Sitting of 24 November 1937

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

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Ministry of Health Provisional Order (Halifax) Bill,
Read a Second time, and committed.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  SPAIN.
  Lieut.-Commander Fletcherasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how many British ships are at present held under restraint by the rebel authorities in Spain; and how many claims for damage or compensation in respect of ships or other British property are pending against those authorities?
  The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Eden): No British ships are at present held by the Salamanca authorities. As regards the last part of the question, I am not in a position to state how many claims of this nature may be pending against those authorities.
  Lieut.-Commander Fletcher: Are any obstacles being placed in the way of British shipowners receiving Franco-owned property in respect of these claims?
  Mr. Eden: I should like to see that question on the Order Paper.
  Mr. Arthur Hendersonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is now in a position to make a statement on the Royal Calpe Hunt and the resumption of its hunting activities in territory adjacent to Gibraltar; and whether his attention has been called to the statement by the Governor of Gibraltar that the future of Gibraltar may be influenced by the friendly rela-
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  tions which may be established with the Franco authorities through fox hunting; and whether this statement represents the view of His Majesty's Government?
  Mr. Eden: I am informed that permission to hunt over a part of the Spanish territory where the Royal Calpe Hunt has been wont to hunt for centuries was obtained from the insurgent military authorities at Algeciras, His Majesty's Government were not consulted, as this was regarded as a purely local affair. The words used by the Governor of Gibraltar in his message to the President of the Hunt were as follow:
  "His Excellency hopes that all who hunt will at times remember that this is another historical example of sport and sportsmanship rising above bitterness and strife. Every consideration should be shown to all the local population in Spain. It may well be that the relations established this season with our Spanish neighbours will play a very important part not only in the future of the Royal Calpe Hunt but in that of Gibraltar."
  His Majesty's Government see no reason to disagree with the sentiments expressed in this message. In this connection I would point out that it is clearly undesirable to confine the resident population of Gibraltar within the limits of the colony owing to its restricted area of one and a quarter square miles, mostly of rock, and to the fact that over 1,000 British subjects live on the Spanish side of the frontier and enter Gibraltar daily for their work, together with large numbers of Spaniards, on whom the colony is largely dependent for its labour supply. In these circumstances the residents of Gibraltar are allowed to visit the neighbouring Spanish territory at the discretion of the Government of Gibraltar and of the local insurgent authorities, while other British subjects are subject to the normal strict frontier control. It is in accordance with this policy that the arrangements as regards the Royal Calpe Hunt were made.
  Mr. Henderson: Does the Foreign Secretary consider that this action on the part of the Governor of Gibraltar amounts to the recognition of General Franco, and does he consider that the future of Gibraltar depends upon the fox-hunting activities of the Calpe Hunt?
  Mr. Eden: It is quite wrong to give any such significance to the action of the Governor of Gibraltar. As I read the

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  statement, the Governor was referring not to the security of Gibraltar but the amenities of those who live there.
  Colonel Wedgwood: Does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that the unfortunate people who work in Gibraltar at the dockyard and have to go across the frontier to live are fined every time they cross? Why should there be a law for the British subjects who are poor and another law for those who are rich?
  Mr. Eden: I am not aware of anything of the kind. Perhaps the right hon. arid gallant Member will put clown a question to the Colonial Secretary.
  Mr. Mander: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Lord President of the Council will be hunting with this pack during the Winter?
  Mr. Bellengerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether a claim, and, if so, for what amount, has been submitted to the Spanish insurgent authorities in connection with the mining of His Majesty's Ship "Hunter."
  Mr. Eden: His Majesty's Ambassador at Hendaye has been instructed to inform the insurgent authorities that His Majesty's Government hold them responsible for the cost of the damage done. While it is not yet possible to estimate the final totals involved, Sir Henry Chilton was instructed to state that it is anticipated that the cost of the damage to His Majesty's Ship "Hunter" herself will be in the region of£124,000 and that a capital sum of approximately£10,500 will be required to pay compensation for the dependants of those killed and for those injured in the explosion.
  Mr. Bellenger: While appreciating the reply of the right hon. Gentleman, may I ask when it is proposed to submit a definite claim, because in July he told the House that the Government were going into the exact figures, and that a claim would be made in due course?
  Mr. Eden: The hon. Member will see that the general figures have been submitted, but not the details of the exact cost of the repairs.
  Mr. Dalton: Has the right hon. Gentleman any hope of recovering any money from General Franco in any circumstances in respect of any of these claims?
  Mr. Eden: We recovered the ships, which the hon. Member did not expect us to do.

  CHINA AND JAPAN.
  Mr. Manderasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what action it is proposed to take in consequence of the passing by the Assembly of the League of Nations on 6th October of the resolution dealing with the conflict between China and Japan, stating that members of the League should consider how far they can individually extend aid to China; and what countries have assisted or are proposing to assist China by the sending of arms?
  Mr. Eden: I have nothing to add to the reply which I gave to the question asked by the hon. Member for Kingswinford (Mr. A. Henderson) on 22nd November last. As regards the last part of the question, no detailed information has been made public.
  Mr. Mander: Am I to understand that it will be quite proper for any State member of the League to supply arms to China, in accordance with the resolution of the League?
  Mr. Eden: Yes, Sir.
  Mr. Rileyasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is in a position to make a statement with regard to any decisions arrived at by the Brussels Conference on the conflict in the Far East?
  Mr. Eden: A draft report on the work of the Conference, together with the draft of a declaration drawn up by the United States, French and United Kingdom delegations, are to be considered by the Conference this afternoon. I am not in a position to make any further statement at present.
  Mr. Riley: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what this conference is intended to do with regard to China and the population of China?
  Mr. Eden: The terms of reference of the conference have already been made public.
  Mr. Wedgwood Benn: Is the right hon. Gentleman going to tell us after this failure is complete what the next step is to be?
  Mr. A. Hendersonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether customs collections in North China are still held by the Japanese authorities; and to what extent they are making remittances against loan obligations?
  Mr. Eden: My information is that the Customs revenues collected at Tientsin and Chinwangtao are being banked in the name of the Inspector-General of Customs in the Yokohama Specie Bank. I understand that remittances are being made, though not regularly nor of adequate amount.
  Mr. Henderson: Can the right hon. Gentleman say why this course has been adopted?
  Mr. Eden: Not without notice.
  Mr. Benn: Is the Foreign Secretary taking any interest whatever in our share of these Customs?
  Mr. Eden: I am doing so, with the assistance of the right hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Hendersonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the nature of all demands made by the Japanese authorities to the authorities of the International Settlement in Shanghai, and the extent to which such demands have been met?
  Mr. Moreingasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what information he has of the Japanese intentions at Shanghai; and whether he will remind the Japanese Government of its repeated undertakings that Japan will scrupulously respect all foreign rights in China and that the local Japanese commanders in Shanghai will be instructed accordingly?
  Mr. Eden: I understand that the Japanese authorities are discussing with the municipal authorities various matters which come under the head of suppression of anti-Japanese activities and Chinese Government organisations in the Settlement. It is too soon to state the results of the discussions which are still going on. His Majesty's Ambassador in Tokyo and the British authorities in Shanghai have repeatedly reminded the Japanese Government of their promises to respect foreign rights in China, and will continue to do so when the occasion requires such action.
  Mr. Henderson: Is it not monstrous and outrageous on the part of the Japanese Government to make any such demands on those who control the Settlement on territory belonging to the Chinese Government?
  Mr. Moreing: Will the Foreign Secretary see that His Majesty's Government give every support to the Shanghai Municipal Council in any resistance they may make to these Japanese demands?
  Mr. Eden: Yes, that has already been done.
  Mr. Silverman: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether there is any hope of the Japanese authorities respecting Chinese rights as well as foreign rights in China?
  Mr. Gallacher: The right hon. Gentleman in his answer says they have continued to draw Japanese attention to the promises made. Does this mean that Japan is continually breaking promises made? What does the Foreign Secretary mean by his answer?
  Mr. Eden: The hon. Member is at liberty to draw any conclusion he likes from my answer.
  Lieut.-Commander Fletcher: May I ask whether the Settlement has ever been leased or ceded by the Chinese Government to the Governments concerned, or is the international control only a de facto control?
  Mr. Eden: That is an entirely different question from the one on the Order Paper.
  Mr. Benn: As this matter is rather urgent, and as British subjects are being forcibly restrained by the Japanese from entering their own property in Shanghai and the neighbourhood, will the right hon. Gentleman answer a question on Friday giving full information as to what is really happening in Shanghai?
  Mr. Eden: I shall be glad to give the House all the information in my possession at every stage, and I will answer a question to-morrow if the right hon. Gentleman likes to put a Private Notice question.
  Lieut.-Commander Fletcher: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware of the status of the International Settlement?
  Mr. Moreingasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether British merchants in Shanghai now have free access to their warehouses and other property in the Japanese occupied portions of the international settlement, namely, Hong Kew and Yangtze Pool and, if not, whether he will make strong representations to the Japanese Government on the continued damage to British interests due to the refusal of the Japanese military at Shanghai to allow British merchants to exercise their rights?
  Mr. Eden: On 1st November the British, United States, French and German Consuls-General in Shanghai, in response to their joint representations on this subject, were told that all restrictions would be withdrawn as soon as possible. My latest information shows, however, that British merchants in Shanghai have not yet obtained free access to their warehouses and other property in the districts mentioned. The Japanese military authorities state that the districts in question are not yet safe. In the circumstances representations have been made to the Japanese Government on the subject and will be renewed. This matter is also being constantly pressed on the local Japanese authorities in Shanghai.
  Mr. McEnteeasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that the Imperial Maritime Customs' launches in China are being seized by the Japanese for military purposes; and whether, in view of the fact that the international loans in which Great Britain is interested are guaranteed on the Chinese Customs, he will represent to the Japanese Government that they should return the vessels to those who own them?
  Mr. Eden: I am fully conscious of the matter referred to by the hon. Member, and instructions have already been sent to His Majesty's Ambassador at Tokyo in regard to it.
  Mr. McEntee: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether they have been returned or whether any demand is being made for their return?
  Mr. Eden: No, Sir.
  Mr. J. J. Davidson: Can we have an assurance that if they are not returned the right hon. Gentleman will at least
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  make a protest to the Japanese authorities?
  Mr. Noel-Baker: Are we to understand that in face of the virtual military occupation of Shanghai by Japan we have made no protest whatever?
  Mr. Eden: The hon. Member must not understand that.
  Mr. Manderasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any statement to make with reference to the demand made on behalf of the Japanese Government to the authorities in the International Settlement and the French Concession at Shanghai for certain anti-Chinese actions; and why permission has been granted for Japanese troops to march through the Settlement?
  Mr. Eden: As regards the first part of this question I would refer the hon. Member to a reply which I have just given to other questions on the same subject. As regards the second part, permission was neither sought nor granted. Japanese troops were already in the Settlement on the same basis as troops of other nationalities at the outset of hostilities. So far as I am aware, Japanese troops have not marched through the part of the Settlement to the South of the Soochow Creek.
  Mr. Mander: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the statement in the latter part of the question was broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation?
  Mr. Eden: I have given the information in my possession.
  Mr. Benn: Does the right hon. Gentleman remember the answer he gave me two days ago, that no alteration in the administration would be consented to without the consent of the Chinese Government? How, therefore, can he permit such things to occur as the deportation of Mr. Soong under Japanese orders?
  Mr. Eden: I recollect my answer, and it does not bear the interpretation which the right hon. Gentleman has put upon it.
  Mr. Mander: Are we in the humiliating position that we have to do exactly what the Japanese Government tell us?
  Mr. Eden: In the International Settlement British interests are very Large, but

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  they are not the only interests. The situation there is most difficult to-day. That is certainly unhappily true.
  Mr. Gallacher: Does not this difficult situation arise out of the character of the Government?

  BRAZIL (BRITISH BONDHOLDERS).
  Mr. De la Bèreasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Government will endeavour to get from the Brazilian Government a definite statement informing bondholders whether Brazil is or is not going to meet her external obligations to at least the extent to which she has been meeting them recently, since suspension of payment might adversely affect the trade policy which the United Kingdom adopts towards Brazil in future?
  Mr. Liddallasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1) whether, in view of the large amount of British money invested in loans to the Brazilian Government and public authorities, and in businesses in Brazil, he will consult the United States Government and the Dutch Government for the purpose of taking joint action to protect the interests of their respective nationals;
  (2) whether, in view of the fact that there is a large excess of British purchases from Brazil over Brazilian purchases from Great Britain and that there is a similar excess arising from Brazilian and United States trade, he will invite the United States to join us in an exchange-clearing with Brazil, or set up an Anglo-Brazilian exchange-clearing, so as to prevent British creditors being deprived of their property by Brazil?
  Mr. Eden: On 20th November the Brazilian Government issued a statement to the effect that it had been decided to suspend as from that day the remittance of funds destined for the service of the foreign debt and to authorise the Minister of Finance to open negotiations with interested parties in different countries for the conclusion of new agreements within the real possibilities of the country. At the request of the Council of Foreign Bondholders His Majesty's Ambassador at Rio de Janeiro has been instructed to urge the Brazilian Government to re-
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  consider the position, particularly in view of the deplorable effect which such unilateral action has created in this country. I am now awaiting a report from His Majesty's Ambassador on the result of these representations. I understand that the Council of Foreign Bondholders are in consultation with the representatives of the Bondholders' Associations of the United States of America, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland, who have already requested their respective Governments to make representations to the Brazilian Government similar to those made by His Majesty's Government. I should prefer to await the result of the representations to the Brazilian Government before expressing any opinion on the suggestion made by my hon. Friend in Question No. 18.
  Mr. De la Bère: Will the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to confer with the President of the Board of Trade and ask him whether he would read, mark and inwardly digest the invisible exports which he said yesterday were growing, when there is no visiblity at all in Brazil?

  BULGARIA (ELECTIONS).
  Mr. Rileyasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any information regarding the re-establishment of parliamentary government in Bulgaria?
  Mr. Eden: An Electoral Law defining the conditions in which elections to the Sobranje, or Bulgarian Legislative Assembly, are to be held was promulgated by the Bulgarian Government on 22nd October last. The date of the elections has not yet been announced.
  Mr. Mander: Is it not the case that the candidates must be approved by the Bulgarian Government?

  GERMAN FOREIGN SECRETARY (VISIT).
  Mr. Bellengerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs when the postponed visit of the German Foreign Secretary arranged for June last is likely to take place?
  Mr. Eden: No arrangements for such a visit have been made.
  Mr. Bellenger: Is it proposed to renew the invitation to the German Foreign Secretary or does His Majesty's Government propose to leave the initiative to the German Government?
  Mr. Eden: The answer I have given is in reply to the question on the Order Paper. If the hon. Member wishes to ask any further questions, perhaps he will put them down.

  ITALIAN TRADE UNIONISTS.
  Miss Wilkinsonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he received any representations from the Argentine Government with regard to allowing five Italian trade unionists travelling on the "Principessa Giovanna" to land at Gibraltar, in order to go to Mexico; whether he is aware that these representations were promised by the Argentine Government as part of a settlement of the dispute; and whether it was the action of the Italian Consul or the refusal of the British authorities to allow them to land that was responsible for them being carried on to Italy where they are now imprisoned?
  Mr. Eden: Representations were received from the Argentine Government in this matter, but I have no information as to whether or not they arose from any previous promise on the part of that Government. The Governor of Gibraltar was asked by His Majesty's Government to permit the men to land at Gibraltar and to remain there until transport could be arranged. The men, however, did not land. I have no information showing why they did not do so.
  Miss Wilkinson: Is it possible for the right hon. Gentleman to get me the information?
  Mr. Eden: I hardly think so. It is not our business. We made all the arrangements which the Argentine Government asked us to make.

  MANCHURIA.
  Mr. McEnteeasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in connection with the loan now being floated by Japan for the development of Manchuria, any application has been made for the flotation of part of the loan in Great
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  Britain; and whether he can state what Powers commercially interested in the Far East are being approached in the matter?
  Mr. Eden: I have made inquiries and understand that no such application has been made in this country. I have no information about foreign countries.

  ARGENTINE RAILWAYS (BRITISH INVESTORS).
  Sir Nicholas Grattan-Doyleasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will draw the attention of the Argentine authorities to the observations in the report just issued by His Majesty's commercial secretary at Buenos Aires upon the treatment of the Anglo-Argentine rail-roads, and request a considered reply upon those observations, in view of the fact that the bad feeling caused by this treatment of British capital by Argentina will eventually wreck the meat agreement with Argentina's best customer?
  Mr. Eden: I am not clear what observations my hon. Friend has in mind. If he will be good enough to inform me of the passage in the report to which he refers I will gladly examine it.

  ROYAL NAVY.

    COOKS.
    Captain Pluggeasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether there is any shortage of cooks in the Navy; whether the service has any difficulty in obtaining them; and whether any steps are being taken by his Department to train men for the work?
    The First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Duff Cooper): We are not at present getting as many cooks for the Navy as we should like. We are considering steps to remedy this deficiency. With regard to the last part of the question, any volunteers from other branches for the cook's branch are trained for their new duties, but there are not many volunteers.
    Mr. Davidson: Does that mean that the sailors are going without food?
    Mr. Cooper: No, Sir.

    CIVILIAN EMPLOYÉS, GIBRALTAR.
    Mr. Dayasked the First Lord of the Admiralty the number of civilian employés, including non-industrial employés,

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    in the service of the Admiralty at Gibraltar in March, 1936, and March, 1937?
    Mr. Cooper: The number of civilians employed by the Admiralty at Gibraltar at the dates mentioned was 1,609 in 1936, and this year 1,645.
    Mr. Day: Do I understand that the whole of these employés get a fortnight's holiday?

    OFFICERS' MARRIAGE ALLOWANCE.
    Captain Pluggeasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is now in a position to make any announcement about the introduction of a marriage allowance for naval officers?
    Mr. Cooper: The position remains as described in the answer which I gave on 3rd November to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hertford (Sir M. Sueter).

    CHARGEMEN, CHATHAM DOCKYARD.
    Captain Pluggeasked the First Lord of the Admiralty why the present proportion of established to unestablished chargemen in Chatham Dockyard is much lower at the present time than in either of the other two principal home dockyards; and whether he proposes to take any steps to bring the numbers of such established chargemen in Chatham Dockyard up to the level which obtains elsewhere, in the near future?
    Mr. Cooper: There is no fixed complement of established chargemen at any yard, but, when transfers are made to the established list, a general preference is shown to chargemen, and any chargeman on the permanent list or any other charge-man of trades of over 15 years standing is established automatically. Hence the proportion of chargemen established is much higher than that of ordinary workmen, but the percentages may vary at different yards. In view of the preference already shown to chargemen over ordinary workmen, the Board see no reason to fix a proportion or otherwise to interfere with the discretion of yard officers.

    NEW CONSTRUCTION.
    Mr. Noel-Bakerasked the First Lord of the Admiralty what is the approximate total value of the orders for new warship construction placed or to be placed during the current financial year with the Royal dockyards and with the private shipbuilding companies, respectively?
    Mr. Cooper: The approximate total value of orders for new warship construction (including small craft) placed or to be placed during the current financial year in the Royal dockyards is£6,175,000 and with private contractors£62,700,000. The figures for the dockyard vessels include the cost of two cruisers forming part of the 1936 programme, and represent the total cost of the various ships with their armour, guns, machinery and other contract supplies.
    Mr. Noel-Baker: Is it possible that the share of the Royal dockyards might be slightly increased, as 90 per cent. for private firms is rather a high proportion?
    Mr. Cooper: The share of the dockyards in the extension is almost entirely taken up with fittings and repairs, and therefore the proportion of shipbuilding given out is increased.
    Miss Horsbrugh: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that in parts of the country where there is serious unemployment these orders would be welcomed?

    TRINIDAD.
    Lieut.-Commander Fletcherasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has any statement to make concerning the work of the Trinidad Commission of Inquiry; and the present condition of the island?
    The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Ormsby-Gore): I am unable at present to add anything to the reply returned to the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mr. Riley) on 10th November. The situation in the colony remains calm.
    Mr. Sorensenasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what is the charge against Uriah Butler, leader of the Trinidad oilfield workers strike; whether the reward offered by the Government for his arrest has been paid; whether he was permitted to give evidence before the Commission of Inquiry; and whether conciliatory machinery for the settlement of industrial disputes had been established before the strike occurred?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: There were two charges: the utterance of words having a seditious intention, and incitement to murder. I understand that the reward has been paid. Butler was permitted to give

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    evidence before the Commission Legislative provision for the setting up of industrial courts had been made, but I understand no court had in fact been constituted.
    Mr. Sorensen: Is it likely that this man will be actually brought for trial and sentenced, if he is judged to be guilty?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: I think he is now being tried before a judge and jury.

    NORTHERN RHODESIA (WHITE LABOUR).
    Mr. Creech Jonesasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been drawn to the conditions and hours of employment of white labour in certain of the mining establishments in the copper belt in Northern Rhodesia; and whether the terms of inquiry by Major Orde-Browne can be expanded so as to include the conditions of white as well as black and coloured labour?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: No special question relating to the conditions of employment of Europeans in the Northern Rhodesia copper mines has recently been brought to my notice. As regards the second part of the question, Major Orde-Browne has no specialised knowledge of white labour problems, and it is not contemplated that these should be included within the terms of his inquiry.

  PALESTINE.

    CRIME
    Mr. David Adamsasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has any statement to make as to the present position in Palestine?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: Some further outrages have taken place and the additional measures for dealing with certain classes of crime, to which I referred on 10th November, are now in operation. Military Courts have been set up for the trial of cases of discharging firearms at any person, carrying arms, bombs, etc., sabotage and intimidation. On the night of 21st November, troops surrounded a village near Jenin; Sheikh Farhan Essaid, a notorious gang-leader, and three others were arrested, and four rifles, 1,500 rounds of ammunition and some revolvers
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    were seized. These men will be tried by a Military Court.
    Mr. Sandysasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how many murders and assassinations have been committed in Palestine since the beginning of 1936; how many of the assassins have been convicted and sentenced to death; and how many of these have been reprieved?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: For the period 1st January, 1936, to 31st October, 1937, the figures are:

    Murders

    …

    …

    410

    Convictions

    …

    …

    113

    Death Sentences

    …

    …

    7

    One of these death sentences was reduced to penal servitude by the Court of Appeal, while five were commuted to long terms of imprisonment by the High Commissioner. Forty-three persons arrested on murder charges awaited trial on 31st October.
    Mr. Sandys: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in Palestine there is a widely-held feeling that this practice of reprieving assassins has tended to weaken the authority of the police and to encourage further crime?
    Mr. T. Williams: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how many of these murders were committed by Arabs and how many by Jews?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: It is very difficult to say. There have been confused cases. There have been murders by both but certainly there have been more by Arabs than by Jews.
    Mr. Gallacher: Will the right hon. Gentleman face the actual situation and institute a legislative assembly as the only means of stopping what is going on in Palestine?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: A proposal of that kind was made in this House by my predecessor and was rejected.
    Mr. Sandys: Will my right hon. Friend, when the next Governor is appointed, draw his attention to the advisability of enforcing the law?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: The law is being enforced, and I should not like it to be thought that it is not being enforced. But the question of the exercise of the Royal Prerogative throughout the British

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    Colonial Empire does not rest with me. It rests with His Majesty's representative, and in any case it would be most improper and unconstitutional of me to make any remarks about it.

    CITRUS CROP.
    Captain Stricklandasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what volume of citrus export can be dealt with this coming season by the new port of Tel Aviv; and how such capacity compares with the volume shipped from that port in the 1936 season;
    (2) whether he is satisfied that adequate arrangements have now been effected in Palestine for the transport and export of the citrus crop during the forthcoming season; and what is the storage capacity, respectively, in the three ports of Tel Aviv, Jaffa and Haifa?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: I believe that the arrangements for handling the forthcoming citrus crop in Palestine are fully adequate. I will request the High Commissioner to send me the detailed figures of storage capacity asked for.
    Captain Strickland: Will the right hon. Gentleman publish these details?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: Certainly.

    JERUSALEM (MAYORALTY).
    Mr. Manderasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what action it is proposed to take with reference to the appointment of a mayor of Jerusalem to take the place of Dr. Khalidi, recently deported, whether by appointing the deputy-mayor to act as mayor, or an Englishman with experience of local government in this country, or whether it is proposed to hold a new election?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: The Acting High Commissioner has this matter under consideration, but I am not yet in a position to say what action it may be decided to take. In the meantime, in accordance with the provisions of the Municipal Corporations Ordinance, the deputy-mayor is performing the duties of mayor.
    Mr. Mander: In making any appointment will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that the Jews constitute two thirds of the population of Jerusalem and have had a majority for 80 years?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: I understand that the deputy-mayor who is now acting as mayor is a Jew.
    Mr. Benjamin Smith: Will the right hon. Gentleman also take notice that in Palestine as a whole the Arabs are two-thirds of the population as against the Jews?

    ASSASSINATED OFFICIALS (DEPENDANTS).
    Sir John Mellorasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether a decision has yet been reached as to the principles on which special provision is to be made for dependants of officials of the Government of Palestine assassinated in the course of their duties?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: Yes, Sir. It is not considered practicable to make any general legislative provision appropriate to all cases; but an undertaking has been given that, in the event of the assassination of an officer in the course of his duties, the question of a special award to his dependants will be considered in the light of all the circumstances of the case.

    DEPENDENCIES (UNDER SECRETARY'S VISIT).
    Captain Peter Macdonaldasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether it is proposed that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies should visit any of the Dependencies during the coming winter; and, if so, which?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: Yes, Sir. Arrangements are being made for the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies to visit Zanzibar, Mauritius, Aden and British Somaliland during the early part of 1938.

    BRITISH GUIANA.
    Mr. Lunnasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware of the economic disabilities of certain grades of the British Guiana Postal Service; and whether he will take immediate steps to ensure that a comprehensive and unprejudiced inquiry be held with a view to rectifying the disabilities in question?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: The conditions of service of the subordinate staff of the

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    Government of British Guiana, including those employed in the Postal Service, have been the subject of a recent local inquiry, and as the result of that inquiry I have approved proposals for improving the scales of pay of the employés concerned. The report also contained other recommendations for improving the conditions of service which are now under consideration. In the circumstances, I do not consider that any useful purpose would be served by a further inquiry of the nature suggested by the hon. Member.
    Mr. Lunnasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware of the grave dissatisfaction existing among Government employés in British Guiana; whether he has any statement to make on the causes of recent withdrawals of labour; and whether he will take steps to secure a free and impartial investigation of workers' complaints?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: The Governor of British Guiana has informed me that there is no evidence of serious dissatisfaction among Government employés in that Colony. Apart from the small strike of seamen employed by the Harbours Department in September last, which has been settled satisfactorily, some Post Office employés absented themselves from work for one day. As I have already stated in my reply to the hon. Member's previous question, the conditions of service of employés of this class have now been inquired into, and their scales of salaries have recently been improved.
    Mr. Riley: Can the right hon. Gentleman give the House any idea of what the scales are?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: Not without notice. Perhaps the hon. Member will put a question on the Paper, not for oral answer.
    Mr. Lunnasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, in view of the recurring economic dislocations in British Guiana and following the precedent set up in Trinidad, he will consider the advisability of appointing a commissioner to carry out a comprehensive economic survey of British Guiana with adequate facilities for hearing workers' representations?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: I would invite the hon. Member's attention to the reply which I returned to a question by the
    1210
    hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Creech Jones) on 3rd November. Steps are now being taken to ensure the supervision of the conditions of employment in the Colony.
    Mr. Lunn: Does that mean that there is to be a comprehensive inquiry into these matters?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: No; a labour inspector is being appointed.

    FEDERATED MALAY STATES (GIFT OF AEROPLANES).
    Brigadier-General Clifton Brownasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he can make any statement with regard to the gift by the Rulers of the Federated Malay States of two squadrons of service aeroplanes to be stationed in Malaya?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: At the Durbar of Rulers of the Federated Malay States held on 1st November, His Highness the Sultan of Selangor stated that in the desire to show their grateful recognition of the special effort which is being made by His Majesty's Government to make the Empire secure, and with the object of associating themselves with that effort, he and the other three Rulers of the Federated States wished to present to His Majesty's Government two squadrons of service aeroplanes to be stationed in Malaya, subject to the condition that the total cost should not exceed 2,500,000 Straits Settlements dollars. The High Commissioner for the Malay States has reported to me that the proposal of their Highnesses was unanimously endorsed by the Federal Council on 5th November. On behalf of His Majesty's Government I have requested the High Commissioner to convey to their Highnesses the warm thanks and appreciation of His Majesty's Government for this further mark of their good will and practical co-operation.

    GIBRALTAR (HOUSING).
    Mr. Gallacherasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has considered the report of the Gibraltar Housing Commission which gave instances of seven adults living in one room with several children under 10 years of age, and reported that 36 per cent. of the working-class population were occupying

    1211
    single-room tenements; and whether any steps are being taken to remedy this state of affairs?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: Yes, Sir. I have seen this report, and have approved the Commission's recommendation that a loan of£100,000 should be made by the Gibraltar Government to the Gibraltar City Council to be expended during the next five years on the provision of new houses. The City Council have already prepared plans for certain of the buildings. The Commission also made a large number of ancillary recommendations and a number of these have already been implemented.
    Mr. Gallacher: Is not the Minister conscious of the fact that it is a scandal that the Governor should be writing letters about sport to General Franco when these conditions exist, and will he not stop this?
    Mr. De la Bère: Will the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. Gallacher) sometimes bear in mind that silence is golden?

  GOLD COAST.

    EROSION.
    Mr. Sorensenasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what assistance has been given by the Gold Coast Government to the people of Keta, Eastern Province, Trans-Valta district, who are suffering through the loss of their buildings by erosion; and whether steps are being taken to prevent the erosion?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: I have no information on the points raised in this question, and I will ask the Governor for a report.
    Mr. Sorensen: Am I to understand from that reply that the right hon. Gentleman will make available to the House the results of his inquiries?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: I will let the hon. Member know when I have made inquiries, and perhaps he will put down another question.

    PROHIBITED PUBLICATION.
    Mr. Sorensenasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies why the publication "Africa and the World" has been prohibited from importation into the Gold Coast?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: The importation of the publication "Africa and the World" into the Gold Coast has been prohibited by an Order made by the Governor in Council under Section 330 (1) of the Gold Coast Criminal Code. I am arranging for a copy of the Order in question and of the Criminal Code (Amendment) Ordinance, 1934, to be placed in the Library of the House.
    Mr. Sorensen: Will the right hon. Gentleman mention any specific statement which is judged as seditious in this particular document, and will be himself investigate the reason for this prohibition, and let us know what it is?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: It must be left to the Governor in Council on the spot to have any particular issue of a particular newspaper prohibited from being circulated. I could not possibly interfere.
    Mr. Sorensen: Will the right hon. Gentleman accept a copy of this journal if I send it to him?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: Certainly, if the hon. Member likes to send it to me. I have not seen it myself.
    Mr. Sorensen: Will the right hon. Gentleman pass some observations on it?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: Oh, no.
    Mr. Paling: Will the right hon. Gentleman put it in the Library among the other papers?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: The hon. Member can do that.
    Mr. McEntee: Are we to understand that freedom of the Press exists only in the British Isles, and not in the Colonies?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: No. This is very rarely done. A very large number of newspapers circulates; for instance, the "News of the World" freely circulates; and there is great liberty of the Press, but periodically certain types of articles are prohibited.
    Mr. Gallacher: British culture—the "News of the World."

    MAURITIUS.
    Mr. Creech Jonesasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies (1) whether consideration can be given to the qualifications for franchise in Mauritius;

    1213
    and whether he will recommend a modification in the existing arrangements so as to give wider adult franchise?
    (2) Whether the report on disturbances in Mauritius has yet been presented to him; when the report is likely to be available; and whether he will urge, particularly in the Government of that Colony, the value of collective bargaining and trade union organisation and the desirability of an operative minimum in respect to conditions of employment?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: The report of the Commission of Inquiry into the recent disturbances in the Colony has not yet been presented to me, and on this point I have nothing to add to my reply to a question by the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Paling) on 3rd November. The Government of Mauritius have stated in the Council of Government in May this year that they are entirely willing to legislate to provide for the regulation and registration of trade unions in the Colony at any time that may seem convenient to the Council. I am about to address the Colonial Government further on this question. Legislative provision for the enforcement of a minimum wage already exists in the Colony. I am aware that the present franchise is somewhat narrow and I will keep in mind the suggestions contained in the hon. Member's question on this point.
    Mr. Creech Jones: Will the right hon. Gentleman give serious attention to the question of the revision of the existing franchise, because it is impossible for any progressive legislation to get through as long as the franchise remains as it is, and sets up a definitely reactionary government?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: I do not admit that. A lot of progressive legislation has been passed by the existing Government. I would point out that this is not a council where there is an official majority. There is an unofficial majority, and any proposals for reform in this matter would naturally originate in the council.

    PRIVATE BILLS (LOCAL LEGISLATION CLAUSES).
    Sir Hugh O'Neillasked the Prime Minister whether he has now considered the recent report of the Select Committee
    1214
    on Private Bill Procedure (Local Legislation Clauses); and, if so, what action he proposes to take with regard to its recommendations?
    The Prime Minister (Mr. Chamberlain): Yes, Sir. The report has now been considered and it is the intention of the Government to bring forward by way of experiment proposals which will, I hope, secure the main objects of the committee's recommendations, and at the same time meet the somewhat divergent views expressed before the committee. Should the experiment not prove successful, the matter will no doubt require further consideration. I propose to circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT an outline of the proposals.
    I would like to take this opportunity of thanking my right hon. Friend and the members of the committee for the care and trouble which they have taken in their inquiries into this matter.
    Following is an outline of the proposals:
    The objects which the recommendations of the Select Committee presided over by my right hon. Friend were designed to achieve were—

    (1) to relieve the Deputy-Chairman from the very heavy burden which the present system imposes on him:

    (2) to secure greater uniformity in the treatment of Clauses of a local legislation character contained in Opposed Private Bills:

    (3) to give to the Chairman of Ways and Means greater power of control for expediting the progress of Private Bills.

    It is hoped that these objects may be realised by the adoption of the following proposals:
    Object (1).

    (a) by increasing somewhat the number of members on the panel from which the Committee on Unopposed Private Bills is selected.

    (b) by enabling that Committee to sit in two divisions.

    (c) by authorising the Chairman of Ways and Means to nominate one of the members of the panel to act as Chairman at any meeting of the Committee or of a division thereof at which neither the Chairman of Ways and Means nor the Deputy-Chairman is present.

    Object (2).
    By providing that the Counsel to Mr. Speaker shall sit as an assessor to any Committee on an Opposed Private Bill when considering any local legislation Clauses contained in the Bill.

    1215
    Object (3).
    By making arrangements for securing closer co-operation between the Chairman of Ways and Means, the Committee of Selection and the Committee and Private Bill Office.
    The proposals under heads (1) (b) and (c) and (2) will require certain modifications of Standing Orders. As the proposals are of an experimental nature the modifications will be submitted to the House in the form of a Motion for a Sessional Order.

    GERMANY (VISIT OF THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL).
    Mr. Thurtleasked the Prime Minister whether he is in a position to make any statement regarding the conversations which have taken place between Lord Halifax and Herr Hitler, and other representatives of the German Government?
    The Prime Minister: As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer informed the House on 12th November, the visit of the Lord President of the Council was entirely private and unofficial. It had, however, as the House is aware, been arranged that Lord Halifax should see Herr Hitler, which he accordingly did on 19th November at Berchtesgaden, being accompanied by Baron Von Neurath, the German Foreign Minister. During his visit, the Lord President also had the opportunity of meeting General Goering, Dr. Goebbels, and other prominent leaders in Germany. These conversations were of a confidential character, and the House will not, I am sure, expect me to make any further statement in regard to them at this stage. I am satisfied, however, that the visit has been valuable in furthering the desire, which I believe to be generally felt in both countries, for the establishment of closer mutual understanding.
    Miss Horsbrugh: Is the Prime Minister aware that speculations on these conversations have appeared in the morning Press?
    The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir, and I should like to make it clear that these statements are not only irresponsible but highly inaccurate.
    Mr. Attlee: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether, as a result of an agree-
    1216
    ment with the German Government, no details can be given of the nature of these discussions?
    The Prime Minister: There was no formal agreement, but it was understood that the conversations should remain confidential.
    Mr. Mander: Can the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that there is no foundation for the statement that the Government are considering giving Germany a free hand in Austria and Czechoslovakia, in exchange for no demand for colonies for six years?
    Hon. Members: Order!
    Mr. Mander: On a point of Order. I desired to put a question of great importance, and I was prevented by some Members on the other side of the House from even getting to the end of it. I venture to submit that it is a perfectly orderly and proper question in the public interest, and I would ask you, Sir, to be good enough to consider whether the Prime Minister may not reply to it.
    Mr. Speaker: It would certainly not be allowed on the Paper, if a question were asked as to whether a report was true. One does not know from where the report emanates.
    Mr. A. Henderson: May I ask the Prime Minister, first, whether, in fact, any pledges have been given and, secondly, whether, in any event, the French Government have been kept fully informed as to what is taking place?
    The Prime Minister: No, Sir. No pledges have been given. As regards the second part of the question, the French Government have naturally not been informed yet of the result of the conversations—
    Mr. Gallacher: Then there has been a result?
    The Prime Minister—but a question is to be put to me later on about the forthcoming visit of French Ministers when it is hoped full information will be given them.
    Mr. Attlee: May we take it that no commitments of any kind on behalf of this country will be made without the House having full opportunity of discussion?
    Mr. Chamberlain: Of course.
    Mr. Gallacher: Will it not be too late?
    Mr. Mander: On a point of Order. Owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter at the earliest opportunity.

  CIVIL AVIATION.

    MAYBURY REPORT.
    Mr. Perkinsasked the Prime Minister whether he will give the House an opportunity of discussing the Maybury Report?
    The Prime Minister: As announced by my Noble Friend the Secretary of State for Air in the Memorandum accompanying the Air Estimates, the Government has approved those recommendations of the Maybury Committee which call for action on the part of the Air Ministry. The House had, in consequence, an opportunity of debating the report when the Estimates were considered and passed. The establishment of a licensing system for internal air services requires an Order in Council approved by a Resolution of both Houses of Parliament as provided by the Air Navigation Act, 1936. The necessary Order will be submitted to Parliament in due course.
    Mr. Perkins: Will my right hon. Friend consider the advisability of enlarging the terms of reference to the proposed Cadnam Committee in order to allow that Committee to consider matters now barred by the Maybury Report, such as the present position of municipal aerodromes?
    The Prime Minister: That is quite a different question from the one on the Paper, and perhaps my hon. Friend will put it down.

    AERODROME SITE, BLACKPOOL CORPORATION.
    Mr. Kellyasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he can now state the result of the negotiations of the Blackpool Corporation for the acquisition of about 350 acres of land at Lytharn for the purpose of its aerodrome; whether the price has been agreed upon, what is the price; and what was the rateable value previous to purchase?
    The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead): I understand that the Corporation of Blackpool have provisionally agreed to acquire about 167 acres at£280 per acre; the rest of the
    1218
    acreage referred to is already owned by them, but I am unaware of the price paid. I further understand that the land was agricultural land and therefore derated.
    Mr. T. Williams: Could the Under-Secretary say how it is that we pay three, four or five times the agricultural value of land when it is bought for aerodromes?
    Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead: No, I could not tell the hon. Member in this case.
    Mr. Williams: May I ask the hon. and gallant Member whether he is keeping an eye on the colossal prices which are being paid for purely and exclusively agricultural land bought for this purpose?
    Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead: The hon. Member will see that this is a case in which the Corporation of Blackpool are buying the land.
    Mr. Kelly: Is it possible for us to know the names of the people from whom this land is purchased?
    Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead: Perhaps the hon. Member will put that question down.

    COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY.
    Mr. Montagueasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air what is to be the composition and terms of reference of the promised committee to inquire into the subject of civil aviation?
    Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead: In accordance with the announcement made in the course of the Debate, on the 17th instant, my Noble Friend has set up a Committee of Inquiry consisting of Lord Cadman as Chairman, Sir Warren Fisher and Sir William Brown. No formal terms of reference have been given to the Committee, but my Noble Friend has written to the Chairman as follows:—
    "I am most grateful to you for accepting the Chairmanship of the Committee which I have set up to inquire into matters raised in the recent Debate in the House of Commons. I do not think it is necessary to give the Committee formal terms of reference, as the scope of the inquiry was clearly stated by the Under-Secretary of State in the course of the Debate. While broad questions of principle on which the policy of the Government has been fully explained to Parliament would not fall to be reviewed by the Committee, I should wish the Committee to exercise the fullest freedom in examining any matters raised in the Debate whether affecting the Air Ministry or Imperial Airways; and I think the Debate itself affords the most convenient terms of reference. The Under-Secretary stated that I should discuss with the Government

    1219
    Directors of Imperial Airways the system employed by the Company in dealing with its staff, including the methods by which pilots and others are enabled to have their grievances or representations fairly considered. It is my intention to discuss this with the Government Directors. At the same time I should very much value the opinion of your Committee on this matter, and I should therefore be much obliged if you would treat this question also as included in your inquiry."
    My Noble Friend wishes me to add this: He realises that there were possibly several hon. Members who desired to raise certain points during the Debate but could not do so in the short time available. He would, therefore, welcome the Committee dealing with questions not specifically raised in the Debate provided that they have not already been settled by existing Cabinet decisions. The Committee have been informed that they are at liberty to discuss such questions.
    Mr. Montague: Does the Minister realise that in every quarter of the House this is regarded as a trick on the part of the Ministry?
    Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead: No, I must say that I do not.
    Mr. Montague: Can the Minister say what qualifications the members of this committee have for dealing with the question, for instance, of the dismissal of pilots? What qualifications have they? Who are they? Why should they be called upon to deal with questions of this character?
    Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead: The hon. Member asks me for their particular qualifications to deal with the specific questions of the dismissal of pilots. He will see that my Noble Friend intends to discuss the question of the system under which pilots' grievances are dealt with himself personally with the Government directors, as stated by myself in the House a week ago. He is merely asking, in addition, for the opinion of this committee on that particular matter.
    Mr. De la Bère: Why is it that the Secretary of State is not a Member of the House of Commons?
    Mr. Attlee: May I ask the Prime Minister whether the matter can be reconsidered in view of the fact that in a Debate in this House very strong opinions were expressed that an independent inquiry was desirable, and that that was
    1220
    met by an offer from the Under-Secretary. The committee that has been appointed consists of one member who is a Government director, another who is a Government official, and a third who has been Secretary to the Minister for Air. In the circumstances that is not giving the House a proper independent inquiry.
    The Prime Minister: I was not aware that the announcement of the composition of the committee would arouse the feeling to which the right hon. Gentleman has given expression. My Noble Friend, I am quite certain, considered that in making those appointments he was setting up a committee of complete impartiality and of experience to enable them to give a valuable opinion, but, in view of what the right hon. Gentleman has said, I will communicate with my Noble Friend.
    Captain Balfour: In view of the fact that the committee is largely going to question statements made by members of this legislature, does the Prime Minister think it is right that members of the Executive should have any functions in that connection?

    RUSSIA AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA.
    Miss Rathboneasked the Prime Minister whether His Majesty's Government will consider the advisability of endeavouring to arrange an interchange of friendly visits of Ministers with Prague and Moscow?
    The Prime Minister: No, Sir. The Foreign Secretary has recently had the opportunity of meeting and exchanging views with the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, M. Krofta, at Geneva, and the Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, M. Litvinov, at Brussels.
    Miss Rathbone: Since the German conversations are likely to raise questions affecting the security of these two countries and our obligations under the Covenant of the League, may we understand that no proposals affecting the security of those countries will be made to Germany before they are fully discussed with the countries affected and with the Council of the League? May I have an answer?
    Mr. Speaker: That is a purely hypothetical question.

  DEFENCE.

    CONTRACTS, COUNTY DURHAM.
    Mr. Sextonasked the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence the value of orders in the rearmament scheme placed in South-West Durham Special Area for the years 1936 and 1937, respectively?
    Mr. W. Joseph Stewartasked the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence the value of the orders placed in county Durham by the Defence Department in 1935, 1936, and up to the most recent date in 1937?
    The Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence (Sir Thomas Inskip): I regret that it is not possible without an undue amount of labour to ascertain the value of orders placed under the rearmament scheme in any county or any Special Area.
    Mr. Sexton: Is it a fact that the Special Area of South-West Durham is so far beyond the pale that we can get no information about it?
    Sir T. Inskip: No, Sir. The difficulty is, as I have stated in the House, that it would require a detailed examination of every contract with a view to seeing where the contracts have been performed, and that would require an undue amount of labour, which I hope the hon. Member will not press me to undertake.
    Mr. Dalton: Would it surprise the right hon. Gentleman if I were to tell him that the answer to Question No. 49 is, "Nothing whatever"?
    Sir T. Inskip: The hon. Gentleman must not draw any such unfounded inferences.
    Mr. H. G. Williams: May I ask to what extent contracts are placed in the constituencies of those who always vote against the Estimates?

    CALCIUM CARBIDE.
    Mr. Sextonasked the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence whether the decision as to calcium carbide factories has yet been made; and, if so, what is to be the location of such factories?
    Mr. Leslieasked the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence whether the Government have given their approval to
    1222
    the establishment in Scotland of a hydroelectric plant for the manufacture of calcium carbide and a subsidiary plant in South Wales; and whether the Government will consider the establishment of similar plant in Durham?
    Sir T. Inskip: I would refer the hon. Members to the reply which I gave on Thursday, 18th November, to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Cardiff, South (Captain A. Evans).
    Mr. Leslie: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the facilities offered by Durham, containing all the essentials for a plant?
    Mr. Sexton: Was the South-West Durham Development Board consulted in this matter before the decision was come to, and if not, why not?
    Sir T. Inskip: The committee made its own investigations. I am answering a question as to the authorities that were consulted and that were invited to give evidence.
    Mr. Davidsonasked the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence what local authorities were consulted, interviewed, or invited to give evidence by the committee of investigation into the production of calcium carbide?
    Sir T. Inskip: The local authorities invited to give evidence by the sub-committee were the Inverness County Council, the Borough of Inverness, the Fort William Town Council, the Borough of Merthyr Tydfil, and also the Ness Fishery Board. Though I have given this information in reply to the hon. Member's question, I may perhaps remind the hon. Member that, as stated in my reply to my hon. Friends the Members for Inverness (Sir M. MacDonald) and Cardiff, South (Captain A. Evans) on 28th October, the report of the sub-committee has to be regarded as a secret document and I hope I shall not be pressed for further information as to its contents.
    Mr. Davidson: While agreeing with the secrecy of the sub-committee's report, may I ask, if any of the projected plans with regard to this production interfere with the amenities of any local authorities in the area, such local authorities will be given full opportunity of explaining their viewpoint before any action is taken?
    Sir T. Inskip: That is the sort of question which would properly be discussed, I would respectfully suggest, on the Second Reading of the Bill that is to be presented to the House.
    Mr. Davidson: But surely the right hon. Gentleman is aware of the anxiety of local authorities on this question, and can he not give them at least this assurance, that should any of the projected schemes interfere with their local amenities or electricity undertakings, they will be consulted?
    Sir T. Inskip: That is an inevitable step in the procedure by private Bill. There are means for examining exactly such questions as the hon. Member suggests.
    Mr. Sexton rose—
    Mr. Speaker: I would remind the hon. Member that there are too questions on the Paper.

    ABYSSINIAN REFUGEES.
    Mr. Rileyasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies the present position and number of Abyssinian refugees in British Somaliland and Kenya?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: The position as regards the refugees in Kenya was fully described in the reply given to the hon. Member for Birkenhead, East (Mr. White) on 3rd November. As regards Somaliland, I have nothing to add to the reply given to the hon. Member for English Universities (Miss Rathbone) on 30th July.
    Mr. Riley: Has the right hon. Gentleman seen the recent reports of the terrible conditions of 8,000 Abyssinian refugees in Kenya who are suffering from smallpox, typhoid, dysentery, malaria, and so on?
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: I have seen what seems to be a highly inaccurate Press report, but I gave the figures in the reply to the hon. Member for East Birkenhead (Mr. White). In Kenya there is a total of approximately 6,000, and I gave the cases of disease, the most notable of which were 155 cases of small-pox.

  ROYAL AIR FORCE.

    BALLOON BARRAGE SCHEME, CARDINGTON,
    Lieut.-Commander Fletcherasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air
    1224
    whether any trouble is being experienced with the experimental balloon barrages at Cardington?
    Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead: The balloon barrage scheme, including the training of personnel at Cardington, is proceeding satisfactorily. Minor mechanical faults in the ground apparatus have been responsible for recent cases of balloons breaking away, and these faults are being rectified.

    PHYSICAL TRAINING.
    Captain Harold Balfourasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether physical training is part of the regular training for airmen at all Royal Air Force home stations; whether suitable light change-kit is issued for this purpose; and whether adequate time and facilities are now provided for changing and for baths at all new Royal Air Force stations?
    Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead: The answers to the first and last parts of the question are in the affirmative. As regards the second part, airmen on entry are supplied with gymnastic clothing free.
    Captain Balfour: When the clothing is worn out, will the airmen have to pay for it by stoppages?
    Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead: Airmen are required to maintain it out of the quarterly clothing allowance.
    Captain Balfourasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether, in view of the importance of maximum physical fitness for pilots and the fact that the Royal Air Force Sports Board are unable to grant further loans due to lack of funds, he will consider making loans from public funds for the provision of squash racquet courts at new Royal Air Force stations where there are more than 30 dining members and where no accumulated mess funds exist which can be used for building?
    Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead: Squash racquet courts at Royal Air Force stations are provided not at the public charge but out of funds in the hands of the Royal Air Force Sports Board, and it is not in contemplation to finance their provision by loans from public funds. The Board has already provided 5o squash courts. The question of the best means of facilitating the building of such courts in future is under active consideration.
    Captain Balfourasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether the tennis courts and gymnasia provided from public funds for the use of non-commissioned officers and men at the new Royal Air Force stations are built at the same time as the rest of the station or are completed after other buildings; and, in the latter case, what other physical fitness facilities are provided until tennis courts and an equipped gymnasium are available?
    Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead: Essential living and technical accommodation is provided first at new Royal Air Force stations, other buildings, including gymnasia where approved, and tennis courts being completed subsequently. At stations not equipped with tennis courts or gymnasia, facilities for other outdoor sports are provided and in some cases facilities are available for indoor exercises.
    Captain Balfour: Can the Under-Secretary of State say whether the construction of these buildings is started always at the same time, or whether it is only commenced when the rest of the station is finished?
    Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead: I think it is safe to say that they are often started after construction of the rest of the station, at all events, is well advanced. I could not actually say that in all cases the rest of the station is fully completed before they are started.

    AERODROMES.
    Mr. Kellyasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether negotiations have been completed for the acquisition by the Slough council of 190 acres of the Parlont farm for an aerodrome; what has been the price agreed upon or paid for this land; and what was the rateable value of the land previous to purchase?
    Lieut.-Colonel Muirhead: I understand that negotiations for the acquisition of the site referred to have been discontinued. A compulsory purchase Order made by the Slough council in December, 1936, in respect of this land was not confirmed by my Noble Friend.

    FRENCH MINISTERS (VISIT TO LONDON).
    Mr. Attlee(by Private Notice) asked the Prime Minister whether the French
    1226
    Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs are shortly to pay a visit to this country?
    The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. The French Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs have accepted an invitation from His Majesty's Government to visit London on 29th and 30th November for an exchange of views on the international situation with myself and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

  BALLOT FOR NOTICES OF MOTIONS.
    LOCATION OF INDUSTRY.
    Lieut.-Commander Fletcher: I beg to give notice that, on this day fortnight, I shall call attention to the Location of Industry, and move a Resolution.
    PRESERVATION OF AMENITIES.
    Mr. Godfrey Nicholson: I beg to give notice that, on this day fortnight, I shall call attention to the Preservation of Amenities, and move a Resolution.
    LABOUR CONDITIONS IN COLONIAL DEPENDENCIES.
    Mr. Pethick-Lawrence: I beg to give notice that, on this day fortnight, I shall call attention to Labour Conditions in Colonial Dependencies, and move a Resolution.
    COST OF LIVING.
    Mr. Creech Jones: I beg to give notice that, on this day fortnight, I shall call attention to the Cost of Living, and move a Resolution.
    AIR REARMAMENT.
    Mr. Perkins: I beg to give notice that, on this day fortnight, I shall call attention to Air Rearmament, and move a Resolution.
BILLS PRESENTED.
  PERFORMING ANIMALS (REGULATION) BILL,
  "to amend and extend the provisions of the Performing Animals (Regulation) Act, 1925," presented by Mr. Frankel; supported by Mr. Samuel, Mr. Westwood, Lieut.-Commander Fletcher, and Mr. Lipson; to be read a Second Time upon Monday, 6th December, and to be printed. [Bill 52.]
  SMALL LANDHOLDERS (SCOTLAND) ACT (1911) AMENDMENT BILL,
  "to amend the Small Landholders (Scotland) Act, 1911," presented by Mr. Foot; suported by Sir Archibald Sinclair, Mr. Malcolm MacMillan, and Mr. Davidson; to be read a Second Time upon Tuesday next, and to be printed. [Bill 53.]

MALNUTRITION.
3.49 p.m.
Mr. Leonard: I beg to move,
"That this House has noted with concern the convincing evidence of widespread malnutrition which is being intensified by rising prices, and regrets the continued failure of His Majesty's Government to take effective steps to deal with this grave and urgent problem of hunger and want in the midst of plenty."
The Motion is quite concise. It makes reference to the convincing evidence that can be seen, to the fact that malnutrition is intensified by rising prices and it charges the Government with taking no real and effective steps to deal with this problem. Finally, it calls attention to what must be obvious to everyone—the existence of want in this country to-day in the midst of plenty. I have heard expressions of opinion from time to time as to the importance of this matter. I have heard that it is of importance to industry, of recent years it has been referred to as a problem affecting the Fighting Services and I have even heard that those who continually advertise and advise that we should eat more of this or that food, hope that the problem will be solved by the eating of the product which they advertise. I put this subject forward for none of those reasons, but for the overpowering reason that it is the right of every man, woman and child to live the life that can be given to-day by nature and science.
In regard to the evidence, there is an inclination to pile up figures based upon statistics and technicalities, but I would ask hon. Members who demand evidence whether they ever walk the streets of our cities with their eyes open. Have they ever been told that women whom they deem to be 5o years of age are actually only 35 or 39? Have they ever noticed the undersized and under-weight men that are in evidence everywhere? Above all, have they taken the advice given by the hon. Member for Springburn (Mrs. Hardie), in her maiden speech, that they should pay attention to the different types of school child leaving the gates of the schools in the poorer areas, and leaving the gates in the areas of the well-to-do? There is evidence in plenty.
We are always informed that economy is one of the factors which has to be considered, but I am of opinion that it is false economy to try to economise on the lives of the infants of the country.
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You cannot repair an injured infant, and you pay for your neglect throughout its life. Even in its maturity it reminds you of your indifference and neglect in those years when you were practising false economy. I am particularly pleased by the work that has been done by the Children's Minimum Council, although I am sorry that the council's report makes very dismal reading. Under the heading of national income we are informed that 13 per cent. of the population live in families where the income is 10s. or less per head. That is appalling enough, but we find that in the families with 10s. or less to live upon reside 23 · 5 per cent. of the children. That is a prime danger, and of itself justifies our consideration of this question.
With regard to the pre-school child, I regret that I cannot find much evidence of controlled-group investigation. One doctor has given us the result of his investigations into 125 school children from a poor district whom he compared with 124 children from a well-to-do district. He found that 36 per cent. of the poor children showed evidence of malnutrition, and that 50 per cent. were below the standard of weight and height, whereas the well-to-do children showed no malnutrition; only 5 per cent. were below height and only 13 per cent. below weight. Only 20 per cent. of the poor children passed the test for anaemia, whereas all the children from the better class district did so.
It would not be possible to investigate all the circumstances that IN e are discussing without referring to the unchallenged evidence of Sir John Orr upon infant mortality. He said that well-to-do infants have a death rate of 3o per thousand, those in poorer districts ion per thousand, and in the poorest districts 150 per thousand. That evidence must be considered as very serious. I have been aware of the fact that it is difficult to diagnose malnutrition. I noticed that on the 17th of this month the "Manchester Guardian" gave us the result of a discussion dealing with the differences in the conceptions of doctors as to malnutrition. The evidence given in this report is ample. Just to show what can be done in the way of mistakes I will read the inconsistency in the judgments of the same doctor in the same circumstances:

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"Even more striking was an inquiry into how far doctors were consistent in their own judgments. Four of the staff of the Cheshire County Council took part in an inquiry held at Northwich on dates seven days apart. There were three remarkable results. First, the extraordinary differences between the various doctors; thus on the second occasion one doctor found only three subnormal boys, another found 90. Secondly, the difference between the judgment of the same doctor on the two occasions; thus one doctor increased the number of 'excellents' and decreased the number of 'subnormals' by about half. Thirdly, on the second occasion every doctor found more boys excellently nourished and (with one exception) fewer subnormally nourished. On an average they placed one boy out of four in a different grade on the second examination."
That is sufficient to make us doubt the doctor as a repository of sole right to enter into judgment on these matters. I find that in the Hebburn district, a distressed area, a new medical officer came from a non-distressed area in 1935. His conception of well-being was such that he classified as subnormal and bad more than double the number that had been classified by the previous doctor in those categories in that distressed area. That shows clearly that you accept the things to which you are accustomed. It is, therefore, with doubt that I accept the diagnoses of the doctors.
The best proof is what happens to what is called the normal child, when the normal child is given extra food and we have a controlled experiment. In Scotland a few years ago an experiment covered two groups of children, numbering 20,000. It was found that by giving one of the groups milk as against the other, the growth of the children who received milk was 20 per cent. greater than of those not receiving milk, and that in general the improvement was most marked. I have heard it stated also that some children are reluctant to take milk, but I am not prepared to accept that statement as general. One of try reasons is that, in addition to other evidence, I have the established case of a South Wales school where after a period only 46 boys out of 125 took milk. The rest when questioned said that they "did not like it" and so did not ask for it. But the strange thing is that when a voluntary organisation came forward and paid for the milk, the total of 46 who took the milk jumped up to 107, so that the excuse that the children did not like it does not hold good against the evidence.
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I would like to go far afield in this matter, but time will not permit except to refer to investigations into the case of the children in Russia. There has been published by the Committee on Malnutrition a splendid report which shows the great advantage that can be gained from curative diets being introduced into schools instead of the children being given medicine. That method has also been applied in the industries of Russia, and no fewer than 600,000 persons are receiving curative diets in the canteens of various industries. The other day I put a question to the Minister of Education regarding the Oslo experiment. That experiment is based on an ascertainment of the normal dietary of a day in the households of that city, with the view of finding what were the defects and making up the defects in the form of a breakfast given to poor and rich alike, a breakfast which gives no trouble and requires no cooking. That experiment has resulted in an infant mortality of 46 per 1,000 in 1931 being reduced to 30 per 1,000 in 1936.
That experiment has been investigated by the Education Department, but it was considered that there were alternatives just as suitable for this country. I shall not enter into any argument about that. But can this country show a result such as a reduction from 46 per 1,000 to 30 per 1,000 in five years? If not I press for an extension of the experiment here, especially as London now has an infant mortality of 67 per 1,000, Newcastle 84 per 1,000 and Glasgow 98 per 1,000. I have looked at the records of Glasgow. I have a high regard for the Medical Officer of that city. I find that in 1935 they reported "no evidence of an increase-in those conditions which are the causes of malnutrition." In 1936 they went further and the Medical Officer reported that in his examination for nutritional defects 32,103 were "good," that is 58 per cent.; 21,253, or 38 per cent., were "fair"; 1,482, or 2 · 7 per cent., were "bad"; and 42 were "very bad." I do not know what "good" means? I wonder what it is in a city that has an infant mortality rate of 98. I know what is meant by "fair" in this House. 'If two hon. Members meet each other and one says, "How are you to-day?" and the answer given is "Oh, fair," the hon. Member who said that is not very good.
It is strange that in the poorer countries of the world the children are healthier—

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in Norway and Sweden, New Zealand, Australia the infant mortality rate is 30 to 50 per 1,000, but here in rich Britain, where we are spending£1,500,000,000 on things that we hope will never be used, we have an infant death rate of 57 per 1,000, in England and in Scotland there is a death rate of no less than 82 per 1,000. Therefore I want specifically to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health what the Government are going to do? I know why the Minister of Health cannot be here and that is why I address my request to the Parliamentary Secretary. I ask what the Government propose to do with the memorandum and details submitted to them by the Children's Minimum Council last July for the purpose of drawing attention to the need for cheap milk for expectant or nursing mothers and children under five years of age. That has been in the possession of the Government sufficiently long for them to know what they intend to do.
I refer next to the question of the physical fitness campaign. That such a campaign should be necessary is not to be wondered at, seeing that in the years 1934, 1935 and 1936 over 6 per cent. of the men presenting themselves for the Services were rejected as unfit, and we have had a right hon. Gentleman answering a question from the Government Bench by stating that the physical standard for the Army was being reduced in order to meet the type of man coming forward. Fancy that in a country such as this, fancy admitting on the Floor of the House that the workers of this country are not receiving sufficient in wages and benefits to ensure a standard of nutrition to make them able to fight for the country in time of need. What an admission to make. I do not know what hon. Members opposite think about it. Take next the case of industry. Industry also requires people who are able and fit to maintain themselves. While I admit that we are privileged to live in a country where and at a time when great progress is being made, we must never forget that we have never lived in a time when there were greater anxieties attaching themselves to the ordinary household and the ordinary worker in this country.
It is of interest also to note that one of the doctors who have been paying
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attention to the junior instruction centres, the Medical Officer for Cumberland, Dr. Fraser, reports that "many of the boys coming to the centre are too unfit even to want to play football." The League of Nations report on nutrition has made it quite clear that the corrected death rate in depressed areas exceeds that of a well-to-do area by 166 per cent.—an awful picture to present—and we must not forget that in this country there are 4,000,000 living in depressed areas. Do the Government know what is required? There can be no doubt that the Government do know, because the National Advisory Committee on Nutrition which reports to the Minister of Health himself—the Government's own advisory body—has stated that the consumption of fresh fruit, vegetables and milk is just over one-half of what it should be. Therefore the Government know what is required in one aspect, in order to deal with the problem. The League of Nations report indicated that the lowering of diets from 1914 to 1918 brought alarming results. They say:
"There is no country NS here conditions could not be improved with more Government help and direction."
There the Government are definitely asked to consider this as part of the machinery that must move to get this malnutrition banished. Further the report states:
"While the average levels of individual incomes are high in industrialised countries large sections are so poor as to be unable to purchase proper diets."
That does not mean in a poor country; it means in Great Britain, where last year the Inland Revenue Commissioners reported that there were 79 more millionaires than in the year previous, or 79 more persons with an income of£30,000 or over; and in addition 2,000 persons who increased their incomes by£2,000 a year. The report fits exactly the conditions in this country. The total sum spent on food by workers increases with the total income. Can the Government help? They can help. They must realise the facts, and the facts are that abundance is the order of the day and that the only things in which there is a scarcity are thought and willingness. If we had as much of thought and willingness as of the things we need, there would be no problem at all.
With regard to abundance, I shall not reiterate all the facts. In 1936, 37,000,000 bags of coffee were burned and millions

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more were put into store. Sugar, a most important food the potentiality of the foreign production of which is not known as it is so great, and yet we are acting in this country in a peculiar way, bolstering up a most uneconomic crop. Pigs and bacon—an awful picture. Small Denmark, small in size and population, actually is the second largest exporter of pigs and bacon products in the world. There is nothing to hinder our doing the same thing here by co-operative methods. We have just recently had indications that the pig marketing scheme in this country has fallen through. The result is that the curers can get all the pigs they want for the purpose of keeping their factories running to full capacity, but if they did run them to full capacity the Bacon Marketing Board would come in and prevent them from selling. That is in a country where bacon and the products of pigs are urgently required. Take wheat. The largest part of what we consume comes from countries with a very small yield per acre. I have worked on farms in Canada, I have been a homesteader there, and I know that the yields are small in comparison with what they could be if modern methods were applied.
Take potatoes. Recently it has been acknowledged that from the point of view of nutrition potatoes are a splendid substitute for white bread. What is the position? If a man in this country who is a grower of potatoes grows one acre more than he did in his standard year, he is fined£5 for that acre. In the case of fish, the same arguments apply. A control organisation says that prices must be kept up and profits must be assured. Our engineers and shipbuilders have produced trawlers capable of going into the farthest seas, but they must not. Control organisation says only in certain months will you land fish from these parts. Prices must he protected. The same with beef—control, control, control, not for the advantage of this country but for the advantage of those who exercise the control. Control, control, control means profit, profit, profit, and as soon as the Government recognise that they will be able to take steps and interfere. It is not that we cannot consume or do not need these things. We are afraid to try an experiment.
The Medical Research Council of Great Britain has accepted the standards of the Committee of the League, dated 1935, as
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a reasonable and necessary standard. Let me give one example in the application of the standard to a child of six years. It needs 1¾ pints of milk, one egg; one ounce of meat, fish, liver or cheese; 2½ ounces of green vegetables and 5 ounces of potato or root crop. Give the child that, and you give it the wherewithal to create two-thirds of the energy it needs; the other third can be supplied by bread, butter and cereals. But while the child has a right to that, it is not getting it, because it costs 6s. or 7s. a week to give that to a child of six, while in the case of a nursing mother it would cost from 9s. to 10s. a week. But when we are spending£1,500,000,000 on what we hope will never be used, surely we can take steps to see that children and nursing mothers, if nobody else, can receive what is essential to their well-being.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Mr. G. Griffiths) is going to deal with the rise in prices, so I shall not touch upon that question, but it is necessary to bear in mind that any money that is spent in this way will build up the workers and make them better workers than they have been in the past, will build up the men that the nation wants to protect it in the future, and will save on health more than is actually spent in abolishing malnutrition. The Government have the machinery to do this. Mr. Roosevelt, in the United States, is endeavouring to find any means that he can to pump more money into circulation, to get greater values into the possession of those who must spend, because the poor people must spend what they get; they cannot save it, and it always goes back to, I regret to say, those who exploit them. Many of the industries of this country need to be rationalised. There are industries and occupations in this country employing thousands of people whose conditions of work and wages are a scandal to a civilised country. Something should be done to prevent this exploitation.
Then there are the ex-service pensions. I had a letter yesterday from a London pensioner, a man who has given 40 years' service to the State. He fought in the Boer War, he fought in France, he fought in the East, and then went into the Post Office, and, because of some illness, he is now fobbed off with a pension of 30s. a week, and he, his wife, and three children are expected to live on that.

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How is it possible. These pensioners provide an avenue whereby the life blood of trade could be got moving. The old age pensions, again, provide a field galore. There are also the Employment Exchanges. It would be possible to give an immediate increase to the children of applicants to the Exchanges, and to put in more money from the State side. Here you have a total of 1,400,000 people who are not living the life that they ought to be able to live. That would help to consume the things that you desire to produce in this country. Further grants for poor relief could also be given. If the machinery of this country produces commodities for use, let us get them used. If the land produces food for feeding the people, let us feed the people. Do not let us interfere with that as we are interfering at the present time. There is a market in this country to start with. Half the population of the country is not up to the standard of the Government's own Advisory Committee on Nutrition; 5,000,000 are in such a bad state that they are deficient in every respect; and these include a quarter of the country's children.
If the Government want to see prosperity in this country, they should balance the budgets of the citizens of the country. If they balance the budgets of the citizens of the country, their own Budget will balance much more easily. It is said that some workers spend in various directions money that they should be spending on food. Enlightened opinion on the question of nutrition is not agreed upon that. There are many who are not pie-pared to accept that statement, and are prepared to argue that it is quite possible that, if certain people spend money in going to the pictures, they will receive more advantage from the mental enjoyment they get at the pictures than they would if they spent the same amount of money on food. These things appear to be like lime and fertilisers. Fertilisers will give no return unless there is lime in the soil, and the amenities of life are necessary for people as well as food. Lord Horder in another place, on 10th November, made a statement with which I agree. He said:
"There are other still more basic things that are imperative in this matter: food, shelter, air, and leisure."
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He was referring to the physical fitness campaign. He went on to say:
"I prefer the word food 'to nutrition.' As a scientist I am interested in calories and vitamins; as a doctor I am a little dubious whether nature really intended us to be so selective in our diet as some people suggest. But, as one who is anxious to avoid the delays that exasperate"—
I take him to mean, avoid the delays that have been inherent in all the theories that come before us—
"I would say: Look after the accessibility of food, and nutrition will look after itself."
That is the point to which I desire the Government to attend. It may be said that we have made progress, and admitedly we have, but the point to bear in mind is that we have made progress with very little effort. What progress could we not have made if the Government had made a real effort? It would have been much in excess of any progress that has actually been made. I do not want to be looked upon as emotional, but I have no objection to being looked upon as emotional. I think we should go ahead much more quickly if the world were emotional, because, where there is no emotion, there is no motion.
With regard to the departmental aspect of the matter, I am not sure that the Departments of Health and Agriculture and Fisheries are closely enough linked in this matter. I think there could be no harm in their being brought together and considering this matter in a dispassionate manner, and seeing how they could link their work. The Board of Trade, too, could pay a great deal of attention to the potentialities of trade in this country, instead of worrying about Tanganyika and other distant places all over the world; while the Ministry of Transport might advantage consider the possibilities of coordinating the collection and distribution of the things that are essential to the welfare of the people. There can be no over-production where there is hunger, and, as there is hunger, we do not admit that there is any over-production. I shall be told that nobody will produce unless they get a profit. That may be so, but why in heaven's name should we continue producing for profit when it is profit that is causing the misery in which we are at the present time, owing to the malnutrition which results from preventing people from getting food?

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The pattern of the world was destroyed by the Great War. It was a pattern that had been built up by industrialists and financiers, who were interested in talking about stocks and shares, and very seldom about men and women. There is now a new pattern, which is called national self-sufficiency, but it will be necessary to pay more attention to the power of the people of this country to purchase food if self-sufficiency is to be brought about. People must have a higher standard than they have ever had before. I make no apology for moving this Motion. I notice that the Prime Minister, speaking at the Lord Mayor's Banquet, stated that we are practically back to the good year of 1929. We are not. We are further back than that, because in the good year of 1929 there were 1,200,000 people unemployed, and in the good year of 1937 there are 1,400,000 unemployed. You may tell me about the people who are now working, but I am not concerned with them; I am concerned with the people who need sustenance, who are suffering from malnutrition, and among them those 1,400,000 are included. It is for these reasons that I move this Motion.
4.26 p.m.
Mr. George Griffiths: I beg to second the Motion.
I am very pleased to have the opportunity of doing so, though having to follow my hon. Friend the Member for St. Rollox (Mr. Leonard) makes it rather a difficult task. It makes me feel rather like the man who sat one Sunday morning through a Salvation Army meeting. The officer had been holding forth for about 25 minutes, and it was five minutes to 12 o'clock. He said, "What further shall we say?" and one of the lads, who had had his breakfast pretty early, replied, "Say 'Amen,' Captain, and let us go home." After my hon. Friend's speech I feel that everybody could say "Amen" and at least ask the Government to do something in this matter. During the last few days I have been thinking about some of the new words that have cropped up lately. Among them is the word "malnutrition." It is a newly coined word as far as we are concerned. Another new word that we had from the President of the Board of Trade yesterday is "global." It made me wonder in what part of the globe this mining business is. Then we have had the word "complacency." The
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Chancellor of the Exchequer has made some play with that word, and one of his sentences has stuck in my mind. He said:
"We have not only to think about the men who are working part-time, but we have to think about the men who are working overtime."
That is the kind of thing that helps to bring about complacency.
I want to deal for a moment or two with the word "malnutrition." To me, when I was a boy going to school some 5o years ago, malnutrition meant semi-starvation and I think that that is the workaday definition of malnutrition. I know something about it. I am not going to speak from someone else's theory this afternoon; I am going to speak from my own experience as a lad of 10 in a family of 10, whose dad had to work at the coal face 50 years ago and brought home from 18s. 6d. to 24s. each week. There were then seven of us in the family; the other three had not arrived. I knew what semi-starvation meant. I knew what it was to be without any milk at all till Sunday dinnertime, when there was a drop in the pudding. I never had any milk in my tea when I was a little boy. I understood then, as a lad, what malnutrition meant, namely, semi-starvation. We have to face up to these facts. There are many Members on the other side who have never had to go through that experience, though some have, but when I hear them telling us how to cook cods' heads—
Viscountess Astor: Who did?
Mr. Griffiths: In 1926, there came an expert to lecture to the women in my Division, when the lock-out was on, and she was telling those women, who sat with their mouths wide open, how to cook cods' heads. One of them got up and said, "Who is having the fish if we have to have the heads?" What I want to put across for the moment is that our people will know how to cook fish, and put the cods' heads in the bin afterwards, when they have the money to do it. I have got written here: "Malnutrition arises largely from under-feeding, from poverty, from insufficiency; and there is no graver or more momentous issue which can be discussed by this Parliament." I may possibly be putting it across the

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Floor in, shall I say, an unusual manner, but I am doing it in my own manner, and, as the last speaker stated, if there is not some emotion there is nothing, practically speaking. Some people say it is sentimental tosh; but you cannot live in the world to-day without some amount of sentiment, so that you can understand the reality of things. Although I may be putting it across in a way which may be jocular in a sense. I am in earnest, and I say that with all your theories about malnutrition, 90 per cent. of it arises because the people have not the wherewithal to buy food.
When I hear people telling my folk that they do not know how to cook, and that they are wasting their money—5½d. a day; not sufficient for some of these jokers to buy a cigar—I say that it is not that they do not know the value of food; it is that they do not know how to get the money to purchase it. If they could get that money, you would have at your door a market for your produce, without going to other parts of the world. We are not pushing the farmer down; we want him to have a decent living; but we say that his best market for his produce is not at the other end of the world, but in the mining districts where we live, and we are the best customers when we have money to spend. As the hon. Member for St. Rollox says, when the worker gets money he does not spend it in the South of France. [Interruption.] He does not spend it in America either; he spends it in the township in which he lives, and it circulates again the very next week.
Yet the people on the other side of the House are crying out about markets. The farmer is crying out about the milk. We will drink all the milk you produce if you will give us the money. We will eat all the eggs that the hens lay. I would sooner eat one British egg than all the Chinese eggs. There has not been much crying from those benches lately about the poultry business. That is because there has been cold weather and a scarcity of eggs, and the price has gone up. Milk, eggs and beef—there is nobody smacks his lips more over a bit of beef steak than I do, and it is the same with every miner. Our members know that if a miner is to get coal he has got to have beef, milk and eggs; otherwise, the output in the coal mine goes down. We say that if you raise
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the income, practically 80 per cent. of the malnutrition will vanish.
My hon. Friend said I should deal with prices, but, before I do, I want to give you some figures. Sir Robert McCarrison, in 1936, made this alarming statement: that, so far as state sickness was concerned, in regard to short sickness periods, it had gone up by 109 per cent; and in regard to long sickness periods, it had gone up by 103 per cent. That is largely because people have not enough to eat. They get run down, and the slightest cold that comes along, down they go. I have two instances out of my division which I shall never forget. I had got two boys working in the pit. One was 15½, and the other 14½. They met with slight accidents. They were taken to Beckett's Hospital, at Barnsley. They died as the result of the accident, and the foreman of the jury said to the doctor: "How do you account for these two boys not being able to recover from a minor accident like this?" The doctor said that these two boys were in such a state of ill-health that they went under, not so much on account of the accident as on account of the condition of their health. That did not happen in America or Russia, but in my division, and it was because they had not had sufficient to eat in their school days. That is malnutrition, that is semi-starvation; and that should be sufficient to make the Government, instead of lying in a bed of complacency, waken up and decide that, in this time of plenty, nobody should go short.
Of the children in our schools, official figures show that there are 26 per thousand who definitely require more and better food. I want the two vice-captains of the Ministry of Health and the Board of Education to listen to this. While, for the country over, the proportion of boys and girls at school who require more nourishment is 26 per 1,000, in Merthyr the proportion is 130 per 1,000; in Newcastle 172 per 1,000; and in Pontypridd, 210 per 1,000. Practically one-fifth of the boys and girls at Pontypridd require more food, and we are throwing it in the sea, keeping it away. I have a letter here from a farmer in Sussex. When the Minister of War stated that they were going to give the soldiers butter, instead of margarine, my name was mentioned, and this farmer wrote to me last March, saying that he wanted to grow more potatoes, that his quota was only three acres of

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potatoes, and that he was desirous of growing 23 acres. He said:
"I have written to the Potato Board. and they have written to tell me that if I grow these 23 acres I shall be fined£115."
Viscountess Astor: Hear, hear.
Mr. Griffiths: Hear, hear. They ought to be hanged.
Viscountess Astor rose—
Mr. Griffiths: This is not a dialogue between you and me.
I want to quote a few more figures. In Sunderland, 26 per cent. of the young mothers are sub-normal. Next week, we shall have somebody on that side of the House shouting about population. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary, what are we going to do about these things? I hope he is not going to get up to-night and reply, in a complacent mood, that all is well, and that in the sweet by-and-by it will be so-and-so. I hope he is going to tell us to-day that the Government intend to do something in this matter. I have some more startling figures, too, but I have been told by some of my colleagues: "George, we hope you will cut it short; we want to speak, too." I would not mind cutting it short for some of my pals, but not for the noble Lady.
The figures which I want to quote now are not figures compiled by the Labour party, but the figures of the Committee of which the late Prime Minister's wife, Lady Baldwin, was chairman. They are figures which they themselves have dug out from South Wales and other places. This is an indictment of malnutrition. The figures relate to infant deaths for the seven years, 1927 to 1933, and maternal deaths for 1928–34, for a population of 6,148,000 in five mining counties and seven ports in the distressed areas. The number of infant deaths in the seven areas in those years was 64,052, and the number of maternal deaths 3,965. The corresponding figure of infant and maternal deaths in London and Middlesex, with the same population, was 38,629, and the deaths of mothers, 2,206. There were 25,000 more babies died, for the same population, in those distressed and semi-distressed areas, and 1,750 more mothers died for the same population in distressed areas as against areas which were comfortable. I do not say that they all died on account of malnutrition, but malnutrition prevailed very heavily in these districts, and was one of
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the causes of the high percentage as far as the deaths were concerned.
I want to give a few more figures, and they are from the women's section of the Labour party this time, and not from Lady Baldwin's party. The women's section of the Labour party investigated the conditions of 1,000 homes after Sir John Orr had published his book. They went from door to door, they were on the doorstep, and obtained first-hand information. Of this number 476 were unemployed men with families, not one of whom had more than 3s. per week per head for the family to spend upon food. Seven days a week, three meals a day, that is 21 meals, 3s., or 36 pennies, a rate of about 1½d. a meal. One hundred and seventy-nine of these families had not more than 2s. a week to spend on food—just over 1d. per meal. And then we say, "All's well in England," and we have some folk in this House telling us that the workingman's wife does not know how to spend her money on food values. Food values at 1d. a meal! It is disgraceful and an insult to the working women of this country. There is no waste as far as they are concerned in spending 5d. a day. I have here a Ministry of Health Report for 1932. [Interruption.] I know that you do not like these details.
Viscountess Astor: I am waiting to give them myself.
Mr. Griffiths: Well, you will not give them to-day—I am giving them. The Ministry of Health had a committee sitting on dietetics in 1932, and that committee stated in its report that in respect of children living in a home of not less than 200 children, where they were not buying food in pennyworths round the corner, but buying it wholesale, it cost 4s. 6½d. per head, and with the rise in prices to-day compared with the prices in 1932, that means 6s. per head. They were buying the food in bulk, and these facts were revealed as the result of the Ministry of Health's own inquiry. They threw that report into the waste-paper basket a good long while ago, but it was their own inquiry. If it costs 6s. per week in a home, where there are 200 children and the food is being bought wholesale, how much would it take where the mothers have to buy food retail in pennyworths? Yet the children are having only 3s. per head at the present time, and then we wonder why there is so much mal-

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nutrition. Who are the people who are suffering to-day? First of all there are the people who are on public assistance. I do not know whether the Minister has seen—I hope he has, for he was up to something last Saturday—the unrest up and down the country among the people who are receiving public assistance and who are on the point of starvation. A number of the local authorities have met in the North and have decided to give at least 10 per cent. more in out-relief than what they have been giving on account of the increase in the cost of living.
I said that I was going to speak from experience. Before I came into this House I was a member of a public assistance committee—the county committee and the guardians committee. The Ministry of Health sent their inspector into our district. I received a note one day and it said, "You are surcharged£80." When the letter was opened my wife said to me, "What have you been doing?" and I replied, "I have done now't wrong." I then explained to her that I was being surcharged along with six others, but we were surcharged varying amounts. If a member had missed a Wednesday sitting and had not been present when relief was granted to a certain person, a corresponding amount was knocked off, but the secretary of the branch and I were surcharged £80. We met the inspector later on and I said, "What are you surcharging us for?" and he replied, "You have given them too much. They have had too much income in the home." I said, "What are we to do?" and he replied, "You have only to relieve destitution." I said, "Will you tell us what is the standard of destitution?" and he replied, "We cannot tell you; the standard varies." I replied, "Well, it has varied with us." This conversation took place with the district inspector. We said that we were not going to pay the money, and we then had to go to Doncaster to meet another inspector. We were kept for five hours shut up in a room like criminals, though I am sure we did not look like criminals. A fortnight afterwards the inspector sent word, "You will have to pay 5s." We took the matter to the miners' branch and put the facts before a meeting of 2,500 men at which I was also a delegate. The men said, "George, you are not going to pay a penny of it. We will pay it out
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of our private fund." These people of whom I am speaking are now suffering from malnutrition and on the verge of semi-starvation.
One of these men met me a week last Saturday and was hardly as fat as an envelope looked at edgeways. He said, "George, how are we to go on?" He has been sick for some 15 years, and when I saw him he could hardly walk along the street. I can see him now. I worked in the next place to him 35 years ago when I first went to the pit. He was one of the best colliers who ever broke a piece of coal. He said that he and his wife could not "continue to go on like this. There ought to be something done. Are you going to do anything down yonder at the House for us?" I said, "When we get a chance, we will try and do what we can." They have not had their amount of out-relief increased yet, because if they give an increase the public assistance committee will be surcharged£80, or something like that. The Ministry hold them to certain things such as that. I ask the Ministry to think about those on out-relief, and the old age pensioners who receive 10s. a week, and 2s. 6d. which they get from the rates, which is practically all they have. I have an old lady of 84 in my constituency who said to me, "George"—they never call me Mr. Griffiths—"I wish you could get us another two bob. If I had another two bob I should be as happy as a bird on a tree. Do what you can to help to get us another couple of bob." And to think that we have folks talking about the scientific way of spending money and the values of food.
There are, first, the people on poor relief, secondly, the old age pensioners, and thirdly, the compensation men. I know what I am talking about; I am talking from experience, and not from a solicitor's theoretical book. I once had 3o weeks on compensation—21s, 3d. a week for myself, wife and two children, plus 4s. 9d. from the West Riding permanent relief fund—26s. in all. There was not a penny piece coming in from anywhere else for 30 weeks. A week last Saturday night I met one of my own men who was hurt 10 years ago. He is drawing 23s. 6d. a week, and the cost of living during the last two years has gone up by no less than 17 per cent. He has had the same amount for 10 years, and he does not receive any out-relief because

