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire, and the tendency is that the more you rationalise industry and bring it up-to-date and make it efficient in the world's markets, people will go to the new and up-to-date places rather than to the old. Therefore, I do not see that we on the North-East Coast are going to benefit by the planning and localisation of industry, and yet from an economic point of view it would be wrong for this county not to adopt such a policy.
  What is going to happen? What can be done? It is a question of new industries, and here again we are faced with the fact that the tendency of all the smaller new industries so far has been to come South, and, if possible, as near to London as they can. The reason for that is obvious. London is the best market, and it has the most convenient and central position for trade. I do not think—and I say it with regret—that the new industries are likely to come of their own accord to the North-East Coast unless something is done to induce them to come there. I do not anticipate that our local efforts will go very far. My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Curry) and I are associated with one particular Development Board for South Durham, and I am also on the committee of the Development Board for the North-Eastern area, and I know how earnest and keen all the Durham, Newcastle and Northumberland people are to attract industries. We are doing our utmost and using the "self-help," which is advocated by the Commissioner in his report. But I do not honestly think that we are likely to be very successful in our efforts unless something or other is done by outside authorities to help. I have already alluded to the question of rates. The hon. Member for Lanark (Lord Dunglass) alluded to the question of psychology. I say nothing more about this subject, but there is something to
  1740
  be said for the fact that industrialists, especially in the South, are a little doubtful of the Northern psychology.
  Should the Government take direct action and help on a large scale? It is, of course, outside the powers of the Commissioner to advocate this, and he does not do it. But would that be desirable? Is it possible for the Government really to locate industry? I do not think that it is, and I am certain that it would not work in practice, or, at any rate, that it would take a great deal of time. The Government might help very much on the North East Coast. They might help us, and they could help us undoubtedly in one way, and more particularly than in any other. They could build a great many more ships than they do on the Tyne. They would do this if it were not for hon. Members who plead for the Clyde. I appreciate the difficulty of the Government, but it must be remembered that it is by shipbuilding that Newcastle and the North East Coast generally on both sides of the Tyne have flourished, and it is largely owing to the fact that shipbuilding has practically ceased, or is certainly nothing like what it was, that we are in this position.
  The Government might help us in this way. The proposal made by the Commissioner on page 16 of the report that there should be a special fund created in order to lend money on easy terms for the expansion of existing enterprises and the starting of new enterprises would prove to be a very great help to us. He points out in his report that credit for industry cannot run the risk apparently associated with the starting of industries in our part of the world, and unless there is a special fund for the purpose there is no means of assisting new industries in our particular area. He cannot himself, apparently, do anything to help, but he says that he will advocate the formation of a special fund if he finds that it would be of advantage to the industrialists of the North. That would be a very hopeful way of helping new industries to come to our area. If the Government do not accept that point of view, and if it really is proper to believe that the North Eastern area, and other distressed districts in Wales and Scotland are going to solve their own problems in the course of time, what exactly can be done to help us for the time being?

  1741
  I am not in favour of a large scheme of public works. It is possible that you might waste a lot of public money and do very little good, but I do think there is a very good reason for carrying out public works in these particular areas during the period of time which must elapse, even if the Government come to their help, and even if conditions are improving, before conditions have really improved. There are many ways in which public money could be spent to the general public good in the North East area. I put housing first and foremost. I suppose that nowhere else in England is housing anything like as bad as it is on Tyneside. There is undoubtedly room for any amount of house building in that part of the country. I therefore like the suggestion which the Commissioner makes of a public utility society for the purpose of house building, but apparently under the terms of his commission, whatever they may be, he is not in a position to help, nor indeed will the Housing Bill which we have passed through the House of Commons during this Session really help us to the extent which we should like to be assisted.
  Miss WARD: A public utility company to deal with North East Coast housing was definitely promised by the late Minister of Health in Standing Committee.
  Sir C. HEADLAM: Could not the Government bring some influence to bear on the railway companies in order that some differentiation in freight charges might be made in order to help us in the North Eastern area? Obviously, if you established a new industry in a place like Newcastle and wanted to get trade all over England, and especially in London—and this is a suggestion which was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton-on-Tees—something of this kind would be of immense help. It is a matter which deserves the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour, and I hope that he will be able to give us some satisfaction on the point. Again, there is a matter in the county of Durham which, if attended to, would prove of immense value, and that is, that something should be done in order to do away with the large number of level crossings which exist in Durham. That would be work suitable for the unemployed during the winter, and if we
  1742
  could get any extra assistance from the Minister of Transport for that purpose we should be able to do an admirable service for the community. Above all, I want again to make a point of suggesting that Admiralty orders should be given more freely on the Tyne. If that were done you would start going a great many industries which are now quiescent on the North East Coast. I am a North-countryman. I live in the North, and I have witnessed during the last 10 years a most admirable display of patience and fortitude by my countrymen in Northern England. They have borne this long period of unemployment with a patience worthy of Job, and they have stood this all these years with a courage and good nature which have been the admiration of all. I beg of the Government, I urge them with all the force at my command, to carry out quickly the recommendations given by their investigator and by the Commissioner appointed under a special Act passed by this House.
  7.56 p.m.
  Mr. KINGSLEY GRIFFITH: Though the Minister of Labour will not expect me to greet his statement of policy on behalf of the Government with shouts of joy, at the same time I welcome him very heartily to his present position. There is no one else I would rather see there, and I am only sorry that he has had to play his first test match on such an extremely unpleasant wicket. There is, when we come to consider the report before us to-day, a practical difference between that report and the report of the investigators—the Wallace, Davidson and Rose Report. These previous investigators were occupied in thinking out the problem. Before that particular activity was centralised entirely at Hastings, they were given the job of thinking out what could be done with regard to the distressed areas, and they produced their report. This report is from the Commissioner who was appointed for a different purpose. He was appointed primarily not to think, but to act, and the test of this report is really to be found rather in the action taken than in the recommendations made. I am not at all averse to the present Commissioner making recommendations. I am indeed glad that he has done so, but I think that most that is valuable in his recommendations was already contained in the previous

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  reports, and especially in the Wallace report.
  The value of this particular report must really be weighed by what we find on page 70. The Minister of Labour detailed at some length the conditions for it being made, but a summary is found on page 70 and it accounts for an expenditure of just over £2,000,000, which includes a great deal of money that has not yet been spent. For instance, there is £100,000 for the proposed public utility society in Durham. None of that has yet been provided or expended, and a great deal of the rest of that money represents further commitments. It is rather interesting to compare that figure with the statement attributed to the Paymaster-General, Lord Rochester, on page 4 of the report, where he is reported as having said that
  "the £2,000,000 is in the nature of a token vote and merely a preliminary figure for the three months ending next March."
  There has been a disposition to put all the blame on the Ministers and to say that the Commissioner has done everything that he could have done, and that anything that has not been done is solely due to the way in which he has been hampered. I am not sure that this is strictly true, because there was at any rate money available for him for three months, and on the financial side, at any rate, he has not been asking for more money than he could get if he wanted it. It appears that that is so. I am not therefore satisfied, I am sorry to say, that everything has been done up to the present which could be done even within the limits of the Act. But, of course, it is primarily the shape of the Act that has dictated the activities of the Commissioner. He himself is very bitterly conscious of that fact. In some ways I think his report is rather a tactless document, as far as the Government are concerned. He starts on page 5 by complaining that the extent of his powers is misunderstood, because of
  "statements made by Members of the Government during the passage of the Bill."
  Therefore, if I should say, or anyone from these benches or above the Gangway should say, that the House of Commons was misled by statements made at the time the Bill was passed, it is no more than is contained on page 5 of the Commissioner's report. He goes on im-
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  mediately afterwards to make a further complaint, that the framing of the Act was so loose and that its lack of definition of the word "payable" had made him extremely doubtful as to what his powers were, with the result that he had been very gravely cramped in his activities. He says:
  "This ruling has produced a disappointing position. It has rendered it impossible for the Commissioner to give local authorities in the Special Areas any financial assistance towards the construction of roads, bridges, tunnels, canals or quays, or towards any educational service."
  Here is a tremendous limitation on the activities which one might expect the Commissioner to carry out, and it is not to be supposed that these activities would be mere relief works of their own nature. The ways in which he says he has been hampered show that these were real, useful works which would have been for the advantage of the areas and within his powers otherwise, and when one reads the very formidable list of things that he cannot do which he goes on to explain, page after page, saying how sorry he is he cannot make a bridge here, or a tunnel there, one is rather reminded of the song which was attributed, with great injustice, I have no doubt, to various units during the War, in which they were made to say:
  "We cannot dig, we cannot shoot, what earthly use are we?"
  That is the sort of song which it seems the Commissioner is singing to himself now. I think also it is worth taking into account that he obviously does not regard his job as likely to be one which is permanent. It is true that the Act itself does fix a limit of 2½ years, but that was, I think, only intended as a trial period, and from my memory of the Debate we were given to understand that if the activities of the Commissioner during this period were satisfactory and were proving of benefit to the areas that he was treating, there would be further legislation, and these powers would be extended. But this Commissioner has taken it for granted that he is coming to an end in 2½ years' time, and that is the reason that he gives for not having provided himself with an adequate staff. He says:
  "It has throughout been my policy to keep the staff to the lowest number compatible with efficiency; it was clearly undesirable to create a large staff for an organisation

  1745
  which would probably last less than two and a half years."
  I am bound to say that if a man starts off in his job in that spirit, believing that he is so hampered by the instrument which put him where he is that he will not really be able to have a great effect on the situation, believing he is only going to last for such a short time that it is not worth while building up an efficient organisation, he is not likely to achieve any very great results. You have to give a man some freedom, a free hand to a considerable extent, and you have to give him some prospect of permanency if he is to take an interest in his job and make it a success, and I cannot help thinking that that has not been done. It is an invidious task to criticise the Commissioner himself, who is a man performing an unpaid job, giving up an enormous amount of time which he would otherwise have expended to his own advantage, instead of giving his services to the nation, and I am not seeking to put any criticism upon him, because I believe it is due to the limitations of his job, which is so hampered and handicapped. He has really been given the job of baling out a tank with a thimble, an instrument quite inadequate to the task. All the same, we have to pay very serious attention to his report, and I am bound to say that I have found it one of the most gloomy, one of the most melancholy documents I have read for a very long time past. It is true that at the end he says we have not got to give way. He says:
  "We must not be content to remain baffled and defeated."
  But I am bound to say that when I arrived at those words, which are very nearly the last in the report, I felt very considerably "baffled and defeated" myself. The seriousness of the position really is this: If we were confronted with the depressed or special areas in the state in which they are at present at a time when very abnormal conditions prevailed, we could say, "That is the reason." If we were in the presence still of a financial crisis, we could say, "Such things have been before; it will pass; we have seen worse weather." But we are told—and I am prepared to accept it—that the financial crisis is over, that confidence has been restored, that the finance of the country is so sound, as
  1746
  has been said in a recent publication, that it is not on the financial side that these things are going to go wrong. Also we have seen the world in general taking some rise out of the lowest trough of the industrial depression.
  We have also seen—and I think this must be taken into account because psychologically it is of very great importance—the panacea of one of the great parties in the State, namely, tariffs, applied. I am not going to discuss whether they are right or wrong, but that was the great remedy for unemployment put forward. We have seen that applied, and applied very strongly, with a great deal of energy and drive behind it. It has been applied, and this result still remains. Therefore, we have to face this situation, that the word which the Conservative party would like to have spoken as the last word is already spoken, and the charm has not worked the magic expected of it. Personally, I am very sorry. I would much rather that all my economic theories should be proved wrong, if only the situation could be proved right. But we have to face the facts as they are, and we cannot pretend to ourselves that the normal revival of trade is operating or is going to affect these areas. On page 12 of the report hon. Members will see—it is a rough and ready test, but it is one of the only tests which one can apply—that in the Durham and Tyneside area, where 14 new factories have been opened, the Commissioner states:
  "It is estimated that these provide employment for about 750 workpeople."
  He also reports that during the same period 11 factories in the special areas were closed. I do not think it unfair to say that those results pretty well balance out. There is not much advantage to be claimed one way or the other, so that, apart from special efforts, it does not look as if the ordinary revival of trade was going to give back hope to these areas.
  What of the future? I suppose I cannot pretend to belong to a depressed or special area myself in these days, because the official definition has excluded Teesside, rather unreasonably to my mind, from these areas, but taking the result as it is, I am near enough to Durham anyway to be able to see it for I am only just separated by the river, and when

  1747
  one looks at the new bridge across it, it is almost as if one was looking across to a desert. What hope is held out by this report in areas like that? On page 71 of the report one sees what the Commissioner thinks about it. He says:
  "I see no prospect of any effective reduction under existing conditions."
  That is, reduction of the percentage of unemployment. That is the view of the Commissioner, who has been into all the facts and, I have no doubt, studied them with the very greatest care. The hon. Member for East Rhondda (Mr. Mainwaring) picked out a phrase which had also caught my eye, the extraordinary pronouncement that population creates work, in which case of course there is no problem to solve, because where there is population there must also be work, and therefore there are no depressed areas, and we can all go comfortably to bed. Clearly we cannot get much satisfaction out of sweeping generalisations of that kind. I hope it will not be regarded as due to a particular economic viewpoint held by a Liberal like myself, but I could not help noticing this in the report:
  "The decline of trade is largely due to international causes, economic and political, and their readjustment in the near future, so as to restore effectively lost trade, is not to be looked for in the face of a world committed to increasing economic nationalism."
  That is the reason for hopelessness found by the Commissioner, not by me, and surely it must remain at the back of our minds. I am not pretending that one country alone can rid the world of economic nationalism, but I do ask that we should on all occasions make our contribution, that we should not bind ourselves by lasting agreements to keep tariffs up when in our own interests and in those of the whole of the rest of the world we should try to retain as much freedom as we can to bring them down. I do ask that the opportunities should be constantly explored. It is unreasonable to expect immediate results. Speaking for myself, I do not think any Government could at once sweep away all the tariffs, all the barriers. I think it would be fallacious to hold out any such prospect, but I do ask that a system of policy which, when we speak of it from the point of view of the world, is
  1748
  universally recognised as disastrous should be reversed as far as we can do it in our own country. Apart from that, I can see no hope of restoring the trade to these areas for which they are naturally fitted, out of which their fortunes were made, and which made them the great contributors to our national prosperity which they once were.
  The only suggestion of the Commissioner—I am leaving out mere palliatives, detailed works, which are no doubt useful for the time being—the only great proposal is with regard to transference. I want to examine very briefly what kind of transfer we are getting at the present time, because the kind of transfer that I see, the kind of transfer that I fear is to be extended, is not the transfer of men to work, but the transfer of work away from men. We have had the great example threatening South Wales at the present moment. I have sometimes allied myself with my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. Macmillan) on the question of planning, but transference of this kind is not planning at all. It is the very reverse of planning. It is allowing industrial movements to take place leaving half the factors, and among them some of the most important factors, entirely out of account. That is not what anyone would recognise as being any kind of intelligent planning, and when I see that threat to South Wales, which may easily, some day, become a threat to Middlesbrough, I have to think of it as it affects my constituents also, and I beg that if this movement takes place, we should have some far more thought-out scheme of how to deal with the people who are displaced, because the present system seems to have no thought for that factor at all.
  I shudder to think what the results upon the country will be. It reminds me of the old quotation about the king who made a wilderness and called it peace. Let us not make a wilderness and call it reconstruction, because it will not be reconstruction of any kind that the nation can value. I would only ask the Government to consider that. I fully accept from the Minister of Labour his statement—I know he would not have made it if it had not been true—that he does not regard the situation with any kind of complacency. For that reason, I shall hope that the

  1749
  speech which he made to-day is not the Government's last word, and that, although they have had these proposals before them not only for a few days but for years past, now that they are reinforced by the Commissioner perhaps his word will prove the final make-weight which will cause some of these proposals to be adopted. They are long-term remedies, remedies which do not only affect the special areas, strictly so-called, but none the less they are really the carrying out of the suggestion of the last Minister of Labour, which was the most promising thing in the introduction of the Bill. I have always held that the Bill itself was insufficient, but I had some hope from the speech of the Minister when he said that we had to face the problem of the reorganisation of leisure. There are proposals here which amount to the reorganisation of leisure, and I hope that consideration will be given to them from that aspect.
  It is not only an economic question or a human question in some of these areas, but it becomes a constitutional question. I know that it is old fashioned to quote Ruskin, but I remember John Ruskin once suggesting that amongst the industries of a nation the manufacture of souls of a reasonable quality ought to be considered. I am certain that the manufacture of damned souls is something that very seriously concerns the State. When I use the word "damned," it is used in the sense of those without hope. When you have people brought up in these areas without hope, what allegiance can they have to the Commonwealth? It is not a Commonwealth to them. If they are seditious, if they begin to make outbreaks, whatever may happen, whatever things they may do that might be blameworthy in the ordinary citizen, one would have a great deal to take into account on their behalf in extenuation. People will go through bad times with unexampled patience, even if the bad times last for years, providing there is some hope of their coming out at the other side, but in a report like this, what hope can these people have? I could almost say that I hope this report will not be read in the special areas until it has been followed up by a policy which will restore the balance and give them some kind of hope. I close with that extraordinary sentence
  1750
  from the report which might almost have been a quotation from the late Prime Minister:
  "We must plumb the depths of despair before lifting our eyes to hope."
  We have heard that quotation before tonight. Certainly, the people in these areas have been plumbing the depths of despair for years, and I am afraid that there is nothing in this report that will raise their eyes one inch towards hope.
  8.19 p.m.
  Sir ROBERT HORNE: I shall detain the House only for a very few minutes. I fully appreciate the fact that it is impossible to make a speech on this subject which can cover the whole of it. It is only possible to utter a few observations upon what one may select as salient features applying to the particular districts concerned. The House must be grateful to the two Commissioners for the reports which they have presented, because while they do not put forward solutions of the problem, they make very valuable suggestions. May I say, and I say it with some regret and disappointment, that I wish it had been possible for the spokesman of the Government today to say in regard to some of these suggestions whether the Government can respond to them and whether they intend to act on them? It is a perfectly fair criticism that while the reports have only been in the hands of the Government for a very short time, there are almost no suggestions in them which have not been before the country in some shape or form for the last five or six years. In these circumstances, I hoped that it might have been possible for the Government to have indicated some active operations on the lines of some of the suggestions made. I recognise, however, the vast number of questions with which the Government have to deal at the present time, and I am not disposed to make my reproach too harsh upon that matter.
  No one can exaggerate the poignancy of the distress in the areas with which we are dealing, and I shall not endeavour to deal with it, because I cannot do it nearly so well. I endorse entirely the eloquent appeals made by the two last speakers to the Government. I think, however, that my hon. Friend who spoke last perhaps left some things out of account in the direful picture which he presented of the condition of the country. He forgets this

  1751
  in regard to the real amount of profit that has been made in any given employment in this country—I am sure the matter would be brought home to him if he considers for a moment—that if emigration had proceeded since the war to anything like the same extent that was in vogue before the war, we should have no unemployment in this country, except for the unemployables. If the emigration had continued on the same scale as before the War it would have completely taken up the 2,000,000 people who are unemployed to-day. Therefore, it is not quite fair to the country, or to the efforts it has made, or to the Government, to represent the situation as if we had a condition of things now for which, somehow or other, our present economic system was to blame. The fact is that we have during our period of great industrial progress in the past built up populations which could never be adequately supported within this small country, and that situation was to a considerable extent ameliorated and largely cured by the amount of emigration which constantly went on.
  An important thing to notice is that the unemployment which exists in its most intense form is largely confined to four districts. The House ought to note the fact that every one of those districts is the same in character. Each one is a region which has depended initially on the coal trade and built upon the coal trade, the iron and steel trade and ship-building. Each of those four areas has its employment entirely depending upon those great industries. There is an old saying that corruption at the best is the worst, and when trade has declined from the highest prosperity the decline is most obvious where it falls to its lowest depth. It is because these regions depended upon the great heavy industries which were in the past so prosperous and from which the prosperity has gone, that we have there great centres of population which were collected by the prosperity of those trades. The problem, accordingly, is a very difficult one, and the only thing that one can do is to tackle it in its most obvious features.
  The basic problem is the coal trade. Anybody who has studied the figures of industry to-day will see that everything depends upon the prosperity of the coal
  1752
  industry. The transport industry, for instance, depends upon the amount of movement there is in coal in order to rise from a position of difficulty to a position of prosperity. So it is with many of the other great industries. It is idle to say that if we had had a Socialist system in vogue the position would have been any different from what it is. I listened carefully to the speech of the right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) who opened the Debate. He gave an account of the vast number of people who had gone out of employment in the coal industry and spoke as though he blamed the Government. Suppose the best of Socialist Governments had been in power under a Socialist system, what could they have done to make the coal trade any better? Could they have compelled Italy to take more coal? There base been a decrease in the demand from Italy, one of the great markets upon which the South Wales coalfield depended. Could they have compelled the citizens of the Argentine to take more coal? Their difficulty has been one of exchange. It is no good producing a large amount of coal unless you can sell it. All over the world the problem has not been one of production but one of markets, and even the best Socialism in the world cannot make markets if conditions do not justify it. The problem is one for all shades of politics, if there is to be a solution. I think that there are certain elements of hope in the present conditions. The iron and steel industry is doing better than it was, and the right hon. Member for Wakefield will admit that this is due to the protection it has obtained through the Import Duties Advisory Committee. An improvement in the iron and steel trade must mean an increase in the consumption of coal, and I think that we shall see greater development in the future than we have been seeing during the last six months.
  But we have to go much further. I am only talking about things with which everybody is familiar when I remind the House of the possibilities there are in connection with the production of oil from coal. Undoubtedly one of the reasons why the consumption of coal has fallen in our own markets is the consumption of oil, but, if we can produce out of our own coal oil, then, obviously, we have found a solution for a part of the

