Sitting of 29 November 1939

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.
PRIVATE BUSINESS.
  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (CANTERBURY) BILL,
  "to confirm a Provisional Order of the Minister of Health relating to the City of Canterbury," presented by Mr. Elliot; read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 1.]
  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (ILKLEY) BILL,
  "to confirm a Provisional Order of the Minister of Health relating to the urban district of Ilkley," presented by Mr. Elliot; read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 2.]
ORAL ANSWER TO QUESTION.

  AUSTRALIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE.
  Mr. Attlee(by Private Notice) asked the Prime Minister whether he can make any statement as to the despatch of a military force from Australia overseas?
  The Prime Minister (Mr. Chamberlain): Yes, Sir. The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia has announced that a division, which has been raised in Australia, will be sent overseas as soon as a suitable stage of training is reached, probably early in the New Year. The House will, I am confident, agree with me when I say how warmly we welcome this further evidence of Australia's resolution to put forth her full effort in the common cause.
  Mr. Thorne: May I ask the Prime Minister whether these soldiers, who may number a thousand or more, when they come from Australia, will be well protected on the way?
  The Prime Minister: We can trust the Navy to look after that.

  NEW MEMBER SWORN.
  Willard Garfield Weston, esquire, for the County of Chester (Macclesfield Division).
BILLS PRESENTED.
  POSTPONEMENT OF ENACTMENTS (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) BILL,
  "to postpone the commencement of the House to House Collections Act, 1939, the Marriage (Scotland) Act, 1939, and certain provisions of the Adoption of Children (Regulation) Act, 1939, to amend Sections eight and fifteen of the last-mentioned Act, and to amend the provisions of Section one hundred and forty of the Law of Property Act, 1922, with respect to the period within which applications may be made under that section," presented by Sir John Anderson; supported by Mr. Colville, Colonel Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, the Attorney-General, the Lord Advocate, Mr. Peake, and Miss Horsbrugh; to be read a Second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 3.]
  EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE BILL,
  "to continue certain expiring laws," presented by Captain Crookshank; to be read a Second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 4.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
2.54 p.m.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Chamberlain): I beg to move,
"That, during the present Session:

(1) Government Business do have precedence at every Sitting;

(2) no Public Bills other than Government Bills be introduced;

(3) whenever the House adjourns from Thursday to the following Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday Members desiring to give Notice of Questions for Oral Answer on a Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday may send Notices of such Questions to the Clerks at the Table, and any Notices of Questions so received by them before Five of the Clock on a Friday or Monday or Tuesday can be accepted as Notices of Questions for Oral Answer on the following Monday or Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, respectively, and be printed and circulated with the Votes"

I informed the House yesterday that the Government intended to take the whole time of the House for Government business and to provide for the presentation of Government Bills only during the present Session. I now rise to move the Motion which is on the Paper to carry out those proposals and, in addition, to continue the arrangements made last September by which individual Members may send notices of Questions to the Clerks at the Table on the days when the House is not sitting. In taking this course the Government is following the precedents of the last war. In the Sessions 1914–16, 1916, 1917–18 and 1918 similar action was taken. At that time the then Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, said that every effort was concentrated upon one purpose, namely, the successful prosecution of the war and that the time was inappropriate to bring forward controversial legislation or matters of academic interest. He added:
"So long as this Order is in force the Government will introduce no legislation of a party or a contentious character, and they will, indeed, confine … their legislative proposals, unless in some exceptional case, … to such measures as may be found necessary to facilitate, financially and otherwise, the successful prosecution of the war."—[OFFICIAL. REPORT, 3rd February, 1915; Col. 46, Vol. 69.]
The position to-day is the same as it was then. We must confine our efforts to the consideration of those matters which are urgently necessary for the successful prosecution of the war. In those circumstances I had hoped that we should have
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the general consent of the House, but I see that the Leader of the Opposition has tabled an Amendment in regard to Private Members' Bills. I think, perhaps, it will be convenient if I deal with that point after the Amendment has been moved. At times like these we cannot follow our normal procedure, and the precedents set by the Liberal and Coalition Governments during the last war justify the action which we are now proposing to take.
2.56 p.m.
Mr. Attlee: I beg to move, in line 4, to leave out paragraph (2).
I think the Prime Minister will agree that in all parts of this House there has been every disposition to facilitate the business which was necessary for the prosecution of the war. Indeed, I think this House has played a very noble part, and it has been done because this House, quite rightly, has been careful to see that in a war we carry out to the full our duties as representatives of the people in a democratic House of Commons. We do not object to Government business having precedence, and no question arises on the third part of this Motion, but on the second part whereby all introduction of Private Bills is prohibited we shall require a very great deal of persuasion. There is a tendency in war time to take more than is absolutely necessary, and we had an instance of that in the regulations which we discussed a few days ago and which have now been reconsidered. I think in all parts of the House there was complete readiness to give the Government the necessary powers, but also great vigilance is necessary in order that no excessive powers are given.
Will the introduction of a Bill by Members either under the Ten-Minute Rule or by the ordinary way of introducing a Bill really do anything to hamper the proper carrying on of the war? I suggest nothing of the sort. I believe it is an extremely useful thing that legislative proposals should be brought before this House quickly and with certainty. It may be said that that involves the expense of printing, but I do not think that is a very large expense, and I am quite sure that in many respects there are other quarters in which economies will be made. It may be said it is futile because the Bills will go no further, but in this House there are always a great many Bills introduced which go no further. It is a method of