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he has a little lad working at the pit, and therefore cannot get out-relief. We of the Mining Association have over 8,000 men on our books who have been disabled for 10 years, and we are asking that something should be done for them. The hon. Member for Hitchin (Sir A. Wilson), who is to second the Amendment to this Motion, said in this House last Friday that the Workmen's Compensation Bill was not revolutionary enough for him, or he would support us wholeheartedly. I went to find out whom he did support, and I found that he went home without supporting anybody.
Sir Arnold Wilson Sir Arnold Wilson indicated assent.
Mr. Griffiths: He did not either vote for or against. I never thought that the hon. Member for Hitchin was so revolutionary as to want to give the miner more than£3 when he was injured. Apparently he is. I hope that when we bring in a revolutionary Measure dealing with workmen's compensation we shall have the support of his vote in the Lobby. I have the latest figures given by the Ministry in respect of Poor Law relief at the present time. You never hear them talk about this on the benches opposite. Why? Because it is against them. At the present time in England and Wales, there are 1,287,618 persons on Poor Law relief, which means that there are 230,000 more now than when we were in office on the benches opposite. The President of the Board of Trade said yesterday that he had launched his magnificent Bill to get ready for another slump. I hope that the Minister to-day will give to us some consideration, and will say that the Government will do something as far as this matter is concerned.
I want to say another word about the hon. Member for Hitchin, and I know he will not mind. There are certain Members in this House who talk about malnutrition and about giving the workers something, and yet, when the opportunity conies, instead of giving the workers something, they march into the Lobby and do all they can to prevent the workers from getting it. On 23rd March, 1937, when the Agricultural Unemployment Bill was before the House for Third Reading, we pressed to a Division that the maximum amount should not be 30s., that: is, 14s. for the unemployed man, 7s. for the wife and 3s. each for three children. Hon. Members on the other side of the House
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said, in effect, to the agricultural labourer: "If you have more than three children, you can throw away the fourth, the fifth and the sixth where you like, because we will not give them a penny of maintenance." The hon. Member for Hitchin voted against the fourth child of the agricultural labourer having one penny piece. He voted for a maximum of 30s., and so did the hon. Member who is to move the Amendment. I would ask them how they reconcile that action with what they are saying to-day about the things the Government have done. What the Government have done has been to say to the agricultural labourer: "Look here, there must be birth control in your family after the third child, and if you do not stop there, and a fourth child comes, there will be nothing for the child."
5.3 p.m.
Mr. Hamilton Kerr: I beg to move, in line 1, to leave out from "with," to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
"satisfaction the action taken and proposed to be taken to improve nutrition, and approves the continuous and successful efforts of His Majesty's Government to promote better health and social conditions in this country."
I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for St. Rollox (Mr. Leonard) on the objective and sincere way in which he introduced the Motion. There was one phrase in his speech which particularly caught my fancy. He said there is no Motion without emotion. The problem of prices and its associated problem of nutrition, although it concerns itself with facts and figures is, as the hon. Member said, essentially a human problem. The problem of the loaf on the breakfast table affects equally every class which inhabits this country. It affects equally the worker in the great industrial city, the agricultural labourer in his cottage and the black-coated worker in his garden city residence. Perhaps many hon. Members opposite, like myself, have often watched on a Saturday evening the housewives in their constituency going on their rounds of purchases. They will have seen them with baskets on their arms, sometimes pushing a perambulator, passing from shop to shop and shrewdly assessing the various prices of the goods which the shops offer. They will have seen them standing at the windows trying to decide whether they will buy New

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Zealand or Danish butter, or more often trying to decide whether for their midday meal on Sunday they could afford a prime cut of beef.
The hon. Member for Hemsworth (Mr. G. Griffiths), whose speech so attracted the House, drew attention to rising prices. Before I proceed to discuss that question I should like to congratulate the hon. Member upon the knowledge he displayed in regard to such delicacies as cods' heads. Having listened to his speech I can readily understand that it was his eloquence which overcame the opposition of the War Office, and persuaded it to adopt butter instead of margarine as a staple food for the Army. Such an achievement is very notable. His constituents will not be able to say of him what two ladies once said when they were discussing the engagement of a certain young lady. Said one: "Have you heard that Erica is to marry her X-ray specialist?" "Is she?" said the other, "Well, no one else can see anything in her."
I do not want to worry the House with too many facts and figures which are dry things at best, but as the question of rising prices was mentioned, I should like, as briefly and as concisely as I may, to talk about the question of prices. Are rising prices a bad thing? Hon. Members will recollect that the representatives of the British Commonwealth of Nations, who met at Ottawa, decided that one of the first essentials of a world return to prosperity was a rise in commodity prices. Subsequently, those nations which sent their representatives to the World Economic Conference at the Science Museum in London decided that the first essential for a return to world prosperity was a rise in prices.
Economists never wearied of telling us in those days that the producers of primary products, like the farmers in the great wheat belts of America and Canada, were compelled not only to dismiss their labourers, but were unable to pay the fixed debt charge they owed to the banks for the purchase of agricultural machinery, because the price of wheat was so disastrously low in the world market. Seeing that a rise in prices was universally admitted as a necessity and as irresistible, we have to ask ourselves two questions: (1) has the rise in prices
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gone too far, and (2), has it outgrown the purchasing power of the masses of the people of this country? I cannot do better than quote from an article written by Mr. Johnstone, which appeared in the "Daily Telegraph" on 5th November. In that article he compares the cost of living index in 1930 and 1937. In 1930, a year of gradually deepening depression, of rising unemployment and of goods from abroad flooding the home market, the index was 138. In 1937, a year of record employment, of industries booming and of high levels of production. the figure was 145, or a rise of 3¼ per cent. How have wages responded to this movement? The Ministry of Labour index shows that wages since 1930 have risen by 4 per cent., so that as far as facts and figures go that cancels out the rise in prices.
Before I proceed to discuss the aspects of malnutrition I should like to address a few arguments to the House with regard to imports. Can we see any conceivable means of controlling the prices of imports? The Advisory Committee on Nutrition, which hon. Members have quoted, analyses our chief imports from abroad, briefly, as flour, meat, butter, margarine, and fruit. It must be obvious that we cannot possibly control the price of these commodities in the great open markets of the world. There are such things as drought, market conditions and little dislocations which arise from time to time in world markets. Therefore, whether we like it or not, we cannot control the prices of these commodities when they come to this country. How far is it true that the tariff policy of the Government has artificially forced up the price of food? I should like to quote briefly again from the same article in the "Daily Telegraph." Taking the years 1930 and 1931 in the first nine months the value of imports coming into this country was£202,000,000. If we add to that figure the amount which the Sugar Duty brought in we have an aggregate sum of£212,000,000. Taking the year 1937, in the first nine months the value of imports was£190,000,000. If we add to that figure£22,000,000 in respect of the Sugar Duties and the Ottawa duties and other duties, we reach a total figure of£212,000,000. Therefore, the value of the imports in those two periods is virtually the same. If we translate the quantities imported in 1930 into the values of 1937, we have a figure of

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£191,000,000, and if we translate the 1937 quantities into the values of 1930 the figure is£206,000,000.
I pass rapidly over these figures because I know they are dry and uninspiring things at the best. With regard to prices, we have to consider what our policy should be. Should we continue the policy which we have pursued up to now, which has had three bases: (1) sound finance, (2) moderate protection of the market and (3) trade agreements with countries overseas. What is the alternative? The only alternative to that policy is to subsidise the consumer. During the War, during the heat of that conflict in 1917, when we stood with our backs to the wall, the Royal Commission on Wheat Supplies was initiated. That Royal Commission bought wheat from the wheat producers at world prices and sold the wheat to the millers at a price which, allowing for manufacturing costs, would allow the 4–1b. loaf to be sold for 9d. From September, 1917, to December, 1920. when the Wheat Commission finished its labours, those transactions had cost the country no less than£162,000,000 or, roughly, an average of over£50,000,000 a year. Therefore, it seems to me that this policy of subsidising the consumer would be a very expensive alternative to the methods we have already tried.
I know that hon. Members opposite will not agree as to some of the results which the Government have claimed for these efforts. But I think no one can deny—I am talking of the present and not of the future—that, as things stand, the improvement that we see in the country to-day has gone a very long way. Translated from facts and figures into everyday details it means that whereas formerly we saw great queues of unemployed stretching outside the Exchanges, there are now notices at the Exchanges calling for skilled labour, more ships are coming into and going out of the ports, more people are travelling on the railways, and those terrible slums, those narrow airless courts in our great cities, are fast disappearing, and giving way to vast housing estates along the big arterial roads.
Having covered briefly the ground an these aspects of the question, I want to talk not of the past, but of the present and the future. We have to consider, par-
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titularly when we seek to deal with this problem from the human point of view, that class of unfortunate men and women who have not been able up to the present time to find employment. They are to be found principally among the older age groups of men and women over 45. They are to be found in areas such as South Wales, Scotland, Lancashire and Tyneside, areas where formerly the entire work was devoted to one particular industry, and where when the crisis came, there was no alternative either in the form of light industries or other industries to fall back upon. When I think of these people I particularly welcome the instruction of the Unemployment Assistance Board to their officers to make special provision for them in cases where the rises in prices have begun to affect them. They are the people who cannot be too often remembered on the Floor of this House, men and women who have spent their lives in industry and whose enforced idleness really hurts their sense of self-respect. The self-respect of working men and women is a most important and valuable thing to sustain.
What of the future? The Advisory Committee on Nutrition, quoted by the hon. Member for Hemsworth, brought out one important fact. When they analysed the foods required for human welfare under three heads, calories, fats and proteins, they drew attention to the fact that the consumption of milk in this country is only half what it ought to be. We all welcome a more vigorous milk policy. We know that milk is being distributed to school children, and I see from the figures one interesting fact. Whereas 92 per cent. of the schools in this country are included under the milk scheme, not more than 5o per cent. of the children avail themselves of the milk supplied. There is certainly need of vigorous propaganda to bring home to the people the benefits which milk can give to growing children, and the foundation of health which it can give for after-life.
I think that a great deal can be done in further research into the whole question of nutrition. Therefore I was particularly interested to read in the report of the Advisory Committee on Nutrition that two committees are due to set to work; the first on the question of income distribution and the second household budgets. We ought to know much more about the income distribution of the

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people of the country. A short time ago a totally unofficial body, the London Press Association, produced statistics in a book called "The Home Market" which divided incomes of the people of this country into three groups—one group above£10 a week, the second group between£4 and£10, and the third under£4 a week. The result, to my mind, was so interesting, that I hope the committee which the Ministry of Health are setting up will speedily produce official figures. When we discuss the whole problem of nutrition we should know exactly how much the average working family spends on meat, vegetables, repairs, omnibus fares, etc. With these two committees pursuing their investigations I hope we shall finally have an authoritative pronouncement on the whole question of food values. It interested me very much, while listening to the speeches of the Mover and the Seconder, to see how evidence from expert sources differs on the whole question of nutrition. A great step forward would be taken if we could get an official pronouncement.
The British housewife has often been maligned on account of her lack of cooking knowledge, but I have to confess, considering the immense difficulties that she has to face, that she does very well indeed. The average working-class woman not only has to give breakfast to her husband and send him off to work, but wash the children and send them to school. When they are gone she has to clean the house. Many hon. Members doubtless have had the same experience as I have had myself in some of the great industrial towns where even the smallest houses are spotlessly clean and the stove is polished as brightly as a patent leather shoe. The housewife has to do this as well as bake and wash. She is often too tired to go out and receive cooking instruction. Therefore I think when the investigation into the whole question of nutrition has been completed, every local authority should, in conjunction with the Ministry of Health, be able to circulate into every home specialised knowledge on the values of food. The actual circulation would not cost much, but the effect would be excellent. Public health would immediately improve, and disease decline. I am certain that the British housewife would once more be able to return to those proud traditions, so talked
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of in the eighteenth century, when British cooking was the envy and admiration of foreigners when they visited this country.
5.19 p.m.
Sir Arnold Wilson: I beg to second the Amendment.
Before I deal with it I will answer the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Mr. G. Griffiths). He asks why I voted in favour of the Unemployment Insurance (Agriculture) Bill, 1936. I did so because my constituents include a large number of farm workers and I am satisfied that I was representing their views in holding that it would be a mistake to bring agricultural unemployment benefit substantially above the current rate of wages payable in a county in which there is practically no unemployment among able-bodied farm workers and demand even for the older men beyond the insurable age. He has also asked me why I did not vote on Second Reading of the Workmen's Compensation Bill moved from the Socialist benches last Friday providing, amongst other things, larger allowances to men temporarily disabled by industrial accidents. I spoke for nearly half an hour to explain why, and I will repeat it very shortly. I wished to wait until the two committees set up by the Home Office had reported and I hold, personally, the view that workmen's compensation should be removed from the sphere of private profit and correlated with National Health Insurance.
Having said that, I turn to the Amendment itself. We have had a most pessimistic view put forward by the hon. Member for St. Rollox (Mr. Leonard). I am sorry he is not here to be cheered up. We have also had a gloomy report of his experiences in the happily long-distant past by the hon. Member for Hemsworth, but the fact is that the standard of nutrition in this country is unquestionably higher to-day than in any other country in Europe, and probably much higher than in the great cities of America. The Board of Trade figures show a steady increase in the consumption of meat, butter, cheese and of imported fruit year by year in this country, and there has been no recession for the past five years in the increase in consumption of the most valuable and protective foodstuffs. The figures are incontestable.

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When we come to the question of the Oslo breakfast, so far as this country is concerned there are very few working men in this country who would wish to live on Oslo diet. We are far ahead of Norway and we have no reason whatever to be ashamed of our own progress in the last five years. The proportion of British working-class wages spent on food is lower than in any other country in Europe though the proportion spent on rent and burial money is, I believe, substantially higher. There is more money left for the amenities of life of wage-earners in this country than in any other country in Europe, and I am the last to under-estimate the importance of the amenities of life as part of nutrition. The sum spent on tobacco in this country is incomparably higher than elsewhere. I leave beer to the Noble Lady who, I hope, will follow me.
Viscountess Astor: No, you deal with it.
Sir A. Wilson: Let us be perfectly clear what beer is. Whilst I differ from my Noble Friend in regarding beer as a food, it is also a luxury, and the expenditure on it has gone up for some years past. The money spent on quasi luxuries could be spent with advantage in some cases in other directions. The proportion spent on bread, on the other hand, has actually decreased. It is 10 per cent. lower than it was twenty years ago, perhaps because we have got into the habit in this country of eating inferior bread. I am fortunate at home in having a wife who with her own hands bakes for the family bread of British stone-ground flour, and I go home knowing that I shall have some really good bread and butter.
The hon. Member for St. Rollox referred to Sir John Orr's authority as being unchallenged and unchallengeable. I do not accept his deductions as scientifically accurate or his estimates as reasonably precise. His conclusions depend upon many approximations. They are based on uncertain data and some of his generalisations are not logically supported or statistically sound. He relies on the assumption that the necessary money cost of food is equal at all ages. If any hon. Member is interested in more detailed criticism I should refer him to an article by an equally unchallengeable statistician, Professor A. L. Bowley, in
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"The Nineteenth Century and After," December, 1936. Neither Sir John On nor the International Labour Office nor the Women's Co-operative Committee who were collecting information in South Wales, can tell us more than that there is malnutrition in lower-paid categories of workers—but they cannot tell us anything as to its incidence or extent. The importance of more data has been emphasised by the hon. Mover of the Amendment. Until e get it we should not accept the gloomy descriptions we have had from the Opposition benches. All we really know from these reports of the International Labour Office is that in certain countries wages and other resources are insufficient to provide adequate diet. There is very good ground for that, but there is no valid estimate of its extent and we must await the further researches of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Labour.
Malnutrition before the age of five in some degree is not uncommon in the poorer families and particularly in the distressed areas, but I am unable to accept the statistics of the hon. Member for St. Rollox. I am sorry he is not here or perhaps he would put me right. I went off to the Library to consult the Annual Report of the Registrar-General, in which I found that the infant mortality per 1,000 live births from all causes in 1926 was 70, and in 1936 56, and there has been a successive reduction during each intervening year. I cannot square those figures with those quoted by the hon. Gentleman.
Viscountess Astor: I think he was talking about just one certain area.
Mr. G. Griffiths: Glasgow.
Sir A. Wilson: So far as England and Wales as a whole is concerned—Scottish pride prevents Scotland being printed with the figures for England and Wales—the mortality figures under five years of age have dropped since 1910 from 36 to 17, and under ten from 3 to 2, a 50 per cent. improvement. There is no reason for depression there and much for encouragement. Malnutrition of expectant mothers is another reality which the Government's Milk Bill will seek to remedy. The White Paper states that the Government regard the continuance of the scheme of the provision of cheap milk as of the greatest importance.
Mr. G. Griffiths: When the hon. Gentleman refers to malnutrition of expectant mothers does he classify them?
Sir A. Wilson: No, they are not classified at all. It is a general statement and I have reason to believe that the malnutrition of expectant mothers is much more widespread than would be gathered from the wage average. In the Liverpool area it appears that mothers coming from homes where there was ample money coming in were on the whole less healthy at childbirth and were suffering more from malnutrition in the purely technical sense of the word—not semi-starvation—than those coming from the poorest homes.
Mr. G. Griffiths: The figures for the West Riding of Yorkshire for 1936 show that out of 92 deaths 51 were of poor mothers.
Sir A. Wilson: I gather from the report of the chief medical officer of health that a special inquiry is on foot in the West Riding which will doubtless cover that point. I am not disputing the need for milk. I am pointing out that the Government have decided to carry on the milk scheme and to develop it further, and I am speaking in support of an Amendment which views with satisfaction what the Government are doing and propose to do. Why should we he despondent?
In the past 10 years deaths from diseases directly or indirectly due to malnutrition have dropped for the most part by half, intestinal tuberculosis by half, rickets by half, infantile convulsions by one-third, diarrhoea and enteritis by half, diseases of pregnancy by 10 per cent., deaths under one year have dropped from 70 to 56 per 1,000, and the report of the chief medical officer indicates that the public health has been thoroughly well maintained. Malnutrition due to insufficient means does exist, but it is to a relatively small extent among families of unskilled wage-earners in regular employment.
The real causes of malnutrition are six in number, long-continued unemployment, prolonged sickness or physical disability, bad environment, insufficient purchasing power, poor quality of many of the foodstuffs available, and lastly the irreducible element of human incapacity and carelessness which is found equally
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in all classes in the country. Indeed, as far as cooking is concerned, I am inclined to think incapacity is less common among the poor than it is among those who are comparatively well-to-do, and who are more inclined to be unduly affected by advertisements of patent and preserved foods. Long-continued unemployment is one of the principal causes of malnutrition, but it is one for which you cannot condemn the National Government. Year after year the figures for unemployment have shown an improvement and there is no evidence as yet that the rates fixed by the Unemployment Assistance Board are inadequate as compared with the figures and cost of living for 1929. But the problem is admittedly serious. There are 460,000 insured persons, men, who have been unemployed for more than three months, and 260,000 of these who have been unemployed for more than 12 months. Assuming that half of these are breadwinners of families there may be 1,000,000 persons in that group who are affected by long-continued unemployment. But this problem, too, is being tackled with success. The report of the Chief Medical Officer of Health on the state of public health makes this reference to Newcastle, one of the distressed areas, where three-quarters of the unemployed have been unemployed for more than 12 months:
"The majority of families even of the unemployed were receiving diets which were not seriously inadequate according to commonly accepted standards."
That is the report by an impartial authority. There is great activity going on in the Ministry of Health and other Government Departments in this matter. A dietary survey by the Ministry of Health is in progress, the Ministry of Labour is collecting material on family budgets and the Minister of Labour has made it clear that the Unemployment Assistance Board and public assistance committees should use a wise discretion in increasing grants in order to meet cases of need and rising prices.
I turn now to insufficient purchasing power, one of the oldest complaints of mankind. The spread between wholesale and retail prices in this country is far greater in relation to vegetables, fish and other perishable produce than in regard to any other class of produce. To a large extent this is because we have lost the

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costermonger and the public market frequented so much formerly by housewives. That is not a matter in which the Government can possibly accept blame or exercise a great measure of control. The costermonger has been driven out largely by the local authorities. There was a time when he went from one end of the town to the other selling his produce for what he could get for it. Now we are in the hands of the shopkeeper and the great general stores, and to keep prices up they are sometimes prepared to allow perishable commodities to be destroyed. The costermonger performed very valuable functions, and so did the retail market.
I went to the town in which I was bred, Rochdale, a year ago, and I visited the old market where I used to go with my nurse to get celery, potatoes, cabbages, and eggs straight from those who grew them, at the cheapest retail prices. It was dilapidated and dirty—not a place to which a housewife would willingly go and was being much less used than formerly. Nobody who has a new housing estate in his constituency can be unaware that one of the principal troubles of the residents is not that they are paying high rents or have to travel a long way to their job, but that retail prices for ordinary commodities are higher than in the old markets to which they were accustomed to go. I should like to see a committee appointed to consider how public retail markets can be encouraged. Something must be done to prevent the spread of prices in regard to perishable commodities which contain all the vitamins we want. Hannah More said:
"Know when to save and when to spare,
And where to buy and thou shalt ne'er be bare."
Where to buy is a much more difficult problem to-day than it used to be when the retail markets were free. Bad environment is another cause of malnutrition. Has any Government done more than or even as much as the National Government to improve environment? Housing schemes sponsored by the Government are now developing and whole slum areas are disappearing. Some hon. Members have been complaining about high rents. The annual return of the Ministry of Health, Command Paper 5527, July, 1937, dealing with rents of flats and houses owned by local authorities, shows that out of 886,000 houses owned by local authorities more
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than half, 462,000 to be accurate, were let at rents of less than 8s. a week and about three-quarters at under 10s. per week.
Mr. G. Griffiths: Plus rates?
Sir A. Wilson: These figures exclude rates. In fact the Government are tackling bad environment with success. Then there is another aspect of insufficient purchasing power and that is the high standing charges of family budgets for things other than food and fuel. Every shilling on the rates is a shilling off the table. Local authorities to my mind are spending more than they should in what are, comparatively speaking, luxuries, thus adding to the rates and reducing the amount of food that a family can buy. The increase of the rates is serious but there again the Government have no responsibility. [An HON. MEMBER: "What does the hon. Member mean by luxuries?"] I am thinking of swimming baths, larger and more expensive roads, and the large palaces which are being erected to house local governments. There is, I think, a tendency towards extravagance which I should like to see checked. All this is having an effect on the rates, and the rates have an effect on the amount available for food.
Then there is a question which I perhaps shall be out of order in dealing with in any detail—the question of burial money policies. Every inquiry made by the Labour party or by any independent authority has shown the great strain on working-class budgets of these burial policies. A recent inquiry in South Wales showed that it worked out at an average of 4s. per family for a dozen or more families, all of whom were unemployed but who had to go on paying, otherwise they would have lost every penny they had put in. Dr. Gonigle and Dr. Kirby of Stockton-on-Tees put this amount at 2s. 9d., and the average is from 2S. 6d. to 4s. per week. It is "useless thrift" for men who are not getting enough food and whose children are not being properly fed and clothed to pay 2S. 6d.-4s. in order to provide for their burial. Of course, the surrender value is next to nothing. I should like to see this system drastically reformed. There is£70,000,000 a year of working-class money going into it, collected from door to door, and I have no doubt that we could save£40,000,000 of this money. The Financial Secretary to

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the Treasury in the last Government said that the Government contemplated legislation and I have no reason to think that it will not be introduced.
I turn finally to the question of the quality of food available for sale. The Ministry of Health had a thoroughgoing inquiry into adulteration, a Departmental Committee has sat, the Acts of Parliament are being consolidated, and I understand that the Minister has announced that he hopes shortly to promote legislation dealing with the whole question of adulteration. That is not likely to be a controversial Measure. I hope bread is tackled. I think that the herring deserves almost as much consideration as bread, and I hope that the National Government will deal with the herring industry in order to increase the consumption of herring, and will succeed in establishing the herring more firmly on the breakfast table.
Mr. Banfield: The hon. Member has made a charge about the adulteration of bread. I am a bit of an expert on this question, as he knows, and I should like to ask what he means by adulteration?
Sir A. Wilson: I must plead not guilty to having said that bread is adulterated. I said it is of very inferior quality. It is being stripped, for hedonistic purposes, of some of its more valuable constituents, which I understand are being fed to fowls, and a perfectly white, tasteless, odourless paste, only palatable when eaten quite fresh, and not always then, is handed out in slices to children, who are told it is bread. My children will not eat what is known as baker's bread, but prefer the bread made of the old stone-ground flour, the difference between the two being tremendous.
Mr. Banfield: The hon. Gentleman's complaint is not against the bakers, but against the millers, who are responsible for the flour. May I tell the hon. Gentleman that the stone-ground flour of which he speaks used to be called super-bran?
Sir A. Wilson: I have not mentioned the bakers. I should be the last to do so, for I have no reason to think that they are not doing their best with the somewhat indifferent materials that are supplied.
Mr. Banfield: That is very handsome of the hon. Gentleman.
Sir A. Wilson: For the rest, we are continuing the campaign for improved health and improved nutrition. The physical fitness compaign, the campaigns of the Milk, Herring and Potato Boards, the efforts to get people to eat more fish and more potatoes, and to drink more milk, are going ahead, all under the direct auspices of boards set up by the National Government. We are going ahead on a broad front, with the assistance of a great number of persons of good will outside this House. As Lord Chancellor Bacon wrote to the King in 162o:
"For the good that comes of particular and select committees and commissions, I need not commonplace…it will make many good spirits, that NA e think little of. co-operate in them."
The National Government have every reason to look forward to a steady repetition in future years of the improved figures both of health and of mortality and of consumption which has marked the whole progress of our nutrition campaign for the past five years.
5.48 p.m.
Mr. Ridley: I listened with interest to the speeches made by my two hon. Friends in moving and seconding the Motion. I wish to direct my brief remarks to a special aspect of this problem, but before doing so I will comment on one or two of the observations made by the hon. Member for Hitchin (Sir A. Wilson). The hon. Member derived an undue measure of satisfaction from what he conceives to be the improved standard of public health during the last few years resulting from the efforts of this Government and previous Governments of a similar nature. The hon. Gentleman said that the standard of nutrition in this country is higher than in any other country in Europe and that there has been, in a specified number of years, a 50 per cent. improvement in the infantile mortality figures.
I listened to the hon. Member with considerable attention, but I did not hear him make any reference to which I consider to be two of the principal factors that have contributed to any measure of improvement. The first is unmistakably the growth of the trade union movement. During the last quarter of a century, the growth of the trade union movement has

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compelled the unwilling employer—frequently the unwilling Conservative employer—to give a less inadequate standard of wages than was the case before the trade union movement secured power and influence. The party opposite, with which the hon. Member is associated, has done its best, sometimes with brutality and frequently with cruelty, to oppose the growth of the trade union movement. [HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense!"] If hon. Members opposite were to-day employés of the Union Bank of Scotland they would be experiencing, even in 1937, the shadow of that kind of anti-trade union activity.
Secondly, supporters of the Government cause considerable annoyance to my hon. Friends on this side when they take credit for the growth of the social services system which, during the last 25 years, has undoubtedly made a considerable contribution to the standard of public health. But the great social services system of this country has been wrung, by constant pressure by my hon. Friends, out of successive reluctant Conservative Governments. There is hardly a social service in existence that has not been opposed in its initial stages by the very people who, in 1937, claim the political credit for it. It is not inappropriate for me to tell the House, particularly in view of what I intend to say in a few minutes, that some six or seven months ago, on a Wednesday afternoon, I went to the Library to read the Debate on the 1906 Act concerning the feeding of necessitous children, a very miserable and meagre little Act. I discovered that that Act was vigorously opposed by Conservative Members of the House at that time, and that the leader of the Opposition, in the Committee stage, said that the Bill would lead to the prolific production of children, to the improvident marriage of young persons at the ages of 19 and 20, and would be a deliberate incitement to the working classes to spend their money on drink. Whatever improvements have been made in the standard of public health during the last quarter of a century have been due far more to the work of my hon. Friends than to the present Government.
I am glad that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education is in his place, because I desire especially to direct attention to the last report of the Board of Education. On page 48 of that report, in connection with the nutrition
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and feeding of school children, it is stated that the medical officers of the Board, as a result of the 1936 investigations and returns, reported that 74 · 1 per cent. of the school children were in a normal condition of health, and the report goes on:
"In the country as a whole school medical officers found no evidence of any general deterioration in the condition of the children as a result of the economic stress of recent years."
I would like to ask one or two questions. From what standard was there "no evidence of any general deterioration?" Secondly, the report says that 74 · 1 per cent. of the children were in normal health. What does the word "normal" signify? Is there one standard of health for all the school children—public school, secondary school and elementary school like—which is regarded by the Board as the normal standard of health, or are there, as I fear, different standards of normalcy for different social classes of children in different areas and even in different schools in the same area? The normal health in the middle-class group is a higher normal health than it is among the working-class children. It is notorious, and it is supported by the figures that were given by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Rollox (Mr. Leonard), that in any public school at a given age a child is higher and heavier than is his less fortunate brother of the same age in an elementary school.
I wish I could avoid the conclusion that in this matter, just as the Board of Education still has a class view of the type of education that working-class children are entitled to have—the elementary type of education—so it has a class view as to the normal health that an elementary school child is entitled to enjoy. It believes that those children are entitled only to an elementary education and that similarly they are entitled only to an elementary standard of health. I am certain that if one took the whole of the children from any elementary school in my division, 74.1 of whom on the average would be regarded, in terms of the Board's report, as being normal, and put them into any reasonably comfortable middle-class town and had them inspected by the medical officer in relation to the normal standard of school-child health there, they would all be found to be substandard, and not normal standard. They are regarded by the Board as being normal

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only because they conform to the average of their own school and of their own area, and not because they conform to the general average of health throughout the whole scholastic system.
I wish, also, to draw attention to the investigation carried out in Newcastle to which my hon. Friend the Member for St. Rollox (Mr. Leonard) referred. I wish to quote two or three other figures from the investigation in support of the point that was so well made by my hon. Friend. A sub-standard of nutrition does not only mean shorter height and lower weight, but, what is very serious indeed, a lowered capacity of disease resistance. It was shown in the Newcastle investigation that out of 124 children in the better class, two had had pneumonia, one pleurisy and two chronic recurring coughs. In the working class, 17 had had pneumonia and 32 bronchitis. It was shown that in the better class group, 6 had had measles, and that in the working-class group, 46 had had measles. There is definitely a class distinction in the assessment of child health as between a child in the elementary school in an area such as that covered by my constituency and a child who was much more fortunate in discriminating as to the type of parents he would like to have. In order to pursue the point, I will draw the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary to the last part of paragraph 20 of this part of the report, in which it is stated:
"In some areas the arrangements for the discovery of under-nourished children are not yet complete."
How, then, can we place any reliance upon the figures produced in the report when the report itself states that the arrangements for discovering undernourished children are not yet complete?
"In others the income scales adopted for the purpose of assessing the parents' ability to pay are too severe, while in others the food provided, the service of the meals, and the premises in which they are served are all or severally open to criticism. The need for the periodical nutrition surveys recommended in paragraph 7 of Circular 1443 has been strikingly proved in an urban area in Lancashire where, until 1936, only tree milk was provided for about 700 children. As the result of a thorough nutrition survey"—
How many areas are there where a thorough nutrition survey has to be undertaken for the first time?—
"it was found that 1,300 additional children were in need of supplementary
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nourishment, and a complete scheme for the provision of meals and/or milk is now in operation."
Paragraph 20 of the Board's report is completely inconsistent with the satisfaction expressed in an earlier paragraph. I seriously urge on the Government that these grave disparities as regards child health, between one area and another, between the Special Areas, for instance, and areas like my own which while not Special Areas are still distressed areas, and areas which are more comfortably off, are having a very serious anti-social effect. The present inadequacies in the provision made for the working-class child lead to a lowering of physical efficiency and also to a lowering of the capacity for disease resistance. In my constituency which, as I say, is not as bad as the Special Areas there are, I am sure, hundreds of children who are denied a regular and satisfactory amount of meat, milk, butter, eggs, cream, fruit and all those things in which the children of most Members of this House can enjoy freely when their appetite tempts them to do so. There is also the question of the capacity for enjoying holidays at the seaside. I would not mention this subject were it not that earlier references have been made to it. There must be still thousands of children in this country who have never played on the sands, who have never bathed in the sea, who have never bared their bodies to the sun who have been denied not only the opportunities of enjoyment, but the opportunities for recuperation which they seriously need.
For those reasons I direct attention to the present operation of the school meals arrangements. The Board of Education in the last few days has been courteous enough to supply me with some interesting and up-to-date information, and I discover from a careful analysis of that information, that, taking counties and boroughs and county boroughs, the following are the percentages in each of those three categories, of authorities which provide nothing at all—neither milk nor solid meals. In the case of counties, 41 per cent. provide nothing. In the case of boroughs 24 per cent. provide nothing and in the case of county boroughs 3 per cent. provide nothing. I suggest that there is scope for political reflection in those figures and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education may be able to understand how it

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is that in the case of the county boroughs, 97 per cent. of the authorities provide something, while in the case of the county councils only 59 per cent. provide anything at all. Taking the same three categories again, we find that of the counties, 87 per cent. provide no solid food; of the boroughs 66 per cent. provide no solid food and of the county boroughs only 19 per cent. provide no solid food.
I wish particularly to draw attention to the inadequacy of the present arrangements in the county in which my own constituency is situated. The Derbyshire County Council does not provide one free solid meal for one child in the whole of that county. To those who know that the coalfield in Derbyshire is a pretty considerable one, and who know something of the present depressed condition of the people in the mining industry, it is a shocking thing, that, in the whole of that county, as far as I know, up to 31st March, 1936, not one free solid meal was provided for one school child. That is not due, as the Parliamentary Secretary once urged, to rural difficulties. It is due to a complete absence of sympathy or willingness. Despite what the Board of Education has attempted, it has not yet clone enough to persuade reluctant local authorities, with an unsympathetic political point of view, to make use of the provisions which are on the Statute Book for this purpose. It is only by doing so, that we can avoid a substantial deterioration in the public health with its obviously serious results, and also avoid the complete frustration of the whole process of our educational system.
6.7 p.m.
Viscountess Astor: While I am grateful to the hon. Member who put down this Motion for discussion, I am sorry that in the course of the Debate we have heard from some hon. Members the old cry of class consciousness. Nothing upsets me more than to hear people talk about class consciousness. I do not happen to be class conscious, and I find that when questions of class distinctions between different sections of the community are introduced in a discussion, one always gets away from the facts. This is a Debate in which we want to face the facts, to find out whether the Government are doing enough and try, if possible, to make them do more. I am not going to condemn the Government. Personally, I am deeply grateful to the Government for all they
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have done. I have been in the House long enough to have seen a good many Governments come and go. I had to sit here from 1929 to 1931 and watch our social services disappearing. had to watch the unemployment figures going up, and up and up, and the trade figures going down, and down and down, until the National Government came in and not only saved the country, but saved our social services.
I am the last person in the world to condemn the Government in regard to the social services. I watched them face the slum problem in this country. No other country in the world has done as much in as short a time to deal with that problem as this country. I remember the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) before he was Minister of Health, and I remember his promises. I heard Mr. Sidney Webb, as he then was, and others talking about the Socialist schemes that were all ready and cut-and-dried and only waiting until the party got into office. When they got into office we sat here for two years and said, "Show us your schemes. We do not care what they are; if they are workable, give them to us."
Mr. T. Johnston: The Noble Lady, I understand, is referring to slums. Has she forgotten that the first attack on the slums was made in the 1930 Act passed by the Labour Government?
Viscountess Astor: I remember that Act perfectly. The Government to which the right hon. Gentleman belonged did nothing else but pass that Act. As I say, we used to ask hon. Members opposite to show us their schemes, but they had not any plans that would work. They have told us a lot about the atrocities of the capitalist system. I say we should thank God that we have a capitalist system and a Government who believe in it, instead of a Government who have only theories that will not work. I am not here to apologise for the National Government. This Government, faced with the slum problem could have said, "We are doing pretty well about housing, and we are carrying on as all other Governments have done, and that is enough." But they did not say that. They said that the slum problem had to be faced, and they got to work and they did something about it.

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I want to put this question to them. Are they going to face the question of malnutrition as they faced the slum problem? They can claim that they are the only Government who have given milk to the school children. They can claim that the system of school meals has extended enormously. We know that our social services are the finest in the world. But, even all that the Government are doing will not solve the problem of malnutrition, and I want to see them tackle that problem just as they tackled the slums. I know there is a terrific temptation to make political capital out of these questions. It is very easy to hit the Opposition in discussions of this kind, and, indeed, I do like to hit them because it is too easy, but my experience in this House goes back for some time. It is all very well for comparatively new Members opposite to make statements such as we have heard, but they cannot get past an old bird like me with such statements. The kind of exaggeration which we hear from the Members of the Opposition will not do any good. We heard the hon. Member who moved the Motion speaking about great numbers of people being hungry and in want, but exaggeration will not solve the problem. The Government say "The problem is there, and we must see what it is possible to do about it, but until the extent of the problem has been defined we cannot know what to do." It is no good hon. Members opposite asking them to set up another committee. I hope the Government will do nothing of the kind. I am suspicious of too many committees.
We have new knowledge of malnutrition to-day just as we had new knowledge about slums and housing when we set about dealing with those problems. A century ago, the medical officers of health, if there were any at that time, would have been content with the conditions which existed when we started to deal with the slums. But we have new knowledge about the appalling effect of slum dwellings on the health of the people and I would say that the wife of a miner's leader or a trade union Member of this House to-day has far more comforts and lives on a higher standard than a queen of a hundred years ago. We cannot go back as some hon. Members are constantly trying to do. We
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want to go forward. We have to-day a higher standard of nutrition. It is interesting to note that an international body representative of eight countries, was set up to consider this subject, and they agreed that malnutrition was not confined to the poor countries, but existed in the rich countries like America and Great Britain. They also said that medical knowledge on the subject was sometimes deficient and we cannot always go by what the medical people say on this question.
This important committee carried out a lot of expert work, without any national prejudice. This is important when it comes to the question of food production, each country wants to be self-sufficient. We know that if each country insists on being self-sufficient and producing its own food supplies, we cannot solve the problem of making the proper foods available at right and cheap prices. In spite of dangers due to national prejudice the committee produced a splendid report. I do not think any country has gone ahead in dealing with the subject as we have gone ahead here. Certainly no democratic country has done so, and we can only compare ourselves with the democratic free countries.
In England the Minister of Health appointed an advisory committee under the chairmanship of Lord Luke. Certain estimates and figures made by Mr. Lloyd of the Market Supply Committee were accepted as substantially accurate by the Minister's own Committee. Practically the same figures are to be found in the report by Sir John On. The Minister cannot get away from it by saying that Sir John Orr's figures are wrong, because they are approximately the same as the figures accepted by his own Committee. It may be said that a full survey was not made. It may be said that the survey might have taken in a larger range of families, but I think it is agreed that the figures in both cases are pretty nearly accurate. Sir John On said that there were in this country 4,500,000 people who were, not starving, not even hungry, but who had not enough money to buy for their children and themselves sufficient of the right kind of foods for health, such as vegetables, fruit and milk in addition to bread. That is a very serious statement, and I think the House of Commons ought to ask what the Government are going to do about it.