  1753
  problem. We cannot blame the Government on this head because they have done everything they can by helping research and making arrangements with regard to the duties upon oil to encourage this development. The amount of research which has been done in Government departments on the low temperature carbonisation problem has been great, and they have encouraged the setting up of the great factory at Bilingham which is to produce oil by the process of hydrogenation. I look forward to a great development of the production of oil from this hydrogenation process. From all indications the factory at Billingham is going to be a great success, and, if that is so, then it will be the bounden duty of the Government to do everything they can to foster similar factories in South Wales, in Scotland and in Cumberland. When this production has been tried and tested and proved to be good the coal trade can be helped in all those districts where in recent times it has been so depressed.
  At the same time let us not forget the other process of oil from low temperature carbonisation. That also has had considerable success. All the aeroplanes which were flying at Hendon were flying upon petrol they got from British coal. That again is an encouragement, and there is ample room for both these processes to be developed. They have their own distinctive features, and one of the features of low temperature carbonisation is that it leaves you with smokeless coal which you can burn in the grate. I look forward to the time when nobody will be allowed to burn anything but smokeless fuel. It will rid our atmosphere of a great deal of smoke and soot, increase the health of the people and save enormous sums of money. These are two hopeful lines of development, and I am certain that the Government will encourage them with all the support they can give.
  Something has been said about planning. I believe in a more careful organisation of the industries of the country. The unfortunate thing is that when everybody begins to use a word it seems to lose the efficacy of influencing people as to the value of what is behind it. Rationalisation was so much talked about some time ago that people became disgusted with the idea, and people are now
  1754
  beginning to look askance when the word "planning" is used. Nevertheless, the idea is right. In the present complicated system of society the wastage that occurs through the absolutely disorganised dogfight in our industries is enormous. That is something which must be prevented. Sometimes when I say these things I am told that I am talking socialism. My answer is that I am talking of the antidote of socialism. At any rate, we need not quarrel by what words we call these arrangements; the fact is that some development of this kind is necessary. That the Government believe so is made obvious by what they are doing in regard to the cotton industry of Lancashire. They are prepared to take up the idea in any set of circumstances in which it may be efficacious.
  I pass to the question of the migration which may possibly take place of tin-plate works in South Wales to another part of the country. As soon as you mention this question it is obvious that you are in a region of immense difficulty. On the one hand, at a time when you are trying to attract industry to South Wales it seems ridiculous and absurd that an industry which is giving employment should be leaving. You have a whole organised community with all the social services which have been created at great cost, and it seems a tremendous waste of wealth and effort to leave all that behind and establish a new community somewhere else, and do the same thing there. A phrase was used by a Member of the Opposition which suggested that this could not be in the interests of the welfare of the community. It may not be in many cases, it would be very unlikely to be so, but there are circumstances in which it may be the only way in which the welfare of the community can be preserved. For example, if you find that foreign competition is able to manufacture much more cheaply than you can in the particular place where you have been conducting the industry, and that there are other parts of the country which will give you the conditions which will enable you to compete, then, obviously, the welfare of the community would demand that you should shift your works to a place where competition is possible.
  I do not know anything of the merits of the particular question which is in controversy. Personally, as chairman of

  1755
  a great railway company that goes into South Wales, I would much rather see the works where they are, and also from the point of view of humanity I would greatly desire that no one should lose work through any such condition of such things arising. But it is quite obvious that no one can come to a decision on that matter without very careful thought. It involves a very great principle, and the machinery by which you can deal with it is a matter which requires most cautious deliberation. I do not think that any of us would be in a position to say now how precisely that matter should be dealt with. At any rate it is a problem which faces us and it deserves our most serious consideration.
  Both the Commissioners, I observe, have referred to the fact that they have had to come to the aid of some of the localities whose resources have entirely disappeared and who could not rate any more highly for the purpose of keeping up their services. I do not wish to say this by way of getting back to an old argument. I had a controversy some time ago with the Secretary of State for Scotland as to whether we in Glasgow and the West of Scotland were getting full support from the Chancellor of the Exchequer for maintaining the able-bodied unemployed—a controversy in which he was able to show me that the State is really contributing vast sums of money to that community. Indeed, Glasgow alone is getting something like £3,580,000 from the State at the present time, which represents 94.7 per cent. of the burden; and one could scarcely quarrel with a figure so large.
  The two Commissioners, I think, reinforce the argument that I previously put, as to the attempt which was being made to make the support of the unemployed a completely national burden because these distresses still lie very harshly upon the special areas. I think that in many instances now, in particular portions of the special areas, it is quite impossible for the local authorities to raise the necessary money to carry on their services without putting on the rates a charge which it is impossible for the community to sustain. That is brought out in the reports of the Commissioners. I do not put that to the Government by way of making any re-
  1756
  proach, but I do suggest that wherever these conditions arise I hope they will see that industry is not prevented from thriving, or indeed going to those districts, by any difficulties of that character that may arise.
  8.38 p.m.
  Mr. ANEURIN BEVAN: The distressed areas have been debated in this House on many occasions in the last few years, but on previous occasions I have not taken part in the Debates because I was in consultation with the Commissioner concerning the possibility of the resumption of the Ebbw Vale steel works. I desisted from saying anything in this House that might have been construed as putting any obstacle in the way of such resumption. I never entertained any high hopes, but as I knew a great deal of manoeuvring was taking place I was anxious that if the steel works did not start the responsibility should be put where it lies. From time to time we were informed that the steel works would start provided we would have tariffs.
  The House will perhaps pardon me for mentioning this particular part of the country, not only because I happen to represent it in this House, but also because the Commissioner in his report says that if you can start the Ebbw Vale steel works you can probably solve a great deal of the distress in the Monmouthshire area, inasmuch as the restarting of a huge steel plant of that kind, producing 250,000 tons of steel per annum, would have an encouraging influence upon the neighbourhood and would attract ancillary industries, and altogether create a profound impression. We have the tariffs, and instead of the tariffs assisting us it looks as though they are going to make things much more difficult than they were.
  I want to leave the Ebbw Vale steel works for a moment and approach this matter from an entirely different angle. It seems to me that in the last two or three hours the House has forgotten the proposition before it. We are not discussing the Commissioners' report in particular. We are discussing a Vote of Censure moved by the Opposition against the Government for their share of responsibility for the condition of the distressed areas. We have had two speeches on this subject in the last fortnight, one by the Prime Minister and one by the Min-

  1757
  ister of Labour. I listened to the Prime Minister with great expectations, because he had already made a speech in the country and had referred to this problem, and I was expecting that when he addressed the House he would have something definite to say. But I was profoundly disappointed, and I think my disappointment was shared by the country as a whole.
  The right hon. Gentleman is a very disarming personality. If he is faced with a particularly unpleasant or difficult task he gets up and speaks quite frankly about it, and expects everyone to forget it because he has been so frank. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the unattractiveness of his policy is not made more attractive because he strips himself naked at the Treasury Box and throws himself upon the mercy of this House. Indeed I confess that I find myself on this occasion more impatient with him than I am ordinarily. He offered two definite proposals as a means of contributing to a solution of this problem. The one was an appeal to employers to establish factories in a distressed area, and the other was an appeal to employers outside the distressed areas to give preference of employment to persons from distressed areas. The first of these two proposals was answered by the threat of Richard Thomas and Company who moved their works from South Wales to the Midlands, which struck me as a particularly disloyal act on the part of a presumably loyal Conservative firm.
  A second revelation on the same point was the report of the distressed areas Commissioner that over 6,000 employers had been written to and that only one employer had replied favourably. Does the Prime Minister expect us to take a proposal of that sort seriously? Surely he must realise that there can be no more humiliating spectacle than for the Prime Minister of a great country like this to stand at the Treasury Box, admitting that he is face to face with one of the major problems of the day, and all he can do is to appeal to private persons outside to come to the assistance of the Government.
  The other proposal of the Prime Minister was to ask employers to give preference in employment to persons transferred from the distressed areas. To that proposal the people in the distressed
  1758
  areas themselves take strong exception. It pits them in competition against unemployed workers in the other parts of the country to which they are sent. Indeed, the people of South Wales object particularly because, as a consequence of the invasion of other parts of the country by people from South Wales, a great deal of local ill-feeling has been created on the ground that those people from South Wales have taken jobs which residents in the locality thought—and properly thought—ought to have been given to them. Therefore, we reply to the Prime Minister that we take great exception indeed to the proposal that there should be transference from these distressed areas to other parts of Great Britain where already there is a considerable percentage of unemployed. It must not be thought that there is any area in Great Britain where there is a dearth of labour. There is unemployment everywhere and this problem is not to be solved merely by spreading out unemployment more thinly over the country and adding to the local difficulties and local ill-feeling.
  The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour is the second Member of the Government who has spoken on this problem. I felt particularly sorry for him to-day, because I know that he has enormous industry and that if the Government had a policy, even of the most teeny-weeny, microscopic kind, he could be relied upon to carry it out. I was sorry for him because he had the task of presenting a hopeless case to the House. He attacked the Commissioner—at least a good many of the expressions which he used were discourteous to the Commissioner. He said it was easy to use phrases about the solution of the problem but very difficult to work them out in reality. If those phrases had not occurred in the Commissioner's report we should have been told by the Government that the Commissioner was a gentleman of the unique industrial experience and commercial success and that if he found the problem hopeless and had nothing concrete to suggest, then there was no hope anywhere. But the Commissioner misunderstood why he was appointed. I have had the pleasure of meeting him and he is, if I may say so, a very estimable gentleman. Many of us who met him have the pleasantest recollections of our personal intercourse. The

  1759
  Commissioner is a sincere downright person and he thought he had been given a job of work to do. He did not understand that that was not his function and that he was there to be the whipping-boy for the Government.
  We reminded the House of Commons when he was appointed that the limitations imposed upon him were so great that he could not possibly do anything within them. So long as he was in existence and so long as his report had not been produced, those of us who represent the distressed areas could be told by the Minister of Labour, "That is a matter for the Commissioner; go and see him." So, His Majesty's faithful Commoners have been running round trying to pick up some crumbs of hope from the Commissioner. We knew he could do nothing but nevertheless we had to follow the Government's decoy. There was no use doing anything else. The Commissioner's report is now before us. About it I want to say nothing because although the Commissioner has reinforced with his influence and reputation many proposals which were already well known, the rest of the Report makes such gloomy reading that I do not want to consider it. If we are to solve the problem at all, we must approach it in an optimistic and hopeful mood.
  The hon. Member for East Newcastle (Sir R. Aske) in an interesting speech, said that the problem boiled down to one of lack of work or lack of money in the distressed areas. It is a trite thing to say, but it is correct and I ask the House to consider what the Government have been doing about the distressed areas, independently of the Commissioners. To be frank, I am very sick of the humbug of Members in all parts of the House saying, "We all feel this problem keenly; our hearts bleed for the distressed areas. We know what a desperate thing it is for these millions of people to be living in derelict areas and if you could only make a practicable suggestion we would immediately adopt it." But those hon. Members are the very people who have followed the Government in the Division Lobby during the last three or four years to deal blow after blow against the distressed areas. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour himself is one of the worst sinners in this respect. The right hon. Gentleman read out the state-
  1760
  ment that the Commissioner had been subsidising all sorts of amenity schemes. Many of these schemes could be carried out by local authorities if they had the grants.
  Mr. BUCHANAN: Why should they not do it?
  Mr. BEVAN: It is their proper function and there is machinery in existence by which they could do it, but all the Government did was to withdraw the money from the local authorities and then give a lot less to the Commissioner, but in such a way as to make it look big.
  Mr. BUCHANAN: And the Miners' Welfare Fund.
  Mr. BEVAN: I am coming to that. Then there is the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister who is the worst sinner of the lot. In 1920 we passed the Mining Industry Act which placed a levy of 1d. per ton on coal, providing £1,000,000 a year. This fund was used far less than it ought to have been used for miners' welfare and a lot of it was used to do the job which the coal-owners themselves ought to have done, namely, industrial research. But a great deal of it was used to provide amenities in the distressed areas and then the right hon. Gentleman came to this House and gave £500,000 back to the coal-owners from the distressed areas and all of you walked into the Division Lobby to support him.
  HON. MEMBERS: No, we did not.
  Mr. BEVAN: Well, most of you walked into the Division Lobby in support of that proposal.
  Mr. DICKIE: The hon. Member must be fair.
  Mr. BEVAN: It may be that one or two hon. Members, knowing that the Government would not be endangered by their abstention, managed to have it both ways.
  Mr. McKEAG: The hon. Gentleman must acknowledge that those hon. Members who did not vote for that proposal, were Members representing depressed areas and areas which depend on the coal industry.
  Mr. BEVAN: I said just now that a number of hon. Members did not vote for that proposition and I am prepared to be convinced that they refrained for the

  1761
  most honourable motives. Nevertheless, this Government and the right hon. Gentleman who is now the Prime Minister and who then was the real Prime Minister, who goes to the country and makes beautiful perorations about how his heart is moved by the depressed areas, took £500,000 from them because the coal-owners wanted it. I wonder how much contribution they made to the Conservative election fund. The Government in 1932 delivered another shattering blow to the depressed areas by threatening the pensions of the old men. They have restored them now after a terrific agitation in the country, but they restored them, not because they thought the case was just, but merely because increased employment put more money in the insurance fund. Are we to assume that if the insurance fund is depleted again by unemployment, the pensions will be taken away again from the people in the depressed areas? The third blow the Government delivered to the depressed areas was to increase enormously the number of able-bodied persons chargeable to the Poor Law. This, at least, can be said for the last Labour Administration, that under it the number of able-bodied persons chargeable to the Poor Law sank to the lowest level in the last 15 years. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister without Portfolio smiles, but, if he will look up the figures, he will find that I am correct. Within three years of this Government the figure went to record heights.
  To show how much at heart the Government really have the distressed areas they brought in the unemployment assistance regulations. If these regulations had remained, and if the distressed areas had been as docile as hon. Members wanted them to be, they would be existing still, and there would have been stark starvation in those areas. Even now, while this matter is being discussed by the House of Commons, the Unemployment Assistance Board officers are everywhere reducing unemployment scales. Every new person coming on, every change of circumstances in the family, puts the unemployed members of the family on the scales rejected by this House. Get rid of the humbug and stop being mealy mouthed about this problem. If you really feel that the distressed areas have a genuine claim upon your sympathy, restore the £500,000 every year
  1762
  —not £2,000,000 for these areas once, but £500,000 every year. If that amount were capitalised there would be an enormous sum of money which could be spent in the distressed areas immediately. It makes me tired to listen to the speeches of hon. Members who seem to have a remarkable power of mental dissociation. They can discuss the distressed areas in vacuo; they can forget altogether what they have been doing in this House against the distressed areas.
  It seems to me that there are three lines of approach to this problem. There is the line of approach of the Noble Lord the Member for Lanark (Lord Dunglass); there is the line of approach which has been suggested by some hon. Members, including the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George); and there is the line of approach of Members sitting on these benches, but we cannot hope to convince the House of Commons of that. What I want to convict the Government of is not that their philosophy is wrong—we believe it is—but that they are incompetent in the management of the system in which they themselves believe. We may not be able to bring this system down, but they will bring it down if they go on. They are digging their own grave rapidly.
  The other day we were asked—and the Government staggered me by taking credit for it—to vote a sum of £40,000,000—I am not objecting to it—for the electrification of railways in North London. We were asked to vote that sum because the traffic problems of London have grown so enormously that it is not possible to move the vast population through its environs every day unless there is speedier transport. Many of us thought that the Government were doing a remarkably courageous thing and advancing boldly and intelligently in asking the country to find £40,000,000 for that purpose. At the same time that the country is spending £40,000,000 merely as a consequence of the fact that people are all huddled together here, nobody seems to pay any attention to the economic disutility of promoting a system of society in which nearly 8,000,000 people are crowded all of a heap and then spending enormous sums of money on supplying services which are a direct consequence

  1763
  of the fact that they are in a heap. That £40,000,000 is being spent in London while millions of pounds are being poured out in unemployment benefit in South Wales and all social activities are becoming derelict because since the census of 1921 the population of south and south-east England has increased by 26 per cent., although the population of the country as a whole has increased by only 6 per cent. There is a great concentration of population in two or three large centres of the country. I suggest to hon. Members that that is not a development and a tendency that they can view with complacency. If London goes on swelling much more, it will become completely intolerable, developing as it does a kind of city intelligence which is anti-social.
  That is one aspect of the problem to which some attention ought to be paid if we are to tackle it seriously. It is suggested that industries come to London because of the local market. Naturally, if the industry comes the local market is there, and that industry provides markets for other industries, and there is a snowball growth. I want to know when it is going to be stopped, who is going to stop it, and how it can be stopped. The same argument which is used for establishing industries round London, like Slough or Dagenham, because the local market is there can be used in any of the distressed areas for the establishment of industries there. It is merely a matter of assisting the development at some point. Who is going to assist it? The right hon. Gentleman has said that so far as he is concerned he is distrustful of planning. The Government have not faced the fact that there is a profound revolution in the technique of industry and in the relationship between industry and society. In the past industry was less mobile than man, now man is less mobile than industry. The right hon. Gentleman has said that he distrusts plans. There has always been a plan for society, a plan imposed by natural and physical conditions. Men had to establish their industries at the mouth of rivers or on the sites of mines or in areas which were topographically suitable for them, and on those sites there grew up the great centres of population. Now that state of affairs has ended. The development of electrical power, the ability to create
  1764
  atmospheres inside factories and the transport system, all combined, have made industry infinitely mobile, and although man has developed on the old sites of industry a complicated social apparatus the economic foundations of that apparatus have been sapped by the movements of industry in obeying the caprice of seeking a very uncertain margin of profit.
  It seems to me that when industrialists like Sir William Firth talk about the economics of the establishment of new steel works at Redbourne they are talking antediluvian economics. They are merely taking into account the balance sheet of steel production alone, but if you are to have economics which are sound you must take into account the obsolescence of the social apparatus left behind in the old place. Society has to be developed, and eventually the new steelworks will have to meet the bill. It will meet the bill in the form of increased charges for roads, sewers and all the amenities of modern society. Because at a particular moment a great industrialist escapes those additions to his costings account, he imagines that his new works are really being established in the most economic place. The proposition which we advance from these benches is that in considering the location of industry you must always add to the balance sheet a disturbance item, and that if that disturbance item is included it is doubtful whether the transfer of industry is an economic proposition.
  The right hon. Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne) said that ultimately industry must be allowed to establish itself where it can cut its cost of production, in order to meet overseas competition. I have yet to be convinced that this island is so big that it really matters very much where industry is situated. It is a question very largely of transport charges, and if they are the single factor responsible for the shifting of industry surely that problem can be solved by some system of equalisation of railway freight rates. But it is a monstrous proposition that a large comunity must be shifted from one spot to another, sometimes only 20 miles away—and 20 miles is as important as 100 miles if a community has to be shifted—because the works will then be more favourably situated from the competitive point of

  1765
  view. That proposition cannot be defended. At any rate, if you are going to shift industry for such reasons they ought to be properly examined, and the community ought to have its say before it has to pay the price of the dislocation.
  This consideration applies to the Ebbw Vale Steelworks. They have been slain by two factors, one the financial history of the company, and the other the fact that the iron ore around there has been exhausted and iron ore has now to be brought up from the cost. The Ebbw Vale Steelworks were an important industrial unit, producing 250,000 tons of steel per annum. If the financial history of the company is responsible for the present position, the people of Ebbw Vale ought not to be sacrificed to the financial incompetence of the company. Companies can be removed, companies can be destroyed. They have nothing to do with producing steel, they are merely the fiction of ownership. We ought not to allow a community to be destroyed because the company managing the works has in the past been incompetent or unfortunate. It seems to me that if you are going to reorganise the steel industry you must impose conditions upon these steel centres which will not sacrifice them to the mere accident of having to be run by this man or that.
  Coming to the question of iron ore having to be removed from the coast to the Ebbw Vale Steelworks and the finished steel shifted back again, I want to put this proposition to the Government very seriously, because it is the first time that I have put it in the House. I know that the transport of iron ore is a consideration of some importance in this matter, but there is no reason why it should not be possible to give transport rebates if the Government were satisfied that it was necessary that this industrial centre should be maintained. They have given rebates in the case of coal transport in some parts, and believe a small rebate is given on iron ore, and it should be possible to bring about such an equalisation of transport rates as wipes out that one charge. Now I want to put another proposition, that although Ebbw Vale may not be so advantageously situated as many steelworks near the coast for supplying the export market, it is advantageously
  1766
  situated for those concerns at home which consumes its products. The large steelworks established lower down are not so well situated as is Ebbw Vale for supplying Birmingham and Sheffield, which are large consumers of steel. If the right hon. Gentleman will look into the matter he will see that Ebbw Vale has been producing finished sheets satisfactorily all through the depression, and, according to the report of the shareholders' meeting, working to full capacity all the time. There we have one of the most distressed areas in Great Britain—Ebbw Vale surrounded by Tredegar, Brynmawr and Nant-y-glo and other places. If it were possible to reestablish the making of steel at Ebbw Vale, we should immediately give a, fillip to all the surrounding industries and solve one of the most difficult problems.
  If the Government say that it is impossible to interfere in this way with the free movement of industry, that private enterprise cannot work satisfactorily within the strait-waistcoat of Government regulations, that you cannot impose plans from above upon the establishment of industry, the Government and the country must be prepared to pay the price for that decision. We are dealing here with the very narrow problem of the geographical distribution of industry, and we have not said a word about the total volume of industry. Hon. Members in all parts of the House must realise that they cannot allow large industrial populations to fester without paying the price.
  About a week ago in Monmouth, a number of persons were charged with resisting the police with violence at Blaina and Abertillery, and were sentenced to nine months' imprisonment. The people who ought to be serving that nine months' imprisonment are sitting on the Government Front Bench, because those men were engaged in a demonstration against their public assistance conditions. The men are now serving their sentences in gaol. That is only the beginning. It seems impossible to move hon. Members inside the House; they will have to be moved outside the House. If the Government think that South Wales is going to sit down and go on rotting much longer, they are making the biggest mistake of their career. The same thing is true with regard to many other distressed areas in