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ventilating a question and of putting proposals before this House and before the country in a concrete form. I think it is a desirable thing. There is no reason to think it will unduly impinge on the time of Government business, and I do not agree that we ought to be bound by the precedent of the Parliament that sat in the last war. I hope we are not going to be bound by the precedent set by that Parliament throughout.
We must have from the Prime Minister some definite reason why it would be wrong to have a Bill introduced under the Ten-Minute Rule. It might be a Bill which the House desired to pass. The Government are not putting any legislative proposals before us this Session, so it is not due to pressure of time. We should be very careful in this House-because this is not a party matter—before we give away any of our rights, and I have heard nothing yet to convince me that we ought to surrender the right to introduce a Private Bill.
3.0 p.m.
Mr. Dingle Foot: I am bound to say that, in spite of the precedents of 1914, I find myself in a good deal of sympathy with the Amendment moved by the Leader of the Opposition. As he has said, there is no objection to the other two limbs of the Motion, but the issue which is raised by his Amendment is whether private Members in all parts of the House should entirely surrender the right of initiating legislation, of every kind, into the hands of the Government of the day. The Prime Minister, when he introduced this Motion, cited the precedents of the last war. I should like to make one or two observations with regard to the precedents he mentioned.
First, it seems to me that the private Member to-day is in a very different position—and a very much worse position—from that which he occupied in 1914. The rights of private Members have been consistently cut down, beginning with the reforms of procedure just after the war and continuing by various devices through recent years. Although we make no complaint, of course, of the manner in which it is exercised, since 1914 the Chair has been given the right to select Amendments, thus cutting out in many cases Amendments which hon. Members might wish to move. We have had some-
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thing which was unknown before the last war, the introduction again and again of restrictive Money Resolutions under Standing Order 69, which was not introduced until 1919. Except for a few days at the outset of this war, the practice of having Debates on Motions to introduce Government Bills has dropped; and we have had the new practice, which has grown up in the last year or two, of taking Report stages and Third Readings of Government Bills on the same day. With regard to Government Bills, hon. Members have fewer opportunities of discussing them and of shaping and amending them than they had in 1914. I suggest that we ought to be more jealous of our rights now than we were then, because we have far fewer rights to preserve.
There is this distinction, too, that in 1914 the change was a matter of agreement; there was no division between the two sides of the House. Although it is impossible to speak authoritatively on this, one wonders whether Mr. Asquith would have insisted on that change if it had been objected to by Mr. Bonar Law at that time. But an undertaking was given by the Government, and anyone who reads Mr. Bonar Law's speech accepting the Prime Minister's Motion to take private Members' time will see that the undertaking given by the Government played a very large part, and acted a good deal on the minds of the Opposition. In his speech, on 3rd February, 1915, Mr. Bonar Law referred particularly to an undertaking which had been given on behalf of the Government by Lord Crewe the day before. Lord Crewe said:
"So far as the conduct of business is concerned, we do not propose to introduce any contentious business, but to confine ourselves entirely to such business as is concerned one way or the other with the prosecution of the war"
As far as I know, no such binding and categorical assurance has been given on this occasion. Perhaps we may be told whether it is the intention of the Government to give an assurance of that kind? Here we have a Motion being introduced to prevent Members who are not members of the Government from initiating any legislation at all. So far as I know, no similar Motion is being introduced in the other place. If that is so, we are left with this rather remarkable position, that, while no Member of this House may