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It is no good setting up any more committees. That is what I am really against. This is a question that will not wait, and I have, I hope, a constructive suggestion to make. Suppose it was a case of only 3,000,000 people in the country whose income was such as not to allow them to buy what are called these health foods, that would be serious enough, but the committee, the Government's own committee, said it was 4,500,000. Mr. Seebohm Rowntree said that if the Government wanted the children in large families to get enough of these health foods, they would have to give cash allowances to the tune of£5,000,000. I do not believe we can do that at once. We all know that the hon. Member for the Combined Universities (Miss Rathbone) has talked in this House for years about family allowances, and we all know too that for many years past one of the great difficulties has been that the trade unions have been against them. [Interruption.] You are so generous and so unlike the rest of us over here; you are so perfect, so I am showing that there is a flaw in your perfection. The trade unions would not have anything to do with family allowances, but I think that is the right way. We shall not get that at once, however, so what are we going to do about it?
We have a rise in prices, we know, and I think it is owing to two things, namely, the world market and our policy of marketing boards. Look at the price of milk. That is entirely the fault of the Milk Marketing Board but these marketing boards are not a thing invented by the National Government. They were invented by the Labour party to solve all problems, and the National Government were stupid enough to take these unworkable Socialist ideas from the Labour party. The Labour party, who talk about all these boards, are really the party that invented them and made it a crime for farmers to sell cheap milk. It is the Labour party that made it a crime to grow so many potatoes. They cannot get around it and they know they cannot. Socialist theories will not work, but the National Government foolishly took them on in this case. Never again should we look to the other side of the House for ideas; they will not work.
Sir Arthur Salter: Does the Noble Lady agree that it was the provisions of the 1933 Act as to quotas and restriction of
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imports which enabled the Marketing Board to put up prices as they would not have been able to do under the Addison Act of 1931?
Viscountess Astor: That is what you knew the Marketing Board would not do, and if the hon. Member will read the speeches made by my husband in another House and pamphlets written about it, he will see that he predicted that that is what would happen. Anyhow, the first thing they ought to do is to see to it that the Milk Marketing Board should not be elected mainly by farmers. They should do what they did in Ulster and have people who have nothing to do with the industry. That is working very well. It ought to be done at once. There is no doubt that the Government have got to subsidise foodstuffs, I think to the tune of£5,000,000. They are bound to do it to get to these malnourished children. They should subsidise school feeding, infant welfare centres, open air nursery schools, and maternity centres, and if they did that, the result would be an enormous increase in our own homegrown agricultural products.
It has been said that if the people of this country ate enough of these health-giving foods, prices would at once go up. For instance, milk would rise by 70 per cent., fruit by 60 per cent., eggs by 65 per cent., and vegetables by 45 per cent. What a terrific help that would be to the farmers, because all these are fresh commodities and they have a natural advantage over the foreigners. That ought to be the policy of our Keep-Fit programme and of our agricultural programme—to encourage, by subsidising, the growing of food for these necessitous children. It would immediately solve the problem of these malnurtured children and help our agricultural policy, and it would be the basis of our Keep-Fit programme. I think the House of Commons ought not to be complacent in this matter. We ought to see it as a problem and to want to solve it, but it will depend on what the Government will do in the next year. That is why I am so keen on it. If they are going to do any good, the back bench Members have not go to say, "Hear, hear," and be complacent and talk about the wonderful things we have done. They have got to say, "We have done wonderful things, but we have got to do even more wonderful things yet."

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Some hon. Members say that children will not take milk. Well, the Government tried an experiment. They tried giving cheap milk in some of the distressed areas, and what was the result? The children immediately drank four times, and the mothers three times, as much milk as before, and it is nonsense to say that they will not take milk. Hon. Members opposite talk a great deal of nonsense about poor starving children not being sufficiently fed. It is not all poverty, it is not all a question of wages; much of it is ignorance, and a great deal of it is bad cooking. It is a most astonishing thing that at our open-air nursery schools children come who have had too much to eat, but of the wrong sort, and we have got to get an educational policy to teach children in certain areas what are the right things to eat.
The House of Commons knows that I always get back to open-air nursery schools whenever I speak, and I believe that if we could press the Government at once and say, "You know very well that the local authorities are not doing what they could do in this matter," it would be a good thing. We have had a most important report from the Board of Education which shows that the local authorities have powers; first of all, to discover the children and then to feed them freely, where their parents are unable to do it. There has been progress in the last five years, but there are many local authorities which are not doing what they ought to do in this regard, and the Government ought to take powers to make the local authorities do it. Then, if this House of Commons insisted on£5,000,000 going towards this question of malnutrition and the growing of fresh vegetables, fresh food, milk, and bread, school feeding, maternity centres, and open-air nursery schools, I believe we should do more in that way than by all the sub-stuff speeches that we could make and that we hear from time to time.
It is a question of poverty and ignorance, and as the Government have done so splendidly about the slums, I hope the House of Commons will not let them go to sleep about this question. There is not only the Minister of Health, but there are also the Minister of Agriculture and the President of the Board of Education. We ought to have a national
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policy and ask both the younger and the older Members of this House to press it forward. Do not let the Government go to sleep. Do not be put off by exaggerations from the Opposition. Simply because the Opposition are making this a party question, we will not make it a party question. It is a national question, and I hope the Government will face it in a national and a productive way.
6.25 p.m.
Mr. R. Acland: I hope we shall have the Noble Lady the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Viscountess Astor) with us in the Lobby at 7.30 this evening. I thank the hon. Member for Clay Cross (Mr. Ridley) for the tributes which he paid to the social services based on principles pioneered by my party 25 years ago, and I would remind him that his party came into existence mainly because some people thought that my party was going too slowly, and that since his party came into existence no new principles of social legislation of any sort or kind have been pioneered through this House. The hon. and gallant Member for Hitchin (Sir A. Wilson) questioned the accuracy of some of Sir John Orr's figures. Sir John Orr says there are 4,500,000 people hungry every week and 18,000,000 who, though not conscious of hunger and though satisfactorily filled, are in one way or another suffering from malnutrition. Let us say with the hon. and gallant Member for Hitchin that those figures are very considerably inaccurate. Let us say they are twice too high. We then get 2,250,000 people hungry and 9,000,000 suffering in one way or another from malnutrition.
Well, that is a very serious situation, and it is not made any better by comparing it with other countries or with seven years ago. I really do not think the Government make a good case in this House by comparing the position with that of seven years ago. It is all very well for the country and for the platform, where people do not know any better, but in this House of Commons we know that in the last 3o years we and the whole world have moved through a period of rising trade cycles. The Government can justify themselves before a simple audience by quoting figures from 1930 to 1937, but in this House it is a little bit babyish to take those years and compare them, and then pretend that something

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frightfully clever is being done by the Government now. Does not all history show that these things go up and then down, and then up and down again, and does anyone suggest that that is not going to happen now? Anyhow, we are left with this very serious situation, and what are we going to do about it? The remarkable thing about the speech of the hon. Member for Oldham (Mr. H. Kerr), who moved the Amendment, thanking the Government for the proposed action which they were going to take, was that he did not mention any action that was going to be taken. That cannot be said of the Seconder of the Amendment, who spoke of the family budget inquiry, but I did not understand that that inquiry was being held with a view to taking any action, but that it was being held with a view to drawing up more accurate statistics for the cost-of-living index, and we have been told that the unemployed have been specifically excluded for that very purpose.
Now I want to make a practical suggestion about this problem. I say that the core of this problem is milk. What are the Government going to do about that? We are told that there is to be a scheme. The scheme ought, as an absolute minimum and as a sort of rather small introduction, to include cheap milk to school children for the whole year, to children below school age, to prospective mothers, and to factory workers. The milk-in-factories scheme ought to be pressed with the whole resources of the Ministry. It is an absolute gift, because you sell something to a man who does not have to pay for it. You invite a factory owner to allow you to bring milk into his factory for the workers. You are asking the factory owner to give you 90 seconds of his workmen's time to drink milk, and you will in return give him the health of his workers and reduce their absences from sickness.
Beyond those special schemes we ought to provide for more milk to go to the man who is perfectly normal, who is not of school age or below school age, who is not working in a factory, or who is not expecting to become a mother, and that requires that milk should be made cheaper. It could be done if the Government would take a new outlook on this question and would depart from their everlasting habit of calling something a
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policy which merely consists of applying a certain sum of money to some point of the existing economic situation. It is all very well for the noble Lady to talk about spending£5,000,000 on food, and suggesting that that would put up prices by 70 per cent.
Viscountess Astor: Put up consumption, I said, not prices.
Mr. Acland: We take rather a different view. We say it is not a policy merely to put more money into the existing situation. We say that a policy would consist of making some physical alteration in the existing system. Will the Government tackle on those lines the retail trade in milk? They might find, if they did, that something would be involved—I do not quite know what word to apply to it—but they might find that they would have to unify something in the hands of a commission, and I hope that if they did they would not funk. There ought to be one retail milk service in each street. There ought to be special rates for orders given with cash-in-advance at the beginning of the week. There ought to be special rates for those who take the milk on the first delivery, and for those who care to collect it from the depot for themselves. Anybody who wants fancy deliveries, wants to give his order at odd hours of the week, or who wants credit, had better be asked fancy prices. On the basis of cash-in-advance with the order at the beginning of the week for a level delivery by the first delivery daily throughout the week, and one service per street, there could be an enormous reduction in the price of milk. I have not enough time to go into the question of selling milk which is clean enough—not half boiled, and only half boiling the milk because it is so unclean that it will be damaging to health if it is sold without boiling. If the question of compensation were to come up, I would point out that the large companies have proved that they are only making one-tenth—was it?—of a penny per gallon profit on their milk, and that would be a very adequate basis of compensation in the case of the big companies.
I should like, in conclusion, to comment on one thing which the Noble Lady said, that we can only compare ourselves to democratic countries. I have a great aunt who was 61 at the time when the women's suffrage movement was at its

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height, and I am extremely glad to say that she is still alive. She was opposed to votes for women, and whenever she failed in some particular respect, forgot her ticket, or left her umbrella in a taxi, she always comforted herself by saying, "There you are, that proves that women are not fit to have the vote." In the same way, when the present Government, who do not take a particularly favourable view of democracy, cannot through their own incompetence get done a job which could be done by first-rate men, when they find themselves in exactly the same position as my great aunt, they say, "Well, does not that just show that democracy is not really a system which will work well?" This improvement in the distribution of milk, cutting the cost of retail distribution to the enormous benefit of our people, could be carried through by a Government which was determined to do it consisting of men who really knew the job of pioneering new principles in legislation, and not content to follow an efficient but uninspired Civil Service.
6.35 p.m.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Bernays): First, I should like to express my appreciation of the brevity which has been displayed by the hon. Member for Barnstaple (Mr. Acland), and I should also like to congratulate the Mover and the Seconder of the Motion. I only wish there were time for me to attempt an answer to all the questions put to me, but if I had the duty of answering all those questions I should be speaking not merely for the Minister of Health but for the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Minister of Pensions, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, the President of the Board of Education, the President of the Board of Trade, the Secretary of State for War, the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Labour.
Mr. Gallacher: And the Foreign Secretary.
Mr. Bernays: I think that was the only Department which was not involved. I feel that in comparison with me, Pooh-Bah would, under the old regulations, have been rejected as "not genuinely seeking work." Though the problem of nutrition has been raised from the Labour benches, it is one which concerns deeply
1300
every Member of this House. Each of us bears a responsibility for the welfare of those by whom we were sent here. A discussion of this kind is one which the Government welcome. They realise as much as any hon. Member opposite that their record will be judged, as every Government's record will be judged, by the answer to this searching question, "Have your legislation and your administration been reflected in the homes of the people in increased happiness?"
Although the hon. Member for St. Rollox (Mr. Leonard) was very restrained in his speech, there is not much restraint in the Motion. It speaks of widespread malnutrition, and I will deal with that point first. I should like to try to dispose of the idea that in this country there is, as the Motion states, a
"grave and urgent problem of hunger."
I think I can best answer that allegation by a quotation from a speech made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) at Leeds at the beginning of the year, in which he said that he was not going to pretend that malnutrition was very widespread, but he added that it was a real problem in certain areas. The figures in the latest annual report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education show that out of 1,680,000 school children examined, only 0 · 7 per cent. were suffering from bad nutrition; and Sir John Orr, who has been frequently quoted in this Debate, has never suggested that there was real hunger. He says on page 36 of his report:
"It should be kept in view that the standards on which the above comparisons are made are those compiled for the maintenance of perfect health, which is a standard very different from the average health."
I think it will be agreed in all parts of the House that it is irrefutable that every man, woman and child in this country is enabled to obtain, at any rate, the minimum necessary for subsistence. I do not propose at this stage to enter into the question of what is or what is not an optimum diet. Naturally, we must all give the statements of Sir John Orr the weight they deserve, coming as they do from an eminent man who speaks with great authority, but he himself stated that his conclusions were only tentative and based upon a comparatively small number of cases. I say that we have not yet the necessary evidence to form any abso-

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lute conclusion, but the Government are carrying out intensive inquiries, and it was to further that object that they appointed the Advisory Committee on Nutrition upon which Sir John Orr is himself serving. We have now had the first report of that committee, and they certainly give no support to the alarmist views expressed in the Debate this afternoon. They mention, in fact, how the consumption of some of the actual foodstuffs referred to by the Noble Lady the Member for Sutton (Viscountess Astor) has increased of late years. In paragraph 36, on page 16, they say:
"The consumption per head of most foodstuffs has increased since before the War. The largest proportionate increases have been in condensed milk, fruit, butter, vegetables (other than potatoes), eggs, tea, margarine and cheese. Large increases in the consumption of condensed milk and butter have also taken place during the last o years."
But there is one disquieting sentence in that report: "The consumption of milk ill all forms per head of the population is too low."
To the problem of making good that deficiency in the consumption of milk the Government are giving unremitting attention, and not merely attention. They have adopted two main lines of approach to the problem—investigation and action. What we in this House are all interested in is action, and I will summarise as briefly as I can the action taken to increase the consumption of milk. Long before the report of the Advisory Committee appeared the Government had taken action. In the autumn of 1934 there was introduced what has been described as the largest experiment in supplementary feeding which the world has yet seen, the milk-in-schools scheme. With the help of an Exchequer grant and a contribution by the Milk Marketing Board this scheme enables children in schools recognised for grant by the Board of Education to buy for a halfpenny a bottle of milk containing one-third of a pint. This means that parents can provide their children with milk at school at half the price they would have to pay for it if they provided it in their own homes.
Mr. Johnston: Less than half now.
Mr. Bernays: It is very nice to have that acknowledgment. Nearly 3,000,000 children are receiving milk under this scheme. The hon. Member for St. Rollox said poverty was the bar, but I am sure
1302
he will recall that in most areas milk is provided free for those children who need it and are unable to pay for it, and the number of children at present receiving milk in this way is about 400,000 in England and Wales and over 60,000 in Scotland. As the scheme covers 93 per cent. of the children in elementary schools it is clear that lack of facilities is not the reason why actually only half of the children are consuming milk. It is a question which is giving considerable concern to the Board of Education, and an important item in our health campaign which is now proceeding is to publicise the value of milk in schools.
I come to the question of milk and other things for other classes of the community. As part of their maternity and child-welfare services local authorities may arrange for supplies of milk and other foods to expectant and nursing mothers and children under school age, and those powers are now exercised universally. Further, following the report of the Nutrition Committee, general circulars were issued by the Minister of Health and the Secretary of State for Scotland asking authorities to review their arrangements for the supply of milk, to remove any undesirable restrictions on the supply and to make sure that the income scales adopted for the purpose of free or cheap supplies did not make it difficult for any mother to take advantage of the arrangement. The response to the circular of my right hon. Friend has been most satisfactory. Nearly all the welfare authorities, 402 out of the 412 to whom it was addressed, have sent replies. Those replies indicate that the importance of the question is realised, and that where the arrangements have fallen short in one particular or another the authorities are doing their best to improve them. I have the figures here: 98 authorities have increased the period during which milk is supplied, 62 have increased the quantity of milk supplied and 47 have adopted a more liberal scale.
There are also experimental milk schemes organised by the Milk Marketing Board in conjunction with the local authorities. Schemes are in operation in the depressed areas of Jarrow, the Rhondda, Walker-on-Tyne and Whitehaven. Under those schemes milk is supplied at 2d. a pint to expectant and nursing mothers

1303
and children under school age. The hon. Member for Barnstaple stressed the importance of milk in factories. The Ministry of Health is very well aware of the importance of it.
Mr. Acland: Has the hon. Gentleman any figures showing how that matter is going?
Mr. Bernays: I will let the hon. Member know. Now I come to the question of the price level. In the statement of the Government's long-term policy contained in the White Paper issued last July, the Government declared their intention to bring forward proposals for securing, in co-operation with the milk industry, a reduction in the price of liquid milk to local authorities for the purpose of their maternity and child welfare arrangements. Local authorities will then be in a position to carry out further extensions of their present arrangements.
So much for our action. I think that is the answer to the hon. Member for St. Rollox who asked what we were doing with regard to the demand of the Children's Minimum Council. He also raised the question of the boys at junior instruction centres who were not having enough food to enable them to play football. Almost while he was speaking a Bill became available in the Vote Office which deals with this matter. The Unemployment Insurance Bill enables local education authorities to provide solid meals for those in attendance at instructional centres. As to the other inquiries into family budgets and the quantitative dietary surveys I have not time to enter into them now, but when they have been completed other lines of action may be indicated and the House may rest assured that the Government will do their utmost to follow them up.
The Government have done more than any other Government to bring to the attention of the nation the importance of nutrition, and not merely of this nation but of all nations. At the meeting of the League of Nations in 1935 a proposal by our representative and the representative of Australia for an inquiry into nutrition was carried and resulted in the report by the Mixed Committee to the League of Nations which was discussed at Geneva this year, when I took the opportunity of saying on behalf of the Government that we regarded that report on nutrition
1304
both as a challenge and as an opportunity. The hon. Member for Barnstaple referred to figures which he regarded as childish. I do not think the electorate will regard them as childish. In the financial year 1930–31, when the Labour Government were in power, 153 local education authorities provided free meals; now the number is 247. Under the Labour Government, 185,000 children were fed free; now it is 535,000. When the Labour Government were in power, 27,500,000 meals were provided; now over 100,000,000 meals are provided. [An HON. MEMBERS: "It is not enough."] It is more than the Labour party gave, even though it may not be enough.
On the question of rising prices it would be idle to deny that the cost of living has risen since 1933, but the level of that year was a slump level. It was expected that some rise in the cost of living would accompany recovery, but that rise has been less in food prices than in other directions. The level of food prices—43 per cent. above pre-war—is much lower than that of all items of the household budget taken together—58 per cent. above pre-war. On 1st October, 1937, the level of prices was no higher than it was on 1st October, 193o, and 13 points lower than on 1st October, 1929. I do not think that those figures justify the claim that was made that prices are much higher.
The country knows what has accompanied the rise in prices. It is the rising employment figures. That is the real answer to the charge of poverty. Wages are the vital matter; 1,500,000 more people are getting them now than under the Labour Government. The country knows that the tremendous rise in employment could not come without some rise in prices. What were the difficulties when the Labour Government were in office? No responsible man has ever put the whole blame for the slump upon the Labour party. [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes, they have."] They were the victims to some extent of world causes. Where we censure them is that they did not grapple with them. Their difficulty was exceptionally low prices, as their leaders admitted. I have quotations here showing that Members of the Labour Front Bench at that time said that low prices were one of the causes of unemployment. We are now out of that area of very low prices, and our unemployment figures are now less than half what they were then.

1305
An attempt is made to censure us because the low prices that produced the slump no longer exist. But the Government have not forgotten those who are in need of financial assistance. In both unemployment assistance and public assistance the Ministers responsible have recommended that, in giving assistance, account should be taken of the rise in price of certain commodities.
The hon. Member for Hemsworth (Mr. G. Griffiths) raised particularly the question of the people on public assistance. My right hon. Friend has issued a circular dated 22nd November, 1937. I will read what he says:
"In order to ensure that relief granted is adequate in amount, the council will appreciate the importance with the approach of winter and at a time when the prices of certain commodities are showing some tendency to rise of keeping the position of recipients of relief under close review in order to satisfy themselves that the relief they are giving is not in fact inadequate."
Additional moneys are also going to distressed areas by reason of the recent revision of the block grant.
I would remind hon. Members opposite of the publication this morning of the remarkable report by Sir George Gillett in which he says that unemployment in the distressed areas has fallen by one-quarter. Even the "News Chronicle" says that there has been some improvement in the distressed areas in recent months. In the "Daily Herald," the leading article is headed "As Before," but the leader writer apparently forgot what he put at the top because he said:
"Things are not so had as a year ago, to he sure."
At the end of that report "Hope has returned," says the Commissioner. Hope has returned, not merely to the Special Areas but to the whole country, although I agree that much remains to be done. No body of reformers can possibly remain content with or see an end to their labours. It is like climbing a mountain. You negotiate a corner, and as soon as you are round the corner you see another corner requiring the same courage and resource. Under the National Government the country in its upward climb is reaching heights never yet attained. The nation is better fed and is healthier and happier than when the Government came into power.
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I have not time to deal with the statistics of the fall in the death rate, and of infant mortality, but I will take two diseases especially associated with malnutrition—tuberculosis and rickets. Death from tuberculosis now numbers only a half of what it was 25 years ago, and less than a quarter of what it was 5o years ago. Death from rickets is only half of what it was as recently as five years ago and each year fewer people suffer from those diseases. Take any test you like. In wages there has been a steady rise. Savings since 1931 have increased by£450,000,000. Social reform is continually expanding and extending. Food consumption is a pretty good barometer of prosperity, and the consumption of food, drink and tobacco is up by nearly 20 per cent. as compared with 1929. Boots and shoes are up by 25 per cent. Not merely do we find a steady improvement over the post-war period in all the factors that make for human happiness, but we find that that improvement has been greatly accelerated since the National Government took office. Judging by every test, however searching, I say that this Government has justified itself in better conditions for the people of our country, and I ask the House to reject this Socialist Motion as a distortion and a caricature of the position of England as it exists to-day.
7.2 p.m.
Mr. Johnston: Excepting always the issue of peace and war there can be no more important motion brought before this House during this Parliament than that raised by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Rollox (Mr. Leonard) this afternoon. No Socialist has ever contended, so far as I know, that there has not been a continuous and progressive improvement in the conditions of human life during the past 100 years. A group of some 36 professors, scientists and technicians in the United States have committed themselves to the assertion, that
"in agriculture one man can now do in one hour what it required 3,000 hours for him to accomplish in 1840."
We have never disputed continuous development. We boast about it. We glory in it. We are not Luddites. We do not seek to destroy the machine; we welcome the machine, but what we do urge is that the increased productivity due to developments of science, technique, human genius—the developments

1307
of productivity ought to be progressively distributed among the consumers of the world, and that any system which prevents the fullest possible use of the new machinery and skill is a system that stands condemned, in any assembly of sane men and women. If we can prove, as we think we can prove, that in every department of agriculture, fishing, production of food and clothing, there are potentialities which we never permitted fully to operate for the production and distribution of wealth, and that these potential powers are not being used and cannot be used to-day—if we can prove that then we say that our Socialist system is a preferable system to the system for which the present Government stand.
We are not concerned to deny that there have been improvements since 1931. But it is only childish folly or university debating clap-trap to assert that every improvement that has taken place between 1930 and 1937 is due to the National Government, or that the troubles in 1930 were due in whole or in part to the Labour Government That is mere futility and waste of time, and what we have got to address our minds to tonight is simply this: Can it be proved that in the midst of abundance, in the midst of wealth unsurpassed in history, there are people in our land going without sufficient food? And if that is so, can this House take any steps to remedy such a state of affairs? There was only, I think, one hon. Gentleman in this House who attempted to dispute the proposition put before us by the hon. Member for St. Rollox. The hon. Member for Hitchin (Sir A. Wilson), a gentleman of very great industry, whose abilities I admire in many ways, n de a polite attack on my friend Sir John Orr. Well Sir John Orr is able enough to defend himself, and in any case I will not tonight attempt the task, but the hon. Member for Hitchin justified his attack on Sir John On by quoting Professor Bowley, and I happened to have in my hand at the time he was making the attack the exact article by Professor Bowley in the "Nineteenth Century" for December, 1936, to which he referred. Professor Bowley, in the last paragraph of his article, said:
"There is abundant medical evidence that malnutrition, slight or serious, is widespread."
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That is what my hon. Friend the Member for St. Rollox said. The article continues:
"There are classes of the population here and abroad whose unaided resources are too small for adequate expenditure on food. There is no need to wait for perfect statistics before tackling the problems. The problems of want are now of manageable dimensions."
That is the authority to whom the hon. Member for Hitchin referred. Do we require to go into statistics? The committee on the proper dietary for children in Poor Law homes, quoted this afternoon, proved that when buying food wholesale in large quantities it took you 4s. 6½d. properly to feed a child in a Poor Law institution. Since then there has been a rise in wholesale prices, and if it took 4s. 6½d. in 1932, it will take somewhere about 6s. now, and if it takes 6s. now to feed a child then there are thousands upon thousands going underfed. I could not feed a child on 6s. per week, neither could the hon. Gentleman who preceded me, and neither can any Member of this House. You cannot do it. You never try to do it. We know it cannot be done, and if it cannot be done, how is it possible to say that the child of the unemployed workman which gets an allowance of 3s. per week, not for food alone, but for food, clothing, boots, everything—how can it be argued by anybody that the child for which only 3s. is given, can be adequately nourished?
Somebody quoted the report of the Medical Officer of Health for England, about the investigation by the public health department at Newcastle. There were 66 families examined by the Medical Officer of Health there, and he came to the conclusion that a few families were receiving definitely insufficient diet, and others diets which though not definitely insufficient could be regarded as on the border line. Of the unemployed, 76 per cent. only got butter; 66 per cent. never have fresh milk at any time going into the home. All the authorities—Professor Bowley, Sir Arthur McNalty, Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, Lord Horder—every authority that we know of, we can produce here to prove that there is some malnutrition, some underfeeding, some school starvation, and we can quote a medical Member who sits on the second Government Bench, the Member for St. Albans (Sir F. Fremantle), who has published a book on the health of the nation, the preface to which was written by the present Prime Minister

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He tells us that the cost of disease to this nation is some£300,000,000 a year.
Let me endeavour to persuade the Government Bench that we know there are improvements going on. When I was a child the only kind of orange we could get was a Spanish one, often sour and indigestible and almost inedible. To-day we get the Jaffa orange, sweet and succulent. In the 'forties of last century the only place where bananas were ever seen was at the Lord Mayor's Banquet, and to-day they are hawked on the street barrows at a penny each. In the 'forties of last century the Thames was an open sewer, and typhoid, instead of being an incident in a generation, was common and spread to the upper classes. It was only when the Prince of Wales took it up in 1871 that there began a sanitary campaign which resulted in its practical abolition. If we could devise some means whereby the greatest disease of all, hunger, insufficiency and want, could be spread to the mansions of the rich, as cholera, small-pox and other diseases once spread, we should get this scandal of malnutrition and under-feeding stopped instanter.
I do not want to spend my time quoting authorities on malnutrition that has been ably done this afternoon. I would rather spend it making constructive suggestions to the Government. The hon. Gentleman said quite truthfully, that they were developing a clinic system, and quite truthfully that they were providing milk in the schools at is. per gallon. He wanted that scheme developed, and he said that there were not sufficient children in the schools taking the milk. Will he or anybody tell me why if it is right that the child from 5 to 14 years of age at school should get this milk at Is. a gallon, the child from one day old up to five years old should be compelled through its mother to pay 2s. Ad. a gallon? I want an answer to that question. Surely the child of only a few months of age needs milk more than a child of five, six or more years of age up to 14, yet the policy pursued by the Government, and being pursued now, is to provide cheap milk at is. a gallon for a child of 14, but to charge the mother in the depressed area—the mother of the unemployed child that is getting only 3s. a week—to charge that poor woman 2s. 4d. a gallon for the milk. I know no justification whatever for the continua-
1310
tion of that policy, and I venture to repeat the suggestion I have made before in this House.
I know there are members of the Milk Marketing Board who would welcome Government pressure to enable them to make such a change as I propose. It should be possible to authorise every medical officer of health in the country to issue dockets to every mother with children under five years of age, and to every sick and nursing mother, that would enable them to go to any registered milk distributor and get all the milk they required at is. a gallon. That would be no loss to the Milk Marketing Board. If it pays the Milk Marketing Board to sell milk at Is. a gallon to schools, and to urge that more and ever more milk be sold in the schools at is. a gallon, it would equally pay them to have that milk sold—there would be no cost for transport, because the people would have to go to the shops for it—in unlimited quantities to the poor at is. a gallon. If you were to halve the price of milk to the poor, you would increase the quantity of milk consumed, and would do a great deal for agriculture—someone has spoken about marrying health and agriculture; and you would do it almost in a night. You would develop a policy of equating production to consumption, and you would begin to fix the level of production by the amount necessary for consumption, in a land where we have millions of people now who do not get enough to eat.
There has been a lot of talk this afternoon, and I had intended to say something about it, on the question whether there are really any children at school who are hungry, or how many are hungry, or what this doctor at the Board of Education or the other doctor somewhere else has said. I see the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education on the bench opposite. May I direct his attention to a lecture given to the Royal Statistical Society on the 16th of this month by Mr. R. Huws Jones, the statistician to the University of Liverpool? I have the lecture here in proof, and it is a most amazing revelation of the different results that you get from different doctors examining these children. Furthermore, it is a most amazing revelation of the different results that you will get from the same doctor examining the same children at periods,

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only a week or two apart. Here is the sort of thing that is set out in this lecture. Out of Zoo children examined in Cheshire, one doctor found three sub-normal boys. In the same zoo children, another doctor found 90 sub-normal boys. What reliance can any Government place upon ex-parte statistics of that kind? But the plain inescapable fact, which no amount of statistics will get round, is that no man or woman in this building to-night can feed a child on 3s. per week. The thing is not possible. [Interruption.] I do not know what the Noble Lady means—
Viscountess Astor: I was referring to the open-air nursery schools, but of course that is collective feeding.
Mr. Johnston: Even in that case you cannot feed them properly on 3s.
Viscountess Astor: Very properly.
Mr. Johnston: This allowance of 3s. is not for food alone. If self-righteousness is a crime, the Noble Lady is liable to a capital sentence. The fact of the matter is that an expenditure of 3s. cannot maintain a child now. Everybody knows that. There is no need to go to doctors and international committees of experts to get that proven. We know it is true that a child cannot be fed on 3s. a week, and, if a child cannot be fed on 3s. a week, there are hundreds of thousands of homes in this land where the spectre of want and hunger abides at the fireside week in and week out.
In the few moments that remain to me, I should like to go back to the positive side of our Motion. If you can, without doing injustice to anyone, supply sick and nursing mothers, and mothers with babies from one to five years old, with all the milk that they need—let them be the judges of the amounts required—you will take one big step forward in public health, and you will begin to justify the assertion commonly made that in this country nobody need go hungry. We need not quarrel about the meaning of the word "hungry."
If you can do that with milk, what is wrong about doing it with fruit? Why should we have fruit destroyed or unplucked in our orchards when there are hundreds of thousands of people who never get fresh fruit? Our herring fishermen are in a state of starvation. They
1312
cannot sell their fish; boats are falling into ruin; towns are falling into ruin; municipal capital is disappearing; a hardy race around our coasts is perishing. Have we not sufficient wit and wisdom among us so to organise the catch of these men that the needy in our distressed areas shall be supplied with the produce of their labour on the sea?
Why cannot that be done? You have done far more marvellous things than that. You wireless messages through the air; you fly across the world; you travel under the sea; you harness the tides; you can do anything and everything, seemingly, but this little simple matter of transferring surplus produce from one place to another, and guaranteeing that every man, woman and child in the land shall at any rate get food. If that were done, if the party opposite would begin to consider it, I, for one, would forgive them for taking a longer time to make the necessary social reconstruction which converting capitalism into a co-operative commonwealth would involve. Food there must be; food there is. You have discovered how to bring refrigerated food through the Suez Canal. You can bring food through hot climates to the tables of our people. There is a glut of everything that I know of except housing. I know of nothing in this land that is necessary for a decent livelihood, except dwellings, that is short, or that we could not produce or get speedily. Clothes, boots, food—all these we could have.
The Government stand for what is called a capitalist system, which says that, even if we could produce double what we produce now, the workers in industry shall not be allowed to do so. Even if we could double our product of food, the producers are not called upon to do it. We on these benches say that the aim of all production should be to meet the consuming demands of the nation. We should ascertain, first of all, what we require for decent sustenance for everyone, and then set our producers in guilds to produce those requirements. In doing so, we should produce health, happiness and wealth. I honestly believe there are men on these benches who could prove to-night that you could make these changes to the financial advantage of His Majesty's Exchequer.
If you spend£300,000,000 a year on ambulance work in connection with

1313
disease, what greater waste can there be than that? If you spend these great and growing sums on disease, ha: not the time arrived when all sections of this House should unite in an endeavour to transfer production from a system of scarcity to a system of abundance and distribution? A new era would then open before us. The visions of men like Sir John Orr, who tell us that in one generation we could add two inches to the height and so many pounds—I forget the exact figure—to the weight of our people, would be realised. We should be stronger, more vigorous, healthier and
happier. These things are within our reach now, party politics apart. The choice before this Government and every other Government is: Shall we continue, in an age of abundance, to permit 1,000,000 of our people to go either hungry or semi-hungry, either in want or in fear of want, when enough, and more than enough, lies around our door?
Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
The House divided: Ayes, 140; Noes, 202.

Division No. 21.]

AYES.

[7.27 p.m.

Acland, R. T. D. (Barnstaple)

Harris, Sir P. A.

Owen, Major G.

Adams, D. (Consett)

Harvey, T. E. (Eng. Univ's.)

Paling, W.

Alexander, Rt. Hon. A. V. (H'lsbr.)

Hayday, A.

Parker, J.

Ammon, C. G.

Henderson, A. (Kingswinford)

Pethick-Lawrence, Rt. Hon. F. W.

Anderson, Sir A. Garrett (C. of Ldn.)

Henderson, J. (Ardwick)

Quibell, D. J. K.

Anderson, F. (Whitehaven)

Henderson, T. (Tradeston)

Richards, R. (Wrexham)

Attlee, Rt. Hon. C. R.

Hicks, E. G.

Ridley, G.

Bonfield, J. W.

Hills, A. (Pontefract)

Riley, B.

Barnes, A. J.

Holdsworth, H.

Ritson, J.

Barr, J.

Hollins, A.

Roberts, Rt. Hon. F. O. (W. Brom.)

Batey, J.

Hopkin, D.

Roberts, W. (Cumberland, N.)

Bellenger, F. J.

Jagger, J.

Robinson, W. A. (St. Helens)

Benn, Rt. Hon. W. W.

Jenkins, Sir W. (Neath)

Sanders, W. S.

Benson, G.

John, W.

Seely, Sir H. M.

Bevan, A.

Johnston, Rt. Hon. T.

Sexton, T. M.

Broad, F. A.

Jones, A. C. (Shipley)

Short, A.

Bromfield, W.

Jones, J. J. (Silvertown)

Silkin, L.

Brown, Rt. Hon. J. (S. Ayrshire)

Kelly, W. T.

Silverman, S. S.

Burke, W. A.

Kennedy, Rt. Hon. T.

Simpson, F. B.

Cape, T.

Lansbury, Rt. Hon. G.

Smith, Ben (Rotherhithe)

Clynes, Rt. Hon. J. R.

Lathan, G.

Smith, E. (Stoke)

Cove, W. G.

Lawson, J. J.

Smith, Rt. Hon. H. B. Lees- (K'ly)

Cripps, Hon. Sir Stafford

Leach, W.

Smith, T. (Normanton)

Daggar, G.

Leslie, J. R.

Sorensen, R. W.

Dalton, H.

Logan, D. G.

Stephen, C.

Davidson, J. J. (Maryhill)

Lunn, W.

Stewart, W. J. (H'ght'n-le-Sp'ng)

Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)

Macdonald, G. (Ince)

Taylor, R. J. (Morpeth)

Day, H.

McEntee, V. La T.

Thorne, W.

Dobbie, W.

McGhee, H. G.

Thurtle, E.

Dunn, E. (Rather Valley)

Maclean, N.

Tinker, J. J.

Ede, J. C.

MacMillan, M. (Western Isles)

Viant, S. P.

Edwards, A. (Middlesbrough E.)

MacNeill, Weir, L.

Walkden, A. G.

Edwards, Sir C. (Bedwellty)

Mainwaring, W. H.

Walker, J.

Evans, D. O. (Cardigan)

Mander, G. le M.

Watkins, F. C.

Fletcher, Lt.-Comdr. R. T. H.

Marklew, E.

Watson, W. McL.

Frankel, D.

Marshall, F.

Wedgwood, Rt. Hon. J. C.

Gallacher, W.

Mothers, G.

Welsh, J. C.

Gardner, B. W.

Maxton, J.

Westwood, J.

Garro Jones, G. M.

Messer, F.

White, H. Graham

George, Major G. Lloyd (Pembroke)

Milner, Major J.

Wilkinson, Ellen

George, Megan Lloyd (Anglesey)

Montague, F.

Williams, E. J. (Ogmore)

Greenwood, Rt. Hon. A.

Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Hackney, S.)

Williams, T. (Don Valley)

Griffith, F. Kingsley (M'ddl'sbro, W.)

Morrison, R. C. (Tottenham, N.)

Wilson, C. H. (Attercliffe)

Griffiths, J. (Llanelly)

Muff, G.

Windsor, W. (Hull, C.)

Groves, T. E.

Nathan, Colonel H. L.

Woods, G. S. (Finsbury)

Guest, Dr. L. H. (Islington, N.)

Naylor, T. E.

Hall, G. H. (Aberdare)

Noel-Baker, P. J.

TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

Hardie, Agnes

Oliver, G. H.

Mr. Leonard and Mr. G. Grl ffiths

NOES.

Adams, S. V. T. (Leeds, W.)

Baldwin-Webb, Col. J.

Beechman, N. A.

Agnew, Lieut.-Comdr. P. G.

Balfour, G. (Hampstead)

Bernays, R. H.

Amery, Rt. Hon. L. C. M. S.

Balfour, Capt. H. H. (Isle of Thanet)

Bird, Sir R. B.

Anstruther-Gray, W. J.

Balniel, Lord

Blair, Sir R.

Asks, Sir R. W.

Barclay-Harvey, Sir C. M.

Boothby, R. J. G.

Astor, Major Hon. J. J. (Dover)

Barrie, Sir C. C.

Briscoe, Capt. R. G.

Astor, Viscountess (Plymouth, Sutton)

Bearnish, Rear-Admiral T. P. H.

Brooklebank, Sir Edmund

Astor, Hon. W. W. (Fulham, E.)

Beauchamp, Sir B. C.

Brown, Col. D. C. (Hexham)

Atholl, Duchess of

Beaumont, Hon. F. E. B. (Portsm'h)

Butler, R. A.

Campbell, Sir E. T.

Haslam, Sir J. (Bolton)

Radford, E. A.

Carver, Major W. H.

Heilgers, Captain F. F. A.

Raikes, H. V. A. M.

Cary, R. A.

Heneage, Lieut.-Colonel A. P.

Ramsay, Captain A. H. M.

Cayzer, Sir C. W. (City of Chester)

Higgs, W. F.

Ramsden, Sir E.

Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.)

Holmes, J. S.

Rankin, Sir R.

Channon, H.

Hope, Captain Hon. A. O. J.

Rathbone, J. R. (Bodmin)

Chapman, A. (Rutherglen)

Hopkinson, A.

Reed, A. C. (Exeter)

Chapman, Sir S. (Edinburgh, S.)

Hore-Belisha, Rt. Hon. L.

Reid, W. Allan (Derby)

Christie, J. A.

Horsbrugh, Florence

Rickards, G. W. (Skipton)

Clarke, Lt.-Col. R. S. (E. Grinstead)

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

Ross, Major Sir R. D. (Londonderry)

Clarry, Sir Reginald

Hulbert, N. J.

Royds, Admiral P. M. R.

Colville, Lt.-Col. RI. Hon. D. J.

Hume, Sir G. H.

Russell, Sir Alexander

Conant, Captain R. J. E.

Hunter, T.

Russell, S. H. M. (Darwen)

Cook, Sir T. R. A. M. (Norfolk, N.)

Hutchinson, G. C.

Salmon, Sir I.

Cooke, J. D. (Hammersmith, S.)

Inskip, Rt. Hon. Sir T. W. H.

Samuel, M. R. A.

Cooper, Rt. Hn. T. M. (E'nburgh, W.)

Jarvis, Sir J. J.

Sandeman, Sir N. S.

Cox, H. B. Trevor

Joel, D. J. B.

Savery, Sir Servington

Crooke, J. S.

Jones, Sir G. W. H. (S'k N'w'gt'n)

Scott, Lord William

Crookshank, Capt. H. F. C.

Kerr, Colonel C. I. (Montrose)

Shaw, Major P. S. (Wavertree)

Croom-Johnson, R. P.

Kimball, L.

Shaw, Captain W. T. (Forfar)

Cross, R. H.

Lamb, Sir J. Q.

Shepperson, Sir E. W.

Cruddas, Col. B.

Lambert, Rt. Hon. G.

Smiles, Lieut.-Colonel Sir W. D.

Culverwell, C. T.

Law, Sir A. J. (High Peak)

Smith, Bracewell (Dulwich)

Davidson, Viscountess

Leech, Dr. J. W.

Smith, L. W. (Hallam)

Davies, Major Sir G. F. (Yeovil)

Lees-Jones, J.

Smithers, Sir W.

Denman, Hon. R. D.

Leighton, Major B. E. P.

Somervell. Sir D. B. (Crewe)

Donner, P. W.

Lindsay, K. M.

Spens. W. P.

Drewe, C.

Lipson, D. L.

Stewart, J. Henderson (Fife, E.)

Dugdale, Captain T. L.

Lloyd, G. W.

Stourton, Major Hon. J. J.

Duggan, H. J.

Loftus, P. C.

Strauss, H. G. (Norwich)

Douglass, Lord

Lovat-Fraser, J. A.

Stuart, Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn)

Eastwood, J. F.

Mabane, W. (Huddersfield)

Sutcliffe, H.

Eckersley, P. T.

MacAndrew, Colonel Sir C. G.

Tasker, Sir R. I.

Edmondson, Major Sir J.

M'Connell, Sir J.

Tate, Mavis C.

Elliot, Rt. Hon. W. E.

Macdonald, Capt. P. (Isle of Wight)

Thomas, J. P. L.

Ellis, Sir G.

McKie, J. H.

Thomson, Sir J. D. W.

Elliston, Capt. G. S.