  1767
  Great Britain. If those areas are allowed to ferment, they will poison the social system. You will have to tackle it or pay the price. If the Government have not a policy, for Heaven's sake let them be honest and say so. Do not let them say again that all these matters are under consideration, or tell the distressed areas that there is any hope from Government action if the Government have no serious intention of acting.
  We are tired of waiting. We have waited 10 or 15 years, and have tried every conceivable way open to us, only to be told at the end that one of the reasons why industries do not come to South Wales is that the South Wales miners and steel workers are too bellicose, and that they frighten employers away. So employers now have to be tickled. We have to be good boys, in order to persuade the good, kind employers to put a factory down among us. Well, it is not true. The Government the other day recommended to the King that Arthur Pugh should be honoured with a knighthood. It is strange to hear now that the Government honoured the general secretary of a union whose members are responsible by their belligerency for frightening employers away from the distressed areas. The Steel Workers' Federation of Great Britain have the reputation of not having had a stoppage for 20 years. It is all balderdash to suggest that the reason why industries do not come to South Wales is the belligerency of the workers. Since 1926, the South Wales miners have been like sucking doves. There has been no stoppage at all, yet during those nine years employment has been steadily dwindling. It is not true to say that employment has gone from those areas because of the militancy of the workpeople; it is because those areas have happened to be a territorial expression o fthe anarchy in the present system.
  It is nonsense to tell the people in the distressed areas, or outside, that the problem is insoluble. There are people in London starving every winter for lack of coal, while there are miners in South Wales starving every winter because they cannot get employment. There are people in Lancashire starving, while people in South Wales are shivering because they cannot afford to buy shirts.
  1768
  It is all nonsense to tell us that this problem is insoluble, although it is certainly insoluble under the system. If you go on in this way much longer you will be digging your own graves, and I hope you dig them deeply enough.
  9.21 p.m.
  Mr. MAGNAY: I sometimes feel great sympathy with you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and other occupants of the Chair, that you should have had to listen to interminable debates about the distressed or necessitous areas during the past few years. We have made representations for years in this House, and we have told the responsible parties in the Government what we thought ought to be done. They were well advised to make most careful inquiries. We had the Board of Trade inquiry, under the expert guidance of Professor Hallsworth. There could not have been a more thorough-going inquiry than that, because all the ramifications of the distress on the North-East Coast were considered at great length, and with great particularity. The findings were, I am sure, very carefully considered, but that was not enough. We had to have the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department come up to the North and go over the ground again, and very carefully he did it. He had not only foresight but insight, and not only ability but capability. Everyone agreed that his report was of first-class importance, and of first-class political interest.
  Those of us who have lived in the area all our lives and who know it as well as our hands, thought that that inquiry would be exhaustive. We then had a Bill to appoint a Special Commissioner for the special areas to look into the conditions and to see what could be done, and not only to make recommendations but to do what he could. We have now before us the report of his six months' work. I am not complaining about what he has done in the six months; he has done remarkably well. I am not intending to go over all the ground, although I could do so. I have spoken during the past week at 15 open-air meetings in my constituency. I regret to say that there are still over 10,000 unemployed in my constituency, and I am aware that I can find many of them on consecutive days at the Employment Exchange. I found hundreds of them there and I talked at length upon the long-range

  1769
  policy and the short-range policy of the Government, and what I would do if I sat on that Bench—very sensible proposals they were, if I may say so. Now we have this report, which is very carefully thought out and is "something attempted, something done." I assume that at long last—although I dislike that phrase very much indeed—we are finished with inquiries and reports, and are getting down to business.
  I expect that the Government will thoroughly tackle the problem soon. The only thing I am concerned about is that it should be immediately. I am old-fashioned enough to like to say "Thank you" for a good turn done to me, so I would say a word of thanks to the Commissioner. I was almost jeered at by the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) about six months ago because I was going round to see the Commissioner. My grandfather used to say that there is no getting anything but where it is. I went to see what I could get done for my constituency. I am very glad to say that, as hon. Members can all see from the report, the Commissioner has done a great deal for us. The sum of £23,000 is not a small one. I suggested doing certain things, and the Commissioner came up himself, and brought his experts, and they agreed with me and with the mayor and corporation of the town, that a certain site should be bought. And one of the Members of the House told me on a certain Tuesday night just before we went away at Christmas that after careful survey of the place and after long consideration with the gas company and other people concerned, he was going to establish a factory in Gateshead for a new industry which would give work to 400 employés. That was on the Tuesday night, and I regret to say that my friend, whom we remember with pride and pleasure as the former hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Slater) dropped down dead on the following Friday night. That was a tragic misfortune, not only for this House but for Gateshead, and for the work he was going to do through one of his companies.
  Much of what I had intended to say has already been said in the discussion, and I would only say that there are two or three things that ought to be done immediately. I think that there is work which could be tackled at once on the
  1770
  North-East Coast in connection with roads, bridges and level rossings. Next week the House is rising for two or three months, and I view with little peace of mind what is going to happen in my constituency and the neighbourhood next winter unless something is done. Between South Shields and Gateshead, on the King's highway, there are five level crossings, and the work of doing away with those could be started at once. There is nothing to stop it. The price for the scheme relating to the High Level bridge, which was built so well a 100 or more years ago by Robert Stephenson, and the Redheugh bridge, has been settled between the companies concerned and the corporations concerned. The Minister of Transport agreed that we are standing at the top of the queue this year. I said to him: "Am I at the top of the queue for next year?" and he said: "You are." But we can only get a grant of 60 per cent. To a man who can only jump four feet you might as well ask him to jump a 10 foot wall as to jump a wall four feet six inches high! He cannot do it. It is not possible for the Newcastle and Gateshead councils to raise the balance of 40 per cent. on a 60 per cent. grant. I suggest what the Commissioner suggests, that for the work on these main roads and these bridges the extra 40 per cent. could be supplied by the Government through the Commissioner. The Commissioner knows the place well, as the Minister of Transport also does, and I think that in view of the special needs of that district the 40 per cent. could be provided out of this special fund.
  There is in the report, I believe, a paragraph which says that the Government should give work to these distressed areas. They could do that. A plea has been made by the hon. Member for Barnard Castle (Sir C. Headlam) and the hon. Member for Newcastle East (Sir R. Aske) that something should be done in allocating more shipbuilding to the Tyne. It is most important, as I have said before, that we should have boys trained in the craftsmanship which was our pride on the Tyne in years gone by. But I wish to refer now to the question of making aeroplanes. As soon as the Vote was passed two or three months ago authorising the building of more aeroplanes, I wrote to the Ministers con-

  1771
  cerned asking that some of the work should be given to our area on the North-East coast. This is a reply which I got—and I think it will interest the whole House. Every one in the House, whether he comes from the distressed areas or not, wants the Government if possible to give work to these areas. And this is the sort of reply I received from the Air Ministry:
  "You may rest assured that we are not losing sight of the advantages of Tyneside as an established engineering centre which is badly in need of work. As far as can be foreseen at present, however, the existing capacity of the aircraft industry is sufficient for meeting our requirements under the expansion scheme."
  And I want the House particularly to note this paragraph which follows:
  "Moreover, the Tyneside is not well placed strategically for factories for the production of aircraft. I am afraid, therefore, that there is little assistance which the Air Ministry can give, at any rate so far as aeroplanes and engines are concerned."
  Did you ever read such balderdash in your life? If Tyneside is not well placed strategically and cannot be used to advantage in that manner, what about Billingham? That must be absolutely dangerous and highly inflammable, because it is nearer the coast than we are at Gateshead, or Tyneside, or Elswiek. Where on earth were all the aeroplanes made during the War if not at Angus Sanderson's at Newcastle? Tyneside was all right then. What has happened since? If we are talking about the possible attacks of aircraft from some foreign country with whom we are at war it is only a matter of minutes for them to get to any part of the British Isles. I never heard such stuff and nonsense as that in my life! I suggest that the Tyne is strategically advantageous. Where did His Majesty's Ship "Lion" creep to when she was battered and "only not a wreck"? She crept to the Tyne, to safety. The Tyne was good enough then, in time of war; surely it is good enough now in time of peace for the making of aeroplanes.
  I suggest with what vehemence I have and yet with all courtesy possible that the Government ought to do something in the way of providing work for these distressed areas and particularly for the North-East Coast, in which I am par-
  1772
  ticularly interested. What is the good of expecting private industry to come and do anything, and to plead with them to do it, if the Government themselves with all the cheap money at their command will not do it? When the Palestine Loan was discussed in this House last year, I asked what the 10,000 unemployed men in Gateshead would think of it when we were voting a guaranteed loan of £2,500,000 for "displaced Arabs." The word "displaced" was not my word; it was in the Preamble to the Palestine Bill. What about the unplaced pitmen and the unplaced shipyard workers? As I said then, our first duty as I understand it is to our own people. I believe in the brotherhood of man, but I believe in looking after your own family first, and it is our plain duty as well as our high privilege to build the new Jerusalem "in England's green and pleasant land" before we talk about going overseas. While I am very thankful for what has been done for Gateshead, I do suggest that the Government should do something immediately in the way I have suggested with regard to roads, level crossings, and bridges and any other work which might be given to do something for this distressful part of the country from which I come.
  9.35 p.m.
  Mr. NUNN: I do not propose to keep the House very long, nor to go over the ground which has already been amply covered, but I should like, if I may without any offence to hon. Members opposite, to say that I do not think they have helped either their case or the special areas by importing what I can only describe as a certain amount of false feeling into the Debate. A suggestion was made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood), who, I think, has not returned since he made his speech, that Members on this side of the House were ignorant of the situation. That is an unworthy suggestion, and it leads no one anywhere. Moreover, the more these suggestions are made, and the more the impresison is conveyed that the Government have no interest in this problem, the more difficult will the problem become. No good at all is done by inflaming popular opinion. The question of the special areas may come as something of a godsend to those people who are looking forward to the forthcoming General Election, but I have

  1773
  great faith in the sound common sense of the people in the special areas.
  The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield said that the people in the special areas are people in whose mouths lie bitterness. I think better of my people, at any rate, and I am quite sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Cape), whose doctor, I believe, has forbidden him to speak in the House to-day, would, if he were able to speak, endorse what I am going to say about the people of our area, at any rate. We are disappointed; we are grievously troubled; but we are facing our troubles with courage and endeavouring to keep bitterness out of our feelings as much as possible. I deprecate the gratuitous importation of bitterness into this question. It does no one any good; it makes the position of the Government infinitely worse: and it causes the people who are suffering distress to feel that they are not being fairly treated.
  No one really supposes, either in this House or outside, that every Member of the Government is not vitally concerned in getting this tremendous problem of the special areas dealt with, and dealt with successfully. It is gratuitous dishonesty, if I may use the word, to suggest that hon. and right hon. Members on these benches are unconcerned about this problem. I think that perhaps, from the point of view of tactics, it might almost be said that the Government made a mistake in appointing a special commissioner. If they had been thinking merely of tactics, they would have gone on making every effort they could, without publicly announcing that they were going to make a special effort. It shows their courage that they did appoint a special commissioner, knowing perfectly well that that appointment would be open to the charge, which was actually made, that it was a piece of eyewash, and knowing that, if nothing immediate occurred as a result of the appointment, they would be open to the charge that they had muddled their work.
  We have heard a great deal of talk on the subject this evening, but I must say, having listened to a good deal of the Debate, that I do not know that I have been particularly embarrassed by the placing of any wealth of ideas before the House. Hon. Members opposite have
  1774
  told us how grossly the Government have failed, but they skilfully and delicately skated over the period of 1929–31, when they were quite free to do anything they wished in dealing with this very problem. I know that a number of hon. Members may say, "We were in office, but we were not in power"; but it is equally true to say that there is no Member of any party who was in the House between 1929 and 1931 who would not have welcomed and supported any suggestion which might have been brought forward for the betterment of these areas and of the country generally, if it had shown any sign of being useful. Therefore, the argument that hon. Members, although they might have been in office, were not in power, carries no weight whatsoever.
  What are the real facts about this question? Has it ever been supposed that by some magic process any Government could immediately cure the very grave ills which descended on this country in 1931, and of which hon. and right hon. Members opposite, although not entirely guilty, are not entirely guiltless? Is it to be suggested that by some magic process these ills could be cured? The problem of the special areas will not be really cured until the problem of the whole country is on the way to cure. All that can be done in the meantime is to ameliorate the distress in the distressed areas, and to make such arrangements as are possible for tiding over the distress. I do not think the most sanguine supporter of the Government—and as, perhaps, I am not such a constant supporter of theirs as some other Members of the House, it may come from me as a piece of genuine support in this case—I do not think the most ardent supporter of the Government would suggest that, until the general industry and commerce of this country show something like a real improvement, nothing can be done to cure the ills of the special areas.
  We have been told in this report of certain efforts that are being made by the Commissioner. I was very pleased to find in the report a reference to the question of the clearance of sites, particularly in areas like the Tyneside. Obviously, if a new industry is to be attracted to a district, it is impossible to expect anyone who is thinking of establishing an industry to go down to a belittered and disorderly site and be

  1775
  attracted by it. There is one matter to which the Commissioner has not referred. Although it may seem a little far-fetched, I think that, if the authorities would direct their attention more intensively to the smoke abatement question, they would do almost as much good as by the clearance of sites. Nobody who is contemplating putting up a modern factory such as one sees anywhere in the South of England would dream of establishing it in the dingy atmosphere of some of our Northern industrial towns. The question of smoke abatement, it seems to me, ought to run hand in hand with the question of the clearance of sites. The Commissioner also refers to the rating question. I think it might be possible, and that it should be made possible, for a period at any rate, say three or four years, that the rating question should not present difficulties to anyone wanting to establish a new industry. I think the local authorities should be relieved for a period of three or four years at least, when they want to make a special offer to someone coming into their district.
  I do not want to take up very much more time, but I should like, if I may, to refer for a moment or two to my own special problem. The Commissioner mentions in his report that an effort has been made to do something about the White-haven harbour, which, it is true, has been held up for some little time. I want to thank both the special Commissioner and the Government for what they have done up to the present point, and I hope that we shall get over our difficulties in that respect. There is another matter in this report which makes me a little more anxious. The Commissioner says:
  "The dominant influence which will affect the future of the iron and steel industry lies in the considerable deposits of ores situated in Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire … What help will this bring to the special areas? I fear none."
  He refers to the hopeless condition of the smaller towns and villages surrounding Cleator Moor in Cumberland. If any observer sent to report upon an entirely new area went to that area and found in close proximity the best iron ore in the world, coal, limestone, and everything else required for the industry he would report that he had found an ideal economic situation. That is the situation
  1776
  precisely in West Cumberland. There is the finest iron ore in the world cheek by jowl with coal and with limestone on the top, but the special Commissioner considers that the position in that area is hopeless. I hope that is not going to be the last word of the Government on that matter. We have suffered very greatly in our area, but we have the wealth. There are difficulties, I know, in making use of it. We find our possibilities of using our wealth interfered with by foreign importations, but we still hope that there may be an opportunity which the Government will find to make that area self-supporting and entirely free from unemployment by working its own natural products. Perhaps the Government might consider the possibility, in view of the tremendous value of those products to the country for war defence purposes, of working those mines and storing the ore on the surface. I throw out the hint, and I hope it will be considered among other proposals. For the rest, I want to thank the Government for their courage in having appointed the Commissioner, and I hope they will not be discouraged by the magnitude of the problem—I am sure they will not be discouraged by the criticisms they have received to-day—and will go on, not attempting to do something spectacular but laying the foundations, by steady and sure work, of a lasting prosperity.
  9.49 p.m.
  Mr. LAWSON: One of the features of this Debate has been that the Minister of Labour has made his bow in that capacity. My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. A. Bevan) said truly that the right hon. Gentleman undoubtedly had great powers and was very industrious, and I should add myself was certainly not lacking in courage, but I think that the House and he himself must admit that his misfortune to-day was that he had to defend the indefensible. That was marked all through his speech. I felt that he was burdened with that knowledge. The same spirit has run through every speech whether from this side of the House or from those behind the Government. The fact is that this is about the climax of this series of Debates in which the people in the depressed areas have been led from one depth of the slough of despondency to another. I ask the House to consider

  1777
  the history of this matter. There was in 1932 a three days' Debate. I think every one in every quarter of the House felt that the Opposition leader's suggestion for turning ourselves into a Common Council to consider the matter was the right thing. For three days suggestions literally poured from all quarters of the House. What was the result? The then Prime Minister said, "We will consider these proposals," and nothing came of it.
  Towards the end of 1933 the situation in the depressed areas got so bad that Commissioners were sent out to them. We on these benches were not satisfied that any more information was wanted, and we said so, but I think all will bear witness that we did not put anything in the way of the Commissioners going out and, indeed, we gave them our blessing. We used our influence in the areas concerned to get the local authorities to give them a welcome and to give them facilities. Some of them were so tired of these investigations that they were minded to have nothing to do with them. However, the Commissioners made their suggestions and the Government said: "We are considering them." In 1934 we passed the Act setting up the special areas and appointing the present Commissioners. The Minister of Labour said that a literature of defeatism has grown up in the areas. If there have been any defeatists in reference to these areas it has been the Government. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Barnard Castle (Sir C. Headlam) is under the shadow of that defeatist spirit, for which the Government are entirely responsible. He said there was no hope in the coal trade, there was no hope in shipping, and there was no hope in land suggestions. He evidently does not know what his own county council are doing in reference to land matters when he makes suggestions of that kind.
  Mr. MARTIN: That is an exaggeration of what he said. You were not here.
  Mr. LAWSON: As a matter of fact, I was here during the whole of the speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman and during practically all the speeches. I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has not been long enough in this House or in public life to be an accurate interpreter of what the hon. and gallant Gentleman said.
  Mr. MARTIN: I am sorry; I thought that the hon. Gentleman was not here.
  Mr. LAWSON: I only mentioned that in order to show that the depression has reached even Members who are supporters of the Government in those areas. I wished the Chancellor of the Exchequer could have been here. I know that it is not his fault. I well remember when he introduced the Special Areas Bill, as hon. Members will recall, the coolness of his reception by hon. Members sitting behind him. I do not know whether it was because of the limitations of that Bill or whether it was because of the tone of the speech. There was certainly not exactly enthusiasm. He went on to show that the Commissioner would have wide powers, and would be able to cut through departmental red-tape. The right hon. Gentleman, speaking for the Government, misled hon. Members behind him, the House, the country and, above all, the depressed areas. I will go further and say—it is a serious thing to say—that I think the Commissioners have been very conscious of it, and that they did it deliberately and knowingly. The Treasury have something to answer for in reference even to the scheme that the Commissioner has wanted to carry out within the narrow limits of the Bill. It was an artistic performance on the part of the Commissioner to put the speeches of Members of the Government in the front of his report. He gives an impression of how the House and the country were misled by those people. If anyone wishes to read the report of that Debate he will see that there were Members of this House, particularly on this side, who could almost have read the report in advance. The Commissioner has set forth statements of Ministers, and then goes on to point out that the country generally was misled. He said:
  "There has been much misunderstanding as to the extent of the powers vested in the Commissioners, perhaps party due"—
  I think that this is a very kind way of putting it—
  "to statements made by Members of the Government during the passage of the Bill."
  Having said that, he goes on to point out that he was much limited in operating even the schemes that he wanted to carry out. I ask the House to consider this gem. I think that the Commissioner

  1779
  must have been feeling very humorous when he wrote it:
  "The exact meaning of the word 'payable' in this connection has been the subject of much controversy. The official legal opinion interprets the word 'payable' as meaning, 'that may be paid or that there is power to pay,' and adds that a grant does not cease to be 'payable' because the Government Department which has the power to make the grant chooses either generally or in a particular instance not to exercise the power."
  I suggest that there is room for a very good comedy in that sentence. He further says:
  "It is interesting to note that the opposite opinion has been expressed by two eminent King's Counsel. This ruling has produced a disappointing position."
  The Treasury would see to it that it produced a disappointing position, and the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer knew very well when he introduced the Bill that the Treasury would see to it that a disappointing position was produced. As a matter of fact, the Treasury was never satisfied with the unemployment grants in operation. It was always against unemployment grants. It is against the spending of money, because it acts in the spirit of the City, it is largely representative of the City, and almost deaf, dumb and blind as to what is happening in some parts of this country. I can understand that point of view. I met a gentleman quite recently who is very much engaged in the City, and he told me what a wonderful Government we had. I said that I should agree with him if I lived in the house in which he lived. I told him something of the blunt facts which I thought were common knowledge about the areas with which I am familiar, and he was astounded. It would do the Chief Treasury officers, particularly one or two of them, some good to be taken up to those areas and live there for a month or two on employment assistance allowance. The Commissioner says:
  "It has rendered it impossible for the Commissioner to give local authorities in the Special Areas any financial assistance towards the construction of roads, bridges, tunnels, canals or quays, or towards any educational service. On the other hand, he has the power to give grants for similar purposes to such bodies as Harbour Authorities or River Commissioners. … One serious effect of this embargo is that in the schemes which
  1780
  have been initiated for site improvements with a view to industrial development, it is impossible to give any grant towards the cost of the roadways, which are an essential and integral part of the scheme.'
  He could only acquire a site if he could make a through road past that site. He is dependent as to whether he can make such a road or not on the definition of the word "payable." That would be a humorous situation if it were not so tragic. The House will remember that one of the really bright passages of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was that we wanted to clear away some of the hideeus mounds, pitheaps and derelict factories in order to give a good appearance to the areas. That was a very good suggestion. I am tired of seeing some of those mounds. We complained that it was simply window-dressing, that there was not much in it. The Commissioner cannot even do that. He is acquiring one or two places, but he says that he cannot do even this small thing.
  Do the Government and their supporters wonder that we talk about this futile report in the Resolution that we put on the Paper? When I got the report I expected to see a report telling us what the Commissioner had done, and I was surprised to find that it merely told us what he thought and of his own particular woes in meeting the Treasury. As to doing the larger sort of works inside an area, there does not seem the remotest possibility of it. Indeed, he says that that is not his function, but he has tried to face up to one or two things outside of the areas. There are the Purfleet Tunnel and the Severn Bridge that I think are being considered, but, generally speaking, as far as actual works are concerned, there has been no achievement worth anything, and there does not seem to be any possibility of any achievement; and I must say I think the whole thing seems as futile as we said it would be.
  There is a general tendency to think that the people in these areas are down and out and have practically lost all initiative. The Commissioner almost says as much, but if they have such treatment as this, what can you expect? I have heard it said, for instance, that the best men have been creamed off these areas and that those who are left are not much good. That is one of the stories that are bandied around. As a

  1781
  matter of fact, it is not true, and it only takes two minutes' thought to see that it cannot be true. Take the coalfields of Wales and Durham. The men who have stayed in the coalfields, who work in the pits, have been selected by a very stern process. It would be more true to say that the best men have been left, as far as those working in the pits are concerned. A pit stops—one stopped in my district last week—and that means that the best men are thrown idle again.
  The Commissioner has about two pages of his report dealing with Durham and land settlement, and I will tell this to the House because I think it ought to be known to the credit of those who live in those areas. He speaks of seeds given through the county council to the men who work allotments. I understand from the chief of the agricultural department in that county that there are no fewer than 22,000 allotment holders who get that seed through the county council, and that the cost of the direct supply of that seed through the county council in the past two years has been £3,250. The men have to repay that amount—large numbers of unemployed among them—and the House will be interested to know that out of the £3,250 due for seed, the amount outstanding is, I understand, 5s. 6d. That is only typical of the area generally. They have done so well that for some years the county council has had in hand a scheme to put men on the land. They have put some 900 men on the land—20 men on five acres, dealing with poultry and allotments, and all that kind of thing.
  I understand that the Commissioner has been so delighted with the scheme that he has given £9,500 more towards it, but the scheme would have gone on, whether the Commissioner had been there or not. They are doing so well, and people are speaking so highly of the men, that I understand it is a common practice for the people in the district to see Jack o'Lanterns going about at one or two in the morning. It is men going to see how their chickens are coming. Out of all that, there has grown an idea for small holdings. It is not very much, but it shows that, in spite of the grievous burden which these people have had to carry, in spite of their woes and their depression all these years, they are so eager to do something useful that they are prepared to give themselves almost in any circumstances to whatever job offers.
  1782
  I submit that these men are worthy of better treatment from the Government than they have received.
  What are the facts? The agricultural committee wants to drain the land, but it is told that it cannot, although there are great areas that need to be drained. It cannot drain the land because there is not a catchment board, and there is not a catchment board because towns and boroughs have the sea and rivers at their disposal. The Ministry of Agriculture will not let them do the drainage. That is the kind of thing that the Commissioner has been up against and that the Treasury was going to see that he was up against too, in doing this particular work. How have the Government met this thing? They started by putting the men who have been longest out of work on the means test. I do not often use the term to Members of this House, but I will use it to-night. You who in many cases have been speaking for the Government and have gone into the Lobbies with them have taken £45,000,000 from these people, £300,000 off the people of Durham, in the last few years. Do the Government wonder that we say that that policy is futile and that we doubt if they want to do anything but starve these people into submission?
  The Durham County Council has done what it could, and the Commissioner has paid tribute to it. Is it not strange that it is always Labour councils to which the House looks to do things? It is never their own friends on the councils; it is the councils that are usually criticised in this House for extravagant expenditure, and those who criticise them are usually those who demand that they should do their duty. In 1931 the charge on the Durham County Council for poor relief was £991,000 a year. In 1935 it is £1,269,000. The Government have laid £300,000 a year upon the County Council for relief. One could give figure after figure to prove that, in spite of all the talk about subsidies to these areas, the net result of the Government's work has been that they have added to the burdens of those particular people.
  The Commissioner, like the good business man that he is, looked at this problem as a whole. I said that it was a book of talk rather than a book of action. Where has he got to? Raising the school age, and pensions.

  1783
  He is not quite sure but that ultimately the Government will be compelled to drive industries to those parts. He has half adopted many of the suggestions that have been made by people outside the Government ranks. I would draw the attention of the Government to the fact that these proposals have not come from Socialists. They have come from one of the hardest-headed business men in the country. I am told that he is a successful business man. I suggest to the Government that this is a pointer to what is coming. If they do not accept some of these ideas that are abroad, ideas which have been suggested or accepted by some of their own people, before very long they will be compelled to clear out and to give room to those who believe in more fundamental matters.
  In a House of this description there is just a handful of us and we do not count for much in the Lobby, but this thing has got to such an extent that as the facts of the situation dawn upon the people of the country there will be a reckoning day for this Government. My hon. Friend who represent East Rhondda (Mr. Mainwaring) carried the mind of the House back into his own area. It would not be possible to underline that most eloquent speech. We are told to look to transference. As a matter of fact men have been transferring themselves long before the term "transference" was found by the Conservative Party. In 1920–21 and onwards people went from my part of the world to Yorkshire, the Midlands and London. Although there is a higher birth rate than the average in those areas there are nearly 100,000 people fewer than some years ago. Girls go out by the thousands into service. Boys leave their homes. It is pitiable sometimes to see those boys leaving their homes. We are told that boys in the better-off classes leave their homes to go to school. But they do not leave home and go where their parents will not see them from one year's end to another. They do not go down into areas where the parents have no knowledge who is in charge of them. I met a girl the other day, a little girl, 14 years of age. She was being given some clothes on going out to service. I say that it is a shameful thing that girls of that age should have to leave home, driven out by poverty. Unless the Gov-
  1784
  ernment are prepared very soon to face up to the problem of the depressed areas, to deal with it in concrete form, to consider the fundamental remedies suggested by the Commissioner, the raising of the school age, pensions, and shorter hours, a wave of passion will come from these areas which will be nothing less than revolutionary, and will sweep away many of those things which hon. Members think are almost permanent in the State.
  10.21 p.m.
  Lord EUSTACE PERCY (Minister Without Portfolio): This is a Vote of Censure, but I am sure the House will understand what I mean when I say that the subject is of so much more importance than the attempts at censuring the Government which have been made that I prefer to devote myself to the subject of the Debate rather than answer the attacks, the sneers, and sometimes the gibes of hon. Members opposite. If on my death bed I am troubled with any sense of futility it will not be the record of achievement of the right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) which I shall take as a standard, and if I am accused on the Day of Judgment of complacency it will not be the abject humility of the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) which will put me to shame. In devoting myself to the main subject of the Debate, I have some advantage in coming to the question with a fresh mind, because I do not forget that I attacked the appointment of the Commissioner some months ago from the back benches on the ground that he would be a fifth wheel of the coach. Therefore, when I read the Commissioner's report I did so with a fairly open mind, and the passage which struck me is one which has not been quoted by any hon. Member but which sums up, in my view, the machinery side of the problem. The Commissioner says:
  "I am more and more convinced"—
  Mr. COCKS: What is the page?
  Lord E. PERCY: I cannot give the reference at the moment.
  "I am more and more convinced that the major problems of the special areas cannot be isolated and limited to one small department, they must be tackled by the Government as a whole, and there is hardly a Government Department which cannot and

  1785
  should not help. It is clearly uneconomical and inefficient for the Commissioner to institute activities which could be better performed by existing departments already possessing the necessary machinery and experience."
  With that I warmly agree. That being so, all these questions of detail, as to whether the Commissioner, qua Commissioner, should be able to aid this or that particular part of a service, fade into insignificance. In the Commissioner's own judgment, however his functions and those of the normal departments are to be de-limited, there must be co-operation over the whole range of government if you are to solve this problem. That is my starting point. What, then, are the main features of the problem which this combined action of the whole forces of the Government has to solve? As in all the whole range of policy throughout this country there is a long-term policy and a short-term policy to be laid down and worked out. I take the long-term policy first. I might list the tasks of government in somewhat this way: In the first place and supremely important, the economic rehabilitation of these areas, so far as it is possible to rehabilitate them. That means the opening up of new industrial sites. It means the whole problem, often referred to in this Debate, of the location of industries. It means the many problems which arise in connection with the reorganisation of industries which are contracting, and it involves such matters as the unification or nationalisation of coal royalties. It involves the whole question of coal production policy and coal selling policy. That is the first item in the long-term policy.
  My right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour has been criticised for not producing in this Debate a statement of the Government's intention as to these and many other matters. I think it is generally understood by the more reasonable section of the House that the Government deliberately took the course of publishing the Commissioner's report in its original form. One hon. Member opposite asked: "Why did we not talk it over with the Commissioner before we allowed him to publish the report." What would hon. Gentlemen opposite have said if we had done so? We took the course of publishing the Commissioner's report as soon as we received it,
  1786
  and therefore before we had had any opportunity of considering the precise form in which many old proposals emerged in it. It is true, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne) and others have said, that many of the proposals are old proposals which the Government are known to have been considering, such as the raising of the school-leaving age and the nationalisation of royalties. Equally so, even there, there is no particular reasons why the report of the Commissioner should be the signal for the Government to choose this particular moment finally to announce certain items of policy. As a general proposition, I would put this before the House—that a Government conscious of its responsibilities does not make a definite announcement of any item of policy until it is ready to bring in a Bill, until its policy has been worked out to the last detail in method as well as in principle. Therefore, the Government do right to defer an announcement of policy.
  That is the first great item in a long-term economic policy. The second is the re-town-planning and re-housing of an area in correspondence with the changes in its industrial development. The third may be to some extent a reorganisation of the services of local government. Here I come to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield. One concrete suggestion which he made was that we should appoint regional local authorities who should not in any way, of course, supersede the existing local authorities and should therefore duplicate the existing local authorities. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] If the right hon. Gentleman will read his ill-considered remarks tomorrow, he will see that that is precisely what he did say. If I was ever guilty of referring to the Commissioner as the fifth wheel of the coach, the right hon. Gentleman's regional authorities which would have nothing to do but to duplicate existing local authorities, could indeed be described as the sixth or seventh wheels of the coach.
  That leads me to one general comment on the speeches from the Opposition today. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield began with a eulogy of planning. I have been accused of being a planner, and I would ask the House to consider that planning, if it

  1787
  means nothing else, means that what the individual man or woman would like is not best for the nation as a whole, and that therefore some deliberate planning and direction of the individual's likes and dislikes is necessary in order to secure the good of the nation as a whole. Hon. Gentlemen opposite are very ready to believe that when it is said of a capitalist, but they are very slow to believe it when it is aid of the ordinary man and woman of a South Wales mining valley or a West Durham pit village. Nine-tenths of the speeches from the other side have been made on this refrain, "We will have no planning." Because the Commissioner's view as to the availability of sites for industrial development in the South Wales mining valleys would mean that no new development in those valleys would be possible, therefore hon. Members argue that what the Commissioner says cannot be true.
  I hold no brief for what the Commissioner says in that respect, stated broadly in that way, but when we come to the next item of the long-term policy, the item of transference, the item of migration from the depressed areas to other parts of the country, hon. Gentlemen opposite say, "No, never." You may, they say, move industry to meet men but never men to meet industry, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield, in the name of planning, delivered a violent attack, which has been delivered before, on the whole development of Corby. That was one development, which was an instance of deliberate planning in correspondence with the economic facts and deliberate town-planning on garden city lines to meet a particular kind of industrial development. The right hon. Gentleman says, "No, never; it does not suit my constituents. I shall not get a majority for my party because of Corby, and therefore it cannot be right." In other words, hon. Gentleman opposite are the greatest obstacles to planning. Their whole idea of planning would be called in America, in another legislature with which I had some acquaintance as a spectator, "pork barrel."
  I have suggested items of the long-term policy. I have suggested the bringing of industries to the special areas and the reorganisation and planning that may be necessary for the purpose; I have sug-
  1788
  gested that, having done that, we have also in many of these special areas to face the fact that we must have migration from areas whose industries can never revive. Those who refuse to face that fact refuse to face it only in public. They do not refuse to face it in private. I know the depressed areas fairly well. I have talked to many working men in those areas, and the very men who say in public that they oppose transference have furthered it when in office, like the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson). He worked very hard for it when in office. He is very anxious for reasons of popularity to oppose it now. The only real charge I have against the late Labour Government is not that they achieved the raising of the numbers of the unemployed in the special areas from under 220,000 to over 480,000, not that they achieved the multiplication of unemployment in those areas two and a quarter times, but that in the most essential part of the policy of transference, that of the transference of juveniles, they allowed a decrease to take place and that they left a number of children who were being transferred in previous years to grow up under the appalling conditions of those areas.
  Mr. MORGAN JONES: The Lord President of the Council did that.
  Lord E. PERCY: Hon. Members opposite are always anxious to cast all their sins on to one scapegoat. It was not until the National Government came in that juvenile transference was revived, and it has been progressively ascending year by year since then. Finally, as part of the long-term policy, comes the question of the control of the entry into industry from the schools and the question of exit from industry by pensions or otherwise. Over the whole range of the policy it is essential that the whole force of the Government should be employed, and let the House mark how even now it is being employed. I state this only as indicating the starting point. Take land settlement. The hon. Member for Chester-le-Street was quite right in saying that the Durham County Council have acted with great public spirit and great ability, and with more enlightenment than some other local authorities of the same political complexion in promoting land settlement of various kinds. He said, too, that the Commissioner paid a tribute to the

  1789
  Durham County Council, but it is not very gracious of him to repay that tribute by saying to the Commissioner: "It is true you gave us £9,000, but thank you for nothing; we should have got on without it." That is the kind of politeness which a, self-sacrificing public servant must expect. But what is the scale, apart from the action of the Durham County Council, of this land settlement?
  My hon. Friend the Member for East Newcastle (Sir R. Aske) said: "Do the Government agree with this land settlement or do they not, and if they do why do they not press it along on a much larger scale?" I wonder whether my hon. Friend knows anything of the work of the Land Settlement Association, and of the programme of that Association, which starts with about 1,240 holdings in the first year, goes on in the next four years with over 3,000 holdings a year, and ends up with an eventual total of 50,000 family holdings. My hon. Friend was quite rightly speaking in terms of a very large scale experiment. Let me assure him that as an experiment on a fairly large scale that work has been supported and financially assisted both by the Ministry of Agriculture and by the Special Commissioner. But when it comes to holding out to the public, whether in the special areas or elsewhere, great hopes from a policy of that kind let us at least remember—and if he were present I would ask the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) to remember—the statement made by the Special Commissioner:
  "Many people have assured me that land settlement would provide a cure for unemployment. They simplify the problem by assuming that the transit of the unemployed to the land is just an easy walkover; as though successful cultivators of the soil could be mass produced, yet they must well know that training and experience are needed to make a successful butcher, baker or candlestick maker, and it takes some years to turn out a fully competent bricklayer, carpenter or fitter."
  That warning is to be borne in mind, but the point I was making was that land settlement is being supported almost wholly—not quite wholly, because we have certain local authority grants—by central government grants whether from the Ministry of Agriculture or from the Special Commissioners. Again, the whole transference policy is being carried out
  1790
  by direct administration by the Ministry of Labour; and in connection with transference may I ask hon. Members who speak of public works outside the special areas as means of helping the position in the special areas what do they mean if they do not mean transference? When those public works schemes take place outside the special areas, their main object, so far as it affects the special areas, is as a means of transference. I do not under-rate the effect of public works in stimulating purchasing power over the nation as a whole, but I am talking now of their special relation to the special areas when they are carried out outside those areas. They are a means of transference, and they were used by the late Labour Government as a means of transference. That was their whole purpose.
  I have dealt with items of Government policy which are the subject of direct central State expenditure. When you come to the extremely important matters of economic rehabilitation within the special areas, you are dealing at every point with works which normally would be carried out by local authorities. The same is true of preparations for raising the school-leaving age and the reorganisation of schools. All these works, whether they be the preparation of sites for industries on Tyneside or the replanning of housing accommodation on Tyneside or in South Wales, or any other special area, they are works which are normally carried out through the local authority and involving local expenditure. The whole problem of the long-term policy, or this side of the matter, which gave rise to the experiment of the Commissioner for the special areas, is that the local authorities in those areas are not able, by reason of their financial position, to bear their ordinary share of that expenditure. Not one Member opposite who has been a critic of the Government has even mentioned that problem, but it is fundamental.
  How are you going to meet that problem? Are you going to take over those functions from the local authority and finance them wholly by central authorities, or are you going to pay to the local authorities a much higher rate of grant in the special areas than you would pay in an area which was not a special area

  1791
  but which was in a financially unfortunate position? Is this House prepared to discriminate to that degree?
  Mr. A. BEVAN: We have lone it for years.
  Lord E. PERCY: The hon. I Member had better examine the subject before he makes such an interruption.
  Mr. BEVAN: We have done t for years. The Noble Lord does not know his brief.
  Lord E. PERCY: What we have done is to discriminate between authority and authority on certain definite statutory criteria. The question is whether we are to carry out a differentiation beyond those ordinary statutory criteria is and introduce a system of purely discretionary grants according to the arbitrary judgment of a central authority.
  Mr. BEVAN: You have done it.
  Lord E. PERCY: That is the problem of the work, and of the machinery of the work, of economic rehabilitation with which we are experimenting. It is in that respect that the Commissioner for the special areas is an experiment. It has worked, with certain hitches. No suggestion has been made that any machinery could be made to work without hitches, in view of that difficulty, but it has worked, and I have no doubt that re-arrangements will be made which will make it work more smoothly and more effectively in the future. The problem will always remain. Again, I say that every Department of Government must be concerned in the work and preparation of this long-term policy.
  I hope that the general trend of my remarks will answer a number of the questions and the constructive suggestions that have been put to me from other quarters of the House. May I reply to the question of the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. H. Johnstone), in which he asked whether steel for shipbuilding could not in certain eventualities be exempted from duty? I think that if he will look at Section 11 of the Import Duties Act he will see that that question perhaps is not a very pertinent one.
  I have sketched the main items of a long-term policy.
  Mr. CHARLES BROWN: Very long term.
  Lord E. PERCY: Yes, a very long-term policy, and I would point out to the House that at any rate on Tyneside the work of redevelopment of industrial sites is now proceeding. Let me turn for one moment in the few minutes remaining to me to short-term policy. There is there an undoubted area for such experiments as the Commissioner was intended to carry out. It is the real field for experimentation by the Special Commissioner. It is from this aspect that one must look at public works within the special areas. Public works within the special areas, in addition to their permanent economic value, stimulate purchasing power within the special areas, mitigate to some extent that impression of depression which the Commissioner referred to, and to some extent attract new industries to the areas because they do not appear to be so depressed as they have been supposed to be. There have been some criticisms throughout this Debate as to the absence of public works within the special areas. I can only give one figure, and it will only refer to one particular area. In the last two years, on roads and bridges alone, there has been an expenditure of just about £1,000,000—[An HON. MEMBER: "The same old story!"]—in Durham, and that, of course, does not include the five-year programme of the Ministry of Transport which is now under negotiation in that area. While an expenditure of £1,000,000 on road and bridge development may be a small thing beside the problems of Durham and Tynside, it at least indicates the importance which the Government attach to stimulating of that kind of work. But let hon. Gentlemen opposite who come from South Wales remember that a great development of that kind has taken place in the very area of which we have heard to-day as being the most hopelessly and utterly depressed—that no place in England has been so opened up by first-class roads as the Rhondda Valley during the last few years—
  Mr. JOHN: And closed-down pits.
  Lord E. PERCY: All that work, however, as the Commissioner says in his general remarks about public works, has produced no permanent effect upon the

  1793
  South Wales situation. It is only local public works in connection with a long-term policy and serving a long-term policy of economic rehabilitation, that will do the special areas any real good. In the short-term policy you have an enormous range of amenity work, of health work, of minor and detailed replanning work, which is mainly to be regarded as short-term policy. Why the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street should have said that the special commissioner has not been able to carry out that amenity work I do not know; it is described in his report. Why does the hon. Member make incautious generalisations of that kind? Finally, you have the range of health and cultural work in the special areas represented by the Tyneside Association of Nursery Schools, with the assistance it has received, and the whole range of adult education and occupation centres throughout the special areas. That is the scope and range of the problem with which we are dealing. That is the scope and range of a problem which needs the united co-operation of the Government as a whole, and of all the Departments of the Government, and the particular work of the special commissioner must be regarded only as one item in that united work, which the Government have initiated and Which they intend to carry on.
  10.59 p.m.
  Mr. MACMILLAN: My Noble Friend who has just addressed the House has, like Pilate, asked a great number of questions, but has not stayed for the answer. The speech delivered by the Minister of Labour in answer to the Debate to-day depressed the House to the lowest level of depression which it has reached since this Government came into office. The right hon. Gentleman made a speech in which he answered none of the points which the Commissioner had put to him in his report. The Commissioner raised great questions of public policy; the right hon. Gentleman answered none of them.
  It being Eleven of the Clock, the Debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed To-morrow.