Macnamara, Capt. J. R. J.

Tree, A. R. L. F.

Emery, J. F.

Macquisten, F. A.

Tufnell, Lieut.-Commander R. L.

Emmott, C. E. G. C.

Magnay, T.

Torton, R. H.

Emrys-Evans, P. V.

Makins, Brig.-Gen. E.

Wallace, Capt. Rt. Hon. Euan

Everard, W. L.

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

Ward, Lieut.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)

Findlay, Sir E.

Markham, S. F.

Ward, Irene M. B. (Wallsend)

Fleming, E. L.

Mayhew, Lt.-Col. J.

Warrender, Sir V.

Fremantle, Sir F. E.

Mills, Sir F. (Leyton, E.)

Waterhouse, Captain C.

Furness, S. N.

Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest)

Whiteley, Major J. P. (Buckingham)

Fyfe, D. P. M.

Mitchell, (Brentford and Chiswick)

Wickham, Lt.-Col. E. T. R.

Ganzoni, Sir J.

Mitchell, Sir W. Lane (Streatham)

Williams, C. (Torquay)

Gluckstein, L. H.

Morrison, Rt. Hon. W. S. (Cirencester)

Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

Grant-Ferris, R.

Muirhead, Lt.-Col. A. J.

Wilson, Lt.-Col. Sir A. T. (Hitchin)

Grattan-Doyle, Sir N.

Munro, P.

Windsor-Clive, Lieut.-Colonel G.

Gretton, Col. Rt. Hon. J.

O'Connor, Sir Terence J.

Winterton, Rt. Hon. Earl

Gridley, Sir A. B.

O'Neill, Rt. Hon. Sir Hugh

Wise, A. R.

Grimston, R. V.

Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. W. G. A.

Withers, Sir J. J.

Guest, Lieut.-Colonel H. (Drake)

Orr-Ewing, I. L.

Wragg, H.

Guest, Hon. (Brecon and Radnor)

Peake, O.

Wright, Wing-Commander J. A. C.

Guinness, T. L. E. B.

Pickthorn, K. W. M.

Young, A. S. L. (Partick)

Harbord, A.

Pilkington, R.

Harvey, Sir G.

Pownall, Lt.-Col. Sir Assheton

TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—

Haslam, Henry (Horncastle)

Procter, Major H. A.

Mr. Hamilton Kerr and Mr. Peat.

Question proposed, "That the proposed words be there added."
Mr. Ellis Smith rose—
It being after half-past Seven of the Clock, the Debate stood adjourned.

CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.
7.38 p.m.
Mr. Tinker: I beg to move,
"That, realising that the gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth are the result of the capitalist system, which cannot guarantee the necessary standard of life for vast numbers of the population, and realising also the waste of natural resources and productive power involved in a system the
1316
mainspring of which lies in the selfish pursuit of private profit, this House declares that legislative effort should be directed towards the substitution of an industrial and social order based upon public ownership and democratic control of the instruments of production and distribution."
On the Motion I am moving, the Debate will follow on almost similar lines to the Debate which has just concluded. It is not a bad thing to take a Debate on the condition of the people and a Debate on malnutrition, because many times we have complained of too much time being given to other things and not enough time to matters directly appertaining to the people of this country. First, I want to remove the impression created during the

1317
last Debate, when the hon. Member for Hitchin (Sir A. Wilson) pointed out that this country was in advance of any other country in regard to nutrition. We accept that. My Motion is not for the purpose of saying that any other country is better than our own. My intention is to emphasise the need for this country to make better use of the facilities it has, and to provide a better standard of life for our people, in keeping with the wealth that can be produced if opportunities are only utilised properly. That is the line that I intend to follow to-night.
The Motion covers many points. The condition of the people appertains to their ordinary life. The first thing I want to deal with is housing. Last week, I listened to the Scottish Debate on rural housing. I know that the Scottish Members are not particular whether an Englishman listens to their Debates or not, but I did listen, and I got some useful information. I know the conditions in England are bad, but it was a revelation to hear of the conditions in Scotland, and how difficult it was to get decent houses for the people. I have also a report from a Labour organisation in Lancashire, examining housing conditions there. This tells of the bad conditions that were found there. I have also another report. Hon. Members on that side often do not pay due regard to what we say on this subject, and so, to put my case as strongly as possible, I am going to quote what was said by a prominent Conservative, Sir Benjamin Dawson, on 25th April, 1936. The heading was, "Sir Benjamin Dawson ashamed of his party. 'Abominable' condition in Leeds slums." Talking about an advertisement which he had seen, appealing for contributions to a fund for providing coals for the poor, he said:
"I made an appointment with one of the staff of the society responsible for the advertisement, a society which is doing a wonderful work amongst the poor, and I spent half a day visiting numerous dwellings. When I had finished my tour, I felt thoroughly ashamed of my country, thoroughly ashamed of the National Government, and thoroughly ashamed of the Conservative party. The pigs on my farm are better housed and fed than some of the people I saw that day. How we in this year of our Lord, 1936, in this British civilisation, of which we are so proud and so boastful, can allow such abominable conditions to exist is incomprehensible. These conditions are to be seen in every large town in the country."
1318
That is from a prominent Conservative, and it proves that when hon. Members on the other side take credit to themselves for doing a lot of good things, there is at least much leeway to be made up, to give anything like decent conditions to the majority of our people. I hope the housing question will be pressed forward with the utmost vigour.
The next point is with regard to wages. Last night, an hon. Member, speaking of miners' wages, pointed out that there had been an improvement probably in the last 12 months. I believe there has been, but it is not sufficient at the present time. The intensive speeding-up in the mines-now is almost intolerable, and to get that extra money the miners are urged forward until life is almost a misery. When Lord Baldwin recently talked about a new thing having sprung up among the people, a nervous disease, he wondered if it was due to speeding up. I can answer Yes. Dealing with the wages question further, because it is well to tell Conservative Members something of the conditions prevailing, I want to talk of wages of cotton operatives in Lancashire. A paper of yesterday stated that a demand had been made on behalf of over 100,000 weavers in the manufacturing section for a minimum wage of 8¾d. an hour, which, in a 48-hour week, would mean a wage of 35s. When we boast of good wages being paid, we should remember that we have a section of the cotton industry in Lancashire at present fighting for a minimum wage of 8¾d. per hour, and realise the condition they are in. That is not a fantastic statement, because the demand is being made now.
The unemployed at the present time are suffering from very bad conditions. The increased cost of living is putting them into a very difficult position because they are not getting what ought to be given to them, and consequently they are being brought down to a lower standard of life. More attention ought to be given to these people. It is not fair that they should have to occupy their present position, which is due to no fault of their own. The condition of the people covers a wide area, and we cannot leave out of calculation a body of men and women who are driven to such extremes as the unemployed. There is a very serious aspect of the unemployed question relating to those who are over 45 years of age. It is a tragedy

1319
that our system provides no chance of employment for those who are over this border-line. Anyone who has read the report of Sir George Gillett, which is in the newspapers to-day, will realise where we are getting in that regard. According to his figures, although there has been some slight improvement in the Special Areas, 41 per cent. of the unemployed are men over 45 years of age, and he is telling the Government that these people must be given an opportunity. What right has private enterprise to discharge these people in the manner they are doing? If private enterprise is to carry on as a fair thing for the country, it will have to deal with all people and not pick out the best all the time, and leave those who get beyond the best working age to be kept by the country.
This is one of the things which will have to be examined in the light of what is taking place at the moment, and no more striking case could be made out than that made out by Sir George Gillett. There are a vast number of old age pensioners who have to apply for relief. In England 214,901, or 10 per cent., have to apply for additional relief, and the Scottish figure is 37,000, or 14 per cent., so that Scotland at the present time seems to be faring rather worse than this country with regard to housing and old age pensions. I can well understand now—I did not understand it before—why there are Scottish Members who want a Government of their own, because if Scotland is in a worse condition than England under a Government in England, it is only common sense that they should want to create a separate government for themselves. I shall have much more sympathy with Scottish speakers when I hear them in future. Hitherto I had thought that they wanted everything from this country and did not wish to give anything in return, but now I understand their position. There are a number of distressed areas in this country where very little is being done for the people, and something will really have to be done in that direction.
The Motion deals with the question of the equalisation of wealth. I have here some figures to help my case and to show the unequal distribution of wealth at the present time. It is estimated that we have for distribution and spending among the members of the community
1320
£3,600,000,000 per year. That is the latest figure. There are the rich, about 100,000 in number, with incomes of more than£2,000 a year. They take from the national income£599.000,000, or 16 per cent. Among those 100,000 are 10,000 people who take£22,000 a year. Next come the middle class, who number 2,200,000, with incomes between£25o and£2,000. They take£950,000,000, or 25 per cent. Next come people within incomes between 125 and£950. The lower middle class number 5,000,000 and take£980,000,000 a year, or 26 per cent. Then we come to the rock-bottom people, who number 11,000,000, with less than£125 each per year, and they take£1,100,000,000 or 31 per cent. Their average income is about£100. Therefore, we can realise the number of poverty-stricken cases there must be among these 11,000,000 people. There are the unemployed, the old age pensioners, the lower paid wage-earners who come in the lowest strata, and we are trying to show to the House that at the present time they are not enjoying the share in the national wealth to which they are entitled.
An Amendment is to be moved from the benches opposite telling us that they do not want undue interference with private enterprise. I want to know what undue interference means, because it must mean interference of some kind of other. There is an admission from the other side that capitalism or private enterprise cannot be allowed to go on unrestricted, which is quite a change from what has been the case. I have in my hand the report of a Debate in this House in 1923 on the capitalist system, in which Sir Alfred Mond said:
"What keeps this wretched private capitalistic system going? I will tell you. If a private capitalistic business is badly managed, it goes into the bankruptcy court. What does that mean? It means you have a method by which inefficiency is automatically weeded out of your industrial system. You have a method by which efficiency is automatically rewarded. It may be a crude system. It may be an unscientific system. It may seem a harsh system, but it is the only system in the world which has been devised up to the present."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th March, 1923; col. 2498, Vol. 161.]
Hon. Members opposite are altering that point of view by their Amendment, because they say in the Amendment that

1321
"the standard of living of the people has continuously and progressively ire proved,"
and they are
"unalterably opposed to any scheme of legislation which, by undue interference, would deprive the State of the benefits of private enterprise."
I am glad to know that at least there is an admission on the part of the other side that there must be some interference from time to time. What is the extent of it? Is it too much to ask that there should be a greater distribution or a more equal distribution of the wealth that is produced in this country and a lifting up of the lower stratum of our people by the creation of better conditions? What surprises me is that the Mover of the Amendment comes from Lancashire arid represents the Division of Eccles, and I advise him to read the report that has been issued by the Labour party on their examination of conditions in Lancashire. He will find how harsh are the conditions of the people. He will also remember that, in defending this system, the cotton business of Lancashire has suffered terribly, and that the cotton people have applied to this House for help to reorganise the industry, which proves to me and to my friends that Lancashire is not satisfied to be left a victim of what is called the fair play of competition If they stood by them there would be no application here for protection, but they have been driven to the Houses of Parliament to obtain the Spindles Act and other protective things, and have appealed to us to protect them from their friends, the other people in the industry, by putting a ring round them as much as possible. Yet we have an hon. Member here supporting an Amendment against what we are trying to do, namely to obtain better conditions for the working people, who at the present time are not enjoying the best that the country can give.
I notice that the hon. Gentleman who is to second the Amendment is the lion. Member for Rutherglen (Mr. Chapman). I hope that my Scottish Friends will be able to deal with him. I do not know the condition of Rutherglen, but I expect that it is another industrial centre which is suffering from what is taking place. Therefore, I hope that someone who knows the position in his constituency will tell him what he ought to have and what he deserves in supporting an
1322
Amendment of this character. We on these benches are not satisfied with what is taking place. We believe that things cannot materially be altered under the present system. On the last Motion my right hon. Friend the Member for West Stirling (Mr. Johnston) gave instances of the destruction of many products under the present system, and as long as we leave private enterprise in possession they will do that sort of thing. Last night we were dealing with the Coal Bill, which provides for the taking over of royalties. I cannot understand why we cannot take over the whole of the coal mines while we are taking over royalties. We want to give the miners a better deal.
We would put as an alternative that the State must control the means of production and of distribution. We must start out by taking over and owning the finances of this country. That is the key to what is happening. Until we get hold of that we can never materially alter things. Therefore, in our programme, we say that we shall take over the banks and control them, when we get the opportunity. We shall also take charge of the land. We cannot leave the land to the landowner to exploit it in the way he does. We shall take over the transport, and finally coal and power will come into our fold. By doing that we shall provide increased spending power for our people. I remember some 12 years ago, listening to the late John Wheatley, who always advocated, when putting up a case for our people, that we should give them greater spending power, and that if we did that we would have solved much of our difficulty, At that time I was not in Parliament, but I paid close attention to him, and as the years have gone by I have become an ardent advocate of what John Wheatley said. His view was that if you increase pensions, increase the spending power of the unemployed and pay higher wages to our people, every one of them will bring a greater spending power into the market and will take more of the goods which go to make for greater employment. Until we do that we shall never have solved our economic difficulty. I trust that we shall have prevailed on a number of Members on the other side to help us in what is after all a human effort to make life better for our people.
8.1 p.m.
Mr. Cecil Wilson: I beg to second the Motion.
Some of the ground which the Mover has covered is somewhat similar to that with which I wanted to deal, but I want to put it rather differently. We find from the last report of the Inland Revenue Department that there are 109,000 people whose total income amounts to the figure of£599,000,000, to which my hon. Friend referred. That is equal to£104 a week. When we come to consider the people at the other end of the scale, the unemployed man getting his 17s. a week, it means that we have 109,000 individuals in this country each of whom is getting as much as 120 unemployed people. I venture to suggest that that is a condition of affairs which no one here can possibly say is in any sense just.
Then if we look at it slightly differently we find that that 109,000 represents something less than one-quarter per cent. of the population, whilst, as my hon. Friend said, they receive 16 per cent, of the national income. I hope those who take the opposite view and who are responsible for the Amendment will, when they come to reply, tell us quite straightly whether they think that condition of affairs is right and just and why they say it is right and just. If they say it is not right and not just, we should like to ask what their proposal is in order to set the matter right. That is not the only point of view that arises from the Inland Revenue returns, because we find, comparing the year 1900–1901 with the year 1935–1936 that for every Too persons whose estates came under the charge for estate value then, there are 251 now, and so far as the values are concerned, for every£100 then it is£228 now. That may be progress, but progress in a direction which ought never to occur. These figures represent the gross inequalities to which reference has been made and which are referred to in our Motion.
With regard to housing, Manchester and Salford Better Housing Council in 1931 made inquiries regarding the rents of 175 houses which had been vacated by the occupiers moving to housing estates. They found that in the case of 80 per cent. of that 175, the rents had been increased by from 5o to 90 per cent. We should like to ask whether that really is progress—whether that really is the way in which
1324
a contented people is to be made. Where the rent is increased by that amount and the wages remain the same something else has to suffer. We have had repeated references in this House to what is happening in that direction. There was also an inquiry at Newcastle-on-Tyne by a committee of the council, and they gave 76 cases of one-roomed tenements in which in 1914 the rent was 3s. 1d. and in which it had gone up on the average to 8s. There were other cases where the rent had gone up from 4s. 9d. to 10s. There were cases of two-, three- and four-roomed tenements where the same condition applied and where rents had been doubled. I do not think we can justify that from a single point of view, but it certainly very seriously affects the condition of the people, and we should like to ask, "What are you going to do about it?" I have in my own constituency rather more than 200 wooden huts, which were put up during the War for the use of munition workers. I have been into these huts and seen their condition. In the hot weather bugs come out by the hundred from behind the cardboard and so forth with which the walls—if you can call them walls—are covered. They have nothing in the way of a pantry in which they can keep their food.
Sir John Haslam: What are the local authorities doing?
Mr. Wilson: I will tell the House what the local authorities are doing. They have been told by the Government, "You have got to see about the slum clearance first, because a good deal of fresh air can get to these houses." There is no particular comfort in that for the people who have to live in them.
Sir Joseph McConnell: Have the local authorities no by-laws?
Hon. Members: Get on with the Debate.
Mr. Wilson: There is no decent standard of life under conditions like that. The corporation is perfectly willing to go ahead when the Government permit them to go ahead. There has recently been published a book by Mr. Seebohm Rowntree on "The Human Needs of Labour." It is a second edition of what he published 20 years ago with regard to between 2,000 and 3,000 cases in York which had been very carefully examined

1325
then, and a rather larger number which have been examined since. It is quite true that this is one area, but it is easy to compare one area 20 years ago and one area to-day and to get very much the same kind of particulars. He comes to the conclusion quite definitely that for a man, wife, and three children, there ought to be an income of not less than 53s. per week if a decent standard of life is to be maintained.
Let us assume for a moment that Mr. Rowntree is wrong to the extent of 16s. per week, bringing his 53s. down to 37s. Unemployment relief for a man, wife and two children is 35s. still 2S. lower after you have taken 30 per cent. of. There can be no possible justification for a state of affairs such as that. There is no satisfactory standard of life under such circumstances as those. It is quite true that the Ministry of Labour is making certain inquiries on this particular matter, and some day I suppose we shall have a report. But we can none of us justify figures such as those I have just quoted when the investigation has been made by one who is as careful an investigator as you will find anywhere in this country.
Recently, so far as London is concerned, there has been published a little booklet called "London's Homeless." That is a report by 26 different organisations in London which are dealing with what they call the homeless folk. These homeless folk are referred to under a number of different heads, such as ex-professional business men who have been out of employment, men of good character who are handicapped in finding employment for lack of recent references, men who need assistance until they get a definite job, and a number of cases of that kind. These conditions which apply in London, apply, although to nothing like the same extent, in practically every part of this country, and it is a matter which never ought to be left to private effort, in spite of the fact that the men and women who are carrying on this work in these various organisations have devoted themselves in a very fine way and in a very fine spirit in an endeavour to make things better. A number of these people are spending nights in what they call "sitting-up shelters." This is a description which one of these men gives. He speaks in generous terms of the kindly
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welcome and generosity extended to him, and he goes on:
"The men are only able to sleep on newspaper on the floor. So many wish to come some bad nights that the men's feet are crammed into one another's waists, or banged into neighbouring noses. Some men sleep sitting on benches, their faces leant on arms folded on tables. After specially bad nights, especially if your head has been under a table, like a ball in a scrum, between an avenue of soaked, late-tramping feet, you wake with your eyes glued together, your nose stopped up and your mouth open, and a dizzy clawing feeling about your head as though your hair were stuck in syrup. You feel inclined to issue from your throat strange clanking sounds, and it is many, many minutes before you realise where you are, or that you are anything, or that you are on a firm place where workaday creatures move about."
That is a terrible picture. It is a picture for which we are responsible.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Earl Winterton): Will the hon. Gentleman allow me to intervene? I think he cannot be aware that the London County Council has issued an explanatory statement to show that there is no need for any homeless person to be without a bed. There is sufficient provision either through the local authorities or voluntary organisations for every homeless wanderer.
Mr. Wilson: I am perfectly well aware of that, but there is a condition of things prevailing, and it is prevailing for some reason. This is a document published by the London County Council and it shows the existence of a state of affairs which in this land ought not to exist. It is true that there are only a few of these people, but if we believe in our religion we are our brothers' keepers and we have a responsibility for them in every part of the country.
The Amendment says that the standard of living of the people has continuously and progressively improved. Let me analyse that statement. What about the figures for lunacy and mental deficiency? In 1923 the number of patients was represented by, say, a figure of 100. By 1930 the figure was 111, and in the return for 1936 it was 120. There is not much continuous improvement there. It is continuous and progressive, but in the wrong direction. True, the population has increased, but when we deal with the matter from the population point of view

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the figures are much the same. We cannot regard it as progressive when we had 20 per cent. more mentally affected people in 1936 than we had 13 years ago. When we come to the insured workpeople who are unemployed, there are three periods of five years each. If we start with the figure of 100 for the first period, we find that in the second period the figure was 102, and in the last period, 1931–36, it was 144. There is no continuous and progressive improvement there, unless that is the sort of improvement that is meant in the Amendment. When we take the figures with respect to relief, and reckon that in the last year before the War the figure was 100, we find that it had increased in 1930 to 121, and in the five years ended 1934 the figure was 2:10. In all these cases instead of the standard of living having continuously and progressively improved it has continuously and progressively deteriorated.
My hon. Friend referred to the report on the Special Areas, in which the Commissioner says that in the case of men over 55 years of age rather more than 5,000 have secured employment. We are glad to hear that, but there is another side to the picture. There are still 37,000 of those men who have not secured employment. Those 37,000 men have spent 30 or 40 years serving the country in industry and have put the whole of their lives into it, and at the end of 30 or 40 years they are told that they are not wanted and that they may look forward to nothing in the way of a happy old age. No one can find any satisfaction from a prospect of that sort. We believe that there is enough for all and that life might be made happy for all if only it was tackled in the right way. I would ask hon. Members whether they agree that there is enough for all, that there ought to be enough for all and whether all are getting as much as they ought to have.
8.21 p.m.
Mr. Cary: I beg to move, in line 1, to leave out from "That," to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
"this House, recognising that under the economic system of this country the standard of living of the people has continuously and progressively improved, is unalterably opposed to any scheme of legislation which, by undue interference, would deprive the State of the benefits of private enterprise."
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I can best begin my brief observations by saying that the hon. Member who moved the Motion criticised the text and draft of the Amendment. I should like to call the attention of the House to the drafting and text of the Motion, which I consider to be completely outworn and out of date. It represents the view of the Labour party prior to their two years of office before 1929. It refers to the gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth which is involved in a system, the mainspring of which lies in the selfish pursuit of profit, and it seeks to substitute another industrial and social order which is in no way related to capital or the capitalist system. The only other order of that kind in existence to-day is the social order which exists in Russia. In all other countries there is some relationship in a greater or lesser degree to a system of private profit and private enterprise and the accumulation and redistribution of the wealth of private individuals for the benefit of their fellow-men. A Motion was moved some months ago by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Silverman) which ended with these words:
"and calls upon His Majesty's Government, whether or not such measures are within the limit of the existing social and economic order, to take such measures as may be necessary to secure for the unemployed, the partly unemployed and the employed workers a standard of living commensurate with modern industrial potentialities."
That is much more in the mood of the modern thought in the political movement of hon. Members opposite. My reply is that it is the intention of the Government progressively to improve the standard of living of our people and to that end they will continue their social policy, which includes the building of more and more houses. Since the hon. Member opposite touched upon the question of housing, I would point out that under private enterprise and the system of private profit, since the end of the Great War we have built 3,500,000 houses, and under the system which hon. Members opposite disapprove we have taken no fewer than 700,000 people out of slum conditions. If hon. Members opposite can say as much for any other system, the House would be only too delighted to hear of it. Can they make any such extravagant claim for the Russian State?
Mr. Gallacher: They are ahead of us in all that.
Mr. Cary: I challenge the hon. Member. The system which he represents, and of which, fortunately, he is the only representative in this House, which I quote from the "Statesman's Year Book," is based upon these principles:
"In every factory, and every collective farm, there is a Communist cell which watches the technical administration of the factory and which is in contact with the other organs of the Communist party. In this way the Members of the party distributed over the whole mechanism of the State system represent the controlling power which drives the State machine in the direction required by the General Secretary of the Communist party, along the so-called general party line. The purity of the party policy and strict discipline are maintained by means of a special party Code of Regulations and by systematic purges."
Is that the alternative hon. Members wish as against the flexible and beneficial system which is in existence in this country? I have been reading some of the debates in this House on the capitalist system. The most famous took place in 1923 when the mover of the Motion was the late Lord Snowden and the mover of the Amendment, the late Lord Melchett. The Motion on the Order Paper to-day is snore suitable to those times. Great changes have taken place in the world since then. Russia is becoming an increasing subject for fair comparison; Germany has turned from Socialism to Nationalism.
Mr. Kelly: Germany never was Socialist.
Mr. Cary: For five years after the Great War Germany had a Socialist Government, but they did not put into practice a single Socialist theory. Free Trade has disappeared, and quotas, tariffs and a managed currency buttress what is called economic nationalism. When we have these economic barriers and the development of this economic nationalism is not the time for political experiments, but the time to develop and extend the present system which has proved so admirable for six years under the guidance of the National Government. In spite of what hon. Members opposite may say about the present system, taxation has remained unchanged and the revenue constant. The expenditure upon social services has been more than doubled. In 1925, under a Conservative administration, we were spending£100,000,000 on social services. In 1937, again under a Conservative administration, we are
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spending more than double that amount. At a time of intensive rearmament we are still finding it possible under a despised capitalist system to spend£217,000,000 on our social services. The hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) read out a long list of people who were enjoying incomes in certain categories, but I would remind him that when income is distributed in that way it is a source of taxation which pays for the social services for the benefit of the more unfortunate of the population.
Let me say a word about the cotton trade. The hon. Member for Leigh complained of the inadequacy of the wages of some of the cotton operatives—about 35s. a week. I would remind him that, in spite of all the difficulties of the cotton trade in the last five years, we have managed to get back into employment no less than 20,000 operatives, and if we have our way, if we can persuade the capitalist system to be further guided by close co-operation with the Government, we hope in the not far distant future substantially to improve the wages of the Lancashire cotton operatives. I do not say that 35s. is an adequate wage, and I know that under certain forms of public assistance a man can almost draw as much, but we have been able even at this moderate wage to get 20,000 men back into work in what has been a distressed trade.
Mr. S. O. Davies: Does the hon. Member consider the wage he has mentioned a moderate wage?
Mr. Cary: Whether it is moderate, in that it is not particularly well related to the standard of living now—
Mr. Davies: Why not admit that it is scandalous?
Mr. Cary: Would the hon. Member like people who are getting this wage to be able to go into the local co-operative society's shop and buy fresh butter at 8d. per 1b.?
Mr. Davies: Is that a question for me to answer?
Mr. Cary: If the hon. Member desires to answer, I will give way. If he is, then he is asking for a return to the conditions of 1933, because that was the price at which fresh butter was being sold in the co-operative shops owing to the dumping of Russian butter. If wages

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are to be kept in line with the small increase in the cost of living, quite obviously at some time or another every industry will have to consider the relationship of wage scales to the cost of living.
Sir J. Haslam: I rise at this paint because I may not get a chance of speaking, and as the representative of a Lancashire constituency I do not want the impression to get abroad that 35s. a week is the average wage of a man in the cotton trade. I do not know the percentage of women employed, but I think that nine out of every ten who are getting 35s. a week are females. I do not want a wrong impression to go out. I am not quarrelling with the percentage, but I think hon. Members will agree with me that the majority of those who are getting this wage are females.
Mr. Cary: The hon. Member for Bolton (Sir J. Haslam) is much better informed about the cotton trade than I am, as he sits for one of the great cotton centres. However, I do not wish to turn this Debate into a Lancashire cotton Debate, and I will come back to the more general terms of the Debate, and point out that the key of modem industry is not capital but good management. If hon. Members opposite can show that by suppressing private enterprise and initiative they can maintain the standard of management which at present prevails, I am sure the House will welcome any new suggestion they may have to make.
The report on the Special Areas has been referred to already. It contains one bad and vicious problem, the unemployment of the older men, which was mentioned by the hon. Gentleman who moved the Motion. The "Manchester Guardian," in a most reasonable and sensible article to-day, writes as though it were impossible to do something for the 83,000 men, of an average age of from 45 to 65 years, who seem to be the hard core of unemployment. Recommendations are made in the present report and they were made in the last report, but the problem is one that requires not only the consideration of His Majesty's Government but any suggestions and recommendations that hon. Members opposite can make in order to help to solve it.
I defend the system under which we live at present, and I would not like to see it altered. I am in sympathy with
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the motives which prompted the hon. Member for Leigh to place this Motion on the Order Paper. Naturally, I am as distressed as anybody is that so many of our fellow men have to suffer from deplorable industrial conditions for which, in most cases, the last century was responsible. One has only to travel the length of England and to see the contrast between wealth and poverty, between happiness and misery—a contrast which, particularly in the case of the Special Areas, any man of decent feelings will see only through a mist of tears—to realise how much remains to be done in the way of social legislation and economic legislation, and done, if possible, at once. Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite are frequently accused of being sentimentalists. No one is more pleased than I am that they possess in a marked degree so recommendable a quality. It means that if in the future hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite are called upon to form a government, they will have won the hearts of the nation with good British sentiment and will not have tricked the minds of our people with bad Russian arithmetic.
Mr. Callacher: Oh!
Mr. Cary: The hon. Member may sneer, but if he visited as many Labour meetings as I do, he would find that the doctrines which he holds are being propounded from strictly Labour party platforms. Above all, I beg hon. Members opposite to avoid that indigestible brand of arithmetic most favoured by those whom George Orwell described in a recent book as
"that dreary tribe of high-minded women, and sandal-wearers, and fruit-juice drinkers who come flocking towards the smell of progress like bluebottles to a dead cat."
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), speaking in the Debate upon the Financial Resolution which preceded the Special Areas Bill, expressed a profound sentiment when he said that the misfortune of this country and of other democratic countries was that since the end of the Great War, the Government had been in the hands of men who had spent their prime in dealing with pre-war conditions and had never quite picked up the new conditions created or revealed by the Great War. The obvious answer to that is that in spite of our many vices

1333
since the end of the Great War, the credit and prestige of Great Britain stands second to none in the world to-day. That is due to the National administration that has occupied the Government Front Bench for the last six years. I sincerely hope that in the interests of every one of us it will go on occupying it for the next six years.
8.38 p.m.
Mr. Allan Chapman: I beg to second the Amendment so ably moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Mr. Cary). Before dealing with the main provisions of the Amendment, I would like to tackle one or two points that have been raised by hon. Members opposite, before they pass from my memory. The hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) was good enough to ask how industrial conditions were getting on in the division which I have the honour to represent. I am very glad to say that under the National Government, and thanks particularly to their treatment of the steel industry, there has been a very marked improvement in employment. At the Blantyre end of the constituency where there are mainly mines—an end in which I take as much interest as I can despite a lack of technical knowledge—there is an improvement, although it is perhaps not as great as I would like to see. I trust that the hon. Member's own constituency will have as good an improvement in the future, if it has not got it now.
The hon. Member for Leigh alluded to a statement made by Sir Benjamin Dawson about housing, in Which Sir Benjamin Dawson said that he was ashamed of the National Government. I wonder how much more ashamed he would have been of the Socialist Government when they were in office had he gone round the slums in those days, for the simple reason that the National Government are doing a very great deal of slum clearance to-day. The hon. Member for Attercliffe (Mr. C. Wilson) made a most interesting speech, and his statistics flowed so rapidly and so concisely that I had to run very hard to keep up with them. He raised a point concerning unemployment benefit, and I gathered he implied that it is not sufficient. One wants to see it rise as much as possible, but I would point out to the hon. Member that there is now in the Unemployment Fund a surplus, the use of which I believe is being considered. I
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do not know how it will be used, but I do say that under the management of the National Government, and under the capitalist system, at least there is a very considerable sum and one which I hope will be used in due course to benefit the unemployed in one way or another.
I could not quite follow the hon. Member's argument about lunacy and efficiency. He quoted a whole string of figures showing how much worse things would become the longer a capitalist Government remained in power. But at the end of his speech, as far as I could gather, he withdrew his own statement, because when he dealt with the increase of population, the percentage which he gave showed that it represented a more or less stable percentage. Therefore, I do not think there was a very big point in that. I would like now to pass to the Amendment and the Motion which we are discussing. Up to now I had not believed that modesty was an outstanding feature of hon. Members opposite.
Mr. Kelly: It is.
Mr. Chapman: Perhaps in the case of the hon. Member it is, and the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), who sits next to him, has, since acquiring civic honours, become more modest than ever. However, I do not think it has been an outstanding feature of hon. Members opposite. I have always realised that the omissions were the most important part of the Socialist argument, and there were many omissions on the part of the hon. Members who moved and seconded the Motion. Indeed, they failed to discuss most of the Motion. There were one or two general references to it, but when it came to discussing the machinery which is to produce the wonderful new era which will sweep away Capitalism and make everybody more happy and glad, there was silence. In order to make their Motion good, I think the hon. Members have to prove certain points. In the first place, they have to prove that when their particular plan, which for want of a better name I will call Socialism, comes into operation, there will he no gross inequalities under it. They have to prove that their Socialist state will so increase the national wealth that it will be able to pay for all the vast social improvements which they propose and many of which I agree are desirable in themselves. [HON. MEMBERS: "That is easy!"] I am glad

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to hear the view of hon. Members that it is easy to increase the national wealth. It is a pity that the Mover and Seconder of the Motion did not spare a few minutes to show us how it is to be done, but for some reason they omitted to do so. They have also to prove that private enterprise is solely concerned with the selfish pursuit of private profit and that Capitalism has failed. Finally, they have to convince us that Socialism will work. I submit that they have proved none of these things.
As regards the Amendment, our first contention in support of it is that whether hon. Members opposite like it or not it is a fact of history that all progress since the dawn of modern civilisation has been due to private initiative and enterprise. Governments have conserved and encouraged, but I do not recall any case in history of a Government having initiated a great invention or a great new idea. Perhaps that miracle is being left to the Government of hon. Gentlemen opposite when they get into power—if ever that disaster should overtake the nation. Our second contention is that the pages of history also show that, under the system of private enterprise, there has been a marked improvement in the standard of life of the people. Our final contention is that the Socialist plan, if brought into operation, could only bring about economic chaos if not something worse.
The Mover and Seconder of the Motion made a powerful appeal to the emotions. I admire the sincerity of hon. Gentlemen opposite. I know that many of them speak either from their own experience or from the experiences of those who are near and dear to them. I am not surprised that their main appeal should be to the emotions, but I respectfully suggest to them that a plan which proposes to turn the present economic system upside down, requires not only an appeal to the emotions but a strong appeal to reason to recommend it. We must consider how the plan is to work, before we can afford to indulge our feelings—very proper feelings—of sentiment for those who are worse off than ourselves. I refer hon. Members opposite to a most interesting and very courageous book written recently by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, entitled "The Labour Party in Perspective." On page 32 of that book they will find these words:
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"It is not enough, to-day, to denounce capitalism and then leave Socialism to a few general principles."
I wish that hon. Gentlemen opposite had taken the advice of their leader on that point, and given us this evening some facts and details. But even the general principles mentioned by them were remarkably few. To my mind, they did not prove that private enterprise has failed. On that point I would invite any hon. Gentleman opposite who follows me in this debate to explain away the following state of affairs. In 1928 there were 10,020,000 people at work. Since then we have had a series of crises and disasters. Hon. Gentlemen opposite will forgive me if I say that I regard as one of the major disasters of that period the fact that we had a Socialist Government in 1929–31. We also had the aftermath of the War, leaving conditions which are still affecting us. We have had the worst depression in modern history. We have had Europe in a state of political chaos with a war lurking round the corner.
Mr. Sexton: Were the Labour Government responsible for that? Perhaps the hon. Member will suggest next that they are responsible for the typhoid epidemic in Croydon.
Mr. Chapman: Apart from the question of responsibility, which is not the point, the fact remains as I have stated. We have also had restricted exchanges, currency difficulties, and the pursuit of a policy of national self-sufficiency by other nations. On top of all that, we have had a rapid advance on the technical side in industry reducing labour requirements. Finally, we have had an increased population. I suggest to hon. Gentlemen opposite that if the capitalist system were on the borders of collapse, any one of those influences which I have enumerated would have finished it altogether. Yet what is the fact? In 1937 there are 11,706,000 people at work. Those figures are not indicative of a system which is dying.
Then, if private enterprise has failed, why is it spreading downwards and why are there so many more small investors now than there used to be? Why, if it is a failure, is the system tolerated, as my hon. Friend the Mover of the Amendment pointed out, by Socialist Governments like those of France and Sweden,

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since private enterprise continues in those countries to-day. If the system is in a state of collapse, why did the people turn in 1931 to that party or group of parties who advocate capitalism? Why did they not welcome with joy the heralds of the new civilisation? If capitalism has failed, why has M. Stalin reverted to capitalist practices? I take it that Russia is the classic example of Socialism. Indeed, I find from the book to which I have already referred that while the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition rightly abhors terrorism and dislikes the methods by which Socialism is maintaining itself in Russia, he says of the children in this country brought up in orthodox Socialist homes:
"They see before their eyes the great experiment in Socialist Russia. They see a country putting into operation a Socialist economic system which their predecessors 20 years ago could only contemplate as a distant dream."
We on this side of the House might prefer the word "nightmare" in that connection. If Russia is the Socialist State par excellence it is interesting to follow what has been happening there. M. Stalin, addressing the leaders of industry on 23rd June, 1931, said:
"We must get rid of the equalitarian spirit"—
I hope the Mover of the Motion will note that there is to be no equality even in Russia—
"and break down the old wage scales. We must set up wage scales which will take into account the difference between skilled and unskilled labour, between heavy work and light work. It cannot be tolerated that the highly skilled worker in the steel mill should earn no more than the sweeper."
I think to any unbiased person that sounds remarkably like the practice that is followed under capitalism. When hon. Members opposite rail at capitalism, one notes from their catalogue of details that they are really railing at the abuses of that system. He would be a bold man who would say that any system exists which has no faults. I think some little time ago the Trades Union Congress went to great lengths to deal with certain subversive organisations which were causing trouble in their ranks. Because there are subversive organisations, which cause unofficial strikes, and strife, and dislocation, we on this side do not argue that the system of collective bargaining has failed. I frankly admit that, as far
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as we are concerned, we have subversive influences at work in capitalism, and it is our desire that they should be cleared out, but when we are challenging the abuse of our system we do not mistake it for the failure of the system.
I submit next, that the hon. Members who moved and seconded the Motion failed to prove that private enterprise is solely concerned with "the selfish pursuit of private profit." I think my hon. Friend gave the figure of between£400,000,000 and£500,000,000 spent on social services. [HON. MEMBERS: "No.") Anyhow, hundreds of millions are being spent on social services under the capitalist system, and if hon. Members opposite will study the incidence of taxation, they will see that the people who pay it are not necessarily I hose who get the benefit from those social services. I personally and other hon. Members on this side are extremely glad that that should be so, and I believe that we who believe that private enterprise is the only system of producing these vast sums have a definite responsibility to see that the needs of the workers are met as generously as possible. That has always been my standpoint, which I have declared on many platforms, but when hon. Members opposite charge private enterprise with not doing its duty, will they permit me to give them one more quotation? It is rather interesting, and runs as follows:
"The last century has seen so marked and so constant an improvement in the position of the non-possessing classes that, with increasing command over nature and a profounder social conscience, we may hope for even greater improvement in the years to come. We curb monopolies at every turn in the interest of the general consumer. We prohibit the practice of sweating in industry. Legislation like the Factory Acts, Workmen's Compensation, the limitation of the hours of labour, the prohibition of noxious materials in industrial processes, all show a concern by the State to subordinate profit-making to the public welfare."
That does not sound to me as if private enterprise was entirely selfish, and those words do not come from this side of the House. They come from a book written by a newly elected member of the Labour party Executive, Professor Harold Laski. The title of the book is "The State in Theory and Practice," and I have quoted from pages 169 and 170.
Let us keep a balanced point of view in these matters. The substance of the hon. Members' Motion is the new

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Socialist State. I presume that none of them will deny that. They believe that that State can work, and they believe it very sincerely. They believe that it can be brought in by constitutional means, but I hope that hon. Members opposite will take note of this, that when the Leader of the Opposition, in his book, was referring to Russia, he talked about the great "experiment" in Socialism there, or words to that effect. Why do hon. Members opposite not indicate to those who support them that they are advocating an even greater experiment? Apart from whatever one thinks of the way in which Socialism is working in Russia, at least it is in being, and we cannot say that the British Socialist State is in being. Therefore, I suggest most earnestly, and quite apart from the give and take of debate in this House, that in view of the effects their revolutionary plan would have on our economic system, they have a first and prominent duty to perform in letting the workers know that it is a great experiment that they are wanting to make. I hope they will not flinch from that.
I have gone through a considerable amount of the more popular propaganda publications of the party opposite, and while in one of them I found the word "plan," in no one of them could I find any indication of the fact that what is being handed to the people is an experiment. I have in my hands a magnificent piece of propaganda, which I am told is the finest pamphlet ever put out. It is beautifully got up. On the front are rows of beautiful houses, with shady trees, and inside are handsome looking people, bonnie children, and very fine babies, and here is an extraordinarily smartly-tailored gentleman. I do not know whether he is one of the downtrodden workers whom we hear so much about, but I should like the name of his tailor.
Mr. Ede: The local co-operative society.
Mr. Chapman: I do not grudge a great movement like the co-operative society a small advertisement from the back row opposite, but to revert to what I was saying, all these photographs are of life under the Capitalist system, not Socialism.
Now notice the cover of this publication, which says, "What everybody wants." It then says:
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"Regular work at fair wages.
A decent pension in old age.
Plenty of food at fair prices.
A decent home at a fair rent."
At the bottom it says:
"Labour will see that everybody gets them."
Hon. Members: Hear, hear.
Mr. Chapman: I am very glad to hear hon. Members opposite cheer that, because that is an emphatic statement. It is not an indication of a theory that is to be put into practice, of an experiment, but a definite statement that everybody will get these things. Hon. Members opposite have greater pluck than most people in this, that they come down to this House with a Motion such as this, which is one virtually to establish a Socialist State, and they tell us nothing about the working of it. I presume that the right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) still has the plans locked up in his desk. They come down here with this Motion, but they go to the people and say, "We will do this, we will do that, and we will do the other," yet in no case, as far as I can gather, except in the more expensive books, of which I have several but which the ordinary working man is not likely to read, can I find any indication that this is a very dangerous experiment for the country. Neither can I find in these popular pamphlets, any indication of the machinery by which it will work.
I had intended to suggest reasons why I think the Socialist system cannot be brought in without great dislocation and unhappiness and a lowered standard of living, but I have already detained the House too long. In conclusion, I would say that Socialism or the Socialist plan is a Dark Horse, by Doctrinaire, out of Bad Economics. I do not think it is a horse that the British public will ever back, and I hope, for their own sakes, they will not. I do not question the sincerity of hon. Members opposite, and I hope they will believe me when I say that we also earnestly desire to raise the standard of life of our people. But I will conclude with the words that Mr. Disraeli used in the House in 1846, when he said:
"I find that a body of men have risen in this country eminent for their eloquence, distinguished for their energy, but more distinguished, in my humble opinion, for their energy and their eloquence than for their

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knowledge of human nature or for the extent of their political information."
I therefore second the Amendment.
9.7 p.m.
Major Owen: I feel sure the House has listened with a great deal of interest to the speeches which have been made on this subject this evening. I agree with the Seconder of the Amendment that very few references indeed were made by the Mover and the Seconder of the Motion to the way in which the Socialist State which is foreshadowed in it is going to operate, or how it would bring about the great changes, and the beneficial changes which were forecast. One thing which I have particularly noticed during discussions of this kind is the frequency with which the word "system" is introduced. One of the fundamental errors into which many of us are prone to fall is to talk about systems as though they really exist in the social and economic life of nations. We have heard mention of the Capitalist system, the Socialist system and the Communist system. I should like to say that Capitalism is not a system. It is a very unsystematic natural growth. It is a name for the varying relations and degrees of wealth that exist in a society where the individuals differ in ability, in acquisitive instincts, and in the tendency to save or to spend, and where they have a wide freedom to exercise their individual characters in competition.
Let me add, also, that Socialism is not a system which has ever got farther than the text books in which it is described. There may be, and in fact these is, a large measure of Socialism in this country to-day—in our free education, our national insurance, our old age pensions, the post, telegraphs, telephones, broadcasting, roads, production of electricity and a host of public services. But it is not a system. In no country is Socialism a stable working system. There has been in one great country a resolute attempt to establish Communism as a system.
Mr. Gallacher: You are just talking a lot of nonsense.
Major Owen: The hon. Member who represents that particular type of politics in this House is generally listened to with respect by other Members, but he in, variably spends his time in interrupting others, and will never allow any other Member to express his opinion of what
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Communism is and of the working of it where it has been tried. The history of that attempt shows how incorrigibly unsystematic human nature is. We all know that the original system in Russia has been constantly modified and it is still altering. Already it is far from its original form, and the pure Marxian theorists in the Russian Republic who agitate for a return to consistent Communism are being ruthlessly eliminated—or is the word "liquidated"?—by the Government as seditious Trotskyists. The British people are a freedom-loving people. We do not want to be imprisoned within the cast-iron limits of any system. We believe in progress, in growth, in development, in evolution.
We on these benches—I should like to say that at once—feel a profound dissatisfaction with things as they are, a dissatisfaction just as earnest and as thorough as that of people who advocate revolutionary changes such as are foreshadowed in this Motion; but we do not deceive ourselves with the idea that the substitution of some fixed formula like "public control" or "the abolition of all private capitalists, manufacturers and traders" will bring in the millennium.
To "sack the lot" may be an excellent way of dealing with a Cabinet or some specific gang of reactionaries, but it would be a catastrophe, in my view, if applied to our economic life as a whole. It is true that we could find better men to replace a "dud" Cabinet, but we have no reason to suppose that Whitehall could supply an army of officials capable of running all our trade and industry more efficiently and more effectively than the private business men who now have it in charge. [Interruption.] But what does the Socialist State mean if it does not mean handing all the industry of the country over to officials? It is natural that people dissatisfied with things as they are should call for a revolution, but if the water tub is leaking you will not cure the leak by turning the tap upside down. We cannot get a new world, and we cannot get new humanity, either. The human race will continue, whatever form of Government is introduced.
In the Motion there are, on the other hand, several statements which must command general assent. I do riot think that any hon. or right hon. Member would approve the gross inequalities of

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wealth which exist among our people. Even when we have made full allowance for differences of capacity and differences of value to the community, I do not think there is any justification for one set of men possessing unlimited affluence while millions of capable, honest workers secure only a bare subsistence. The latest estimate of the value of our total national capital, made by Professor Daniels and Mr. Campion in a book "The Distribution of National Capital," which puts it at£20,000,000,000, presents a very alluring picture. The suggestion that the total capital wealth of this country has increased by about£2,000,000,000 also sounds very cheerful. But our satisfaction is very short-lived when we turn to consider the distribution of this immense wealth. If we take the Estate Duty figures of 1924–30, we find that just under 1 per cent. of the adult population had more than£10,000, or to be exact 57 · 7 per cent. of the nation's total capital. The richest section, 11,000 of them, that is to say, one adult in every 2,000, together own almost a quarter of the whole. At the other end of the scale, 93 · 6 per cent. of the population have less than£1,000, and together own only 14 · 3 per cent. of the total capital, or, say, one-seventh. I think hon. Members will agree that it is inequitable that it should be possible in present conditions for six-sevenths of the nation's wealth to be held by one-sixteenth of the population. That is not the fault of the conditions under which we live, but of the way in which people, by their acquisitive instincts, have gathered into a few hands the wealth that ought to be distributed more equally among us.
Another self-evident fact which is referred to in this Motion is that, in view of the natural resources and productive power at our disposal, it is outrageous that vast numbers of the population should be compelled to exist at a level below the standard necessary for sound health and reasonable amenities.
This matter has already been discussed on the Motion which was before the House this afternoon, and I shall not pursue it further except to say that productive capacity is growing to-day far more rapidly than the population and that that is a new thing in economic history. There should be no ground therefore for a large
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part of the nation being left in poverty. In spite of all this, our most reliable experts report that fully 50 per cent. of the population in this wealthy country is insufficiently nourished and that hundreds of thousands of people in the distressed areas are existing in utter, abject and hopeless poverty. Here we are in an age of plenty. I believe we owe our enormously developed mechanical productive capacity to the ingenuity of persons working in the main for private gain. In my opinion, the incentive to personal advantage is too valuable an asset for human progress for it to be recklessly discarded. Our aim must be to give it adequate scope for development while ensuring that the settled and permanent benefits it creates shall be given as wide an application as possible.
I would say to hon. Members above the Gangway that we need, in short, a combination of private enterprise and progressive socialisation. We are not afraid of socialisation; the National Government are constantly doing it. They were at it yesterday and the day before, so there is no need to be afraid of it. That is the method towards which we in this country have been groping our way for a long time. As regards private capital and private property, we already take steps, by taxation, to distribute a portion of them to the poorer sections of the community. In the public services, health, education, assistance, pensions and so on, the general line of progress that promises the best results is not the application of a formula such as the public ownership and democratic control of the instruments of production and distribution, but rather the steady extension of such control in those specific cases where it is evidently to the public advantage.
9.23 p.m.
Mr. Boothby: The Motion which has been so ably moved from the opposite benches raises an issue of fundamental importance—that of Capitalism or Socialism. I do not agree that you can easily blend the two, although up to a point, and only up to a point, it is possible to do so. The Motion arraigns the Capitalist system on account of the fact that it does not give to the people of this country a decent standard of living. It demands that the Capitalist system—if you can call it a system—shall be substituted by a Socialist system. I hope the House will forgive me if I confine

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myself to that main issue and deal with it in its broad aspects.
I believe there are only two alternative methods of conducting economic life in the world to-day. One is a real Socialist system and the other is what we call the Capitalist system, but which, I agree, is rather characterised by lack of system. By Socialism I think is meant the control of production, distribution and exchange by the State. That is the objective. I do not think that half-hearted methods are possible. In modern conditions private property and individual initiative must be completely suppressed. Otherwise I do not see how any Socialist plan can fail to be thrown into confusion. It would be like a commander-in-chief of an army, planning a campaign with half the men under his orders and the other half under their own orders, running about and doing what they liked. I do not think that would be a very successful campaign. I do not think a Socialist Government could ever create the confidence which is really necessary for the functioning of the Capitalist system, and that is why I think the hon. and learned Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps) is fundamentally right. I think, that, sooner or later, t he Opposition will have to make up their minds as to which way they are going. If they are going Socialist, they will have to do it good and proper, quickly and completely; and if not, they had better on the whole follow in the trail of the National Government which is doing a little bit of Socialism here and there quietly, unostentatiously and to the general acceptance of the community. If the Labour party obtained power in this country, and really decided to go in for Socialism good and proper, I do not think it would necessarily create a revolutionary system, although I think that possible, but I think it would be bound to create a financial crisis of the first order; and that is why I think the hon. and learned Member for East Bristol is one of the few absolutely sincere Members of this House, because he has the guts to say what the advent of a Socialist Government would necessarily involve.
The alternative system, if you can call it a system, is Capitalism, under which initiative in the economc field and the right to private property are left to the individual, and production,
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distribution and exchange are governed by the free choice of the consumer as reflected by prices in the market. But I would like to make this caveat, that this system is subject to four modifications. First there is the State control of the monetary and financial policy of the country, which exists to-day and involves the management of money and the control of the supply of credit. Secondly, there is control, in greater or less degree, of public services, utilities, and monopolies. Third comes the development of a system of social services; and, last but not least, is the redistribution of wealth by taxation. Those are the four controlling factors operating upon the Capitalist system.
So far as Socialism is concerned, I do not feel bitter or passionate upon the subject, but I think it has certain disadvantages which are fatal. The main disadvantage, in my opinion at any rate, is that, if fully applied, it would deprive the individual of personal freedom. Admittedly the ultimate goal is freedom, justice and equality for the individual. Marx actually believed that after the revolution and a comparatively brief period of what he described as a dictatorship of the proletariat, the State would gradually fade out of the picture, and ultimately everybody would be independent, prosperous, happy, and loving ever after. But 20 years experience of the only complete Socialist system that the world has yet seen does not completely bear out this view. With all due deference to the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. Gallacher) I do not see much freedom or equality in the Union of Soviet Republics as yet. No doubt that is the aim, but it has not been achieved. That State is sustained by terrorism, amounting at times to wholesale murder on a gigantic scale; and, however desirable the collectivisation of the farms may be, it does not seem to be worth while at the cost of the lives of 5,000,000 of the peasants of Russia. It is sustained by espionage, military conscription, which I do not think hon. Members opposite particularly desire, censorship, intensive propaganda and personal idolatry of the same kind as we find in Italy and Germany; and all this is in the interests of a powerful oligarchy which is none the better for being bureaucratic rather than aristocratic. It remains an oligarchy and an autocracy. No freedom of expression is permitted.

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Tyranny is bad in any form, and in my opinion the main menace of Socialism is the threat to the freedom of the individual, and I believe that in that opinion I have behind me the support of the vast majority of the people of this country. The experience of Russia during the last 20 years suggests that the goal of freedom and justice cannot be reached by the road of planned dictation. You cannot proceed by a method like that of "Alice Through the Looking Glass" to attain freedom, by going backwards to it via dictatorship, even if it be the dictatorship of the proletariat. If you want freedom and justice go for it straight, and you may get it, but not otherwise. Lastly I would like to say that Socialism would reduce the standard of living to a uniform level of drabness, if applied in its entirety; and I want to ask the Opposition what Government do they think could really plan the infinite variety of human requirements? The supreme merit of the Capitalist system is that the consumer decides for himself what he wants and what is to be produced, and the price at which it is produced is settled by the market.
I would say also that I do not think that Socialism is a means towards the attainment of peace. I was reading the other day an interesting book of essays by Aldous Huxley, and I came across this sentence which seemed suggestive:
"The comprehensive planning by individual nations results in international chaos, and the degree of international chaos is in exact proportion to the number, completeness and efficiency of the separate national plans."
I think there is a great deal of truth in that statement, and I think it is quite untrue to say that Capitalism is working towards war. Whatever it may be Capitalism is essentially international and hates war. It hated it in 1914. No greater pressure was brought to bear upon the Government in 1914 not to intervene in any circumstances than that by the bankers of the City of London. Hon. Members opposite know very well that Capitalism thrives in conditions of peace, and that capitalists with all their faults are anxious to do business in any corner of the world where there is a chance of making a profit. Socialism, on the other hand, does promote class war inside the State, inevitably, and produces Fascist and Nazi States outside, and the two
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together divide the world into a series of closed political units which have no economic basis or justification and intensify the menace of international war.
In the present circumstances I believe that the creation of more Socialist States, each with its own planned economy, could only increase the aggregate poverty of the world and the dangers of war. Every purchase and sale of goods, down to that of a tin of sardines, under those circumstances is liable to become a diplomatic incident. I would say with regard to the Capitalist system itself that, whatever hon. Members opposite may say, and despite gross mismanagement, it has produced a steadily rising standard of life for the workers of this country—steadily rising over the last 100 years—and more men are earning higher wages in this country to-day than ever before in our history. By competition it does tend to greater efficiency, higher production and lower prices. The method of production in this country tends to reduce the profit even in an industry in which monopoly exists, by the inflow of new capital. Lastly the great strength and flexibility of the Capitalist system does undoubtedly lie in the power of the profit motive which is inside all of us. I like to think that, if an hon. Member opposite has a bright idea, if it is a really good one, he can make some cash out of it, and so do most hon. Members opposite. You will not eradicate that profit motive from the hearts of human beings for a very long time.
Before I sit down I want to say a word, not by way of concession to hon. Gentlemen opposite, but perhaps by way of warning. We are discussing now the merits of the Capitalist and Socialist systems, and whether Capitalism can survive. I think it can survive, but only in certain conditions. I think that, if it gets much more of the treatment it has been receiving during the last few months, it is very doubtful whether it will survive. Then we shall all be compelled to try to make some kind of Socialist system work. But, with all its advantages, there are certain dangers inherent in it which have to be guarded against, and the chief of these is instability, due to fluctuations in the price level.
The main causes of instability are, first of all, lack of confidence, and secondly,

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lack of effective economic co-operation between the democratic and capitalistic countries of the world. I do not need to remind hon. Members in any part of the House of the failure to achieve international monetary co-operation until both this country and France had returned to the Gold Standard, and both had been driven off it. Nor, I think, is it necessary to remind hon. Members in any part of the House of the unhappy, and largely unnecessary, events which have taken place in the economic sphere during the past six months. We ourselves are not entirely free from blame. I submit that the quite unnecessary gold scare, which caused such damage during the summer months could have been checked by resolute action on the part of the Bank of England. But there is no doubt that for the recent recession, which does give ground for serious anxiety, the responsibility rests primarily with the Government of the United States of America.
The power of governments in the economic field to-day is enormous already, without their being granted the additional powers which are now demanded by hon. Members opposite. The main levers of this power—this terrific power—are taxation, legislative restrictions, the management of money and the control of credit. These powers have been wielded of late in the United States of America with an apparent lack of responsibility which gives cause for the very gravest anxiety. Prosperity under Capitalism depends upon the maintenance of confidence; upon a comparatively stable commodity price level, high enough to ensure the economic wellbeing of primary producers all over the world, upon whom everything ultimately depends; upon a steady flow of investment into capital industries, under the stimulus, I admit, of anticipated profits; and, lastly, upon the freedom, or comparative freedom, of the markets which settle prices under what is known as the capitalist system.
In the Spring of this year the President of the United States suddenly announced that in his opinion commodity prices were too high, although they were actually lower than the level of 1926, which hitherto had been his declared objective. He followed this by doing everything in his power to restrict the free-
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dom of markets and to discourage investment in the capital industries of the United States. Confidence, which is so much easier to undermine than to restore, was absolutely shattered; and this has led inevitably to an acute deflation—that deflation which I have been fighting in this House for years, because I know that in the long run, if allowed to continue, it means ruination and poverty for the working classes of this and every other country—an acute deflation which has involved a catastrophic fall, not only in the stock markets but in commodity prices and in industrial output. The result is that, at a very critical moment in the world's history, the underlying strength of the democratic countries has been greatly diminished, and the danger of war sensibly increased.
In these circumstances I think the time has come, quite apart from the rather academic arguments which we are having across the Floor of the House to-night, for someone to indulge in some plain speaking on this side of the Atlantic, and to endeavour to express the unspoken thoughts of many people in this country at the present moment. Yesterday the Prime Minister announced that His Majesty's Government were willing to cooperate in every possible way with the Government of the United States in order to restore a measure of economic prosperity and stability to the world. No one has been a more fervent advocate and supporter of economic co-operation and a trade agreement between this country and the United States than I have. I believe, with many other people on both sides of the House, that in such an agreement lies the greatest hope for the world to-day. But what is the use of making a trade agreement, or attempting to co-operate, with a government which seems determined to sabotage the economic system under which we live at present, without any alternative system to put in its place? They have produced no alternative system during the last nine months. The index figure of commodity prices has gyrated madly between 150 and 200, and back again to 150. No economic system, socialist or capitalist, can possibly withstand fluctuations of such magnitude over so short a period, accompanied, as they have been, by the writing down of wealth by several thousand million pounds, with a corresponding reduction of purchasing power all over the world.

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Whether we like it or not, the economic fortunes of this country are bound up with those of the United States of America. If President Roosevelt continues to pursue a policy which, by discouraging investment in the capital goods industries, restricting the freedom of markets, and deflating prices, violates every sound economic principle, it is bound to have an adverse effect, and I say frankly to the Opposition that it is bound to have an adverse effect upon the economic well-being of the masses of the people of this country. For my part I think that, before we continue our efforts to achieve economic co-operation with the United States, His Majesty's Government should ask the President to state frankly and precisely what his intentions are, and whether he is or is not prepared to co-operate with us in a genuine effort to restore confidence, stability and prosperity to the peoples of the world. If the Federal Government continues its present policy, the slump in prices will create its own justification, and there will be no trade to agree upon in a trade agreement.
In conclusion, I would point out to hon. Members opposite that this time the recession—for let us face the fact that it is a serious recession—is not the fault of the wicked capitalists. It is the fault of the treasuries, of the civil services, and of the officers of the central banks; it is the fault of the men to whom the Opposition are now demanding that fresh powers, and larger powers, shall be granted. The chief of the Metal Trades Section of the American Federation of Labour summed up the situation, I thought, very well two days ago when he said:
"I think we are suffering from the well-intended programmes of a number of brilliant economists whose knowledge in the various fields of economics is in inverse ratio to their knowledge of practical affairs and of the fact that legislation affects human beings."
That comes, not from a capitalist, but from one of the leaders of Labour in the United States at the present time. I would only say that, if the capitalist system succumbs, it will not be due to its own defects, which can be remedied, but to the fantastic, one might almost say wilful, blunders of those who at present control the economic machinery of at any rate one great capitalist country. I venture to suggest to hon. Members opposite that we should be well advised to
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learn how to run the very delicate mechanism of our present economic system before we attempt to change it for one which, whatever arguments may be adduced in favour of or against it, is bound to be more difficult and more complicated.
9.45 p.m.
Mr. A. Edwards: We began by discussing the condition of the people. The last speaker seems to have got on to a discussion of the condition of racketeers. I cannot see how a speech of that kind was necessary in a Debate such as this. This is a day on which the Opposition have an opportunity to discuss something that really matters, and the back benchers have a chance to express their views. I wish we had a little more time for the hack benchers, and less for the back numbers.
Mr. Boothby: Does the hon. Member think that the things which I have been discussing do not affect the prosperity of the British people?
Mr. Edwards: Not quite so intimately as the things we have been discussing on this Motion. As we have some alternative proposals to put forward, we want to consider some of the faults of the present system. We have to consider whether the present system is working or not, We gather that it is not working very well. Even hon. Members opposite have been reading Socialist literature. I wish the hon. Member who seconded the Amendment would get away from propaganda pamphlets and pictures. They are all right for some people, but not for a serious Debate such as this. I might tell him of a similar leaflet which I had distributed in my constituency at the last General Election, in which his own head office put pictures of not only beautiful people and beautiful trees, but of a beautiful bridge, and they said this was built in Middlesbrough of Middlesbrough steel. But the electors had to wait for me to explain that the National Government had loaned the Government of Denmark£2,000,000 to buy that bridge, and they had refused to loan the people of London the money to build Waterloo Bridge.
The Noble Lady the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Viscountess

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Astor) accused this Government of making it a criminal offence to sell cheap milk to children. That is not much to boast about. It is often said that half of the world does not know how the other half lives; but it goes further than that. One half does not care how the other half lives. That is the burden of our attack on the other side. The hon. Member who seconded the Amendment also referred to prosperity in his constituency, where I understand they make steel. In my constituency they manufacture hardly anything else but steel. The industry is working under perfect conditions, ideal to test capitalism, with record orders, production and profits, working seven days and nights a week, absorbing every possible man that can be absorbed into industry. The hon. Member boasted that machinery was reducing labour.
Mr. Chapman: I referred to the way in which machinery was displacing labour, but I pointed out that, despite that fact, the number of people employed to-day was greater than in 1928.
Mr. Edwards: Something more important is involved. Who is to get the extra profit? The people on that side never offer any part of that saving to the workers. They must fight for every penny they get.
Mr. Boothby: Rubbish.
Mr. Edwards: No, it is not rubbish. With all that saving, output is 50 per cent. per man greater since 1926. They are still breaking more records again this year, and still, under these perfect ideal conditions for the Capitalist system, 16 per cent. of the registered male population in Middlesbrough is out of work. Nearly 8,000 men do not know that they are out of the last depression yet, and they are being told that they are going into a new one. Is that anything to boast about? I have sometimes tried to make a calculation of the amount of money which is spent in this country on teaching Christianity. It we spent a small part of it practising Christianity, what an improvement we should make.
The Minister at that Box confessed today that there is only sufficient just to keep people alive, sufficient to maintain them in existence. He repeated it lest it should be thought to be exaggerated. He claimed no more than that. Here is the wealthiest country in the world,
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wealthier than ever before, making record profits, which are still increasing, and the racketeers are buying and selling in the open market, making the very poor people lose the little they have got. Some of us could very well sit on those benches opposite. Some of us enjoy the prosperity of this system. Only one thing we would lose by going over to that side, and that is our self-respect. [Interruption.] What is the use of making your beautiful speeches about a quarter of a pint of milk per day. I should be ashamed to get up and make speeches about it. Did we have a Royal Commission about spending millions of pounds a year for armaments?
Mr. Boothby: How many pints of milk did the Labour. Government give?
Mr. Edwards: That is beside the point. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." You have the power. I thought it was the boast of that side that they still had some Socialists, a little leaven of Socialists. Do they now apologise for them or is there no longer any difference? A coloured pastor having to explain the presence of a white man in his pulpit, where none but a black man had ever before appeared, said, "Brethren, I assure you that although our brother's skin is white, his heart is as black as ours." Even very many poor people to-day are being tempted by this iniquitous system of getting something for nothing. I want to call the attention of the House to a system in my own constituency, where a working woman, living in a council house, has introduced a system of snowball trading, whereby a person depositing£5 gets at the end of six months£30. This is almost as good as some of the companies in this country, paying 40, 50 or 60 per cent. This person has shown how to get 600 per cent. "Put£5 into my fund and in six months you can draw£30. Put in£4 to-day and in six months get a 16 guinea wireless set. Pay£25 today and in six months get a£125 motor car." There are thousands of motor cars running around Middlesbrough to-day bought on that system.
It is a most iniquitous system, but no more iniquitous than the capitalist system. It is an off-shoot of this very system. I tell the House what this woman living in a council house and starting on this capitalist system has done to-day. If

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only one person per day were enlisted into this investment scheme, this wretched, scandalous, fraudulent method which is learnt from the capitalist system—[Interruption.] It is all done on credit. Tell me of a Member on the opposite side of the House whose business is not being run on credit. If only one person had come into this scheme per day there would be a deficiency at the end of six months of£3,900, with not the slightest hope of these people who put their money into it getting it out again. It is rather like investing in certain companies. Not one but thousands to-day enlist in the scheme. The other week there were five or six motor cars outside that woman's house, and I inquired who the owners were, and they said, "These are the agents of the woman, going round getting new clients." The best tradesmen in the town have refused to do trade of that kind. One or two are still standing out. I know of one store taking£300 a week in this form of trading.
Within six months, if the people are not told to stop this mad investment and effort to get something for nothing, there will be a deficiency of half a million pounds. The House will realise that it is a variation of the old chain system. It is illustrated by the boy who offered to work for a halfpenny a day provided his employer would double his wages every day and the wage which had to be paid on the last day of the month was£1,000,000. The woman who is carrying on this system, I say deliberately, has learned it from the Capitalist system. She is leading people to invest and holding out at the end of six months the offer of 30 for every£5 put in. How can it be done? Of course it cannot. There is no other way of warning people that this is the worst form of Capitalism carried to its extreme. It is an iniquitous scheme of people trying to get something for nothing.
Mr. Bull: It sounds very like Socialism.
Mr. Edwards: There was a famous statesman once who said in this House:
"Where ignorance predominates it persistently asserts itself."
Someone is trying to say that Capitalism can avoid war. Capitalism is war. They are synonymous terms. You can no more keep from war under Capitalism than you can keep away from profit. I thought
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that the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) was going to make a worth-while ending when he was talking about profit. It was rather a mixture of Socialist sentiment and Capitalist free will. He should have ended by saying, "Thus profit doth make cowards of us all."
9.59 p.m.
Earl Winterton: No doubt the anxiety of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has allowed a certain tone of bitterness, not to say irrelevancy, to come into his speech when he solemnly assures the House that neither he nor any of his hon. Friends would sit upon this side of the House and hold the views that we do without loss of self-respect. I would remind him that all of us on all sides of the House can retain our self-respect, provided we believe in the policies that we put forward. I think that it was rather an unfortunate remark for the hon. Member to make and that he was very irrelevant in his description of his remarkable constituent. As my hon. Friend behind me truly said, the constituent in question seemed to have adopted almost completely the electioneering method of some Socialist agent. He did less than justice to my hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) when he said that my hon. Friend's most interesting point had nothing to do with the main object of this Debate. On the contrary, it had everything to do with it.
It would be very wrong for me, standing at this Box and representing His Majesty's Government, either to controvert or to agree with the reference which he made to the Government of the United States, but all, on either side of the House, can accept the pre-position which he laid down that international trade is difficult, if not impossible, if you have in different countries the fluctuating conditions which we have recently experienced. Therefore, from that point of view, surely it is as much a matter of concern to hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite as it directly affects the livelihood of the working classes. My hon. Friend said that, whether you have a Capitalist State or a Socialist State, it would be difficult for that State to do international trade under the world conditions which have prevailed recently, and everybody agrees with that point. Why does the hon. Gentleman say that it was wholly irrelevant?
Mr. Edwards: I merely mentioned that there were other occasions for discussing it.
Earl Winterton: It is almost a work of supererogation for anyone to rise from this Bench and say he cannot accept the Motion. But it is by no means superfluous for the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Keighley (Mr. Lees-Smith) to rise and give the House his reasons for agreeing with the terms of the Motion. And if we really got from him an exposé of the Socialist party policy no doubt all of us sitting on this side of the House would be grateful to the Mover and the Seconder of the Motion. Anyone who has been about the world and has seen its many phases of activity cannot possibly be complacent about the evils associated with human existence in this or any other country. What seems in all these debates to vitiate some of the arguments used is to assume that all these evils proceed from the economic system. Though I do not want to introduce the horrible and sinister in this Debate, let me as a hospital chairman of 25 years standing remind the House of the worst of all the evils that threaten the human race, the lurking enemy behind all of us of 40 and over, which probably causes more pain and suffering, directly or indirectly, than any other factor, strikes alike at rich and poor. There is my recollection of a Prime Minister who died of that particular disease in Downing Street and there are many homeless people who die of it. It is absurd to suggest that all the evils with which we are faced to-day are due to the economic system.
Mr. Callacher: That is quite irrelevant.
Earl Winterton: It is not in the least irrelevant. It is most relevant to a discussion of these things because the general impression in this Debate from speakers opposite, as much as from any on the Front Bench is that everything has proceeded from the economic system. I should like to quote to the House a very true observation made by an hon. Gentleman whom I think most of us admire for the independence of his opinions although those on the Opposition side do not necessarily agree with him. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Mossley made these remarks in a rather celebrated De-
1358
bate some four years ago on this very subject. He said:
"I, who have been convinced for many years that it is utterly useless to attempt to get progress by changing institutions, maintain that the whole history of mankind shows most conclusively and manifestly that progress is only to be obtained by changing individual men and women."
Would any one challenge the truth of that statement? Applying that test? I would say with emphasis, and I do not think Members of the Front Opposition Bench will disagree with me, that there is far less of a clash between the classes and far less tolerance of injustice, oppression and conditions that injure body and soul to-day than there has been at any time. Public opinion has tended to become more broad and centrally minded in this House and outside it. Doctrines of extreme Socialism or Leftism are not accepted. There is a much greater community sense abroad about all these economic questions. In the immense fluidity of world economic conditions public opinion favours empirical conclusions and not text book theories whether they proceed from Karl Marx or Adam Smith. Hon. Gentlemen and right hon. Gentleman opposite know that and so-do some of the hon. Gentleman on the benches behind me who represent the extreme right of our party. There is no need to apologise for the economic policy pursued by the present Government. I do not in the least reject the rather sly reference of the hon. Gentleman behind me to that policy because we have tried to meet the changed situation of the times.
I do not want to trouble the House with a lot of facts and figures, but in view of the statements that have been made in the course of the Debate, there are some that I must introduce. If it is indeed true that the capitalist system has failed, why do we see the remarkable figures already quoted as to the drop in the standardised death rate from all causes per thousand living from 18.7 in 1885 to 9.2 in 1936? That is an enormous drop, and the drop in infant mortality is even more remarkable. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Gentleman who interrupts know of any country in the world comparable to this country where there has been a similar drop in the death rate for the last half century? I know of none. The death rate in Russia is infinitely greater

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than in this country and the reduction in the death rate since the change of system in that country has been practically negligible.
Mr. Lees-Smith: Will the right hon. Gentleman give the infant mortality rate in other countries as well as this?
Earl Winterton: I know what the right hon. Gentleman wants. He is going to tell us that the infant mortality death rate in Russia has dropped enormously.
Mr. Lees-Smith: No I am not.
Earl Winterton: If the right hon. Gentleman is not going to do that I can only say it is a pleasant return to statistical accuracy on the part of the Front Bench opposite. In regard to the condition that used to be called in the old debates "the condition of the people," let us turn to the figures for 1913 taken from the official statistics of investments in friendly societies, industrial insurance and co-operative societies, building societies, trade unions and miscellaneous organisations of that description. In 1913 the total was£254,000,000. In the year 1935 that figure had gone up to£1,442,000,000, an increase of five times the previous figure. Nobody is going to tell me that the population has increased five times or that the depreciation in the value of money is anything like that percentage.
Reference was made to the question of housing. I claim that no country in the world has made such progress in housing as has been made in this country by both public and private enterprise since the War. Let me quote from Sir Walter Citrine who in a famous book on the subject of his visit to Russia makes a comparison between different housing policies. He writes:
"The houses we have seen represent the latest Soviet ideas. What are they? They are large tenements badly built, sometimes five storeys high, mostly without any lifts. They have no baths as a general rule and usually only cold water. The nearest public bath may be a considerable distance away ….
Compare this with Great Britain. I know how badly we need more houses and cheaper accommodation for our crowded people. A considerable part of my time and energy has been spent in trying to secure this. But it is unchallengeable that the modern house accommodation in England provides at least
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separate bedrooms, separate bathrooms, and usually a separate w.c. as well. I never saw a separate w.c., for a single family only, in any of these Russian houses."
Another country which is constantly being put forward by speakers from the party opposite and which is quoted as showing the value of the Socialist experiment is Sweden. I do not know whether hon. Gentlemen opposite have noticed that there has been very serious criticism recently both in the Swedish Press and by English writers who have visited the country about the housing position in Sweden. I mention this only for the purpose of comparison. I do not wish to criticise the Governments in those countries, but it is absurd to deny the truth of all these facts which are brought to their notice. I do not say that hon. Gentlemen opposite have done nothing. All Governments and all local authorities have a record of social service which is unparalleled in the history of the world.
The Seconder of the Motion referred to the subject of housing and dealt with a comparatively small point which is, however, very important from the point of view of Sheffield and the Ministry of Health. He gave us a harrowing account of the state of some huts in Sheffield. He said they were wooden huts, dating from the time of the War, that they were verminous and ought to be pulled down. One of my hon. Friends asked why the local authority had not acted, and the hon. Member made a reply which surprised me and on which I would ask him to pursue the matter further with the Ministry of Health. He said that the Ministry of Health had prevented the local authority from pulling these houses down on the ground that there was slum clearance which was more urgent. I cannot think that that was so.
Mr. C. Wilson: What has happened is this: They desired to pull them down, but what I have been told, as I understand it from the town clerk, is that the Ministry of Health stated that the loans were for slum clearance and not for the demolition of these buildings.
Earl Winterton: It is obvious that the hon. Member ought to make further inquiries. I think he is misinformed. The Ministry of Health has no power to do anything of the sort. If the local authority consider that these houses ought to be pulled down, it is their duty

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to pull them down, and it is the duty of the hon. Member to call the attention of the local authority to the state of the houses. I hope that he will supply the Ministry of Health with full details. These matters are important because they occasionally arise in Debate and if they are not answered a wrong impression may be given. In another part of his speech the hon. Member scarcely did justice to another local authority, the London County Council. He suggested that there were dozens, I think he said hundreds, of homeless people wandering about London, and that the only place where they could obtain a bed was by sitting on the floor in some building, with newspapers round them. In the most emphatic manner the London County Council have issued a statement, which I know to be correct from my own knowledge, saying that by public enterprise and by private means there is a sufficiency of beds in London for all homeless wanderers.
Mr. Lawson: It is hardly fair to pillory my hon. Friend for the facts of this case. As a matter of fact, in different parts of the country, it is known to Members of this House, there are blocks of huts that were left over from the War period, and a very great financial responsibility has fallen upon the people. In my own Division an impossible position was created and a very great struggle has been required to get rid of these huts.
Earl Winterton: All that I am asking is that full particulars of this serious matter should be supplied by the hon. Member to the Ministry of Health, because I think it will be found that he is mistaken. I could quote a good many other figures as evidence of the relative prosperity of this country compared with any other country. Here are figures which have not been quoted in any Debate. I find that the United Kingdom percentage of world trade in the year 1929 was 13.62, and in the year 1936 14.50. What are the comparable figures for other countries in that period? In the United States there has been a decrease, minus 20.6, in Italy minus 11.9, in France minus 9.7, and in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, minus 9.2. These are very important figures. There is not another country which shows an increase of industrial production as important as ours. I could
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give further figures showing the production in particular trades.
When it comes to employment, here again I would ask, where is there any country where the conditions are better than they are here? Throughout the speeches this afternoon and this evening we have been given to understand that conditions somewhere else are better. Where? They are not to be found in any statistics. I find that employment, taking 1929 as 100, has gone up in Great Britain from 92.3 in 1931 to 111.3 in 1937. The closest approach to that is Italy, which has gone up from 88.8 to 100.7. If you take unemployment and employment I do not think the figures of any country compare with the figures of this country. Since August, 1931, employment has increased by 2,220,000, an increase of 23.7 per cent. and unemployment has fallen from 2,762,000 to 1,400,000 a decrease of 51 per cent. These are hard and difficult figures for hon. Members opposite, and I challenge any hon. Member to take the figures of any of the dictator countries of the Right or Left, or any of the democratic countries like France and the United States, in regard to housing, nutrition, employment, and industrial production and deny the assertion that in this country we are relatively much better off.
Mr. Kelly: And you are happy about it.
Earl Winterton: I did not say that I was happy, or that the Government were complacent. What I am pointing out is the blindness of hon. Members opposite who fail to see the comparative prosperity of their own country and put forward Measures and advocate a policy which would destroy that prosperity in return for some theoretical system the real meaning of which they themselves do not understand.
Mr. Davidson: Is the Noble Lord aware that only last week the Minister of Labour said that in Scotland from 1929–37 there has been a definite increase in unemployment of 51,000?
Earl Winterton: I am taking the United Kingdom as a whole. I think I have established my contention that this country with all its imperfections and all its faults remains the most prosperous today, and in the moral sense there is

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infinitely less class and religious and sectarian ill-feeling than there is in any other country. If you want to know real bitterness between the Left and Right hon. Members should go to France and the United States or to any other country except the totalitarian countries where no bitterness by the minorities is allowed. I say that on moral grounds we can take credit to ourselves for the condition of affairs in this country and that we should continue to work upwards towards increasing the spread of prosperity. I want to ask one or two questions of the right hon. Gentleman who is to follow me. Is it intended under the Socialist scheme put forward in the Motion to obtain for the State all houses, all land and all property? I think we ought to have an answer to that question. I have in my constituency thousands of small house owners, and they will be greatly interested in the answer of the right hon. Gentleman. Are they going to be the owners of their own houses or under a Socialist system are they to be the tenants of the State.
There are other questions I want to ask which have never yet been answered by the Socialist party. There is the question of production and distribution. I see that under the plan these are to be in the hands of the State. Who is going to manage this production and distribution? Are the Government to manage it, is Parliament to manage it, or is it to be an uncontrolled bureaucracy? [Interruption.] Hon. Members opposite seem to think that is a rather frivolous and humorous question; they seem to think that it is quite unimportant, and that it does not matter who manages it. Let me assure them that the electors will have a great deal to say on this question before they are ever returned to power on a full Socialist policy. Let them not forget that when they did obtain a sufficient number of hon. Members to form a Government, they did not obtain them on a full Socialist policy such as they are now putting forward. At that time they agreed with the views of one of their distinguished Party Members on the inevitability of gradualness; but that was before the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps) joined the Executive. It will not be possible for them to play that game again. It will be a question of undiluted Socialism.
Sir Stafford Cripps: Hear, hear.
Earl Winterton: I fully appreciate the sincerity of the hon. and learned Gentleman's "Hear, hear"; and my only regret is that he is not going to reply to this Debate. These questions have never yet been answered by the high priests of the complete religion, those who, like the Wahabis of the desert or the Puritans of the time of Queen Elizabeth, go the whole hog, as does the hon. and learned Gentleman in the pure gospel of Socialism. What is to happen about salaries and wages? Are they to be higher or lower than under private enterprise? Are they to be graded? Are the lower-paid workers, as in a certain country, the name of which I will not mention, where this policy has been adopted, to have barely enough to live on, and the artisans be primed by various methods of coercion to work as hard as they can in order to get a full meal?
Mr. Gallacher: That is a travesty of the facts.
Earl Winterton: Who is going to pay the losses of industry under a Socialist State? Is the industry itself going to pay? Is the taxpayer going to pay? How do hon. Members propose to compete with other countries if the cost of production of a particular article, for example, steel, is very much lower in another country than here? It will be impossible to carry out the competition except by lowering wages, but obviously they will be precluded from doing that, because one must remember that they will get into office on the basis of promises that everybody is going to be better off when they are in office. Naturally they will have to carry out their promise.
Mr. Gallacher: On a point of Order. Is it possible to move the Adjournment so that we may have more time in which to deal with these childish frivolities? Is there no possibility of getting an Adjournment?
Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of Order.
Earl Winterton: I have only one other question to ask. With the utmost good nature, may I say to the hon. Member who interrupted that possibly he could obtain, by communication with his friends in a certain country, the answer to some of the questions that I have

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asked? I wish now to ask the most important and most serious question of all. It is a question that has never yet been answered, and it is fantastic and absurd to suppose that any party can ever obtain office in this country without answering it. By what process are the means of production and distribution in this country to be taken over? By compensation or by confiscation? Do hon. Members propose to pay the full value of these most valuable services, for they are the most valuable services that any country could have? I think we are entitled to an answer to all those questions. May I say in conclusion, that while I am well aware that the right hon. Gentleman who is about to reply will probably employed a better dialectical weapon than I can command, it will, on this occasion, be loaded with such rusty ammunition that I shall be very much surprised if he is able to give an effective answer to the questions which I have addressed to him.
10.31 p.m.
Mr. Lees-Smith: I hope the Chancellor of the Duchy will wait with some patience until I get to that part of my speech which would naturally come within the scope of the questions put by him. Until he spoke, a great many of the speakers on the benches opposite complained that my hon. Friends in speaking on this Motion, had omitted arguments with regard to one item or another, or had given insufficient facts. Therefore, I propose to attempt to cover shortly all the points in our Motion, and I shall come at the end particularly to those questions of Socialist policy and its implications, which seemed exclusively to interest the Noble Lord. This Debate has followed rather fortunately upon 'a Debate on malnutrition. The two Debates have very conveniently run together, and this has enabled us to inquire, what are the underlying causes of the malnutrition which undoubtedly exists. I, therefore, begin by laying down certain central facts which, I think, are now established as a result of recent discussions on the standard of living. These facts have been definitely established and are now the background of any Motions of this kind which may be put before the House.
It is definitely established that, taking the British Medical Association standard of the minimum nutrition needed for
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health and vitality, at least one-third of the population have not the income to buy sufficient food of the proper kind to reach that standard. That, as I say is the minimum standard. That standard has been criticised but if we take the very well-known standard of Sir John Orr—what he calls his optimum standard—then it is also clearly established that about half the people of the country have not the income necessary to obtain sufficient food of the kind required to meet that standard. Beginning with that fact we come to some of the consequences to one of which the Noble Lord referred in putting his questions. One of the consequences is to be found in the effects on the health of the nation and in the figures of infant mortality. I think at the present time the infant mortality rate per thousand in this country is 57. The Noble Lord challenged me to point out any other country which had either a death rate or an infant mortality rate as low as ours.
Earl Winterton: No. I referred to the fall in the general death rate in the last half century.
Mr. Lees-Smith: I will deal with both questions, but I am not a Minister, and I do not carry all the vital statistics of the country in my pocket. It does happen however that I have here an authoritative reference to the infant mortality figures. The Noble Lord asked me a number of questions, and I doubt whether I have time to answer them all, but, at any rate, I will answer that one. The Noble Lord's question is answered by Sir John On. This is what he says:
"If we take infant mortality as an indication … we find that other nations have been improving faster than we have. Thus, for example, the infant mortality rates for Norway, Sweden, Holland, Switzerland and the Dominions of Australia and New Zealand are lower than the rate for England. The rates for these countries are between 30 and 50 per 1,000. This is not because the people of these countries are naturally more healtly and vigorous than we are, but because the rate of improvement in these countries has been faster than in England and Scotland."
That is a reply to the right hon. Gentleman. He spoke with great pride of this figure of 57 per 1,000, but what he did not point out was that this is an average and that it is reached because the wealthier section of the community have a figure of only 30 per 1,000, whereas, if you come to the very poorest slum dwellers, it is 150