  CATTLE INDUSTRY (EMERGENCY PROVISIONS) (No. 2) BILL.
  Order for Third Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."—[Mr. Elliot.]
  Mr. COCKS: On a point of Order. Have we not been speaking on the Adjournment, and does not the Debate on the Adjournment terminate at half-past eleven?
  Mr. SPEAKER: We have been discussing the Motion which stands in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.
  Mr. LANSBURY: I rise to ask you, Sir, what is the business before the House at this minute?
  Mr. SPEAKER: The business before the House at the moment is the Third Reading of the Cattle Industry Bill.
  11.3 p.m.
  Duchess of ATHOLL: I want to say how glad I am that the Government have found it possible to continue the subsidy for livestock pending the conclusion of an agreement with the Dominions and the Argentine. I am also glad that a levy has been definitely announced as the Government's long-term policy. But the farmers of Scotland will, I fear, learn with considerable concern that apparently a marketing scheme for livestock is to form part of the Government's proposals. That was indicated, not perhaps very definitely, a week ago, by my right hon. Friend, but it was made quite clear by the Prime Minister last Saturday. The Scottish Chamber of Agriculture recently, seeing the serious loss caused to many producers by the milk scheme, and that some other schemes still have to prove their success, expressed the opinion that there should be no more marketing schemes for the present, that in particular, they desired no scheme at present for livestock. Livestock is much the most valuable part of farm produce, more especially in Scotland where it plays an even bigger part than in English agriculture. Therefore, I feel that there are many farmers who will be concerned about the introduction, possibly in this Parliament, or, anyhow, at some future date, of a marketing scheme for livestock. I would remind my right hon. Friend that at the last election

  1795
  the present Prime Minister gave a pledge that the farmers would be made secure against dumping. It does not seem to be consistent with that pledge to require a marketing scheme, as a condition of the levy, and I would point out to my right hon. Friend with how much concern this announcement is likely to be read. I hope therefore that very careful consideration will be given to the matter. In the meantime, I gladly support the Third Reading of the Bill.
  11.8 p.m.
  Mr. BUCHANAN: We are asked to pass a Bill to give farmers, over a period extending to October next, roughly £4,250,000. To-day we have debated other issues. The Government take a long time to consider human beings in distressed areas, and cannot act in regard to the things which have been complained of for years; yet to-day, in marked contrast, we see public money being handed over to the farming community, while the Minister's own Division, part of which is one of the worst depressed areas in the country, is neglected to a considerable extent. I hope that my hon. Friends will divide against this Motion. This is a case of public money being distributed among those whose interests are strong. We have been lectured about votes, but I have never seen a more ghastly spectacle of handing over public money to find votes for the Conservative party than that in which we are now engaged. We see to-day a spectacle which would have been condemned by past Parliamentarians of the Conservative party. The Minister represents as I do part of a great city which is in a terrible state of depression, and yet he is handing over public money to an industry for no other purpose than to gather in votes while his own poor people, not for a year or two, but for 10 years, have been in a state of almost unprecedented depression. That is a spectacle which is too contemptible for words.
  11.10 p.m.
  Lieut.-Colonel ACLAND-TROYTE: Unlike the hon. Member for Govan (Mr. Buchanan), I rise to thank the Minister for bringing in this Bill. The last speaker's suggestion was that the Bill was one to catch votes, but anyone who knows anything at all about agriculture
  1796
  knows very well that if this subsidy was not granted to the producers of cattle, the cattle industry would be in a terrible way, and the producers of cattle would have to go out of business, and a large number of farmers throughout the country would "go broke." I therefore thank the Minister very much for bringing in this Bill.
  11.11 p.m.
  Colonel Sir EDWARD RUGGLES-BRISE: The hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) has complained that the Government, in dealing with the question of the distressed areas, have not been as generous as he would like them to have been, but I would ask the hon. Member whether there would be any depressed area at all if the industries of that area had been able to remain in a flourishing condition. Surely had the industries of an area been kept going, there would have been no depressed area. The Government have taken the view, rightly, that whatever else happens, they do not want to add to the number of our distressed areas, and they have seen to it that the agricultural industry, which covers, after all, the major portion of the area of this country, shall not become depressed. The right way to keep any part of our country from becoming a distressed area is to support the industry of that area. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why not support mining?"] I might ask the hon. Member who asks that question why it was that when his friends were in office they supported mining with so little success, because, after all, the depressed areas are mining areas, and therefore it ill befits hon. Members of the party above the Gangway to ask why the Government do not support the mining areas, when they themselves devoted so much of their time in this House, and rightly, to relieving that distressed industry in order that there should not be distressed areas. Unhappily, they made a failure of their efforts.
  The Government do not intend to add to the number of depressed areas at any cost. They say it is far better to do something to support industries which are still alive, although being carried on with considerable difficulty. At least, where we have an industry alive, do not let us allow that industry to die. That must be a common-sense policy. Where there is an industry actually in being today, let us keep it alive at all costs.

  1797
  That is the only way in which we can keep people in work and drawing weekly wages. If an industry dies, there is no alternative to having, instead of two badly depressed areas, ten or a dozen badly distressed areas. Let hon. Members consider what are the results of some of the efforts of the National Government.
  Mr. SPEAKER: I think we must confine the Debate to what is in the Bill.
  Sir E. RUGGLES-BRISE: If I may turn to the intrinsic merits of the Bill, I would say that its great and chief merit is that it is coming to the assistance of an industry, namely, the cattle industry. But for the assistance which this Bill will afford to that industry, there would be another industry falling into decay. Surely on that broad ground alone, in view of all that has taken place in to-day's Debate, there should not be one hon. Member who is not prepared to support the Government in taking all reasonable measures to prevent any other man losing a job, in which he now finds himself at work and earning wages.
  11.16 p.m.
  Sir JOSEPH LAMB: I should like to add my thanks to the Minister of Agriculture for the Bill, and to congratulate him most sincerely for the steps he has taken and the success he has achieved in connection with the negotiations with representatives of the Dominions who have been over here in regard to the Cattle Industries Bill which we are now considering. I have no doubt that he has had a very difficult task. The more difficult the task the more essential it is that we should thank him for his achievements with the Dominions.
  Mr. T. SMITH: On a point of Order. May I ask whether on a Bill of this description it will be in order to discuss the question of the Dominions?
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is founding his argument on the basis that there have been negotiations with Dominion representatives, and the Government have been able to bring in the Bill.
  Sir J. LAMB: I should like to reply to the argument that the landlords will profit from this Bill. No man or woman can live to themselves alone. If hon. Members opposite will be serious and not
  1798
  so frivolous they will realise that no industry can live to itself alone. If we do not pass Measures such as this, we shall find that the industry of agriculture cannot continue. I should not be in order to refer in detail to the Debate that has taken place to-day on another question. One of the most serious facts in connection with the depressed areas is the lack of purchasing power of the people, which is not only detrimental to the people in the areas, but detrimental to those living outside these areas. If the purchasing power of the people whom this Bill is intended to benefit is reduced, other industries will suffer. Agriculture can never he prosperous by itself. Other industries are the customers of agriculture, and if they do not grant to those engaged in agriculture a right to purchasing power, they themselves will also suffer. Those engaged in the agricultural industry far outnumber those in any other industry. I have a great admiration for the colliers, but they do not equal the number of those in agriculture, whose purchasing power is equal to that of the miners and the quarrying industry combined. Therefore I say that it is important that agriculture should continue, and Bills of this description are the only method by which the industry can continue to maintain its purchasing power for the benefit of the whole country.
  11.23 p.m.
  The MINISTER of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Elliot): The great statesman Talleyrand said to a person who was arguing against him on the pleasures of eating:
  "What other pleasure is there which repeats itself four times in the day and goes on for an hour at a time?"
  When the right hon. and gallant Member the Chief Whip heard of this he asked whether they had ever thought of the Minister of Agriculture on the Cattle Industry Bill. However, I should not have troubled the House to-night, but for the speech of the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan). He has repeated a statement to-night which I must challenge; indeed, it is necessary to challenge it whenever and wherever it is made, and particularly necessary after the Debate to which the House has just listened with regard to the distressed areas, because the problems of the

  1799
  special areas are closely bound up with the problem of increasing the number of those who are settled on the land. Of all things necessary before you can increase the number of persons settled on the land, surely it is necessary to maintain those who are already there. It is not a question of lack of prosperity among farmers, but a question of 600,000 or 700,000 or 800,000 people admittedly receiving wages at the lowest level and losing those wages or being thrown out of employment. As I said before, the hon. Member for Gorbals has voiced the feelings of the Opposition—voiced feelings which right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite are either afraid or unwilling to express. [HON. MEMBERS "No!"] Does anyone deny that right hon. and hon. Members opposite are unwilling to speak upon this Bill?
  Mr. T. WILLIAMS: We are waiting to speak. I and my right hon. Friend beside me rose when the hon. Member for Stone (Sir J. Lamb) was called upon to speak.
  Mr. ELLIOT: I said "unwilling." [Interruption.]
  Mr. NEIL MACLEAN: We will keep the debate going all night if you like.
  Mr. ELLIOT: Hon. Members are showing an unnecessary amount of heat. I do not wish to get into any sort of quarrel with right hon. and hon. Members opposite. I will withdraw the word "afraid" altogether, but I would point out that when my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir J. Lamb) concluded his speech I kept my seat and no one rose from the other side to continue the Debate. Wherever and whenever a challenge is brought by the hon. Member for Gorbals, there and then that challenge will have to be met. The hon. Member stated that in some way or other an injustice was being done to the poor. Nowhere on earth can that challenge be made in my hearing without my doing my utmost forthwith to refute it. No one suggests that this Bill is going to do anything of any kind to injure the poor in the price of meat or the cost of living. Does the hon. Member for Gorbals deny that?
  Mr. BUCHANAN: You take £4,500,000 of money out of national taxation. It
  1800
  should go to the poor, but you give it to other people who have not proved their poverty, and so you are injuring the poor.
  Mr. ELLIOT: Does the hon. Member apply that argument to the building industry?
  Mr. BUCHANAN: In the building industry before money was granted they had to prove that the houses they were going to build were for working people and the poorest people. That was necessary before the subsidy was granted. Here a subsidy is granted without any test at all. It is simply shovelled out.
  Mr. ELLIOT: The hon. Member cannot avoid the issue in that way. His challenge was that money was being given, without a means test, to men who might be wealthy, but he avoids answering the question, whether the builders did, or did not get money without a means test.
  Mr. BUCHANAN: I say again that the local authorities were granted subsidies to go on with the building of houses. So far as we were concerned, they got the subsidy but they had to build houses for the working people. Here, the farmers are being paid a sum of money without any regard to the use they make of it or anything else.
  Mr. ELLIOT: The evasion is patent. [HON. MEMBER: "No!"] There is no question about it whatever. I asked the hon. Member a straight question.
  Mr. BUCHANAN: And you got an answer.
  Mr. ELLIOT: There was no answer given to it at all.
  Mr. N. MACLEAN: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether any portion of the housing subsidy was given by the Government, direct to any individuals working in the building industry? Was the subsidy not given to the local authority or to private contractors who were building houses?
  Mr. ELLIOT: Does the hon. Member suggest that nothing was given except in cases where direct building was being carried out by local authorities? It is common knowledge that this money was given through the local authorities to private individuals—builders who were building under the conditions of private

  1801
  enterprise. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Of course, it was.
  Mr. MACLEAN: Yes, but the private builders who were getting it from the local authorities were like the farmers to whom you are giving this money.
  HON. MEMBERS: Oh!
  Mr. ELLIOT: Exactly—and now, that question having been disposed of by the hon. Member for Govan (Mr. Maclean), I pass on to other points which were raised in the earlier discussion. A point of great interest was raised by the Noble Lady the Member for Perth and Kinross (Duchess of Atholl), as to marketing schemes. I am glad to be able to assure her that we have determined to examine this question—
  Mr. SPEAKER: I did not hear the speech of the Noble Lady, but, if she had referred to marketing schemes within my hearing, I should have called her to order.
  Mr. ELLIOT: Then it would be out of order for me to go further into that matter. As the question of the steps to be taken in connection with the long-term policy appears to be out of order in a discussion on this Measure, I need only say that those steps will be given full consideration before the long-term policy falls to be introduced. The long-term policy is being framed and the time which this Bill is designed to secure, will be used for that purpose. I can give the Noble Lady the assurance that the points she has raised will be carefully taken into consideration in the framing of that policy. As to the general question of whether the price level is being unreasonably held up by reason of this Measure or other Measures introduced by the Government, I say, without hesitation, that nobody can suggest for a moment that the price of food is being other than held down by this legislation. This Bill is necessary because, since 1930, the price of fat cattle has gone down from 100 to 67 where it is to-day and during that time the price of other great necessities of the working class, such as coal, has been held up, owing to legislation passed by—
  Mr. SPEAKER: We obviously cannot get on to the subject of coal.
  Mr. ELLIOT: I say that because the price of fat cattle has gone down con-
  1802
  siderably since 1930, and the price of other important articles has not gone down in anything like the same ratio. It is important for the interests of the people engaged in the industry that this Measure should be passed to-night. It is for the purpose of enabling us further to work out the long-term policy which we have repeatedly put before the House and which we are prepared to defend when the time comes. This Measure, which is a Measure of unmitigated good for every person, and more particularly for the working-classes, is one which the House cannot, after the earlier Debate to-day, refuse to give the Government.
  11.36 p.m.
  Mr. T. WILLIAMS: I am rather surprised that the right hon. Gentleman should have suggested that we are unwilling to take up his challenge on this question. I can understand the right hon. Gentleman making a meal of his opportunity when the mutual admiration society started to operate. After the terrible display that we had from the Minister of Labour this afternoon and the equally terrible display we had from the "Minister of Brains," the Government are naturally anxious to cover up the tracks of the depressed areas Debate. For the right hon. Gentleman to state that we were unwilling to deal with this case because we had no courage is really the last word. The right hon. Gentleman brought a similar proposal before the House in July of last year, and he asked for seven months breathing space. He was breathing freely for seven months, and then he found he wanted more breathing space on the 18th February this year, when he asked for a further extension. We expected that the right hon. Gentleman, with his facile mind, great agility and courage, would, if we gave him three more months, be at least able to provide us with a long-term policy. But he failed again, and on 26th June he wanted more breathing space, and on 15th July he wanted still more. Really the right hon. Gentleman has compelled us to make speech after speech on the same subject until every other hon. Member except the right bon. Gentleman thought we had talked ad nauseam about cattle and subsidies.
  The right hon. Gentleman always injects into these Debates the question of the mines. He has worked that problem

  1803
  overtime, and he has not done himself or the subject justice. He always tells us that unless this subsidy is made available 800,000 to 1,000,000 workpeople will be unemployed. The right hon. Gentleman knows that he is talking bunkum. In 1932 we were informed by his predecessor, supported by the right hon. Gentleman himself, that unless £6,000,000 was made available there and then all our arable farmers would go out of existence at once. We were told by hon. Members, including the right hon. Gentleman, that were it not for the continuation of the sugar subsidy the industry would be in a parlous state and many people would be unemployed. The Scotsmen, and they were supported by the right hon. Gentleman, said "Unless there is an increased duty on oats what is to happen to agriculture in Scotland?" We have been told that unless £5,500,000 for milk was made available immediately—
  Mr. SPEAKER: I am waiting to hear about beef.
  Mr. WILLIAMS: It is all in the same industry. The right hon. Gentleman says that unless all these subsidies are made available, so many hundreds of thousands of people, more than the number of miners in the country, are going to be thrown out of work. The right hon. Gentleman and his predecessors have captured £53,000,000 per annum, directly and indirectly, for agriculture. If he and his friends were half as generous to the mining industry we should have work not for 780,000 men but for 1,000,000. Why does he keep a quarter of a million men out of work? By implication the right hon. Gentleman can keep any number of people in any industry, that is, if the Government provide funds. We have been told that the Government are giving £2,000,000 to help the distressed areas, areas that are in absolutely dire straits through no fault of their own, whereas £4,300,000 is going to beef, to one branch of an industry alone, just to tide it over events for a time.
  It is high time the right hon. Gentleman started thinking in terms other than subsidies. I can tell him that there is a great deal to be said on this subject from these benches and he should regard himself as fortunate that we have been so
  1804
  generous and sympathetic to him and have not talked as we might have done. That is only because we have been willing, up to a point, to allow experiments to be made and have agreed to large sums of public money being made available for those experiments. Money was voted in July, in February, in June, and in July again, all for the same industry, and still no permanent policy is forthcoming. It is no good the right hon. Gentleman retorting that subsidies were provided for the building industry. That was only because the capitalist system had broken down. There would have been no house for the working classes without subsidies.
  Mr. SPEAKER: We are not discussing housing.
  Mr. WILLIAMS: I am sorry I crossed the borderline. I want to tell the right hon. Gentleman that we are not unwilling to meet him at any time, on fair ground, on this question of subsidies. We are not members of this mutual admiration society. The hon. Member for Stone (Sir J. Lamb) will always compliment the right hon. Gentleman if the subsidy is bigger to-day than yesterday, and the hon. and gallant Member for Malden (Sir E. Ruggles-Brise), the Chairman of the Agricultural Committee of the House, would not be doing his duty if he did not express his admiration for the Minister when millions are being given to agriculture. The spokesmen of the farmers will, of course thank the right hon. Gentleman, and they have thanked him so often that in the end they have convinced him also that he has done the right thing. But I warn the right hon. Gentleman against his friends, and would remind him of a statement I made in this House some time ago, that if he was not careful he would go down to history not as the Minister with the most constructive mind but as the Minister who manufactured political paupers at a faster rate than any other Minister. I would repeat that warning. These expressions of delight and pleasure and the votes of thanks that are frequently heard are not for the good of the Minister of Agriculture in the National Government. It is because we feel that he is running down the wrong track, that he is off the rails and is not likely to get back on the rails, and that he is courting political disaster that we are willing to go into the Lobby against this Bill to-night.
  Question put "That the Bill be now read the Third time."
  The House divided: Ayes, 262; Noes, 62.

  Division No. 285.]

  AYES.

  [11.45 p.m.

  Acland-Troyte, Lieut.-Colonel

  Essenhigh, Reginald Clare

  Maitland, Adam

  Adams, Samuel Vyvyan T. (Leeds, W.)

  Evans, R. T. (Carmarthen)

  Makins, Brigadier-General Ernest

  Agnew, Lieut.-Com. P. G.

  Fermoy, Lord

  Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R.

  Albery, Irving James

  Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

  Marsden, Commander Arthur

  Anderson, Sir Alan Garrett

  Fleming, Edward Lascelles

  Mason, Col. Glyn K. (Croydon, N.)

  Apsley, Lord

  Ford, Sir Patrick J.

  Mayhew, Lieut.-Colonel John

  Aske, Sir Robert William

  Fox, Sir Gifford

  Meller, Sir Richard James (Mitcham)

  Assheton, Ralph

  Fraser, Captain Sir Ian

  Mellor, Sir J. S. P.

  Astor, Maj. Hn. John J. (Kent, Dover)

  Fremantle, Sir Francis

  Mills, Sir Frederick (Leyton, E.)

  Atholl, Duchess of

  Ganzonl, Sir John

  Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest)

  Bailey, Eric Alfred George

  Gledhill, Gilbert

  Mitchell, Harold P. (Br'tf'd & Chisw'k)

  Baillie, Sir Adrian W. M.

  Glossop, C. W. H.

  Mitcheson, G. G.

  Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley

  Glyn, Major Sir Ralph G. C.

  Monsell, Rt. Hon. Sir B. Eyres

  Baldwin-Webb, Colonel J.

  Goff, Sir Park

  Moore, Lt.-Col. Thomas C. R. (Ayr)

  Balniel, Lord

  Goldie, Noel B.

  Moreing, Adrian C.

  Barclay-Harvey, C. M.

  Gower, Sir Robert

  Morris, Owen Temple (Cardiff, E.)

  Barrie, Sir Charles Coupar

  Graham, Sir F. Fergus (C'mb'rl'd, N.)

  Morris-Jones, Dr. J. H. (Denbigh)

  Bateman, A. L.

  Graves, Marjorie

  Morrison, William Shepherd

  Beauchamp, Sir Brograve Campbell

  Greene, William P. C.

  Muirhead, Lieut.-Colonel A. J.

  Beaumont, Hon. R. E. B. (Portsm'th, C.)

  Grigg, Sir Edward

  Munro, Patrick

  Belt, Sir Alfred L.

  Grimston, R. V.

  Nicholson, Godfrey (Morpeth)

  Bernays, Robert

  Guest, Capt. Rt. Hon. F. E.

  O'Donovan, Dr. William James

  Bevan, Stuart James (Holborn)

  Guinness, Thomas L. E. B.

  Oman, Sir Charles William C.

  Blindell, James

  Gunston, Captain D. W.

  Orr Ewing, I. L.

  Bossom, A. C.

  Guy, J. C. Morrison

  Palmer, Francis Noel

  Boulton, W. W.

  Hacking, Rt. Hon. Douglas H.

  Patrick, Colin M.

  Bowater, Col. Sir T. Vansittart

  Hales, Harold K.

  Peake, Osbert

  Bower, Commander Robert Tatton

  Hanbury, Sir Cecil

  Pearson, William G.

  Bowyer, Capt. Sir George E. W.

  Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry

  Peat, Charles U.

  Braithwaite, Maj. A. N. (Yorks, E. R.)

  Harbord, Arthur

  Percy, Lord Eustace

  Braithwaite, J. G. (Hillsborough)

  Hartington, Marquess of

  Peto, Sir Basil E. (Devon, Barnstaple)

  Broadbent, Colonel John

  Harvey, George (Lambeth, Kenn'gt'n)

  Peto, Geoffrey K. (W'verh'pt'n, Bilston)

  Brocklebank, C. E. R.

  Haslam, Sir John (Bolton)

  Pickthorn, K. W. M.

  Brown, Col. D. C. (N'th'l'd., Hexham)

  Headlam, Lieut.-Col. Cuthbert M.

  Powell, Lieut.-Col. Evelyn G. H.

  Brown, Rt. Hon. Ernest (Leith)

  Heligers, Captain F. F. A.

  Procter, Major Henry Adam

  Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C. (Berks., Newb'y)

  Heneage, Lieut.-Colonel Arthur P.

  Ramsay, Alexander (W. Bromwich)

  Browne, Captain A. C.

  Herbert, Major J. A. (Monmouth)

  Ramsay, Capt. A. H. M. (Midlothian)

  Buchan-Hepburn, P. G. T.

  Herbert, Capt. S. (Abbey Division)

  Ramsay T. B. W. (Western Isles)

  Burghley, Lord

  Hills, Major Rt. Hon. John Waller

  Ramsbotham, Herwald

  Burnett, John George

  Hope, Capt. Hon. A. O. J. (Aston)

  Ramsden, Sir Eugene

  Campbell, Vice-Admiral G. (Burnley)

  Horsbrugh, Florence

  Reed, Arthur C. (Exeter)

  Campbell-Johnston, Malcolm

  Howard, Tom Forrest

  Reid, William Allan (Derby)

  Caporn, Arthur Cecil

  Howitt, Dr. Alfred B.

  Remer, John R.

  Carver, Major William H.

  Hudson, Capt. A. U. M. (Hackney, N.)

  Rhys, Hon. Charles Arthur U.

  Castlereagh, Viscount

  Hudson, Robert Spear (Southport)

  Rickards, George William

  Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.)

  Hunter, Capt. M. J. (Brigg)

  Robinson, John Roland

  Cazalet, Capt. V. A. (Chippenham)

  Iveagh, Countess of

  Ropner, Colonel L.

  Chapman, Sir Samuel (Edinburgh, S.)

  Jackson, Sir Henry (Wandsworth, C.)

  Rosbotham, Sir Thomas

  Chorlton, Alan Ernest Laofric

  James, Wing-Com. A. W. H.

  Ross, Ronald D.

  Christie, James Archibald

  Jamieson, Rt. Hon. Douglas

  Ross Taylor, Walter (Woodbridge)

  Clayton, Sir Christopher

  Joel, Dudley J. Barnato

  Ruggles-Brise, Colonel Sir Edward

  Cochrane, Commander Hon. A. D.

  Jones, Sir G. W. H. (Stoke New'gton)

  Runge, Norah Cecil

  Colville, Lieut.-Colonel J.

  Ker, J. Campbell

  Russell, Alexander West (Tynemouth)

  Conant, R. J. E.

  Kerr, Lieut.-Col. Charles (Montrose)

  Russell, Hamer Field (Sheffield, B'tside)

  Cooke, Douglas

  Kerr, J. Graham (Scottish Univ.)

  Rutherford, John (Edmonton)

  Cooper, A. Duff

  Keyes, Admiral Sir Roger

  Rutherford, Sir John Hugo (Liverp'l)

  Courthope, Colonel Sir George L.

  Lamb, Sir Joseph Quinton

  Salmon, Sir Isidore

  Craven-Ellis, William

  Latham, Sir Herbert Paul

  Salt, Edward W.

  Critchley, Brig.-General A. C.

  Law, Sir Alfred

  Samuel, M. R. A. (W'ds'wth, Putney).

  Crooke, J. Smedley

  Leckie, J. A.

  Sandys, Duncan

  Crookshank, Capt. H. C. (Gainsb'ro)

  Leech, Dr. J. W.

  Savery, Servington

  Cross, R. H.

  Leighton, Major B. E. P.

  Shaw, Captain William T. (Forfar)

  Crossley, A. C.

  Lennox-Boyd, A. T.

  Shepperson, Sir Ernest W.

  Cruddas, Lieut.-Colonel Bernard

  Liddall, Walter S.

  Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John

  Culverwell, Cyril Tom

  Lindsay, Noel Ker

  Sinclair, Col. T. (Queen's Unv., Belfast)

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Llewellin, Major John J.

  Smiles, Lieut.-Col. Sir Walter D.

  Davidson, Rt. Hon. Sir John

  Loder, Captain J. de Vere

  Smith, Bracewell (Dulwich)

  Davies, Edward C. (Montgomery)

  Lovat-Fraser, James Alexander

  Smith, Sir J. Walker- (Barrow-in-F.)

  Davies, Maj. Geo. F. (Somerset, Yeovil)

  Lumley, Captain Lawrence R.

  Smith, Louis W. (Sheffield, Hallam)

  Dickie, John P.

  Mabane, William

  Sotheron-Estcourt, Captain T. E.

  Dixon, Captain Rt. Hon. Herbert

  MacAndrew, Lieut.-Col. Sir Charles

  Southby, Commander Archibald R. J.

  Duckworth, George A. V.

  MacAndrew, Major J. O. (Ayr)

  Spears, Brigadier-General Edward L.

  Duncan, James A. L. (Kensington, N.)

  McCorquodale, M. S.

  Spencer, Captain Richard A.

  Dunglass, Lord

  Macdonald, Capt. P. D. (I. of W.)

  Spens, William Patrick

  Elliot, Rt. Hon. Walter

  McEwen, Captain J. H. F.

  Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Fylde)

  Ellis, Sir R. Geoffrey

  McLean, Major Sir Alan

  Stanley, Rt. Hon. Oliver (W'morland)

  Elliston, Captain George Sampson

  Macmillan, Maurice Harold

  Stevenson, James

  Elmley, Viscount

  Macquisten, Frederick Alexander

  Stewart, J. Henderson (Fife, E.)

  Emrys-Evans, P. V.

  Magnay, Thomas

  Storey, Samuel

  Strauss, Edward A.

  Thomson, Sir Douglas

  Williams, Herbert G. (Croydon, S.)

  Strickland, Captain W. F.

  Thorp, Linton Theodore

  Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

  Stuart, Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn)

  Titchfield, Major the Marquess of

  Wills, Wilfrid D.

  Sueter, Rear-Admiral Sir Murray F.

  Tryon, Rt. Hon. George Clement

  Womersley, Sir Walter

  Sugden, Sir Wilfrid Hart

  Tufnell, Lieut.-Commander R. L.

  Wragg, Herbert

  Sutcliffe, Harold

  Turton, Robert Hugh

  Tate, Mavis Constance

  Wallace, Captain D. E. (Hornsey)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

  Taylor, Vice-Admiral E. A. (P'dd'gt'n, S.)

  Ward, Irene Mary Bewick (Wallsend)

  Sir George Penny and Lieut.-

  Thomas, James P. L. (Hereford)

  Waterhouse, Captain Charles

  Colonel Sir A. Lambert Ward.

  Thompson, Sir Luke

  Wedderburn, Henry James Scrymgeour.

  NOES.

  Acland, Rt. Hon. Sir Francis Dyke

  Greenwood, Rt. Hon. Arthur

  Mainwaring, William Henry

  Adams, D. M. (Poplar, South)

  Grenfell, David Rees (Glamorgan)

  Mallalieu, Edward Lancelot

  Banfield, John William

  Griffith, F. Kingsley (Middlesbro', W.)

  Mason, David M. (Edinburgh, E.)

  Batey, Joseph

  Griffiths, George A. (Yorks, W. Riding)

  Maxton, James

  Bevan, Aneurin (Ebbw Vale)

  Groves, Thomas E.

  Milner, Major James

  Brown, C. W. E. (Notts., Mansfield)

  Grundy, Thomas W.

  Nathan, Major H. L.

  Buchanan, George

  Hall, George H. (Merthyr Tydvil)

  Parkinson, John Allen

  Cape, Thomas

  Harris, Sir Percy

  Rea, Sir Walter

  Cleary, J. J.

  Hicks, Ernest George

  Salter, Dr. Alfred

  Cocks, Frederick Seymour

  Janner, Barnett

  Samuel, Rt. Hon. Sir H. (Darwen)

  Cripps, Sir Stafford

  Jenkins, Sir William

  Smith, Tom (Normanton)

  Curry, A. C.

  Johnstone, Harcourt (S. Shields)

  Strauss, G. R. (Lambeth, North)

  Daggar, George

  Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)

  Tinker, John Joseph

  Davies, David L. (Pontypridd)

  Kirkwood, David

  West, F. R.

  Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton)

  Lansbury, Rt. Hon. George

  White, Henry Graham

  Davies, Stephen Owen

  Lawson, John James

  Williams, Edward John (Ogmore)

  Dobbie, William

  Leonard, William

  Williams, Thomas (York, Don Valley)

  Edwards, Sir Charles

  Logan, David Gilbert

  Wilmot, John

  Foot, Dingle (Dundee)

  Lunn, William

  Gardner, Benjamin Walter

  Macdonald, Gordon (Ince)

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—

  Glbbins, J.

  McEntee, Valentine L.

  Mr. Paling and Mr. John.

  Graham, D. M. (Lanark, Hamilton)

  Maclean, Neil (Glasgow, Govan)

  Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
  The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.
  It being after Half-past Eleven, of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at Five Minutes before Twelve o'Clock.

SCOTLAND.
  RAILWAYS (VALUATION).
  RAILWAYS (VALUATION).
  LAND SETTLEMENT.
  LAND SETTLEMENT.
  AGRICULTURAL DRAINAGE (GRANTS).
  AGRICULTURAL DRAINAGE (GRANTS).
GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS.
  FIVE-DAY WEEK.
  FIVE-DAY WEEK.
  HERRING (IMPORT FROM NORWAY).
  HERRING (IMPORT FROM NORWAY).
  MILITARY RANK.
  MILITARY RANK.
  UNEMPLOYMENT (STATISTICS).
  UNEMPLOYMENT (STATISTICS).
TRADE AND COMMERCE.
  COTTON INDUSTRY.
  COTTON INDUSTRY.
  SILK INDUSTRY.
  SILK INDUSTRY.
  VACCINATION.
  VACCINATION.
EDUCATION.
  ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS, COUNTY DURHAM.
  ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS, COUNTY DURHAM.
  TRAINING (STUDENTS).
  TRAINING (STUDENTS).
  CIVIL AIRCRAFT (COMPARATIVE STATISTICS).
  CIVIL AIRCRAFT (COMPARATIVE STATISTICS).
Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
LONDON PASSENGER TRANSPORT BOARD (FINANCE) BILL.
Read 2a.
HARROGATE CORPORATION BILL.
Read 3a, with the Amendments: further Amendments made: Bill passed, and returned to the Commons.
BLACKPOOL IMPROVEMENT BILL.
Read 3a, with the Amendments: further Amendments made: Bill passed, and returned to the Commons.
CROYDON CORPORATION BILL.
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
LONDON PASSENGER TRANSPORT BOARD BILL.
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL.
Read 3a, and passed.

ARGYLLSHIRE (MID-ARGYLL AND KINTYRE) ELECTRICITY ORDER, 1935.
THE EARL OF LUCAN: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Earl of Plymouth, I beg to move that the Argyllshire (Mid-Argyll and Kintyre) Electricity Order, as reported from the Special Orders Committee, be approved.
Moved, That the Special Order, as reported from the Special Orders Committee on Wednesday last, be approved.—(The Earl of Lucan.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LIVERPOOL ELECTRICITY (EXTENSION) ORDER, 1935.
THE EARL OF LUCAN: My Lords, again on behalf of my noble friend Lord Plymouth, I beg to move the second Motion which stands on the Paper in his name.
Moved, That the Special Order, as reported from the Special Orders Committee on Wednesday last, be approved.—(The Earl of Lucan.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

IPSWICH CORPORATION (TROLLEY VEHICLES) PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Bill reported without amendment.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (CUDDINGTON JOINT HOSPITAL DISTRICT) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Bill reported without amendment.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (EAST SURREY WATER) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Bill reported without amendment.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (HARPENDEN WATER) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Bill reported without amendment.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (MONKS AND PRINCES RISBOROUGH WATER) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Bill reported without amendment.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (RAINHAM WATER) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Bill reported without amendment.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (SOUTH OX FORDSHIRE, WATER) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order) on re-commitment of the Bill: Bill reported without amendment.

HOURS OF EMPLOYMENT (CON VENTIONS) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
THE EARL OF FEVERSHAM: My Lords, before moving that the House do resolve itself into Committee on this Bill, I should like to make reference to the point raised on the Second Reading by Lord Marley that the proviso of Clause 3 (1) (a) might be abused. I should like to say that in prescribing the forms of records, to be kept under Clause 3 (3), of additional hours worked in pursuance of the proviso, special consideration will be given to the importance of showing, for the information of the inspectors, the precise circumstances in which advantage is taken of the proviso in question. I hope that that will satisfy the noble Lord who raised that point on Second Reading. I beg to move that the House do resolve itself into Committee.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(The Earl of Feversham.)
LORD MARLEY: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Earl for the statement he has made. He was good enough to provide me with the chance of discussing the matter with him, and I am more than pleased with the response which he has given to my request.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly: Bill reported without amendment.

DISEASES OF ANIMALS BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day read for the consideration of Commons Amendments.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (EARL DE LA WARR): My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Amendments be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Amendments be now considered.—(Earl De La Warr.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS.
[The references are to Bill No. 61.]
Clause 1, page 1, line 14, at end insert ("unless the context otherwise requires")
Clause 3, page 3, line 9, after ("than") insert ("fowl pest in any of its forms, including")
Clause 3, page 3, leave out ("or") and insert ("and")
Clause 13, page 9, line 22, leave out ("apply") and insert ("appeal")
EARL DE LA WARR: My Lords, there are four Amendments to this Bill. One is the correction of a misprint and the others are drafting. I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Earl De La Warr.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

OIL AND PETROL PRODUCTION.
THE DUKE OF MONTROSE THE DUKE OF MONTROSE rose to ask how many coal distillation plants have been completed in the United Kingdom during 1934 and 1935; what is the annual output of petrol from them; and what is the amount of petrol required now, and likely to be required on completion of the Air Ministry's aircraft constructional programme; and to ask whether His Majesty's Government contemplate taking any further steps to expedite the production of oil and petrol from home sources.
The noble Duke said: My Lords, in asking the Question which stands in my name I would like to emphasise the false position in which the defence of this country will be if we go on adding to our naval shipbuilding and to our aircraft building and to our mechanised Army, and at the same time take no steps to add to the supply of fuel oil from home sources. I think it was about eighteen months ago that I asked in your Lordships' House a Question as to what steps the Government were taking, or were
744
about to take, to increase the supply of oil, and I was told by the noble Lord who replied that the Government were about to give a preference of, I think, 8d. a gallon on home-produced oil, as against a duty levied upon imported oil, and it was likely that the preference would be extended to crude oil suitable for the Navy. In the course of the last eighteen months I believe that very little has been done. That is the cause of my Question. I feel that the results have been disappointing.
Eighteen months ago there was one firm in this country producing oil from coal. That firm is still in existence, and so far as I know it is the only firm producing oil from coal on an economic and commercial basis. I know that there is the great plant put up at vast expense by the Imperial Chemical Industries Company, but that plant is not so much producing oil from coal as turning crude oil into light oil; and whether you look at this question from the point of view of crude oil or petrol, the result is that the supply of oil from home sources put out by those two firms is a mere bagatelle compared with our Service requirements, or of the requirements for the whole country's use. I think I am right in saying that the output of oil of all kinds from those two firms does not exceed 6,000,000 gallons a year, whereas our Service requirements will be somewhere near 16,000,000 gallons a year. So far as our national requirements are concerned, we require 1,800,000,000 gallons of oil; so that the total home production of oil of all kinds represents barely one-third of 1 per cent. of our national requirements.
That is exceedingly disappointing. I feel that nothing is really being done to increase the supply of oil, and that it is deluding the people of this country to go on simply building ships and aeroplanes and doing nothing to provide an increase of the supply of oil from home sources, because it must be obvious that not a ship and not an aeroplane can move or fight without oil. Recently in this quarrel between Italy and Abyssinia there was a suggestion that the Suez Canal might be closed. Who knows whether we might be drawn into hostilities and whether the League of Nations or some such body might decide to close the Suez Canal? If that happened, where would our vast oil supplies from the

745
Persian Gulf and Burma be? It might be that America would decide to restrict the exportation of oil from Mexico. If she did that, where would our oil supply from across the Atlantic be? No one can say for certain that these things will not happen, and it is profoundly unsatisfactory that our national defence in this country should be almost wholly dependent on overseas supplies of oil. The methods of attack on the sea, by submarine and by aircraft, have vastly improved since the War, and there is no finer target afloat than a heavily-laden oil tanker; one shot or one bomb, and she is on fire. Therefore I think it is foolish to go on leaving ourselves dependent on overseas supplies.
I would just say one thing I have never said before. I was the originator and inventor of the first mother aircraft ship in the world—the first sea-going ship that could carry twenty or thirty aeroplanes, and go to sea with the Fleet. I completed my plans and lodged them at the Admiralty in 1912, two years before the War. I did all I could to press the Admiralty and the Government of the day to build an aircraft carrier, because I thought we were drifting into war. For some reason best known to themselves, they did not do so, and the War had been going on for two and a half years before my plans were released and my firm was instructed to make an aircraft carrier. The Admiralty and the Government of that day can be charged with lack of foresight, lack of vision and lack of enterprise in not building an aircraft carrier two years before the War. Noble Lords who sit on that Front Bench will be just as guilty of lack of vision, lack of foresight, and lack of enterprise if they do not do something to increase the home supplies of oil in this country.
All the Government need do is to intimate that they will guarantee interest upon the capital expended in putting up coal distillation plants. The Government could guarantee a limited amount of interest, say, on £2,000,000. Two million pounds will provide ten plants, and ten plants will be capable of putting out 21,000,000 gallons of oil and would give employment to over 5,000 men directly and indirectly. It would save £300,000 in "doles," in paying people for doing nothing, against a total liability, if you take interest at 4 per cent., of £80,000.
746
Is it worth it? What are we doing at present? We are spending £2,000,000 a year in removing slag heaps, laying out cricket fields, providing all kinds of amenities, but these amenities do not increase industry. The two Commissioners for the Special Areas have both said that coal distillation is the right thing for this country to improve employment, but by the terms of their appointment they are prevented from doing anything in the matter. After all, we are now guaranteeing interest on £35,000,000 for improving London transport, this blood-sucking vampire of industry in London. Why should not the rest of the country have the privilege of capital being guaranteed, thus balancing the gain throughout the Kingdom? If the Government guarantee the interest on putting up coal distillation plants, they will not, only increase employment, but give real security to our national defence. I want to know what the Government are doing and intend to do in this matter of increasing oil supplies from home sources. I beg to ask the Question standing in my name.
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: My Lords, on the last occasion on which the noble Duke raised the question of the production of oil from coal, he concerned himself practically entirely with the question of fuel oil, and on this occasion, it appears to me, he is more concerned with the production of motor spirit or petrol. My noble friend, in the Question which he has addressed to the Government, first asks how many coal distillation plants have been completed in the United Kingdom during 1934 and 1935, and what is the annual output of petrol from them. As I think my noble friend is well aware, coal is carbonised or distilled at coke ovens, gasworks and low-temperature carbonisation plants, and, judging from his remarks, I presume he is thinking of the last named when he speaks of coal distillation plants. The number of these particular plants in operation in 1934 was nine, the same number as in 1933. Unfortunately, the general particulars are only collected once a year, and I am not yet in a position to give my noble friend the figure for 1935. The quantity of crude spirit obtained from these plants was 741,000 gallons in 1933 and 767,000 gallons in 1934, an increase of some 3½ per cent.

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These low-temperature carbonisation plants provide only a small proportion of the motor spirit produced in this country from indigenous materials.
Up to the present the main sources of supply have been coke ovens, gasworks, and the shale oil industry, and there has been, I am advised, a very material increase during the last year or two in the production of motor spirit from these sources. There should be a very much larger increase in the immediate future when the Billingham hydrogenation plant comes into full working operation. In reply to a Question a short time ago in another place my honourable friend the Secretary for the Mines Department gave an estimate of the production of motor spirit from indigenous materials for the year ending August 8, 1935. He gave that figure as 60,000,000 gallons. He further added that, while it was difficult to formulate an estimate for next year, the figure was expected to be much higher, possibly to the extent of some 50 per cent. The production in the years 1931 to 1934 inclusive was, taking the figures to the nearest million gallons, 38 million, 39 million, 45 million, and 52 million gallons. Your Lordships will see that there appears to be no lack of vision on the part of His Majesty's Government which, during these four years of office, has seen the production of this fuel increased by so large a percentage.
My noble friend further asks what is the amount of petrol required now and likely to be required in the future for the Air Ministry and for their new expansion programme. I am advised that the present consumption of aviation and motor transport fuel by units of the Royal Air Force in this country is approximately 6½ million gallons. As regards the future consumption, it is estimated that, on the completion of the expansion programme, these figures will be more than doubled. It might be of interest to mention that nine Air Force stations in the United Kingdom are at present using a fuel of which petrol distilled from British coal is a large ingredient. The Air Council are always giving particular encouragement to the use of petrol manufactured from the distillation of coal in this country, and so long as that fuel is suitable for the requirements of the Service the Air Council will continue to take it.
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In the last portion of my noble friend's Question he asks whether His Majesty's Government contemplate taking any further steps to expedite the production of oil and petrol from home sources. As I have already pointed out, the assistance which has been rendered from time to time during His Majesty's Government's period of office has already resulted in a very large increase in the production of motor spirit from home sources, and, as I have also said, a further large substantial increase is to be expected in the near future. I think it worth while mentioning that in the present year's Finance Bill the tax on motor fuel for use in Diesel-engined road vehicles is raised to the same rate as is levied on imported petrol—namely, 8d. per gallon. The Diesel oil which is produced in this country from indigenous material is exempt from that tax, and this, of course, should stimulate further production and the efforts already being made to produce from coal a suitable motor fuel for Diesel-engined road vehicles. I think I can claim with every justification on behalf of His Majesty's Government that they have given very careful and constant attention to this question, and they have frequently rendered assistance of a highly beneficial nature to the industry. The rapid expansion over the last few years is, I think, a further indication of the success of His Majesty's Government's programme. I feel that there has been no lack of vision, as suggested by the noble Duke, but that, on the contrary, the Government may feel and indeed do feel, justly and rightly proud of what has been done.
THE DUKE OF MONTROSE: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Earl for his informative answer, but I am very disappointed with it. I cannot help feeling that we are a long way from satisfying the requirements of the Services as regards the supply of oil. The coke ovens principally supply benzol and very little oil for the use of the Navy. It is also disappointing from the point of view of the Special Commissioners of the derelict areas. They will be disappointed that the Government are not prepared to do much more to encourage the establishment of distillation plants in their areas.