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per 1,000, but among the ordinary poorer sections of wage-earners it is 100 per 1,000. These figures by themselves show that, as a matter of fact, if you take the poorer sections of the wage-earners, out of every 1,000 children 70 die in infancy as a result of causes which, if they were in the same position as the more fortunate children, we could prevent.
But it does not end with the children who die. The effect is left on the lowered resistance of the children who live, and what are the figures about that? There have been some very striking figures. I think I have quoted them in these debates, but I have looked them up again. They are figures given by Sir John Orr about the heights of children. I remember when I was at the Board of Education what was called the Tuxford formula, by which the Board of Education measured the health of children by a formula largely dependent on the heights at different ages. It is now found that if you take a boy of 13 at a great public school like Winchester, Westminster, or Rugby, the average height is 5 ft. 2 inches; if you take a boy at Christ's Hospital, which is a school not so wealthy, the average height is 4 ft. 11 inches; whereas if you take a boy at the average elementary school, it is 4 ft. 8 inches, so that, by the age of 13, they have lost six inches of their potential height, with all that that means in lowered power and vitality and the lessening of the length of life.
That is the background to this discussion, and the question that this Motion begins by asking is, Are these results inevitable? I have here figures of the average income of the country, but I take Sir John Orr's figure, which is ratified by later investigations. The average income of the country is 30s. per head, but the standard of nutrition—not the lower standard of the British Medical Association, but the optimum standard—obtains in those families who have 20s. per head per week. That shows that it is within our power to-day to provide for the whole population a standard of life which would give them power and strength and length of days. Why do we not do it? Our Motion begins by calling attention to the reason why we do not do it. It is not a matter of the individual, but the system does have the result that it ends with a fairly small group or section of the population at the top who have
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not only the money to meet those primary needs—we have enough for the primary needs and half the income of the country for secondary needs—and secondary needs but have 10, 20 and 5o times enough for both. That leads to the inevitable result of stunted lives, stunted bodies, and foreshortened lives at the other end of the scale.
The Motion was put down to call attention to that fact, and I am going to try to prove that that is a fact. I should like to add one or two statements as to the causes of a low standard of life. I have carefully taken advice, and I have selected authorities whom I do not want to be in dispute, but will be recognised and accepted just as much on the other side of the House as on this side. First, I have statistics of the distribution of capital. As the hon. and gallant Member for Carnarvon (Major Owen) pointed out, we have to distinguish between distribution of capital and of income. There was an article in the "Times" discussing this subject—it was not quite up-to-date, but it has been brought up-to-date by some economists mentioned by the hon. and gallant Member for Carnarvon—by Professor Henry Clay, who is now the economic adviser to the Bank of England. It was published just before he took his present position and when he was a professor and a statistician. He points out with regard to the distribution of capital that the country is divided into two groups, a group with 2 per cent. of the population on one side and a group with 98 per cent. of the population on the other, and that the group of 2 per cent. take two-thirds of the capital of the country and leave the remaining third among the remaining 98 per cent. When we have these complacent statements comparing this country with others I am bound to point out, what Professor Henry Clay points out, that in this country capital is much more concentrated than in any other country. That being so, it is not surprising that among that 98 per cent. 75 per cent. of them die practically propertyless, leaving less than£100 behind. That is the verification of our arguments about the distribution of capital.
Now I come to the figures of income. As the result of one remark about the figures of income, I would say that inequality of the distribution of capital

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does not only mean that there is increased dividend on capital, but that there is inequality of earning power. One hon. Member both last year and this year told us that he earned every penny that he made, and that therefore he had no obligations at all to capital. He was quite wrong. As a matter of fact, the ownership of capital and belonging to a family of capital enabled him to have that extended education without which many of the most lucrative earning opportunities would never have been afforded. Moreover, nobody denies that if you belong to a family with capital, you live in that kind of charmed circle of directors where there is influence and where there is a pull. Your chance of getting a good opening in life is much better than that of the outsider. As a matter of fact, you take it for granted as a duty that the openings shall be given to sons, relatives and friends. If this accepted system of private enterprise were adopted in the public service, it would lead to a demand in this House for an inquiry into the nepotism that prevailed. The hon. Member who moved the Amendment and said that good management was the key to efficiency, would surely realise the enormous difference in management between private enterprise and the public service which enters when the key positions are filled by either of those two alternative methods.
Now I come to the actual figures of distribution of income. When I first began to take an interest in these subjects, there was a well-known figure which I have always remembered and which is always used. It was found out and announced by Mr. Leo Chiozza Money, who was a great statistician in those (lays, and it was that one-ninth of the people of this country obtained one-half of its income. I am sure that my hon. Friends have used that argument a great many times on political platforms in this country. Listening to the Debate, I was interested to find out how the proportion stood to-day, and I asked an authority whether it had been worked out for the present day. He replied that it had been worked out by Sir Josiah Stamp. So I turned to Sir Josiah Stamp's book upon the taxation of capital. His calculation is that one-half of the gross total income is received by approximately one-ninth or one-tenth of
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the people. You therefore get the result, which is alluded to in our Motion, that the system under which we live, whatever happened before the War or after the War, still grinds out in about the same proportion that same gross inequality of income to which it refers.
I come to the last part of our Motion, and I come to the Amendment which condemns our Motion, because it is argued that without private enterprise and competition there can be no industrial efficiency. I notice a very great contrast in the Debates in this House. I notice that when we are discussing a general and rather academic proposal such as we are to-night, hon. Gentlemen on the opposite benches are full of praise of private enterprise, competition and individualism. and then for the rest of the Session we are occupied day after day and week after week in passing Bill after Bill to enable industry after industry to free itself from private enterprise and competition. Yesterday it was the Coal Bill, and there was to be no competition in the settlement of prices. If there is competition among the coal mines, they can be compulsorily amalgamated. There is no private enterprise there. Last week it was the sea fisheries. There was a White Fish Bill to prevent undue competition there. Last April there was a Shipping Bill by which a subsidy was given to shipping on the condition, distinctly laid down in the subsidy, that the industry should not waste it by competition. I notice the cotton industry is coming to the Government Departments asking to be allowed to free itself from competition and private enterprise, and just as the House was about to rise, I read a report by the Import Duties Advisory Committee on the iron and steel trade, which is almost taken as the test industry by which we actually measure the advantages of the present system of control.
Fortunately, the result of that position in the industry is such that we know a good deal about it. May I take it as an example of what is now meant by private enterprise and competition? I find here that the Iron and Steel Trade Federation Central Committee has been consulted over the prices and over the iron and steel trade's chart. It has now been consulted about the output of the different firms, consulted as to the amount of imports to come into the country, and consulted as to the amount of exports to

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go out. It is to be consulted before any firm can increase its plant, and now it is to be consulted before any new man can come into the industry at all. The fact is that here in the industry which is more discussed than any other, you have reached the position where the industry has completely insulated itself, as other industries are trying to do, from that competitive and private enterprise which hon. Members opposite at other moments say is industry's very lifeblood. What does this mean? It means that all the great staple industries of the country, one after another, are now accepting the Socialistic doctrine that organisation produces such a result in competition with private enterprise.
But, although that is the case, there is a profound difference between the Amendment and the Motion. The question on which the two really differ is whether this organisation is to be under national control or under the control of self-interested groups of producers. It is evident, taking the iron and steel trades, and the position which other trades are trying to take, that they will not be able to hold the present position. While there is easy money going it may be possible, but the best of these people come on to a falling market sometimes, and the nation will never consent to give great industries, whose policy determines the cost structure of other industries, a private monopoly in the name of private enterprise. There have been a good many references in the Debate to the Debate on this subject in, I think,
1923, when Sir Alfred Mond made a very famous speech. Nobody has repeated, nobody could repeat, that speech to-day, and a speech such as the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) made, saying that he believes in private enterprise and then laying down a programme which was practically Labour's five-years programme, would have been impossible from the Tory benches when that great Debate took place. It is now generally admitted that, although competition may be keen, co-ordination has to be achieved nevertheless, and it will equally be admitted that that co-ordination can best be carried on when it is controlled by national and not by semi-private sectional interests.
Lieut.-Colonel Heneage: Is not the right hon. Gentleman, before he sits down, going to answer the questions which my Noble Friend asked him?
Mr. Lees-Smith: I have in the course of my speech answered a great many of the Noble Lord's questions, but I do not think he seriously expected that I was going to take up time in giving a detailed reply, because, in point of fact, his questions were rhetorical questions, and obviously constituted the last peroration which he gave to the Dames of the Primrose League.
Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
The House divided: Ayes, 117; Noes, 153.

Division No. 22.]

AYES.

[11.0 p.m.

Adams, D. (Consett)

Day, H.

Jagger, J.

Adamson, W. M.

Dobbie, W.

Jenkins, Sir W. (Neath)

Alexander, Rt. Hon. A. V. (H'lsbr.)

Dunn, E. (Rother Valley)

John, W.

Ammon, C. G.

Ede, J. C.

Johnston, Rt. Hon. T.

Anderson, F. (Whitehaven)

Edwards, A. (Middlesbrough E.)

Jones, A. C. (Shipley)

Attlee, Rt. Hon. C. R.

Edwards, Sir C. (Bedwellty)

Kelly, W. T.

Bonfield, J. W.

Fletcher, Lt.-Comdr. R. T. H.

Kirby, B. V.

Barnes, A. J.

Frankel, D.

Lansbury, Rt. Hon. G.

Barr, J.

Gallacher, W.

Lathan, G.

Batey, J.

Gardner, B. W.

Lawson, J. J.

Bellenger, F. J.

Garro Jones, G. M.

Leach, W.

Bonn, Rt. Hon. W. W.

Green, W. H. (Deptford)

Leonard, W.

Benson, G.

Greenwood, Rt. Hon. A.

Leslie, J. R.

Bevan, A.

Grenfell, D. R.

Logan, D. G.

Broad, F. A.

Griffiths, G. A. (Hemsworth)

Lunn, W.

Bromfield, W.

Griffiths, J. (Llanelly)

Macdonald, G. (Ince)

Brown, Rt. Hon. J. (S. Ayrshire)

Groves, T. E.

McEntee, V. La T.

Burke, W. A.

Guest, Dr. L. H. (Islington, N.)

McGhee, H. G.

Cape, T.

Hall, G. H. (Aberdare)

MacMillan, M. (Western Isles)

Charleton, H. C.

Hardie, Agnes

MacNeill, Weir, L.

Cove, W. G.

Hayday, A.

Mainwaring, W. H.

Cripps, Hon. Sir Stafford

Henderson, A. (Kingswinford)

Marklew, E.

Daggar, G.

Henderson, J. (Ardwick)

Marshall, F.

Dalton, H.

Henderson, T. (Tradeston)

Mathers, G.

Davidson, J. J. (Maryhill)

Hills, A. (Pontefract)

Maxton, J.

Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)

Hollins, A.

Messer, F.

Montague, F.

Roberts, Rt. Hon. F. O. (W. Brom.)

Thurtle, E.

Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Hackney, S.)

Robinson, W. A. (St. Helens)

Viant, S. P.

Muff, G.

Sexton, T. M.

Watkins, F. C.

Naylor, T. E.

Silkin, L.

Watson, W. McL.

Noel-Baker, P. J.

Silverman, S. S.

Westwood, J.

Paling, W.

Simpson, F. B.

Wilkinson, Ellen

Parker, J.

Smith, Ben (Rotherhithe)

Williams, E. J. (Ogmore)

Pethick-Lawrence, Rt. Hon. F. W.

Smith, E. (Stoke)

Williams, T. (Don Valley)

Price, P.

Smith, Rt. Hon. H. B. Lees- (K'ly)

Windsor, W. (Hull, C.)

Quibell, D. J. K.

Smith, T. (Normanton)

Woods, G. S. (Finsbury)

Richards, R. (Wrexham)

Sorensen, R. W.

Young, Sir R. (Newton)

Ridley, G.

Stephen, C.

Riley, B.

Stewart, W. J. (H'ght'n-le-Sp'ng)

TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

Ritson, J.

Taylor, R. J. (Morpeth)

Mr. Tinker and Mr. Cecil Wilson.

NOES.

Acland, R. T. D. (Barnstaple)

Fleming, E. L.

Munro, P.

Adams, S. V. T. (Leeds, W.)

Foot, D. M.

O'Neill, Rt. Hon. Sir Hugh

Agnew, Lieut.-Comdr. P. G.

Fremantle, Sir F. E.

Owen, Major G.

Amery, Rt. Hon. L. C. M. S.

Furness, S. N.

Pickthorn, K. W. M.

Anstruther-Gray, W. J.

Fyfe, D. P. M.

Pilkington, R.

Asks, Sir R. W.

Ganzoni, Sir J.

Procter, Major H. A.

Atholl, Duchess of

Gluckstein, L. H.

Radford, E. A.

Baillie, Sir A. W. M.

Grattan-Doyle, Sir N.

Raikes, H. V. A. M.

Baldwin-Webb, Col. J.

Greene, W. P. C. (Worcester)

Ramsden, Sir E.

Balniel, Lord

Gretton, Col. Rt. Hon. J.

Rankin, Sir R.

Beaumont, Hon. R. E. B. (Portsm'h)

Gridley, Sir A. B.

Rathbone, J. R. (Bodmin)

Bird, Sir R. B.

Griffith, F. Kingsley (M'ddl'sbro, W.)

Reed, A. C. (Exeter)

Boothby, R. J. G.

Grimston, R. V.

Reid, W. Allan (Derby)

Briscoe, Capt. R. G.

Guest, Lieut.-Colonel H. (Drake)

Rickards, G. W. (Skipton)

Brocklebank, Sir Edmund

Guest, Hon. I. (Brecon and Radnor)

Ross, Major Sir R. D. (Londonderry)

Brown, Col. D. C. (Hexham)

Hannon, Sir P. J. H.

Royds, Admiral P. M. R.

Browne, A. C. (Belfast, W.)

Harbord, A.

Russell, S. H. M. (Darwen)

Bull, B. B.

Harris, Sir P. A.

Samuel, M. R. A.

Butcher, H. W.

Haslam, H. C. (Horncastle)

Scott, Lord William

Carver, Major W. H.

Haslam, Sir J. (Bolton)

Seely, Sir H.

Channon, H.

Heneage, Lieut.-Colonel A. P.

Shaw, Major P. S. (Wavertree)

Christie, J. A.

Higgs, W. F.

Shepperson, Sir E. W.

Clarke, Lt.-Col. R. S. (E. Grinstead)

Holdsworth, H.

Sinclair, Col. T. (Queen's U. B'lf'st)

Colman, N. C. D.

Holmes, J. S.

Somervell. Sir D. B. (Crewe)

Colville, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. D. J.

Hope, Captain Hon. A. O. J.

Southby, Commander Sir A. R. J.

Conant, Captain R. J. E.

Hunter, T.

Spens. W. P.

Cook, Sir T. R. A. M. (Norfolk, N.)

Hutchinson, G. C.

Storey, S.

Cooke, J. D. (Hammersmith, S.)

Keeling, E. H.

Stourton, Major Hon. J. J.

Cooper, Rt. Hn. T. M. (E'nburgh, W.)

Kerr, Colonel C. I. (Montrose)

Strauss, E. A. (Southwark, N.)

Courthope, Col. Rt. Hon. Sir G. L.

Kimball, L.

Strauss, H. G. (Norwich)

Cox, H. B. Trevor

Lamb, Sir J. Q.

Strickland, Captain W. F

Crooke, J. S.

Law, R. K. (Hull, S.W.)

Stuart, Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn)

Crookshank, Capt. H. F. C.

Leech, Dr. J. W.

Sueter, Rear-Admiral Sir M F.

Cross, R. H.

Lees-Jones, J.

Tasker, Sir R. I.

Cruddas, Col. B.

Leighton, Major B. E. P.

Thomas, J. P. L.

Culverwen, C. T.

Loftus, P. C.

Tufnell, Lieut.-Commander R. L.

Davidson, Viscountess

Lovat-Fraser, J. A.

Turton, R. H.

Davies, Major Sir G. F. (Yeovil)

Mabane, W. (Huddersfield)

Wallace, Capt. Rt. Hon. Euan

Denman, Hon. R. D.

MacAndrew, Colonel Sir C. G.

Ward, Lieut.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)

Dorman-Smith, Major Sir R. H.

M'Connell, Sir J.

Ward, Irene M. B. (Wallsend)

Dugdale, Captain T. L.

McKie, J. H.

Waterhouse. Captain C.

Duggan, H. J.

Macmillan, H. (Stockton-on-Tees)

White, H. Graham

Duncan, J. A. L.

Makins, Brig.-Gen. E.

Whiteley, Major J. P. (Buckingham)

Eastwood, J. F.

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

Wickham, Lt: Col. E. T. R.

Eckersley, P. T.

Markham, S. F.

Williams, H. G. (Croydon, S.)

Edmondson, Major Sir J.

Marsden, Commander A.

Windsor-Clive, Lleug-Colonel G.

Ellis, Sir G.

Mason, Lt.-Col. Hon. G. K. M.

Winterton, Rt. Han. Earl

Elliston, Capt. G. S.

Mayhew, Lt.-Col. J.

Wood, Hon. C. I. C.

Emery, J. F.

Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest)

Wright, Wing-Commander J. A. C.

Evans, D. O. (Cardigan)

Morris, J. P. (Salford, N.)

Everard, W. L.

Morrison, Rt. Hon. W. S. (Cirencester)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—

Findlay, Sir E.

Muirhead, Lt.-Col. A. J.

Mr. Gary and Mr. Allan

Chapman.

Question put, "That the proposed words be there added."
Several hon. Members rose—
It being after Eleven of the Clock, the Debate stood adjourned.
The Orders of the Day were read, and postponed.

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

ROYAL NAVY.
  DOCKYARDS (INDUSTRIAL EMPLOYÉS).
  DOCKYARDS (INDUSTRIAL EMPLOYÉS).
  HIS MAJESTY'S SHIP "WARSPITE" (REFITTING).
  HIS MAJESTY'S SHIP "WARSPITE" (REFITTING).
  RECRUITMENT (SOUTH WALES AND MONMOUTHSHIRE).
  RECRUITMENT (SOUTH WALES AND MONMOUTHSHIRE).
  GUNS AND WAR STORES (MERCHANT SHIPS).
  GUNS AND WAR STORES (MERCHANT SHIPS).
TRANSPORT.
  TRUNK ROADS (TOLL BRIDGES).
  TRUNK ROADS (TOLL BRIDGES).
  FORTH ROAD-BRIDGE.
  FORTH ROAD-BRIDGE.
  MOTOR LORRIES (GUARD RAILS).
  MOTOR LORRIES (GUARD RAILS).
  CAR PARKING, RESIDENTIAL STREETS.
  CAR PARKING, RESIDENTIAL STREETS.
  EDGWARE-MORDEN RAILWAY (OVERCROWDING).
  EDGWARE-MORDEN RAILWAY (OVERCROWDING).
  ROAD TRAFFIC ACTS (PROSECUTIONS).
  ROAD TRAFFIC ACTS (PROSECUTIONS).
  TRAFFIC CONGESTION, BRISTOL.
  TRAFFIC CONGESTION, BRISTOL.
  LIVERPOOL-MANCHESTER ROAD (LIGHTING).
  LIVERPOOL-MANCHESTER ROAD (LIGHTING).
  RIVER BLYTHE BRIDGE, NORTHUMBERLAND.
  RIVER BLYTHE BRIDGE, NORTHUMBERLAND.
  HIGHWAY CODE.
  HIGHWAY CODE.
  ELECTRICITY SUPPLY (BRECON SHIRE AND RADNORSHIRE).
  ELECTRICITY SUPPLY (BRECON SHIRE AND RADNORSHIRE).
  ELECTRIC PYLONS.
  ELECTRIC PYLONS.
  SPAIN.
  SPAIN.
  CIVIL SERVICE.
  CIVIL SERVICE.
  FOREIGN COUNTRIES (LOANS).
  FOREIGN COUNTRIES (LOANS).
  MESSRS. BATA, DAGENHAM.
  MESSRS. BATA, DAGENHAM.
GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS.
  RECORD KEEPERS, PRESS KEEPERS AND MESSENGERS.
  RECORD KEEPERS, PRESS KEEPERS AND MESSENGERS.
  SUB POST OFFICES.
  SUB POST OFFICES.
SCOTLAND.
  EMPIRE EXHIBITION, GLASGOW.
  EMPIRE EXHIBITION, GLASGOW.
  BLIND PERSONS, RUTHERGLEN.
  BLIND PERSONS, RUTHERGLEN.
POST OFFICE.
  UNDERGROUND CABLES.
  UNDERGROUND CABLES.
  HORNCHURCH AND UPMINSTER.
  HORNCHURCH AND UPMINSTER.
  TELEPHONE SERVICE (MALAYA).
  TELEPHONE SERVICE (MALAYA).
  FISHING FLEETS (WIRELESS TELEPHONE SERVICE).
  FISHING FLEETS (WIRELESS TELEPHONE SERVICE).
  WIRELESS RECEPTION, SOUTH ESSEX (INTERFERENCE).
  WIRELESS RECEPTION, SOUTH ESSEX (INTERFERENCE).
  LAND REGISTRATION.
  LAND REGISTRATION.
  SMALL DWELLINGS ACQUISITION ACTS.
  SMALL DWELLINGS ACQUISITION ACTS.
  NURSING (INTER-DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE).
  NURSING (INTER-DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE).
  WATERCRESS BEDS (INSPECTION).
  WATERCRESS BEDS (INSPECTION).
  CHARTERS OF INCORPORATION.
  CHARTERS OF INCORPORATION.
  PUBLIC ASSISTANCE (WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION RECIPIENTS).
  PUBLIC ASSISTANCE (WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION RECIPIENTS).
UNEMPLOYMENT.
  ASSISTANCE ALLOWANCE (COST OF LIVING).
  ASSISTANCE ALLOWANCE (COST OF LIVING).
  UNEMPLOYMENT FUND.
  UNEMPLOYMENT FUND.
  OUTDOOR DOMESTIC SERVANTS (INSURANCE).
  OUTDOOR DOMESTIC SERVANTS (INSURANCE).
  SOUTH WALES.
  SOUTH WALES.
  AERODROMES (RURAL AREAS).
  AERODROMES (RURAL AREAS).
BRITISH ARMY.
  WAR DEPARTMENT LAND PURCHASES.
  WAR DEPARTMENT LAND PURCHASES.
  ANTI-AIRCRAFT UNITS, SCOTLAND.
  ANTI-AIRCRAFT UNITS, SCOTLAND.
  COMMISSIONS FROM RANKS.
  COMMISSIONS FROM RANKS.
  RIFLE RANGES.
  RIFLE RANGES.
  HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT (COAL SUPPLY).
  HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT (COAL SUPPLY).
  TRAFALGAR SQUARE (MEMORIALS).
  TRAFALGAR SQUARE (MEMORIALS).
CIVIL AVIATION.
  GERMANY AND ITALY.
  GERMANY AND ITALY.
  COMMERCIAL UNDERTAKINGS (FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE).
  COMMERCIAL UNDERTAKINGS (FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE).
  COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY (PERSONNEL).
  COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY (PERSONNEL).
ROYAL AIR FORCE.
  BALLOON-BARRAGE PROTECTION.
  BALLOON-BARRAGE PROTECTION.
  LAND PURCHASES.
  LAND PURCHASES.
  AEROPLANE DOPE.
  AEROPLANE DOPE.
  IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRY.
  IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRY.
  MOTORING OFFENCES (TRIAL).
  MOTORING OFFENCES (TRIAL).
Preamble
The House met at a quarter before four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

THE LORD PRESIDENT'S VISIT TO GERMANY.
LORD SNELL: My Lords, I rise to ask the Leader of the House a question of which I have given him private notice—namely, are His Majesty's Government in a position to make a statement regarding the recent visit of the Lord President of the Council to Germany?
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (VISCOUNT HALIFAX): My Lords, as my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer informed another place on November 12, my visit was entirely private and unofficial. It had, however, as your Lordships are probably aware, been nged that I should see Herr Hitler, which I accordingly did on November 19 at Berchtesgaden, being accompanied by Baron Von Neurath, the German Foreign Minister. During my visit, I also had the opportunity of meeting General Göring, Dr. Goebbels, and other prominent leaders in Germany. These conversations were of a confidential character, and the House will not, I am sure, expect me to make any further statement in regard to them at this stage. His Majesty's Government are satisfied, however, that the visit has been valuable in furthering the desire, which I believe to be generally felt in both countries, for the establishment of closer mutual understanding.

FRENCH MINISTERS' VISIT TO LONDON.
LORD SNELL: My Lords, may I also ask whether it is true that the French Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs are shortly to pay a visit to this country?
VISCOUNT HALIFAX: Yes, my Lords, the French Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs have accepted an invitation from His Majesty's Government to visit London on November 29 and 30 for an exchange of views on the inter-
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national situation with my right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE (JUVENILE CONTRIBUTORS AND YOUNG PERSONS) BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and to be printed.

LICENSING OF ADVERTISEMENTS (SCOTLAND) BILL. [H.L.]
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to provide for a system of licensing of advertisements in Scotland, and to move that it be read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.— (Lord Polwarth.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

AGRICULTURAL WAGES COMMITTEES (DEFINITION OF DISTRICTS) (SCOTLAND) ORDER, 1937.
LORD SALTOUN LORD SALTOUN had given Notice that he would move, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying that the Agricultural Wages Committees (Definition of Districts) (Scotland) Order, 1937, dated 11th October, 1937, made by the Department of Agriculture for Scotland under Section 1 (1) of the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) (Scotland) Act, 1937, be annulled. The noble Lord said: My Lords, under the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) (Scotland) Act the Department of Agriculture for Scotland was empowered to make Regulations covering four different portions of the Act. There have been tabled three of these sets of Regulations; the fourth set has not yet been tabled, although I have seen a draft of it. That set of Regulations concerns the way in which the perquisites which farm workers in Scotland receive in the place of money wages are to be reckoned in cash. The whole of the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) (Scotland) Act, as far as it concerns the married men, depends upon the manner in which these perquisites are to be valued, because at retail prices these perquisites in many instances amount to very nearly half the wage earned. I would therefore venture

259
to ask the noble Lord who will reply for the Government if he can tell me in his reply why these Regulations, which cover all these other three portions of the Act to a certain extent, have not been already tabled, and whether he can let us know when the Department expects to lay them on the Table.
I quite understand that it should be a difficult thing to seek to annul a Regulation made by a Department of State under an Act of Parliament, and in the particular case before us I would much rather have sought to amend it. I do not know whether there was a subtle design to make amendment difficult, but the Act lays down that these Regulations cannot be amended in either House of Parliament; all that we can do is to present a Petition to the Crown seeking to annul them. If therefore I seek to annul these Regulations I do so because it is the course imposed upon me by the Department of Agriculture for Scotland. My reason for seeking to annul these Regulations, which are contained in Order No. 920, is on account of the boundary between the Counties of Banff, Aberdeen and Kincardine (which is District No. 3) and the County of Angus and part of the County of Perth (which is District No. 4). I would ask your Lordships to notice particularly that the County of Angus is included with part of the County of Perth, and so when I seek, as I shall do, to add to it also part of the County of Kincardine I am not doing anything which is to be avoided in these Regulations. The County of Aberdeen and the County of Banff and part of the County of Kincardine practise one particular system of farming. Part of the County of Kincardine and the County of Angus practise quite a different system.
To the north of that line we have what is called the chaumer system; to the south, we have the bothy system. Those of your Lordships who are interested in the French derivation of Scottish words may care to learn that the word "chaumer" is not connected, as one might imagine, with chambre and camera, but I think it is connected with the word chaumière because in practice the chaumer is always a separate house, and of course in the old days it must have been a true chaumière and
260
thatched with straw. Under the chaumer system the unmarried men sleep in the chaumer but they are fed entirely in the farmhouse. There is no question in that case of perquisites, because they live at the charge of the farmer who employs them, and in fact they are, except in the matter of sleeping accommodation, inmates of his house. Under the bothy system the unmarried men do receive food allowances and they sleep and feed in the bothies. I am not quite perfectly acquainted with the general system of the allowances they receive, and so I will not attempt to describe it. I will not say that there are no bothies in Aberdeenshire: there are bothies in Aberdeenshire, but these bothies are bothies of gamekeepers, foresters and the like. They have nothing to do with the employment of farm servants.
If the Aberdeenshire committee has to regulate wages in the whole of Kincardineshire it will be necessary for that committee to make special regulations for quite a small portion of the County in a different manner from the regulations that they make for the rest of the district put under their charge. I submit that this is putting a great deal more additional work on the committee, and, furthermore, that if the committee is properly representative of the district that I indicate—part of Kincardineshire, Aberdeenshire, and Banffshire—then the very fact that it is so representative will prevent it from acting as efficiently in the little district that I seek to exclude by reason of the fact that the members of the committee are unfamiliar with the system of life. Now if the line separating District No. 3 from District No. 4 were drawn so as to include in No. 3 District the parishes of Banchory-Ternan, Banchory-Devenick, Durris, Maryculter, Nigg, Strachan and part of the parish of Drumoak, the line of division would correspond to the division between the two systems. Moreover, these parishes are north of the Grampians on the map, but when you go to the County itself the proper division is the crest of the Grampians, and runs right through Kincardineshire, and that is the natural division of the two systems that I have outlined to your Lordships.
I know that these divisions into which Scotland is divided must to some extent be rough divisions, but I submit that

261
when you can do work well it is not necessary that, because in some cases it must be done roughly, therefore you must take pains to do it roughly. In my opinion the Department of Agriculture should have been sufficiently careful to mark the division line in the place where I have placed it. A small additional reason for following this line is the fact that to the north of that line the universal term of entry and way-going for married farm servants is Whitsun, while south of that line the universal term for married farm servants is Martinmas. The wages committees will have to regulate wages six-monthly in any case, and the fact of a few Martinmas entries occurring in the district would make very little difference to their work; but it does emphasise the point I am making that there is a real division between these two portions of Scotland. In default of any power to move an Amendment, I ask your Lordships' permission to annul these Regulations. I beg to move.
Moved, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying that the Agricultural Wages Committees (Definition of Districts) (Scotland) Order, 1937, dated nth October, 1937, made by the Department of Agriculture for Scotland under Section 1 (1) of the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) (Scotland) Act, 1937, be annulled.—(Lord Saltoun.)
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I had not intended to intervene at this stage in this debate, but I cannot allow this Motion to pass without some comment. I am rot quite sure which is the most appropriate time to deal with the matter, whether on this Regulation or on the others. The point in this case seems to be a very small one concerning this particular area in Aberdeenshire and Angus, and I think that could be left to future amending Regulations. The noble Lord has enlarged on the bothy system and the chaumer system that prevail in this area. They are utterly unknown in my part of Scotland, where the whole system is different, the work being chiefly done by married workers. It would be a great pity to take such a drastic step on this comparatively small matter Perhaps one may be permitted to speak more appropriately on a subsequent Motion, but I hope that the noble Lord who will speak for the Government will undertake that, where any real need for amendment is shown, the
262
Government will be prepared to introduce amending Regulations. In this case I hope that the House will not agree to deal with the matter as my noble friend Lord Saltoun has suggested.
THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (LORD STRATHCONA AND MOUNT ROYAL): My Lords, it would probably be for the convenience of your Lordships if I deal first of all with the two points the noble Lord has raised as preliminary to the further point of somewhat greater importance he wants to raise later on. First of all the noble Lord complains that the documents in question do not include all the Rules to be made under the Act. There are, as he explained, also Regulations relating to benefits in kind to be made by the Department under Section 8, subsection (1) (a) which, he claims, should be before your Lordships' House at the same time as the Regulations now under discussion. May I say at once that if this had been practicable it would have been done. But in the discussions with the organisations, which were a necessary preliminary to the establishment of this machinery, it became evident at an early stage that agreement on the principles which are to govern the valuation of benefits in kind presented special difficulties. It therefore became a question of whether the whole of the Regulations, and therefore all action under the Act, should be postponed until the questions arising on the valuation of benefits could be resolved. The Department—rightly so, I think, and with the concurrence of the representatives of both parties—took the view that they were not justified in postponing the duties laid upon them by Section r of the Act, and the Schedule, to divide the country into districts and take the necessary steps, which necessarily have taken some time, to establish the committees. These are steps concerned with the machinery of wage regulation. The Regulations about the valuation of benefits are of a different kind, being a statement of principles for the guidance of the committees in their work. They cannot become effective until the committees are set up and have elected thir own chairmen. There are one or two points in the draft Regulations still under discussion, but steps will be taken to ensure that they are published in good time for the committees to act upon them.

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I pass on to the question of the differentiation of boundaries to which the noble Lord referred. Here again I appreciate the point he raised, and of course he described the circumstances surrounding one particular district more especially than any other. It would, I agree, be convenient if the districts were uniform within themselves, and the task of the committees would be considerably simplified. But I am afraid that this object could have been achieved, and then only partially, by greatly increasing the number of districts and committees, involving correspondingly larger expenditure from public funds. For practical reasons the partition had to be settled on broad lines and, in general, the county boundary has been accepted as affording, from an administrative point of view, the simplest and clearest line of demarcation. The question of the districts was fully discussed with the representative national organisations, and the Government, whilst fully admitting that the result can at the best be only an approximation, are satisfied that the division in the Order is the best that can be effected in the circumstances. Should any serious errors be disclosed by experience, there is, I would remind the noble Lord, provision in the Act for the alteration of the boundaries at the instance of the committees concerned. But, quite apart from this, the Act fully recognises the varying circumstances not merely between districts but within each district, by providing the committees with powers to deal specially with special classes of workers and special areas within their districts. If the noble Lord will consider Section 2, subsection (2) of the Act, he will see that those powers are very wide indeed, and the Government feel sure that they are sufficient to enable the committees to deal with the particular difficulty, by no means peculiar to the Aberdeen district, which the noble Lord has in mind.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I would just like to answer what the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, said. I am compelled to move to annul these Orders because the Act very carefully prevents me from moving to amend them, which I should naturally prefer to do. I am very much obliged to my noble friend Lord Strathcona for his statement with regard to the Regulations about perquisites. I am glad to learn that they will be issued in plenty of
264
time to enable him to look into the matter. Your Lordships will remember that the Act prescribes twenty-eight sitting days for these Regulations to lie on the Table of the House for your Lordships to consider them. I trust that that period of twenty-eight days will be borne in mind, and that the Regulations will be tabled in plenty of time to enable your Lordships to pass any comments upon them that you may wish to make before the committees have to act upon them. In conclusion I would say quite frankly that this is an administrative point. I do not wish to press the Motion, but I would like to point out to the noble Lord that I am not seeking to increase the number of districts; I am seeking to preserve the number of districts. While I recognise that the Act gives ample powers for dealing with strange and incongruous areas, the point is that men drawn from a large area with experience of one system cannot so well make regulations for a totally different system as a committee which is accustomed to that system and whose work is confined to it. I beg to withdraw my Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

SCOTTISH AGRICULTURAL WAGES BOARD REGULATIONS, 1937.