PRECAUTIONS AGAINST AIR RAIDS.
LORD MARLEY LORD MARLEY had the following Notice on the Paper:—To ask whether it is the opinion of the advisers of His Majesty's Government that the recently issued Home Office circular with regard to precautions against air raids contains provisions which are sufficiently effective for the protection of the population of Great Britain to remove the apprehensions which have been aroused as a result of its publication, and to justify the expense which will be involved; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the fare provided for your Lordships' matinee to-day does not seem to be very attractive, as indicated by the small attendance. One wonders whether members of your Lordships' House are interested in the Water Bills we have had before us, or in petrol, poison gas, the Farnham Castle Measure or what. Yet I am indebted personally to the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, for a really magnificent epithet to apply to the Government. I think he called them "blood-sucking vampires." That is very useful.
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: That is how he described London Transport.
LORD MARLEY: I have made a mistake. I am sorry. Had he applied to the Government the epithet "bloodsucking vampires" it was really a magnificent preparation for the coming Election. I, on the contrary, do not want to apply any epithets at all to the Government. The object of my Question on the preparations for dealing with the possibility of air raids and poison gas is to give an opportunity to the Government to state clearly the position and to amplify the terms of the circular issued by the Home Office and headed "Air Raid Precautions." In this connection there is no need whatever to exaggerate the dangers of air attack. There is no need, either, to exaggerate the dangers from poison gas. I think a very simple and plain statement of the position will be helpful, and I am quite certain this debate will extract from the noble Earl who is to reply for the Government a clear statement of the Government's ideas on the matter.
Of course we know that there is no protection against air attack. That is acknowledged in the circular in which they say in paragraph 3 that:
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"Developments in the air have made it possible for air attacks on a large scale to be delivered, and delivered suddenly, on many parts of this country…"
That means not alone on London. It means any residential or industrial centre, and, despite the steps which the Government are taking to increase the Air Force for home defence and the ground on which aircraft defences operate, it is impossible to guarantee immunity from attack. That is to say, the Government have now joined the glad throng of those who admit there is no defence against gas attack from the air.
The present Prime Minister, a, man of very remarkable gifts and great foresight—the noble Duke could never complain of his lack of foresight—more than three years ago pointed out in a speech he made in the House of Commons that the only defence against air attack is offence "which means," said Mr. Baldwin, "that you have to kill women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves." Mr. Baldwin re-emphasised that point a few months ago, when he said he had been occupying himself in studying questions from which has emerged this Air Raid Protection Circular, and he said it really made him
"physically sick to think that I and my friends and the statesmen in every country in Europe, two thousand years after Our Lord was crucified, should be spending our time thinking how we can get the mangled bodies of children to the hospitals and how we can keep the poison gas from going down the throats of the people."
That is an instance of very remarkable foresight on the part of the present Prime Minister.
He is being backed up in many quarters. I see that The Times, just before that speech, made this statement, on May 10, 1935:
"Ministers recognise that it is absolutely impossible, however complete the precautions, to guarantee to the civil population immunity from aerial attack."
They go on:
"As it is mainly the psychological effect"—
which is, to say the least, rather optimistic—
"… steps ought to be taken to accustom the civilians to be familiar with the appropriate precautions."
In this connection I want to quote one other authority, and that is the ex-

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director of experiments at the experimental station at Porton. That is a station run by the War Office mainly to prepare means of defence against poison gas. That means, quite naturally, that they have to prepare poison gas in order to test the value of the defence against poison gas. The ex-director of experiments, Major Paul Murphy, in reviewing a pamphlet called Poison Gas, a very striking pamphlet of which I have a copy here, asks:
"Is there any real defence against the modern weapons of war if the latter are to be turned against civil populations and used with full severity and in utter disregard of morality and humanity? The compilers of this pamphlet answer—very emphatically—in the negative, and even those who cannot go all the way with them in their arguments will endorse that conclusion."
In other words this expert says there is no defence against air attack. "No thinking man or woman," he says, "can afford to ignore or neglect an issue so fraught with good or evil consequences to the human race."
Of course the attack which will come from these aircraft has been foreseen in the document we are discussing, and it will probably be threefold. There will be undoubtedly high explosives, there will be certainly incendiary bombs, and in particular there will be poison gases. In all probability there will be all three. With regard to high explosives, I do not personally look upon them as very serious. It is very trying to be bombed and very frightening to the civil population, but in point of fact it is localised in effect and, as is pointed out, there are a number of ways in which the civil population can protect themselves against high explosives. They can get into cellars and the probability is that bursting shells, unless there is a direct hit, will not smash the walls of houses, and even shutters will keep out small splinters. If you get into a house and lie behind the wall, unless there is a direct hit you will probably be safe.
Incendiary bombs are different. All houses, particularly those occupied by very poor people, are built of materials which will easily burn. Modern incendiary bombs are capable of producing a chemical mixture which, I am informed, will eat through steel and will certainly set on fire any inflammable material on which it falls. Therefore I imagine the result of incendiary bombing will be to
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set on fire a considerable number of houses, particularly the roofs, wood and so on. The authors of the circular recognise that danger because they say that among the essential services that must be provided with protection are fire brigades, and of course it is true that fire brigades will have an immense amount of work to do as the result of incendiary bombs.
Finally, there are gas bombs. The circular says that from the point of view of expense it is quite impossible to provide bomb-proof shelters for the whole of the population. It says that the provision on any extensive scale of shelters which will be proof against direct hits by bombs is impracticable. Of course in any case one ought to protect against direct hits any essential productive industrial buildings. That alone is going to be an expensive item and there is no provision in this circular for assistance to local authorities for protection of industry generally which would be an essential feature in the circumstances in which air attacks would obtain. It has been estimated by a recent writer—the article appeared in fact only yesterday—that the cost of providing bomb-proof shelters for the majority of the population would be about £1,500,000,000. That is about twice the total Budget for any one year.
If we are going to have air attacks on a really large scale; if in point of fact Clausewitz is right when he says that war is merely an extension of civil policy and that the right way to settle a war is to destroy the will to resist of the civil population, and if therefore we want to prevent the will to resist of the civil population from being destroyed, then I think the Government have not taken seriously enough the need for providing at least some bomb-proof shelters for the people in London and the large towns. If you neglect the necessity of providing bomb-proof shelters you neglect the possibility of the will to resist of the civil population being broken down by mass high explosive attacks. Therefore I venture to suggest that if the Government are reconsidering the question they might think it well worth, say, £1,000,000,000 to protect the civil population. It would get rid of unemployment for many years to come, and would ensure that when the war which we seem to be rapidly approaching does come the civil population would have some protection against direct hits.

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With regard to gas-masks, paragraph 9 of the circular deals with those and with protective clothing. This subject, the circular says, needs separate treatment and the proposal is that gas-masks shall be provided only for essential services. Broadly speaking, the mass of the population are not to have gas-masks provided for them. The trouble about providing gas-masks on a large scale is that they demand charcoal, and I think I am right in saying that there is no possibility of anything like the necessary amount of charcoal being available. Therefore, the civil population are not to be provided with gas-masks except gas-masks which are ineffective against modern gas attack. The essential services are to have gas-masks but we have no guarantee that they will be effective with modern gases.
Probably the most authoritative recent writer on this subject is Mr. Davidson Pratt. He gave a lecture a few weeks ago dealing with the subject of gas-masks to the British Science Guild, and he said this:
"Everybody in a city cannot sit indoors until the raid is over. Essential services must go on and gas-masks will therefore be necessary for people such as the police and fire brigades … Whether the rest of the civil population will need gas-masks is a difficult question. There is the psychological argument that the civil population will demand gas-masks, and since it will not be possible to supply the millions which will be wanted if such a demand arises in an emergency it will probably be desirable to provide some simple form which could be on sale in peace and which could be readily made by the million in the event of war."
Your Lordships will realise, and the Government have realised, that an air attack will come long before a declaration of war. In fact, the first thing we shall know about the next war—those of us who do know anything about it—will be in all probability an air attack. Certainly, if I were in charge of the offensive services of the country and there was need for war on a neighbouring country I should be in favour of bombing all the great population centres in that country without any declaration of war, because that would be the surest way to destroy the will to resist of the civil population of that country. As I do not suppose that foreign countries are any more foolish than we are, I have no doubt they will adopt the same course.
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Indeed, the Prime Minister has himself evolved that scheme, because he points out that the only possible resistance to air attack is to bomb the enemy, to destroy their civil population before they can bomb us—Mr. Baldwin's own statement.
Mr. Davidson Pratt goes on to say:
"A gas-mask will not protect against contamination the clothing or body of the wearer."
Therefore, before the more venturesome section of the population go out into the streets after an air-raid, they will have to provide for clothing to cover their whole body, and this clothing is going to be an additional expense. Moreover, there is a danger to which I should like to draw attention in this connection. First of all, if we provide the civil population with gas-masks which are not effective, the civil population, thinking they are effective and wearing the gas-masks, will go out into contaminated areas and will die. If, on the other hand, we equally provide the civil population with ineffective gas-masks, and if the first gas attack is made with a gas of the type of mustard gas which, in the first place, is quite innocuous but merely smells of mustard or geraniums or whatever the smell is, they will go out wearing these gas-masks, find that there is no ill-effects, be completely satisfied that they are safe, and when the second attack with real gas comes they will go out feeling perfectly secure and will be contaminated by the gas.
Of course, what it amounts to is this: that these gas-masks are only of psychological value. They are to keep people quiet; they are to make people think that the Government are doing something to protect the people of this country when, in point of fact, they can do nothing of themselves to protect the people except with the expenditure of far larger sums of money than they have indicated that they are willing to provide. As a member of your Lordships' House said in an article in the Press yesterday:
"Thee non-protective, these sham, these fraudulent gas-masks will be merely to persuade civilians that gas-masks are efficient so that they may die quietly without causing trouble to the military or the politicians."
The gas-masks at present available can be bought by a civilian at a cost of £2 7s. pd., and the number of civilians who are willing to provide five weeks'

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wages for gas-masks to protect themselves and their families is, I suppose, strictly limited by the number of people who can live on nothing for five weeks. In point of fact, of course, the thing is ridiculous, and if the Government are going to provide really for the protection of the civilian population against gas attacks, they have to take far more seriously this question of gas-masks. They must not limit it to adults. They have to consider children, they have to consider old people, they have to consider animals. Therefore I venture to suggest that-this air raid precaution document is not taking the problem seriously, but is merely pretending that there is a means of protection for the essential services, and telling the public that if they want gas-masks they can get them in the shops and that they will protect themselves.
There are a number of types of gas which are just coming on. Mustard gas we know of; mustard gas is a gas which has been described by the former adviser to the Chemical Warfare Department during the Great War in a letter which he sent to the Daily Telegraph last year, as being by far the vilest and most disgusting gas as yet employed in modern war. It is a gas which can be either sprayed from a very great height, in which case it is widespread but not too deadly; or it can be sent down in bombs, when it becomes localised and will kill everybody within a narrow area. There are many other ways of using it. Then we have a better gas than that, and that is Lewisite. Mustard gas, while it creates wounds on the flesh, does not poison those wounds; what you want is a gas which, having made a wound, will poison it so that the wound cannot be cured. Lewisite does that. Lewisite was invented by an American, and it smells faintly of geraniums. It is made from acetylene, arsenic oxide and sulphur chloride, and it poisons the burns which it produces. That is why it would be necessary to have complete clothing when this gas is used in large quantities in an air raid. The pamphlet makes no mention whatever of the provision of clothing for masses of people who must go out in an air raid, into areas which have been contaminated, and may therefore suffer from Lewisite gas.
We also have a new type of gas on which researches have been made in the
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Imperial Chemical Industries laboratories, a fluorine gas. Fluorine attacks metals. It makes a new type of gas-mask very necessary; the old gas-mask is quite useless against fluorine gases. I want to make that perfectly clear, because every gas-mask at present known is quite useless against these fluorine gases. Therefore it is quite certain that fluorine will be employed in gas attacks in large quantities. We may say that every gas-mask provided, even for the essential services mentioned in this very inadequate circular, will be rendered useless, and the Government have made no report that they have done anything to deal with the supply of a gas-mask suitable for fluorine. It attacks glass; all organic compounds are attacked by it; cork is carbonised and bursts into flame, benzine and turpentine are ignited, and even the petrol factories envisaged by the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, will be exploded by an attack by fluorine. Above all, fluorine attacks rubber, and it will destroy all the connecting bands with which the present gas-masks or gas-mask forms can be attached to the head or body.
In addition to that, there are some very interesting new gases which are being experimented with and which are not imaginary. I have actually come across the individual who is doing the experiments, and these new gases destroy the skin and the bones. They have been given the name—I think it is an entirely wrong name—of "syphilitic gases," because they bring about certain effects which are said to be similar to the effects produced by syphilis. But the point is that these new gases are neither mentioned nor discussed, nor have the Government told us that they have made any provision to deal with the possibility of the development on a large scale of the new gases. I am bound to say that this circular is utterly inadequate as regards its provision for dealing with new types of gas. Similarly, with gas detection and decontamination, it is really absurd to talk, as the circular does, of decontamination. "Arrangements will similarly be made," says the circular, "to accumulate supplies of bleach powder for decontamination purposes." We know that bleaching powder is used for the production of chlorine, and that chlorine will be needed to carry out the line of policy envisaged by Mr. Baldwin in his speech

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in another place, of attacking and killing the enemy civilian population by means of our poison gases, before they can attack and kill our women and children by means of their poison gases. Mr. Baldwin is quite right. Our first task, as there is no defence against attack, is to attack and destroy the civilian population of the enemy by the provision of poison gases, for which they will have no resistance. You cannot accumulate stocks of bleaching powder and chlorine when it is all needed for the poison gases which the Government will need.
How do the Government meet all these difficulties? First they say that the responsibility is the householders. Then they say in paragraph 12:
"The aspects of air raid precautions which will call for the co-operation of members of the public will form the subject of a series of handbooks, one or more of which will contain advice to the public what to do in case of air attack, and a description of the precautions to be taken by householders and other occupiers of premises."
I dismiss as purely ridiculous a statement by Major Freeth, Chief Research Chemist of I.C.I., that in ease of a gas raid if
"a man can keep his bead sufficiently to close his windows, put out the fire, and wait until the properly constituted authority has dispersed the gas, he will be safe. If he has no duty to perform and he simply gets into a hot bath, smokes a pipe and laughs he will be safe. Nothing can happen sinless the enemy score a direct hit."
I might say to Major Freeth that two-thirds of the houses in this country have no bath rooms, and even those which have a bath room usually have only one, and how many members of the household can you get into one bath?
Of course that is ridiculous, and the Government do not take that point of view, but they do not say anything else. They tell the householder to close his doors. They tell him he has got to make his rooms gas-tight, and to take responsibility on his own shoulders. But this is only a precaution which the well-off people in this country can take. The poor people in this country have not houses which are capable of being closed. You have cases of six families living in one house with no sanitary conveniences, windows which do not open, and doors which do not shut properly. How are they going to keep out gas from the hovels in which millions of our people are living? We have had a debate on
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housing conditions in Scotland recently, and it is only recently that a well-known publicist suggested that every Scottish valley should be turned into a factory for poison gas. Already many Scottish valleys are factories for war materials and, possibly, gas. At Fort William and Kinloch Leven the British Aluminium Company is manufacturing aluminium products which will form a necessary target for enemy attack, and Scottish housing is not of a quality such as to enable the Scottish householder to protect himself, without help from the Government. I think the Scottish Peers might very well have been here in force, to-day, to protest against yet another injustice to Scotland, in connection with air defence.
Then this circular places on local authorities the task of taking local defensive measures, and promises a certain amount of help, but how much help we do not know. I hope to hear that from the noble Earl. One final point before I conclude. Are the Government taking any steps to prevent the exploitation of the civil population by the fear engendered by this circular and the publicity in the newspapers? I have in front of me a small booklet entitled Do not be afraid of poison gas. Hints for Civilians in, the event of a Poison Gas Attack, by F. N. Pickett, M.I.Mech.E., A.M.I.E.E., Price 1s. net. This booklet was sold with an accompanying letter by the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack, in which he said that be thanked the sender for the courtesy of sending him the book, and he said it was most important that civilians should learn in advance what to do in the case of such a tragedy ever happening again as a poison gas attack. He added:
"It is the uncertainty which lends terror and adds danger to that form of assault. I shall have very much pleasure in reading what you have to say."
I am quite certain that the noble Viscount had no intention that that letter should be used in advertising this book, and I am sure that he would be the first to dissociate himself from that action.
But that is not the point. The point I wish to make is that in this book the writer says that all that men, women and children have to do is to provide themselves with gas-masks, rubber boots and

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gloves, rubber clothing, and chloride of lime. He goes on to say:
"What a tempting opportunity for the exploitation of the people's needs by unscrupulous manufacturers."
I want to bring this to the notice of the Government, because I am sure they want to protect people from being exploited in their need of defensive clothing. He then goes on to say:
"Can anyone imagine what a sudden demand for 100,000 tons of crude rubber or even 50,000 tons would do to the price of rubber, and this would be the demand in this country alone. Add other countries, and it is certain that the price of rubber would soar out of sight."
He tells us that the visible supplies of rubber once touched the price of 9s. 6d. per 1b. I do not know what the price is now, but it is much lower than that. Then this writer says that fortunately we can make vast stores of reconstituted rubber, and here I note that he himself is the Chairman or director of the Rubber Regenerating Company, the Thames Hard Rubber Company, Limited, and Kaycee Limited. I put it to the Government that here is a man who has control of the manufacture of the materials for protection against gas attack.
The Government are not providing any protection for the civilian population. This man exploits that feeling, and by his booklet tells the people that they can protect themselves by buying the rubber of which he is one of the principal makers. What form of exploitation is more dangerous than first of all to fill the people's minds with fear, and then leave it to private enterprise to exploit the fear and needs of the people by holding up the supply of rubber compounds which are necessary to protect the people? This circular raises the fears of the people, raises apprehension in their minds, and then the Government do nothing to secure that the people are protected against this exploitation by unscrupulous profiteers.
The Government have a heavy responsibility. We know that they must bear some responsibility for the fact that air attack is still possible. The noble Marquess who leads the House said a, few weeks ago that he kept on impressing on his colleagues and on the country generally the vital need of the Royal Air Force in the scheme of our defences. He said:
"I had the utmost difficulty at that time amid public outcry in preserving the use
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of the bombing aeroplane, even on the frontiers of the Middle East and India."
The Government must therefore—
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY): May I interrupt the noble Lord? This is a paragraph which is being exploited by the noble Lord's Party up and down the country. If they took the trouble to read the context they would see the whole matter explained. If the noble Lord wants any further explanation will be read the speech of Mr. Eden in the House of Commons the other day?
LORD MARLEY: I have no wish to apply to the noble Marquess anything that would be unjust to him, and I withdraw unreservedly any application to him of any wrong attitude in this matter. I hope he will accept that explanation.
THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY: I wish the noble Lord could speak for his followers all over the country.
LORD MARLEY: The noble Marquess knows that nobody can speak for anybody else.
THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY: And the Labour Party least of all.
LORD MARLEY: If it was a question of the Labour Party least of all, I would venture to remind the noble Marquess that he himself is a member of a so-called National Government comprising people of various Parties who speak with many different voices to the members of the Labour Party. Whatever the responsibility of the Government, however—and I dissociate at once the noble Marquess from any of that responsibility, except in so far as it is a purely collective responsibility—we must realise that the Government have a responsibility to the civil population of this country. That responsibility has not been adequately met by the issue of this extremely unfortunate circular, a circular which has had the effect of arousing apprehension, but has given no protection to the civil population as a whole. It expressly refuses to give such protection. I suggest that to issue such a circular and provide no adequate protection is scarcely a good service to the people of this country. I beg to move.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF ONSLOW): My Lords, if I gather aright the meaning of my noble friend, he deprecates the issue of this cir

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cular because he does not consider that its provisions are sufficient to guard against the danger with which we may possibly be threatened. I do not think that the pamphlet pretends to be a counsel of perfection, but you must make a beginning somewhere. Personally, I rejoice to see this pamphlet, because it lays down a certain organisation whereby steps can be taken to protect the civil population against air attack, or at any rate to enable them to protect themselves. It teaches them to a certain extent what is necessary. I hope they will all read the lurid speech of my noble friend, because his account of the dangers to which they may be exposed will, I am sure, increase in everybody the desire to protect themselves and their families against, air attack. I think that such a preparation as this for the possibility of air attack was long overdue. We all hope that this danger will not eventuate. But, as we protect ourselves against fire, so we must protect ourselves against the possibility of an air raid.
The most satisfactory thing that I see in this circular is on page 2, where it is said that the Government are taking steps "to increase the Air Force for home defence and the ground anti-aircraft defences." That is a. matter in which I have been deeply interested for a great number of years, because I have been Honorary Colonel of the Surrey Anti-Aircraft Searchlight Group, and I have always thought that our defences against air raids were lamentably insufficient and required increasing, especially as aircraft get a wider range. We only have very inadequate defences in the South-East of England and the East Coast of Scotland, and you require these defences all over the country. At the present moment there are, I think, only twelve anti-aircraft searchlight companies, three in Surrey, four in Essex, three in Kent and Middlesex, one in Aberdeen, and one in London. These certainly are not sufficient, and I rejoice to see that the Government are taking steps to increase them. But I think that the defence mentioned by my noble friend—namely, attack—should be prepared. I rejoice that there is some attempt to co-ordinate the various services, the fire brigades, hospital services, the ambulance service, the Order of St. John, the Red Cross and so forth, in order to enable civilians to protect themselves.
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Whatever my noble friend may say, some beginning must be made if we are going to develop the anti-aircraft organisation. The fact that the local authorities are now cautioned to think the matter over and organise anti-gas drill, to take the necessary precautions and to co-ordinate the various services is, I am sure, a very considerable step in advance. I trust that when the antiaircraft scheme develops, we shall see further circulars of this kind which will enable local authorities to co-ordinate the services which they possess.
THE EARL OF FEVERSHAM: My Lords, the noble Lord who moved this Motion has referred in somewhat strong terms to the apprehensions which the publication of the Home Office circular on air raid precautions has aroused. I think it will be generally agreed, however, that the basic apprehension with which we have to deal is not the result of the issue of any circular, but is due to the fact that the development of aircraft has brought large parts of our country within the range of possible attack by air—an attack which could be delivered on a scale and with a suddenness far greater than anything experienced in the last War. The Government hope and believe that the risk of such an attack is remote, and the Government will continue to make every effort, as they have in the past, to maintain peace and to secure a reduction or limitation of armaments which might help sensibly to reduce this risk; but it is a risk which, although remote, is so grave that it must be present to the mind of every person responsible for the welfare of the people of this country. Are we to understand that given the actual situation, the noble Lord and his friends would do nothing whatever but leave people to panic if such a blow fell?
LORD MARLEY: That is the opposite to what I suggested.
THE EARL OF FEVERSHAM: The noble Lord has in the course of his speech indulged in extreme pessimism as to the eventuality of air raids taking place with poison gases. As I shall point out to the noble Lord the present Government, as becomes a Government of a democratic country, have always sought to place before the people of this country the main factors which may determine their policy. The noble Lord opposite evidently believes that such a policy tends to lend

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itself to the exploitation of the public. I think that belief, which evidently he holds, may be substantially criticised by those within his own Party. The White Paper on Defence last March served this purpose in matters of active defence; and the circular which is the subject of the present debate performs the same function in respect of passive air defence. As the circular points out:
"it is of the essence of any such preparation that the civil population should be informed of the present and future possibilities of air attack, and instructed in the precautions designed to meet it."
The risk of attack from the air, however remote it may be, cannot be ignored, and for two reasons. In the first place, the effect of an air attack on an unprepared and unprotected population would be so appalling that, however remote the risk, we must take adequate steps to ensure that the country would not be caught unprotected or unprepared. Secondly, the necessary protective measures cannot be improvised on the spur of the moment. If they are to be effective, they must be carefully prepared and may involve the work of many years.
The whole question of air raid precautions, as no doubt your Lordships are aware, has been under consideration for some years, and the issue of the circular forms part of a fully considered policy, a policy which has already been adopted in the majority of Continental countries. The noble Lord whose Motion we are considering has doubted whether the scheme of precautions, outlined in the circular to local authorities, provides an adequate measure of passive defence. I hope to satisfy your Lordships that it is a satisfactory scheme which, if unhappily the occasion should arise for it to be put into force, would be the means of saving many lives and of ameliorating much suffering. We do not claim that the active air defence of this country, consisting of fighting planes, anti-aircraft guns, and so forth, will in all circumstances prevent all hostile aircraft from reaching their objectives in this country. Neither do we claim that measures of air raid precautions can provide complete protection against the results of bombs. But we do claim that if the schemes outlined in the circular are developed and brought to completion, the effects of air attack will be very greatly reduced. The people of this country will know what to do to protect themselves and will also know what
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the Government are doing for their protection. Such knowledge can surely only have beneficial results. The noble Lord will therefore clearly understand that His Majesty's Government have not joined that band of people who claim that there is no protection whatever against air attacks.
I should like to illustrate these claims by reference to some of the detailed precautions mentioned in the circular. Take shelters, first of all. The Government have felt it necessary to make it plain that the construction on any extensive scale of shelters which would be proof against direct hits by bombs is impracticable. Concrete structures of very great thickness would be required, and the cost of these structures would be prohibitive. The Government are, therefore, recommending that the occupiers of houses and other premises should provide for themselves effective protection against blast and splinters from bombs, and detailed advice as to how this may be obtained will be made available. Although protection is being confined to minimising the effect of blast and splinters, it does not follow that this represents inadequate protection against high explosive bombs. Experience shows that the great majority of the casualities from high explosive bombs result not from direct hits but from the blast and splinters caused by the explosion, which extend over a far wider area than that immediately affected by the fall of the bomb.
In regard to the dangers of gas and the measures which can be taken against it, I should like particularly to draw the attention of the House to one point. It has been stated in many quarters, as indeed we heard from the noble Lord opposite, that there is no defence against gas attack and that, therefore, it is useless to do anything at all. The Government most strongly deprecate this attitude of mind. I am informed by expert advisers that it is perfectly feasible to provide protection against gas; in fact, it is often easier to provide this protection than protection against high explosive bombs; and with regard to what the noble Lord has said in respect of fluorine and similar gases, it may be, and I believe it is held by experts, that that particular type of gas is not efficient for use as a poison gas. It is open to doubt whether that type of gas can be utilised. I am not one to minimise the

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dangers of gas attacks, but it is most desirable that a proper sense of proportion should be held in this important matter. The steps which the Government contemplate and the advice which they hope to give will, they believe, go a great way towards minimising the dangers from this form of attack if it should ever be used. These stories of unknown gases possessing the most devastating properties against which no respirator or other protection is of any avail are at the present time without any foundation of truth whatever.
The Government are actively engaged in designing a form of respirator which will furnish an adequate protection against gas for members of the general public, and it is an essential requirement that the respirator should be available at low cost. Such a respirator will provide an added protection additional to such measures as people have been able to take to render some part of their houses gas-proof. On this question of protection against bombs and gas, the Government, strongly deprecate the suggestion that the wealthier members of the community will be protected while the poorer classes will be left exposed to greater risks. In the preparation of its handbooks on protection, which the noble Lord has evidently ignored, the Air Raid Precautions Department of the Home Office is keeping in the forefront the requirements and needs of working-class dwellings and it will be found that the protective devices proposed have been framed primarily with that class of dwelling in view. Obviously a well-built house requires less attention to make it gas-proof and splinter-proof than a badly-built house; but the Department is devoting special attention to the measures needed to counteract the effects of faulty construction or a bad state of repair. Time does not permit me to deal at similar length with protective measures, other than shelters and respirators, such as lighting restrictions; but it must be obvious that if, as a result of preparatory work undertaken now, all lighting in time of war can be obscured so as to be invisible from the air, we shall have devised a valuable measure of protection for the thickly populated urban areas of this country.
I should like, before I leave the detailed measures referred to in the circular, to say something about what I
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may call the humanitarian services—rescue work, first aid, treatment of casualties and decontamination of personnel. In the recruitment of these services we shall be dependent to a considerable extent on the British Red Cross Society, the Order of St. John, and the St. Andrew's Ambulance Society. These organisations have been good enough to say that, so far as is practicable, they will place themselves at the disposal of both central and local Governments to supplement official resources. The Government and the local authorities, in co-operation, will be concerned to see that air raid services in each area are adequate to deal with the effects of air attack, having regard to the situation and vulnerability of the particular area.
The noble Lord who raised the issue we are now discussing referred to the question of expense. I do not think that this House or the country at large will be concerned with this matter primarily from the point of view of expense. We are faced with a grave, though as is hoped and believed remote, risk; and we must take the necessary measures to meet it. The Government are involved this year in expenses amounting to £92,000. The duties at present being devolved on local authorities are mainly matters of organisation and should not require any appreciable expenditure of money. Refer leaving this subject of expenses, I should like to counter the suggestion which is being made in certain quarters that the Government is ridding itself of the responsibility of providing air raid services and throwing the burden unfairly on local authorities. Measures of passive defence for safeguarding the civil population against air attack differ from the provision needed for other forms of national defence in that they must be related closely to the needs of each district and, therefore, in practice must be organised locally. The organisation suited for London is not necessarily well suited for Hull or Birmingham, and it is accordingly the intention of the Government to allow considerable diversity in local organisation. The local authority has the necessary experience and is the best judge of local needs. Further, many of the air raid precautions services are closely related to existing functions of local authorities—treatment of casualties

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is akin to public health and decontamination is akin to sanitary services—and it would have been very wasteful to create separate machinery for these new requirements.
The Government have already indicated that they are prepared to afford financial assistance towards the provision of additional hospital equipment and stores, where that course is essential in order to assure adequate reserves, and that they will supply respirators and protective clothing to persons employed on air raid precautionary services. I can see no justification for any suggestion that the Government are shirking their proper responsibility. Such expense as these precautions may involve can be amply justified on humanitarian grounds, no less than on the necessity for preserving the life of the people of this country in time of emergency. The comparatively modest sums which may be required are to provide an insurance against possible risks, and if they go a good way to achieve this object no one can say the money has been ill-spent.
The circular itself does not purport to cover the Government's complete schemes of air raid precautions. It is couched in very general terms, and is meant as an introduction to the problem for the use of local authorities. Details will be developed at the series of conferences which it is proposed to hold in the autumn. I could detain your Lordships by illustrating in detail the sort of work that the Air Raid Precautions Department has already in hand, and I should be pleased to supply such information to any noble Lord who may wish to have it. The Government have already got under way certain schemes such as detailed plans in regard to lighting restrictions, and handbooks are being drafted which I think will provide all the information that the noble Lord who introduced this subject implied was so necessary. Further, they have schemes in hand with the Electricity Commissioners, with the principal gas undertakings, with the Metropolitan Water Board and all those undertakers who are concerned with the necessary precautions against air attacks.
We must all regret the necessity of taking these measures of precaution against air raids. The necessity, however, exists, and I can assure your Lordships that the Home Office and their expert advisers in this matter will apply
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their best endeavours to the task of devising an effective scheme of precautions in this country. The Government are confident, in spite of the alarmist fears which the noble Lord has laid before your Lordships this afternoon, that the humanitarian services which form so important a part of these air raid precautions will not appeal in vain to members of your Lordships' House and to others in this country who see the necessity for offering their voluntary services for the efficiency of the precautions that it may be necessary to take.
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE: My Lords, before my noble friend replies I should like to thank the noble Earl who has spoken on behalf of the Government for the very full statement he has given us. He has supplemented what the circular says by a good deal more. I am sure that not only are we grateful to him but that the public outside will be grateful to him. He was good enough to tell us that this was not complete but was an introduction and that it would be supplemented by a great deal of detail. But I think the noble Earl rather mistook my noble friend's intention in bringing this matter forward. My noble friend wanted to point out that this circular and any enlargement of it is really misleading the population. I do, if I may say so, criticise passages in the noble Earl's speech in which he spoke of adequate steps. We do not know. We are absolutely in the dark with regard to this thing. In a few years time this will be regarded with absolute derision. We do not know what is going to happen and the most imaginative of us thinking in the most pessimistic way possibly do not grasp a quarter of the truth of what this air warfare means. It may come really to a parting of the ways for civilisation itself. To mislead the population into supposing that this circular is going to lead to safety, or to anything like safety, or to safety for any appreciable number of them, is doing an ill-service to the people of this country.
The noble Earl deprecated my noble friend talking of these new gases, the names of which I cannot even pronounce, and the possible effect they may have. I do not know whether my noble friend has exaggerated. I think it is very difficult to exaggerate. The course of science is so rapid in these days that within a few

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years or even a few months new explosives can be invented before which the explosives and gases that we know at present will all pale into insignificance. I think it is very risky for any one to say that such-and-such a gas cannot be used in this way or that way or the other way. I mistrust any expert who would be dogmatic on that point at all. I think we have to look forward to hideous possibilities so long as the nations agree to this form of attempting to settle international disputes. But in addition to misleading the population, a circular of this sort is bound to produce a certain amount of panic, because when it is examined very closely it is found to be so grossly inadequate as compared with the possibilities of the attack while, at the same time, there is a sort of feeble attempt to regiment and control and militarise the population under the supposition that they are by that means going to defend themselves.
I do not want to go into the details of the case. I think my noble friend made out an extremely strong case on the point of gas-masks and other points. I only want to say, having heard the Government case, that while I appreciate the noble Earl's efforts to give all the information he could possibly give, we on this side of the House are convinced that the Government have not found an adequate means of defending this country, or any appreciable number of the people of this country, against these possible raids, and that by the pretense that this circular sets out necessary methods of precaution they are misleading the people, which we think is most undesirable.
LORD MARLEY: My Lords, I should like to join with my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition in thanking the noble Earl for the very full reply he made and for the helpful explanatory details he gave about the circular. I am sorry that he accused me of alarmist fears. I had the experience of being in the first gas attack at Ypres at a time when gas was not what it is to-day and at a time when we had no means of defence. That was before the time when the first respirators made of black lace impregnated with urine were sent out to the troops in the Salient. Before that, when we had nothing whatever, this first gas attack came. It was made against men trained, disciplined and courageous, but completely unable to deal with such a
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state of affairs, a state of affairs which was entirely unexpected and against which we had no defence. We did not know what to do, and I lost many of my men and some officers through simply not knowing what to do—perhaps being in a dugout, breathing this gas deeply, or moving about when they ought to have been sitting still. I remember quite well a little conference we had of commanding officers to see what we were to do to deal with this gas attack. I shall never forget it, and it is because I myself experienced it that I deprecate being accused of alarmist fears, when I have been through it myself.
The noble Earl said nothing about Papers. I venture to suggest to him that there are certain Papers which he might lay. First of all, I think there might be a much wider distribution of this official circular. Secondly, he mentioned that he would be prepared—I quote his words—to provide detailed information for any noble Lord who might wish to have it. I do not think it ought to be confined to members of your Lordships' House; I think detailed information ought to be available for the public at large.
THE EARL OF FEVERSHAM: May I just correct the noble Lord? I think I intended to say, if I failed to say, that I should be ready to supply detailed information as to the work already in operation at the new Department, of the Home Office.
LORD MARLEY: I am very much obliged to the noble Lord. I hope I did not misunderstand him, but I think that such information might very well be made available for the public, so that we may know the extent of the preparations for the attack we may have to face. I hope that these handbooks will be very widely circulated to the whole of the public, and I hope that the noble Earl will say what the Government are going to do in the way of provision of protective measures at prices within the capacity of the people to pay. The Royal Army Clothing Department might be extended to take up the manufacture of gas-masks and protective clothing and so save the public from exploitation. I hope that something will be issued by the Home Office in conjunction with the War Office on this very important aspect of the matter. Those are the Papers I should

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like to see laid, and as I understand the noble Earl is prepared to lay those or similar Papers, or any Papers—
THE EARL OF FEVERSHAM: My Lords, I should like the noble Lord to understand quite clearly that I should be pleased, rather than to delay your Lordships unduly in explaining exactly what the Air Defence Department of the Home Office have in formulation as to air protection schemes, to lay that before the noble Lord if he so desires, but I do not feel prepared to lay other Papers.
LORD MARLEY: My Lords, I cannot help thinking that this is not a satisfactory way to leave the position. We have here a circular which I venture to believe the public regard as inadequate. We have dangers which have been emphasised by Ministers; by the Prime Minister, by the noble Lord himself, by many people in extremely responsible positions. The public are told that they must themselves provide the means to protect themselves, and we know the risk of exploitation when the public are faced with the necessity of purchasing goods to meet an emergency. It does not seem to me to be satisfactory that the Government are not prepared to give any more information. Of course I cannot do anything about it. If the Government are not prepared to give further information to the country, I suppose the country must draw its own conclusions. I am not prepared to force this to a Division, but I do feel that it is extremely unsatisfactory that no further information should be laid.
THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY: My Lords, I think perhaps there is a difference of opinion which can be adjusted between the noble Lord and my noble friend who sits beside me. I think the noble Earl has made very clear that the Government are fully alive to the dangers about which the noble Lord has made his speech. This is a matter which is being gone into very carefully. The information which is being arrived at is going on from day to day, and I can assure the noble Lord that in response to further questions, which no doubt he will put at different times, all the information which is available and which it is possible to give him will be given. I cannot say that I agree with the noble Lord's strictures in relation to the White Paper which has been laid. That has
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given the full information available at the present time, and I am sorry that the noble Lord should think that it is misleading the public. I cannot say that I take that view at all. I think that the White Paper as it stands is the information which the Government have at the present moment and which will naturally increase as time goes on, and the advice which they should give to the public.
The noble Lord opposite has also made this categorical statement that there is no defence against air attack. I could detain your Lordships far longer than I should be entitled to by going into those matters. Old quotations have been brought up which have been answered again and again, but the discussion still goes on. The same quotations are repeated and the same allegations are made, and it is left to me, in the form of interjection—which I dislike having to do—to get up and say that if noble Lords would read the text of my speeches, they would see that the remarks which they have made are not the correct ones. That will go on for some considerable time, I suppose, but I should not like the noble Lord to think that some information was being withheld from him, nor should I like the impression to go out that the Government are not fully alive to the danger of air raids, nor doing what they think right in that direction. If the noble Lord thinks there is any supineness or ineptitude on the part of the Government, he must form his own opinion, but I can assure him that there is no supineness or carelessness. The Government are doing everything possible for the safety of the people of this country, and the White Paper states fully what is in the minds of the Government.
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE: Perhaps the noble Marquess or the noble Earl can tell us when this new handbook is to be issued?
THE EARL OF FEVERSHAM: My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord, the Leader of the Opposition, a handbook is very shortly to be published as to the anti-gas precautions that should be taken by the public. Several subsequent handbooks will be followed at intermittent periods from the date of that publication, and conferences will be held, beginning in the autumn, between local authorities, the Department at the Home Office and

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those undertakers concerned in the necessary schemes for the adoption of defence measures.
LORD MARLEY: My Lords, perhaps the noble Earl will also arrange for a broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation in order to initiate the population into the elementary means of protection. That is a suggestion; otherwise I have no desire to delay the House. I am very much obliged to the noble Marquess the Leader of the House for his intervention in this matter, and I will put down a Question to elicit further information after the Recess—unless the next war occurs in the interval! I beg leave to withdraw.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

DIOCESE OF SOUTHWELL (TRANSFER) MEASURE, 1935.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY moved to resolve, That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, this House do direct that the Diocese of Southwell (Transfer) Measure, 1935, be presented to His Majesty for the Royal Assent. The most reverend Primate said: My Lords, it is my duty to transfer your Lordships to a very different sphere from that which has just been engaging our attention. I have to present two Measures of some interest and certainly of some importance, but neither of these need detain your Lordships for any length of time, as they are happily entirely uncontroversial. One of them deals with a very ancient diocese, and the other with a very ancient and beautiful building.
The purpose of the first Measure, my Lords, is to transfer the present diocese of Southwell from the Province of Canterbury to the Province of York. That may seem a comparatively unimportant matter, but it goes down to the very roots of our history and the long association between the Church and the history of this country. Certainly for at least eight hundred years the archdeaconry and County of Nottingham were part of the Province and diocese of York, but unfortunately one hundred years ago, when people paid very little heed to the claims of tradition or history, when the vast diocese of York was divided, the arch-
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deaconry and County of Nottingham were transferred to the diocese of Lincoln, and so it remained until 1884, when the diocese of Southwell was created, including the two Counties of Derby and Nottingham; but as Nottingham had already been transferred to the Province of Canterbury, and the County of Derby was already within that Province, no question was raised as to the transfer of that new diocese to the Province of York. Then, in 1923, the diocese of Derby was created, and therefore the diocese of Southwell was left alone, uncomplicated by association with Derby, and free to return to its ancient allegiance to the Province of York.
I shall not forget my first visit to South-well. I was then Archbishop of York, and I found myself surrounded by memorials of my predecessors, some of whom had founded the Minster, and some of whom were buried within it, and one of whom had created the house in which the Bishop lived. I took a vow then that I would not enter Southwell Minster again unless I could come as Archbishop of the Province to which it belonged. I was able to keep that vow in a way which I did not expect, because although it had not then been transferred to the Province of York, I was able to visit it as Archbishop of Canterbury, and therefore I was able to say what I thought about the diocese returning to its ancient allegiance. There has been a general expression of assent given to the claims of history and sentiment. The Diocesan Conference almost unanimously consented to this transfer, and this Measure effects the transfer legally. It has passed unanimously through all its stages in the Church Assembly; it has received the assent of the Ecclesiastical Committee; and l hope your Lordships will not only redress a great historical wrong, but strengthen the Province of York; and I, as Archbishop of Canterbury, am very willing to assent to what I demanded as Archbishop of York.
Moved to resolve, That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, this House do direct that the Diocese of Southwell (Transfer) Measure, 1935, be presented to His Majesty for the Royal Assent.—(The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

FARNHAM CASTLE MEASURE, 1933.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY moved to resolve, That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, this House do direct that the Farnham Castle Measure, 1935, be presented to His Majesty for the Royal Assent. The most reverend Primate said: My Lords, this simple Measure affects not ancient tradition but a very ancient and beautiful building associated for many centuries with the Bishops of Winchester—Farnham Castle. When the diocese of Winchester was divided in 1923 the Bishop of Winchester chose to make his residence in the old house of Wolvesey at Winchester, and some difficulty arose as to what was to happen to Farnham Castle. I will not trouble your Lordships with all the various problems that had to be decided. Suffice it to say that by the Measure dividing the diocese it was left to a Committee to decide upon schemes for the future use and disposal of Farnham Castle; and it was decided that at least part of the Castle and park should be retained for purposes connected with the Church of England.
There were many deliberations. It seemed very doubtful how far it was desirable that the Bishop of the new diocese of Guildford should reside at Farnham: or even how far financial resources could retain the Castle at all. Then, largely by the courage and energy of one lady, this particular matter was adjusted; and it was ultimately decided that part of Farnham Castle should still be retained as the episcopal residence of the Bishop of Guildford. But it had been decided by the scheme of 1926 that if Farnham Castle or a part thereof were to be used for purposes of the Church of England, the expense of its maintenance should be borne by the Diocesan Board of Finance. Now that that part of the Castle has already been equipped as the episcopal residence, the Board of Finance desires to be relieved of the duty of maintaining repairs and dilapidations, and desires that the conveyance of this part of the Castle should be made, as in the case of other episcopal houses, to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. This will enable this very old and beautiful building to receive special grants in the way of repairs from the Commissioners, who are able to give
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such grants towards old historical residences. There is no controversy in this matter. It has passed through all its stages and the Ecclesiastical Committee approve of it. It only remains for your Lordships to allow this thing to be done. It is good that there is still, as there has been for all these centuries, a Bishop resident within the ancient Castle of Farnham.
Moved to resolve, That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, this House do direct that the Farnham Castle Measure, 1935, be presented to His Majesty for the Royal Assent.—(The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMITTEE OF SELECTION.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, the lamented death of the noble Lord, Lord Somerleyton, has left a vacancy on the Committee of Selection, and I have asked the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, whether he would be willing to fill that place. He has consented to do so, and therefore I beg to move that the Marquess of Salisbury be added to the Committee.
Moved, That the Marquess of Salisbury be added to the Committee of Selection.—(The Earl of Onslow.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

  TRAFFIC ARRANGEMENTS AT ALDERSHOT REVIEW.
  TRAFFIC ARRANGEMENTS AT ALDERSHOT REVIEW.
CAMBORNE WATER. BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to.
SEVERN NAVIGATION BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments. The said Amendments considered, and agreed to.
DERWENT VALLEY WATER BOARD BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments, agreed to.

AMENDMENT TO THE BACON MARKETING SCHEME, 1933.
Draft of Amendment of the Bacon Marketing Scheme, 1933, submitted to the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Secretary of State for Scotland under the Agricultural Marketing Acts, 1931 and 1933:
Laid before the House (pursuant to Act) for affirmative Resolution and referred to the Special Orders Committee.

BACON DEVELOPMENT SCHEME, 1935.
Draft of a, Development Scheme under the Agricultural Marketing Act, 1933, for organising the production of bacon in Great Britain, submitted to the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Secretary of State for Scotland:
Laid before the House (pursuant to Act) for affirmative Resolution and referred to the Special Orders Committee.

ISLE OF MAN (CUSTOMS) BILL.
The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House that the Bill had been endorsed with a Certificate from the Speaker that it is a Money Bill within the meaning of the Parliament Act, 1911.