  AGRICULTURAL WAGES COMMITTEES (SCOTLAND) REGULATIONS, 1937.
  LORD SALTOUN LORD SALTOUN had on the Paper Motions to the effect that humble Addresses be presented to His Majesty praying that the Scottish Agricultural Wages Board Regulations, 1937, dated 11th October, 1937, and the Agricultural Wages Committees (Scotland) Regulations, 1937, dated 11th October, 1937, made by the Department of Agriculture for Scotland under the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) (Scotland) Act, 1937, be annulled. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the next two sets of Regulations, with your Lordships' leave, I will take together, because what I have to say upon the one applies with equal force to the other. I think it is only right to state that the Regulations under consideration follow the lines of the Regulations made under the similar English Act very nearly word for word. I do not know if these English Regulations were ever criticised in your Lordships' House, but as it is

  265
  acknowledged on all sides that conditions in Scotland are very different from those in England one would naturally expect that the Regulations for Scotland would to some extent be different. I sought to annul the Regulations we have already discussed as a matter of administration on the grounds of expediency, but the grounds on which I seek now to annul these Regulations are grounds which go to the very root of good government.
  On the Report Stage of the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) (Scotland) Bill I moved an Amendment to secure proper representation for both farmers and farm servants on the local committees. The Government asked me to withdraw the Amendment and gave me an undertaking on the subject. I dislike reading from the OFFICIAL REPORT in order to try and tie the Government down to the exact words used, but I must in this case and I trust your Lordships therefore will excuse me for doing so. The assurance was in the following terms:
  "It may, perhaps, assist the noble Lord if I now state in general terms the Government's position in this matter. It is the Government's desire that reasonable men on both sides, and as far as possible men closely conversant with the actual problems involved, should be selected. It is also the desire of the Government that those selected should really represent the opinion of those for whom they will speak, and that no organisation should consider that such appointments are in any way its perquisite. Perhaps I may mention that I emphasise that point because my attention was drawn to it in a letter I received from the noble Marquess, Lord Aberdeen, who at the same time expressed his regret that he was unable to be present to mention the matter himself in de bate to-day. This will admittedly raise difficult questions in areas where membership of any organisation is non-existent or very small indeed, or where more than one organisation could claim to be representative. In such a case the rival claims would certainly have to receive fair consideration. The noble Lord's Amendment shows, however, how difficult it will be to bring these considerations within the four corners of a Statute. With the assurance of the Government's intention which I have just given, it will perhaps be possible for the noble Lord to withdraw the Amendment."
  This was not a promise given in the heat of debate, but it was a carefully considered statement, the gist of which had already been communicated to my friends and to myself and which we were prepared to accept as the best course in the circumstances.
  Your Lordships will observe that the statement quite definitely envisages the
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  existence of other local societies—I emphasise local—which ought to receive consideration. Gratified by this assurance, some of us who were interested in agriculture in the North-East conceived the idea of an association of both farmers and farm-workers—admitting proprietors as honorary members at the discretion of the committee—with a view principally to making the Act a success. One would have thought that such a society representing a united industry would have been welcomed by the Department of Agriculture, but the contrary appears to have been the case. Perhaps its existence would diminish the Department's opportunities of mediating between jarring factions and exercising authority. The new enterprise was hailed with enthusiasm by farmers and farm workers alike, and received promises of support from farm-workers all over the country. The enrolment of members went on apace, particularly among the married farm servants, and the success and enthusiasm of the meetings were really inspiring. I have often criticised the Farmers' Union and, therefore, I am glad to state that the new association received no opposition at all from that quarter. I have never criticised the Farm Servants' Union, and I am sorry to say that the association was very obstinately opposed by this body and its agents.
  The statement most widely broadcast by these agents, and most successful in its effect, was that the Scottish Department of Agriculture had given them a private undertaking that they and they alone should receive the right to nominate the farm workers' representatives on the local committees. The secretary of the new association came to see me about it, and I referred him to the Government's statement—the statement I have just read to your Lordships—and I said that as I understood that statement, and as I thought anybody would understand that statement, it meant that provided he could show a representative membership, the claims of his association would certainly be considered. I do not think, and I not imagine anybody can think, that I was wrong in what I said to him. On the firth October, however, months after the association got going—the association was formed last June—the Regulations of the Department were issued, and your Lordships will see that under Clause 1 of Regulations No. 919—I have copies here

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  in case any noble Lord has not got the Regulations and desires to see them—the right to nominate representatives is confined to three definite bodies subject to the veto of the Department, and that under Clause 4 these bodies may terminate the membership of any of these agents at what I may term their will. That is, no member of any local committee can sit for a single meeting against the will of the association that nominated him. As these Regulations are final, the bodies named cannot be prevented from regarding the right to nominate as their perquisite.
  I want to emphasise this point. Once these Regulations have passed your Lordships' House you can never bring them back again for review. No one can raise a question upon them later in this House. They are finished. The only people who can raise a question about the position are the Department of Agriculture themselves. These Regulations can only be amended at the will of the Department. If your Lordships doubt that that is the position, I will ask you how many Amendments there have been to the English Regulations. There have been a few, but your Lordships will see that they have been very few. I do not say myself that the Department gave an improper undertaking to the Farm Servants' Union, but the way the business has been managed does give rise to very strong suspicion. No applications have been invited by the Department either by advertisement or in any other way from such bodies as might feel entitled to nominate representatives. It may be said that this local association is new and does not deserve representation, but if the Department had invited applications they would certainly have had one from the Scottish Land and Property Federation whose undoubted claim to be considered for representation on the Board would certainly have been put forward. It would have been very easy to keep Clause 1 of the Regulations within the terms of the Government's assurance simply by putting after the word "Agriculture" in line 5, and after the word "Union" in line 12, the additional words, "or such other bodies as shall satisfy the Department as to their claim to be represented." If they had put in those words I could not properly have brought this point before your Lordships.
  I submit that on these facts the Department cannot claim to be above suspicion. As a matter of fact I think there may have been some indiscretion and that they have not considered very much what they were doing. I have been given an opportunity of putting the case to the Minister, and I pointed that as far as local associations in District No. 3 were concerned there was still a vacant place in the local committee which could be filled by the local association if the Minister satisfied himself as to its fair claim to that place. He replied—if I misunderstood him I hope my noble friend Lord Strathcona will correct me—that to do so would be to destroy the monopoly of the Farm Servants' Union which had carried out the irksome task of nominating members all over Scotland, and he was not prepared to do this. In any case he was not prepared to consider the claim of any local association for representation on a local committee. That means that the definite assurance given to us on March 23 is to remain unfulfilled.
  I cannot even now believe that the Government intend to maintain this position. Do not misunderstand me. I am not fighting for the claim of this local association to have a place on the local committee. I am not fighting for any particular association. That must be a question of fact to be determined outside your Lordships' House. For all I know there may be many other local associations of this kind which have proper claims to be considered. I merely say that the terms of the Government undertaking on March 23 and the terms of Clause 1 of the Regulations before your Lordships are inconsistent and therefore the Regulation must be amended. If the Government insist upon these Regulations, then it is very difficult to see on what ground similar assurances are ever to be accepted. Moreover, I submit that no Department of State can afford to lie under suspicion of hole-and-corner methods—at any rate they appear to me as hole-and-corner methods—such as have been charged to the Scottish Department of Agriculture, not by me, but by the representatives of the Farm Servants' Union in the North-East of Scotland. This is particularly so in the case of the Department of Agriculture for Scotland, because those of your Lordships who have read the Report of the Committee upon Scottish

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  Offices will remember that one of the difficulties hinted at by the Committee was the restlessness of the Scottish Office under Parliamentary control.
  Now I have done with Regulation 1, and if your Lordships will look at Regulation 4 you will see that members of committees consist of representative members of the various bodies called upon to appoint and independent members appointed by the Department. By this Regulation power is given to each of the appointing bodies to terminate the membership of the appointees, not upon misconduct or leaving the district or bankruptcy but at will, so that every member of these bodies is merely an agent for the association that appoints him. The members have to accept the directions of the association. They cannot act upon the evidence that comes before them as committeemen should, but must always have an ear outside listening to the directions of the constituent bodies who have not seen the evidence and do not know the facts. That is bad enough with regard to what they call the representative members, but it is still worse with regard to the independent members, and on that I would like to remind your Lordships of what happened in another place.
  As the Bill left this House those independent members could be appointed or not appointed as seemed best to the Department, but in another place the Minister made the appointment of these independent members compulsory upon the Department upon the ground that there was a possible danger that if an industrial dispute arose in any area the Government might be tempted to intervene by the appointment of independent members of a known political complexion. I myself think that if a Government adequately discharges its responsibility for administrative acts it has enough to do without framing its legislation so as to have some responsibility which should properly fall upon its successor. Under these Regulations the Government are publicly saying that the reasons given in another place for making these appointments compulsory are of no value, because by giving the Department power to terminate their membership at a moment's notice the Government are in effect putting into the hands of the Minister precisely the power which in another place they claimed they wished to remove.
  There are other points I would like to make, but I have detained your Lordships too long. I must, however, refer to a point on Regulation 10 and another on Regulation 12 which provides a very clumsy piece of machinery to regulate the voting of the representative members. In the North-East of Scotland there are local clubs whose members are drawn both from farmers and from farm servants. Last week I was asked to address such a club upon the subject of these Regulations. This club is one which has had about fifteen years life and a membership of about 300 in quite a small district. Of that 300, ninety-nine are farm servants. In the course of my remarks I had to deal with Regulation 12, and I expressed the view that the Regulation did not envisage any possible agreement between farmer and farm worker, but I was very careful not to make any reference to the Department of Agriculture. I did not think that would be proper. There were present probably fifty farm workers and thirty farmers. On the way home with a friend he remarked to me that the Department appeared to wish to be quite certain that the farmers would vote one way and the farm workers another way and then the Department would have the whip hand. In a casual way I remarked that it might be a possible speculation that the Department wished actually to destroy such harmony as existed in the North-East in order to make quite sure that their existence might be felt. His reply surprised me; he said, "That is exactly what the people in the hall were saying." That is the judgment—as far as I am aware, I said said nothing to lead them to think that—of men who are immersed in the industry on reading the Regulations made by the Department, and I cannot see that your Lordships' judgment should be at all different from that. I beg to move.
  Moved, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying that the Scottish Agricultural Wages Board Regulations, 1937, dated 11th October, 1937, made by the Department of Agriculture for Scotland under the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) (Scotland) Act, 1937, be annulled.—(Lord Saltoun.)
  THE DUKE OF MONTROSE: My Lords, I rise to support the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, and his criticism of these proposed Statutory Orders and

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  Regulations to provide machinery for fixing a minimum wage for agricultural labour. First of all, does it not seem to your Lordships rather ridiculous that a question like this should have to come all the way down here to be discussed in your Lordships' House? It seems to me that a better example could not be required of the benefit of allowing the Scottish people to deal with their own domestic affairs. I am quite confident that if this Motion had been left to be dealt with by the Scottish people you would never have heard of it. They would have been quite equal to determining their minimum wage without any Statutory Orders or Regulations. The average Scottish agricultural labourer knows his work and knows his ability. He knows that he can quite well drive a bargain for himself, and I have never yet found a Scottish farmer who refused to pay a good wage to a good agricultural labourer. It seems to me an absurdity of legislation, that a matter of this sort should first be decided in England and then an attempt should be made to apply the measure to Scotland under totally different conditions.
  However, I am not going to deal any further with that point, but I wish to criticise these Statutory Orders and Regulations as being incomplete. I have never seen any statement regarding the value of perquisites or the value of carting; yet the value of perquisites and carting may easily equal 50 per cent. of the remuneration to the agricultural labourer. These Regulations are incomplete, and we are being asked in Scotland to accept a pig in a poke. We do not know what we are giving, and we do not know what we are being asked to receive. I cordially agree that these Regulations and Statutory Orders should be deferred until the whole matter has been gone into carefully and is complete. I believe that the first paragraph as regards the definition of districts in Scotland has been withdrawn. I am sorry it has, because I most strongly object to one point in that definition. My own County is to be divided between two Counties, the one half to go with Renfrewshire and the other half to go with Ayrshire. That is the first instance which I have ever heard of a local authority, a County, being divided by an order of a Department
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  without any consultation with the County Council. That is a very bad precedent and is certain to lead to trouble.
  Dealing with the appointment of the chairmen of these proposed committees, I observe in the Regulations and Statutory Orders that the chairman is to be vested with very important duties. One would think, therefore, that the appointment of the chairman was a thing which required can and attention. So far as I can make out, paragraph 2 of the Agricultural Wages Committees Regulations deals with the matter satisfactorily. So far as the Agricultural Wages Board Regulations go, however, no arrangements at all have been made for the appointment of a chairman. I do not know whether that signifies that a permanent official of the Department shall always be the chairman or not. If it does signify that a permanent official must always be the chairman, then I strongly object; it sounds too much to me like bureaucracy. I therefore think that that section requires much more careful attention.
  Then there is the question of balancing the committee. I fail to understand this provision. I quite agree with the idea that in constituting the committee it should be made up of four members representing agricultural labourers and four members representing the farmers. But having constituted the committee I should have thought that the proper course would be to allow members to turn up as best they can at the meetings. To have to balance the committee at every single meeting seems to me ridiculous. I quite agree with balancing the constitution, but not at every meeting. What is to happen in a place like Arran? A representative is called to attend a meeting on the main land, he has to be the best part of three days and two nights away from home. That is what a man takes now to attend a county council meeting. What is going to happen if a man gets to one of these meetings and is told that he must leave in order to balance the committee, or is told that his vote is not wanted? It is not so at any county council meeting, but it would be at meetings of these committees. And there is no word of any compensation for men who are called away from home, for all that time they take over their fruitless journey, if they are excluded to balance

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  the committee. I therefore feel that this criticism requires careful consideration, and that the provision should be done away with.
  The best thing to do would be to appoint four independent members who are neither farm servants nor farmers. I dislike immensely the idea that there is always a division of opinion between labourers and farmers, and that the four labourers will cancel out the four farmers. That would leave a permanent official to give the decision on the wages, and I think it objectionable that the wages should really he decided by a permanent official every time on the assumption that the four farmers are cancelled by the four labourers. If you have the four neutral people on, making a committee of twelve, I think you would be much more likely to get a satisfactory decision on the minimum wages.
  Then I come to the question of why members of these committees should be drawn from such a narrow basis as membership of the Farmers' Union and the Chamber of Agriculture, on the one hand, and of the Farm Servants' Union on the other. I am a member of the Farmers' Union and also a member of the Chamber of Agriculture. I do not know what our membership is, but I do know this: that we are a very small minority of all the farmers in Scotland, and it would be wrong to say that the two bodies together are truly representative of the farmers. Again, I have an idea that the membership of the Farm Servants' Union is a small minority of all the agricultural labourers of Scotland. I should like to know whether the noble Lord who is to reply could tell me the percentage of all the agricultural labourers in Scotland who are members of the Farm Servants' Union. Furthermore, I should like to know the answer to this question: what is the percentage in that membership of married and of unmarried farm servants? That is an important point. The married farm servants are the true representatives of agriculture. The unmarried lads are here to-day and gone to-morrow, and our great difficulty is to keep the unmarried young men on the farm. I therefore feel that the basis of selecting the membership of these committees under these Regulations and Statutory Orders should be wider, and not merely confined to the Farmers'
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  Union or the Farm Servants' Union or the Chamber of Agriculture.
  There is no mention in the Statutory Orders of crofters or small land-holders. Crofters and small-holders, at the time of year when the harvest is on, or the potatoes are being gathered, employ local labour or give employment to each other. According to these Regulations they would probably have to be paid in cash, but there is no statement about it, and yet the small land-holders and crofters constitute a very large proportion of Scottish agriculturists. Taking it all round, I have come to the conclusion that the Statutory Orders and Regulations have been improperly thought out, and that the proper course would be to defer putting them into force until they have received more care and consideration than they have done.
  THE MARQUESS OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR: My Lords, I wish to make it quite clear that we who are speaking in support of the Motion are not speaking in an anti-Government sense. We are speaking against the draftsmanship of these Regulations, because they do not carry out the pledges given by members of the Government to your Lordships' House. The noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, read a part of the statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, and let me say that that noble Lord has done his very best to meet our desires, because he was aware that we knew what we were talking about. Lord Saltoun has quoted from the OFFICIAL REPORT of March 23, when the Bill was being considered on Report. I am going to quote what the noble Lord said when the Bill was in Committee, on March q. In column 558 the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, said this:
  "I entirely agree with the sentiments expressed by the noble Marquess, Lord Aberdeen, and it is, I am sure, the object of the Government and of all members of your Lordships' House to do all we can to ensure that the widest and the wisest distribution is made in securing representatives for these committees."
  What is the widest representation as defined by the Department? As mentioned in paragraph 1 of these Regulations, No. 919, the representatives are to be nominated by the Farmers' Union, the Chamber of Agriculture and the Farm Servants' Union.

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  That will not stand the test, because, as the noble Duke opposite has just hinted, those three organisations do not represent either the whole of the farmers or the whole of the farm servants in Scotland. In fact, I believe I am right in saying that last March the members of the Farm Servants' Union represented only about fifteen per cent. of the whole of the farm servants in Scotland. How can that organisation be said to represent the agricultural workers? It is possible that there may be a few more now. The percentage might be seventeen, perhaps, but even seventeen per cent. does not represent anything like half the agricultural workers in Scotland. Moreover, these Regulations, as has already been pointed out, cannot be altered once they have passed this House or another place, and the result is that until the Government take action themselves, on account of the thing working so badly, only those three organisations can nominate to the committees. I feel sure that that is not what Lord Strathcona meant when he gave the undertakings both on March 9 and on March 23. Therefore I say that the Department have not complied with the undertakings given.
  I do not blame the Government one bit; I blame the Department. The Department take jolly good care that they shall have the say as to who shall be the independent members, and should the independent members do anything contrary to the wish of the Department the Department can say, under these Regulations: "Dear Sir, we do not desire your services any longer. Kindly consider your membership cancelled." That is what the Regulations say. The Department can do that without giving any reason whatever. In other words, they have the whip hand. In this case it means, not independence, but dependence upon the wishes of the Department as to how things shall be worked. Take Regulation 9. It says:
  "The place at which a meeting shall be held shall be determined by the Department, or with their sanction by the chairman."
  Surely the members of a committee know what is the most convenient place for the committee meeting. Why should the Department dictate to them as to where the committee is to meet? Or why should the chairman be able to give his
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  sanction only with the sanction of the Department? It seems to me that even the independent members might kick at that, but it is laid down definitely in the Regulations, and unless the Regulations are annulled that is to stand as an Order under which the committees are to meet—namely, at the will of the Department and in no other place. Apparently the only person to whom the Department will listen is the chairman, and then not always.
  Then, in Regulation 10, a committee "shall give to the Department notice of their intention" to appoint a sub-committee, and the number of persons (exclusive of the chairman) appointed shall not exceed such number as the Department may fix. Why should the Department say how many members are to be on the sub-committee? Cannot a body of eight people be trusted to appoint a sub-committee, without going to Edinburgh to find out what they may do, or what they may say, or how many they may appoint, or what the sub-committee shall consider? Can you expect any responsible people to be willing to serve under such conditions? How many of your Lordships would serve on a committee if you were told What you were to do, what you were to say, where you were to meet, and at what time? It is monstrous to ask anybody to serve on a committee under such conditions, laid down by a Department which does not know the county or the village or wherever it may be where the committee is to meet.
  Then again in Regulation 12 it is laid clown that:
  "If at any meeting of a committee or sub-committee the number of members present representing employers and workers respectively is unequal, the chairman, or other person presiding, shall require the side which is in the majority to arrange that one or more of their members shall refrain from voting, so as to preserve equality. If that side fail to make this arrangement by agreement among themselves, the chairman, or other person presiding, may by casting lots decide which member or members of that side shall refrain from voting, or he may, if he thinks it desirable, adjourn the voting on any question to another meeting of the committee or sub-committee."
  It is perfectly agreed that neither side should be unfair to the other, but there are a great many committees and boards and councils which are appointed on these lines of representing different interests and

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  a full attendance of both sides equally is assured by a system of having substitute members, so that if one member cannot attend, one of the substitutes attends in his place, thereby keeping equality between the two sides on the committee. I cannot see why that system should not be introduced into Regulation 12, thereby bringing about a full and fair representation of each party, which is the usual state of affairs.
  These Regulations are drawn up with the idea that farmers and their servants never agree, and if you put them into force in their present form the result will be that you will create hostility between employer and employee. I know the Government well enough to be able to say definitely that they wish to help agriculture, and no Government has done more to help agriculture than this; but is this the way to make agriculture go easily and smoothly—by presuming that because a master and a man sit on a committee they cannot agree, or that they cannot agree even on their farms? I have farmed ever since 1902, and my experience is that farmers and farm servants get on very well together. And why should not they, when there is the association that my noble friend Lord Saltoun has referred to, an association of farmers and farm servants? Such an association could not be formed and be in a flourishing condition within four or five months from its inception if the farmers and farm servants did not get on well together. That is a proof; and yet this association is to be refused any membership of the local committees set up under the Agricultural Wages Act.
  Quite frankly your Lordships cannot allow these Regulations to go through. They must go back in order to be redrafted in accordance with common sense. The Government, after all, in the long run would be responsible, through the Secretary of State for Scotland, for their proper observance. If you allow them to go through you are giving the Secretary of State an impossible job, because he cannot administer them. Take Regulation 13:
  "A meeting of a committee, except for the appointment of a chairman, shall not be duly constituted unless the chairman or a vice-chairman, or one independent member of the committee is present."
  Why should the meeting at which the chairman is to be elected be an irregular meeting? On all other occasions three
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  people must be there, but when the chairman is to be elected it does not matter at all! I venture to say that if you are going to have a good working committee you want a good chairman, and to say that it does not matter who is present when the appointment of chairman comes up is ridiculous. I would invite any member of your Lordships' House to read the first four lines of Regulation 13 and say whether he does not agree that on account of that single sentence the Regulation ought to go back. I could mention many other anomalies in these Regulations.
  I want to snake it quite clear that I am not speaking simply from a North-East Scotland point of view. This deals with the whole of Scotland, and it is just a coincidence that I happen to belong to the same County as the noble Lord who moved the Motion. But we in Aberdeen-shire have a right to take a stand on this matter. One-fifth of the agricultural produce of Scotland comes from Aberdeen-shire, and if that does not carry some weight with your Lordships, I think it ought to. There is plenty of room for improvement in these Regulations, and therefore I feel pretty confident that they ought to be entirely re-drafted in the spirit of the pledges given in this House on March 9 and March 23—not only because those pledges were given, but because it is absurd to allow a set of Regulations to have the force of law when they contain many impossible provisions, which will only wreck these agricultural wages boards, and will be a disservice, instead of a service, to agriculture in Scotland.
  LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I venture to suggest to the Government that out of the technicalities of this debate there emerges a point of great substance and real importance—a point of importance far wider than Scottish interests, and one which really intimately concerns all your Lordships. It would appear that when this Bill was passing through Parliament my noble friend Lord Saltoun found in it certain proposals to which he took exception. He placed before the Government his objection to these proposals at the proper time and place, and he received from the noble Lord who speaks for the Scottish Office certain assurances, and on the strength of these assurances he withdrew the

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  Amendment. On the last occasion that he had during the progress of that Bill he withdrew that Amendment in order to express his acceptance of the noble Lord's assurances which were quite obviously given in perfect good faith. Now the Regulations are published and have been laid upon the Table of your Lordships' House for acceptance, and the assurances which the noble Lord, Lord Strathcona, gave to my noble friend have not been implemented.
  Far from having been implemented, the assurances which were given by the noble Lord have been controverted in every particular, and, without going into the merits of the Regulations, which, so far as my own purpose is concerned, is entirely unnecessary, I would venture to point out to the noble Lord and to the Government and to the House in general that if assurances are to be given, and are to be used by the Government themselves, as a means of inducing noble Lords to withdraw Amendments which they find inconvenient, and if the Regulations based upon the Act which received the Royal Assent are in exact opposition to the assurances given, it does make it exceedingly difficult, to put it mildly, for your Lordships in future to place the slightest reliance upon assurances which come from the Front Bench. It occurs to me that this is really a point of great Parliamentary importance. I am quite certain that noble Lords from Scotland, in raising the many points that they have, have touched upon matters of the greatest importance to themselves and the great country which they represent. But here is a point surely that interests us all, and I sincerely hope my noble friend Lord Strathcona will be able to allay the uneasiness which must necessarily arise in every noble Lord's mind when he discovers that an assurance given and received is not implemented in the way that the mover of the Amendment had every right and reason to expect it would be. I do not desire to detain your Lordships for one more moment, but this particular point is one which no one who has regard for Parliamentary procedure could allow to pass without drawing attention to it.
  LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, coming from another part of Scotland than the North-East about which we have heard
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  so much this afternoon, I must say I have a great deal of sympathy with many of the criticisms raised by Lord Saltoun and the Marquess of Aberdeen. But on the whole they are not very large points. They may have a certain importance, each one, but taken in the aggregate I do not feel they constitute a very strong reason for postponing the operation of the Act passed through this House not so very long ago. So far as I can learn, in most parts of Scotland there is a complete readiness both on behalf of the farmers and the farm servants to work this Act in a harmonious and friendly way, and it is very desirable that these wages boards should be set up and their decisions made without undue delay. Notwithstanding what Lord Saltoun has said, in a large part of Scotland the annual engagements are made to date from the term of Whit-Sunday in the month of May, and these engagements are usually made net later than the month of March. It is therefore desirable that the decisions of the wages boards should be notified to the public before that date. The Government can do a great deal to remedy any mistakes which may have arisen and which they may find lead to unsatisfactory working of the Act in future. I agree with the noble Duke on the other side of the House that it would have been well if the delimitation of areas had been referred to the local authorities for their opinion. In some cases they did consider them, and, in the case of my own County Council, I think we accepted the decision as a reasonable one. I do not think that any small local difference of custom will prevent the men appointed to these boards from being able to come to a fair decision.
  As regards the representation of the societies, it is perhaps a pity that originally the definition was not drawn more widely and that the Regulation did not provide for other representation should the need arise. I would appeal to the Government and ask if they would not even at this stage agree in future to take the necessary steps for the amending of the Regulations to provide for the representation of any organisation or body which represents a considerable number of either employed or employers. If they would undertake to do that, and take the necessary steps to amend the Regulations so as to bring in any organisation on either side

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  which can show it has a really substantial membership, they would go a long way to meet the objections of many of us. If there is to be any collective bargaining, it is a misfortune that the membership of associations either of employers or employed should be small; but I cannot see how the difficulty is to be got over. It is true that the representation of the farm servants is only about 15 per cent., but how are you going to get representatives appointed except through some society of this kind?
  I should not like to see, and I do not suppose Lord Saltoun would wish to see; them appointed as nominees of the Department of Agriculture. That would be a mistake. In the meantime I can sea no other way except to hope that in the course of time membership will increase, and if new societies are started they should be given representation. On this matter of representation I would urge that the Landowners' Federation should have a representative, not on the district committees but upon the Board on the ground that they are employers of a very large number of men engaged in forestry and estate work. In the aggregate the number of these men must be very large and their wages are to be fixed by these boards. The farmers are not interested in this question. It does not concern them, but it does concern very much those landowners who are engaged in afforestation, some of them to a very considerable extent.
  The question of perquisites has been raised, a very complicated question as perquisites vary so tremendously in different parts of the country. I think all that can be done—and I hope the Regulations will so provide—is that they should be dealt with on the basis of not putting them too high or too low. In some districts perquisites, or gains as we used to call them, have almost disappeared. That is the case in my County; beyond a house, a certain quantity of potatoes, and free cartage of coals, they get nothing. In other districts they may be provided with a cow, a cow's keep, large quantities of potatoes, sometimes coal, and so on. Farm servants in many districts have decided they prefer a money wage. This is not the place to discuss the pros and cons of such a system. There is much to be said on both sides. But there should not be any attempt to fix them too low or too high; they should be put on
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  a fair value. We do not expect that the farmer should be entitled to charge retail prices for the potatoes he supplies to his men; they should be supplied wholesale. On the other hand, if he supplies them with coal, then it should be supplied at the price it costs him.
  There is only one other point and that is as to changing representatives. I cannot see how else you are to provide for a member being removed from a board by reason of old age or sickness or any other cause. I am not afraid of the representatives appointed by the Department being unduly their nominees, or if they are we must take that risk. We live in democratic days, and I do not think we have any right to assume that a Government Department will act unfairly or in a partisan way in seeking to nominate their representatives who are supposed to be independent. It is not very easy to get independent people, but I am sure they will do the best they can. I hope very much nothing will be done to spoil the good will which, throughout the greater part of Scotland, does exist between farmers and their workers, and I hope the representative of His Majesty's Government who will speak may give us some assurance that the Government will be prepared, should the occasion arise and should the need become evident, that they will, as they can, take the necessary steps to amend the Regulations. If they can do that, then we need not press for cancellation and the great delay which would be involved and which is so undesirable at the present time.
  LORD LAMINGTON: My Lords, I hope the Government will see fit to accept the noble Lord's Motion. It is a very modest one, and it will do something to redeem the pledge which was given by the Government last March to see that the constitution of the committees appointed for the regulation of wages would be on a broad basis and give all claims full consideration. Perhaps it would redeem that pledge if that were done, and also, possibly, give greater elasticity to the constitution of the committees for the future. As it appears at present on the Paper, it would almost seem to be cast-iron. The suggested Amendment is a very modest one, and, if accepted, it would help to get rid of that rigid structure of the committees as

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  appointed by the Government. I hope, therefore, the Government will see their way to accept it.
  LORD STRATHCONA AND MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, to whose main bone of contention I think we have now come, was good enough to put this Notice on the Paper some time ago, and to give the Department some indication of the lines on which he proposed to speak this afternoon. I think that he has followed that indication fairly faithfully, and I will endeavour, as far as possible, to meet the various charges that have been made this afternoon. As I understand the contention of the noble Lord and others, they take the- view that the Department of Agriculture for Scotland have erred in vesting the right of nomination to the committees in the National Farmers' Union of Scotland, the Scottish Chamber of Agriculture and the Scottish Farm Servants' Union. He went on to suggest that in doing so the Department have fallen short of the statements made on the Government's behalf when the Bill was before this House. I am sorry that the noble Lord feels as he does on this point, and I hope that I shall be able to persuade him, even if he feels bound to differ as to the course pursued, that in all that has been done under this Act the Secretary of State and the Department have endeavoured to translate into action the intentions of this House and of Parliament in passing the Act, and to carry out in practice any undertakings given on the Government's behalf.
  At the Report stage of the Bill I indicated that it was the Government's desire that reasonable men on both sides of the industry, and as far as possible men conversant with the actual problems involved, should be selected to serve on the wages committees. I indicated also that it was the Government's desire that those selected should really represent the opinion of those for whom they would speak, and that no organisation should consider that such appointments are in any way its perquisite. That was what I said last March, and I repeat that the Government's desire and intention in the matter remain the same. Here perhaps I might refer to a remark which the noble Marquess, Lord Aberdeen, made, in which, in the kindness of his heart, he
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  tried to absolve me from blame on this issue and put it on the Department. I must point out to the noble Marquess that the Minister is always responsible for the actions of his Department, and in this House, as the representative speaking for the Scottish Office, I must therefore take the blame for any mistake that may be thought to have been committed. In considering the possible alternative methods of carrying out this intention, the Department took into consultation, as indeed they were bound to do, the three long established organisations of farmers and farm workers in Scotland. These organisations do not make any claim to represent all the types of employers and workers affected by the Act; but they do claim, and I do not think that the claim can be seriously contested, to be broadly representative of the interests of the general farmer and the general farm worker, which are in every district the most important interests and those most directly affected by the present legislation.
  When, therefore, these bodies expressed their willingness to co-operate with the Department in the administration of the Act, and to employ the machinery of their organisations for the purpose, it was felt that the best course, in the interests of employers and workers alike, was to take advantage of this co-operation to the full extent subject to any necessary safeguards. The duty of nomination was, therefore, entrusted to these three bodies, subject to the requirement that they must satisfy the Department that adequate steps have been taken to ensure that persons nominated are representative of the interests of the employers and workers in the district concerned. I may inform your Lordships that public meetings have been held in the districts with this end in view.
  I do not go so far as to suggest that this was the only possible arrangement. Conceivably the organisations of employers of every kind—farmers, market gardeners, poultry keepers and the like—could have been brought together and arrangements made on some basis designed to secure on each committee the representation of these organisations of employers in some relation to the numbers of agricultural workers employed by their members. Apart, however, from the complexity of this arrangement and the

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  difficulty of allocating to each organisation an equitable proportion of seats on the relatively small committees which are prescribed by the Act, the result would have been rather ill-balanced committees since it would not have been practicable to deal with the workers in the same way. The reason for this, of course, is that the workers are not organised in separate agricultural trades. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord will agree that the steps taken by the Government have been the best practicable steps to secure the representation on a broad basis of the interests of farmers and farm workers in general.
  Now, of course, the recognition of these three organisations does not imply that no chance is possible in the future. Conceivably, other organisations will arise and, on reasonable proof of their representative capacity in the country or wages district, the Government will be quite prepared to consider amending the Regulations so as to provide for future nominations being shared on an equitable basis amongst such organisations. It was in order to preserve elasticity in this respect that the method of selecting the committees was left to be dealt with by Regulation which can be amended in the light of experience and not in the Act itself. I also would like to inform your Lordships that no assurance has been given to any organisation that it will have a monopoly of the nominations to the committees.
  I hope that on reflection the noble Lord and his friends will see how difficult it would be, certainly in the early stages of such a movement, to interfere with the normal and obvious method of asking established associations to find representatives of their respective interests. The Government's chief anxiety in this matter is to get the wage-fixing machinery into operation, with a minimum of delay, on a broadly equitable basis. No doubt nomination of representative members by the Department was, as the noble Lord suggests, a possible alternative. But it is fundamental in this Act that the decisions in essential matters lie with the industry itself. It is reasonable and consistent with this principle that the nomination of the representative elements of the committees should also lie with the industry. That is the system which has worked smoothly for twelve years in England, and nobody has
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  suggested that it should be altered. The Act provides that the independent members should be appointed by the Department, and this provision suggests that Parliament's intention was that the Department's power of nomination should be limited to those members. I was a little surprised to hear the noble Lord's suggestion that the power of nomination ought to be in the hands of the Department, after consultation with the industry. Surely such a step would tend—
  LORD SALTOUN: I beg the noble Lord's pardon. I did not suggest that. What I suggested was that the words "or any organisation which satisfies the Department of its claim to be represented," should be inserted after the word "Agriculture" in line 5 and after the word "Union" in line 12. I think that what the noble Lord has in mind is that yesterday the Minister asked me at random if I could suggest amendments of the Regulations. I replied that there were many possible amendments, that I was not a draftsman, but that was one possibility.
  LORD STRATHCONA AND MOUNT ROYAL: I apologise if I have misrepresented something which I thought the noble Lord said this afternoon. I will deal with the question of amendment later. I understand that the noble Lord's immediate desire is that the Aberdeen-shire Farmers and Farm Workers' Association should be recognised and given representation on the district committee for Banff, Aberdeen and Kincardine.
  LORD SALTOUN: I beg the noble Lord's pardon. I did not suggest that I said that was a question of fact which would have to be determined outside your Lordships' House.
  LORD STRATHCONA AND MOUNT ROYAL: Yes, but I cannot help thinking that the noble Lord's interest in that association, which I think he has to his great credit more or less organised himself, must have been paramount in his mind. I only want to point out that so far no claim has been received by the Department from the association, and no indication has been forthcoming as to the representative capacity of the new body. Its claim would, I understand, be that it should be represented on both sides

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  of the district committee, implying two representative members out of fourteen, or out of sixteen if the committee were increased to the maximum legal limit. In the absence in this case of figures of the association's membership, I am rather at a loss to make comparisons. But there are 15,000 farmers in the district and some 20,000 farm workers, and it would hardly be possible to recognise as representative of both parties an organisation having a membership of a few hundreds only. I have said before, and I say again, that the Department will be prepared to recognise any organisation that may be set up which is able to prove its representative capacity. But it was not possible to delay action under the Act to allow of new organisations appearing in the field; the Department had to deal with the situation as it was when they had to undertake the preparation of the statutory Regulations.
  Other noble Lords joined in the attack on the Department and the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, referred to the question of perquisites and the definition of boundaries. I am not sure whether the noble Duke was in the House when I endeavoured to answer these points, but I am sure he will not expect me to repeat that. The noble Duke spoke of his County being divided without any consultation with the County Council. I hasten to assure your Lordships that the County Council have nothing to do with the matter. They are not represented on the wages committee and they have no duties in this connection. I would like to point out also that there is no proposal to appoint civil servants as chairmen of the committees. Another question which was asked was whether members of committees would be entitled to out-of-pocket expenses. I understand that is the case.
  The noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, in another part of his speech, referred to the question of the termination of the membership of representative members under Regulation 4. This Regulation deals with the termination of the services of members of the committees in certain circumstances. The noble Lord's suggestion is that the power given to the organisations concerned to terminate membership in individual cases in effect reduces the members to the status of delegates. This is very far from the intention of the Regula-
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  tion. That intention is to provide means to dispense with the services on a committee of any person who ceases to possess the necessary qualifications. That point I think was brought out by the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth. For example, it may well be that an employer may terminate his active career as such, or a worker may, by a change in his circumstances, himself become an employer and so cease to be qualified to represent the interest on whose behalf he was nominated in the first instance. The power given by this rule is not really greater than that of nomination to a vacancy on retirement by roster accorded by paragraphs 5 and 6 of the Regulations. But if in practice it should, contrary to expectation, be abused in any way whatsoever, the Government will not hesitate to revise the provision.
  The noble Duke and others asked for figures to show the national representation of the various bodies. I give these figures with considerable reserve, as your Lordships will realise how difficult it is to be absolutely certain on this matter, but I am informed that roughly speaking the membership of the National Farmers' Union is some 14,000 out of about 56,000 farmers. The Scottish Chamber consists of some 15,000 members, including 31 affiliated societies, and in passing I may say that I think most of the farming members of the National Landowners' Association—I think that is its title—are usually members of that organisation. I am one myself. The Farm Servants' Union have, we reckon, about 8,500 members out of about 100,000 farm servants. I understand that this union claims to represent about 25 per cent. of the married men and about 5 per cent. of the single men. I had forgotten to refer to the point raised by the noble Marquess, Lord Aberdeen, on Regulation 13. He said that it was unnecessary for independent members to be present when the chairman is elected. The reason for that is that it is held to be desirable that the chairman should be selected, if possible, by the representative members by agreement amongst themselves and not by the casting votes of the independent members.
  Before I conclude I feel that I must touch on the question which the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, raised of an Amendment. He suggested, I think, the words "or such other bodies as may satisfy the Department of their claim to be representative"—or words to that effect. But

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  the noble Lord does not say of what these bodies are to be representative. The other organisations mentioned are national—I would emphasise the word "national" —and normally only national bodies should be considered. Unless the bodies are very closely defined, the proposed Amendment would place upon the Department a very embarrassing responsibility for recognising bodies as nominating authorities. It is far better, surely, that this should be explicitly laid down in the Regulations, even if that means that the Regulations themselves have to be frequently altered. I hope that I have said enough to show that even if there have been misunderstandings over this matter, there has been no intention of breaking faith and, in fact, no actual breach of faith whatsoever. We have approached the only big societies which could give us the information and help which we required, but we propose in the future to give consideration to smaller bodies as and when they appear.
  THE MARQUESS OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR: May I ask the noble Lord one question? Is it desired to discourage an independent member from being chairman of a committee?
  LORD STRATHCONA AND MOUNT ROYAL: I am not sure that I can give the noble Marquess a firm answer. I should rather, if I might. inform him privately later on.
  LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, one thing I should like to say at the start is that, in spite of the noble Lord's strenuous efforts to put himself forward as the whipping-boy of the Department, he has not succeeded in convincing any of us that he is not really in sympathy with us. None of us considers that he is in any way to blame for what has occurred. At the commencement of what he said, however, he pointed out that the Government have given the nomination of members of these committees to certain bodies. I am not concerned with what these bodies are. He omitted, however, as I think he himself will admit, one word: he should have said that the Government under these Regulations have given the right of nomination "exclusively" to these bodies. He cannot maintain that bodies which have the exclusive right of nomination to a position are not entitled to look upon that right as a perquisite. He
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  went on to point out the difficulties that would have been encountered had other bodies been consulted. It boils down to this: that all the negotiations have taken place with these bodies in order to save the Department trouble. He also refers to this newly-constituted local body in Aberdeenshire. I will come back to that. But he forgets that there are other bodies who are both national and more ancient than any of the bodies mentioned in Regulation I. For instance, the Scottish Land and Property Federation is a very ancient body and can claim, more than any other body in Scotland, to represent the owner-occupier.
  LORD STRATHCONA AND MOUNT ROYAL: May I interrupt the noble Lord? I think I have already dealt with that body. I said it was already represented on the Scottish Chamber of Agriculture.
  LORD SALTOUN: It ought to have separate representation. The noble Lord also said that no application has been received from any of these bodies to be represented. On the contrary, that is putting the cart before the horse. When the Department were ready to receive these applications, they should have asked for them. After all, it is the Department who are in charge of the show, and naturally we expected that the Department would put an advertisement in all the papers to say that they were prepared to receive applications. It seems to me, with regard to this particular local association which I was talking about, the noble Lord said that if we could show a proper representation in Aberdeenshire he and the Department would be prepared to consider representation on the local committee. That is, if they are representative in District No. 3, they will get a representation on Local Committee No. 3. But at the end of his speech he immediately took that away again. He said in effect: "On the contrary, we are not prepared to consider any body as a nominating power for members on Local Committee No. 3 unless they have a membership all over Scotland, because we do not like looking at things as they are; we like looking at them through a great, big magnifying-glass, in order that we may feel ourselves great, big people." That is not really business.

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  I am left at a loss to know what the noble Lord really intended in the matter. I can only say that whatever claims may be put forward can only be put forward by amending this Regulation, and nobody can move to amend this Regulation except the Scottish Department of Agriculture. There is another thing. He explained Clause 4 and said that it was clearly not the intention of that clause to make the members of the local committee delegates. Well, if it is not the intention of that clause to make the members of the local committee delegates, then the Department should wish to be the first to amend the clause. It makes the members of the local committee delegates; it makes every one of them a delegate, and unless you alter the terms of the clause we cannot get away from that fact. He also said that the Department of Agriculture had given no assurance to any particular body that they should have these nominations as their perquisite. Very well; all I have to say is that the good name of the Department has been taken in vain for a very long time past, long before these Regulations were issued, and I should have thought that, that being the case, if the Department of Agriculture knows anything about the country which it is supposed to help to govern, it should know that what I am saying is true. And I should have thought that in these circumstances the Department would be the first to ask to clear its good name and to amend these Regulations and to put them in proper form. I am very sorry that I am unable to accept what the noble Lord has said. It seems to me merely what I might call a skilful parry of the direct attack. The direct attack is really a matter of principle, that he did give us an assurance and that these Regulations are not on all fours with the assurance he gave us. For the credit of your Lordships House, I ask you to support me and to see that the Government implement their assurances in the spirit in which they were given.
  VISCOUNT HALIFAX: My Lords I do not know whether I might intervene for a moment in this rather domestic debate. I do so with considerable reluctance, because I do not mind admitting that first of all I am not as fully informed as I should be on the subject-matter of these Regulations. In the
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  second place, I do not deny that some parts of them read rather strangely to English minds. A great many things from Scotland, however, do that, and therefore there is nothing of necessity prejudicial to the Regulations in that admission! I do not know that I should have felt it my duty to say anything if it had not been that the noble Lord, in his reply just now, returned to what had been said earlier: that my noble friend and the Department had been unmindful of the obligations of the pledges given in this House when this matter was previously discussed. I am, of course, quite prepared to admit that when the noble Lords say that they really believe it. At the same time, they cannot expect me, as a member of the Government, to accept it. I suggest that the most generous middle ground that we can both occupy is to admit that perhaps there may have been some measure of misunderstanding between the noble Lords who have taken the line they have, and the Department, with regard to what had been said at that earlier time.
  I confess that, so far as I have been able to understand this debate, I was somewhat disappointed that noble Lords, for whom I have no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, speaks, were not more favourably impressed with the undertaking that my noble friend Lord Strathcona gave in the course of his reply, if I understood him aright, in regard to the power that the Department would, if it were pressed upon them, be willing to take in this matter. But I understand that that goes but a little way to satisfy the noble Lords who feel so strongly on this matter. It is, I suppose, the duty of the Government to make up their minds as to what is the most appropriate course, the conditions being such, to pursue. I do not know, and in fact I do not greatly care, whether in fact if we went to a Division we could secure our Regulations in the form in which they are laid. I am sanguine—I am always sanguine in regard to Divisions in this House—enough to suppose that we could, but I have been in this House and in another place long enough to realise that it is not always the best plan to secure what you want by an immediate Division where no great matter of principle is involved, and where all the members of the House are quite genuinely concerned

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  to produce the best results for the interest that they have in common.
  While it is, on the one hand, as my noble friend said, of importance that this matter should be dealt with as expeditiously as possible, it is also of importance, as he said, that it should be dealt with as smoothly as possible, and I am not, any more than he, disposed to exaggerate a question of honest difference of opinion into a question of vital difference of principle, nor am I disposed to underestimate the sincerity and knowledge and free judgment of those noble friends from Scotland who evidently feel strongly on this matter. Therefore if I might, on this occasion at least, play the part of peacemaker, I would venture to suggest, in all humility, to my Scottish friends and to my noble friend behind me that so far as I have been able to form an opinion, listening to the debate, the differences between them do not seem to be such as honest sensible people should not overcome by an hour or two's talk round a table. If they are of that view I should be willing to counsel my noble friend to agree to the adjournment of the debate, in order that sensible people may get together round a table and find a solution of these differences. If that
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  course commends itself to my noble friends and to my noble friend behind me, I suggest that it be taken, and I beg to move that the debate be now adjourned.
  Moved, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Viscount Halifax.)
  LORD SALTOUN: And I would beg to second that.
  On Question, Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned accordingly sine die.

AGRICULTURAL WAGES COMMITTEES (SCOTLAND) REGULATIONS, 1937.
Moved, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying that the Agricultural Wages Committees (Scotland) Regulations, [937, dated 11th October, 1937, made by the Department of Agriculture for Scotland under the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) (Scotland) Act, 1937, be annulled.—(Lord Saltoun.)
Debate thereon adjourned sine die.
House adjourned at five minutes before six o'clock.