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bring forward any Bill, however small and non-contentious it may be, any Member of the other place will be able to bring forward any legislative proposal he pleases throughout the duration of the war.
I do not know what part was played before the last war by the Ten-Minute Rule, but it does seem to me that in the last year or two it has been a very useful device. There have been quite a number of occasions during the last three or four years when Bills which have been matters of general agreement have been introduced by private Members under the Ten-Minute Rule. There was the case a year or two ago when the hon. and gallant Member for Carlisle (Brigadier-General Spears) introduced an Amendment to the Vagrancy Acts. Everybody agreed with it. I believe the Bill was drafted in consultation with the Home Office. The Government were not prepared to introduce it, but they accepted it, and it was passed. The following year the hon. Lady who is now Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health brought in a Bill dealing with the sale of red biddy in Scotland, and that was passed. Then there was another Bill—I think it was in the last Session. I am speaking now from recollection, but I think it was introduced by the hon. Lady the Member for Wallsend (Miss Ward). It was a Bill to protect the position of old age pensioners inside institutions.
All those things were done by general agreement. They all brought about results which Members of every party desired, and which were welcomed by public opinion outside. They would not have been brought in as part of the Government's legislative programme, although the Government in each case agreed with the objects of the Measure. If we pass this Motion, in its present form, we are going to deprive ourselves of that very useful procedure, as it often turns out to be; we are going to deprive ourselves, as Members of this House, of the opportunity to propose any new legislation whatever. Not only should we be prevented from bringing in Bills under the Ten-Minute Rule, but we should be prevented from handing them in at the Table. The power of initiative would be lost by the House, and handed over simply to the Government of the day.
3.9 p.m.
Mr. Charles Williams: As one who has been in this House for some time as a Private Member, I feel that before we surrender this privilege of private Members we should know very clearly where we stand in regard to the various methods that we have of introducing legislation. I can quite realise that at the present time, when the House of Commons is sitting almost continuously, and probably will be doing so throughout the war, it will not help the proceedings of the House, but will create difficulties in many ways, if we are to have a lot of private Bills. That is a very real difficulty. I venture to put forward what, I think, is another objection to this Amendment: that is, that there are a large number of our fellow-Members who are away from this House, and there are other Members on Service who come here from time to time with considerable difficulty—far more difficulty than the ordinary Member experiences. [An HON. MEMBER: "No"] Very often, at any rate.
If time is to be taken for private Members' Bills and Motions, if we are to have a long series of Bills, which come under the Ten-Minute Rule, and something happening at the end of the day which, I believe, is called "blocking," it is going to lengthen the proceedings of the House at a time when it is not desirable to do so, except on matters of very vital importance. It might be possible to meet the opinion, which, I think, exists in every part of the House, if we could have one day a week or some similar alleviation of the very strong position we have here, so that an agreed private Member's Bill could be brought in under the Ten-Minute Rule. We might find a way in that system whereby it would be possible at the present time not to take away the whole of the private Member's rights, but to leave some initiative in the hands of private Members. If there were agreement on all sides so that that initiative might be enabled to take place we might pass some Act such as the Acts mentioned by the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot).
I put forward that suggestion, although I am perfectly ready to support the Government. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I understood that hon. Members above the Gangway were in full support of the Government in the prosecution of the war. I think all the time which is

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needed by the House for that purpose should be used, and it should not be made unduly difficult for Ministers to carry out their other duties. For that reason I ask whether it is possible to meet the House of Commons situation by giving one day a week for Private Members' Bills under the Ten-Minute Rule? That might help the position. I am sure that there cannot be a large number of Bills while the war is on, but there may very well be certain Bills which might be brought in and which would do a great deal of good. Although, as I say, I shall support the Motion as it stands, I think it might be possible to provide some alleviation of the stringency of the position as it stands.
3.12 p.m.
Mr. Lewis: In rising to support the Motion of the Prime Minister, I would like to call attention to one point which has not been mentioned by any previous speaker. One effect of the taking of private Members' time will be to give the Government more time for such measures as they may desire to introduce. I wish to express the hope that as the result more consideration may be shown to Members of this House in the matter of the presentation of such Bills than has been the case lately. No doubt it is inevitable at the beginning of a war that Measures, very complicated and dealing with very important matters, should be brought before this House in such a way that Members had no proper opportunity to consider them, and consequently not able to take a valuable part in the Debate upon them. It seems to me that that process has been rather abused of late.
The House may remember what happened in the case of the National Loans Bill. The Chancellor of the Exchequer must have been perfectly aware when war broke out that it would be necessary to introduce that Bill, and no doubt the matter was present in his mind considerably before that. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, having taken two months in which to consider the provisions of this very complicated and important Bill himself, had it put in the Vote Office here one morning, and invited us to give it a Second Reading on the afternoon of the same day. That, to my mind, is treating this House as though it were a sort of glorified rubber stamp. It is in the hope
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that it will not be necessary in the future to protest about similar cases that I mention the matter now. Perhaps whoever is to reply on behalf of the Government will be willing to give us some assurance, if this Motion is carried, that Bills introduced by the Government will be presented to this House in such a way that hon. Members may have a reasonable opportunity to consider their provisions before they are put down for debate.
3.15 p.m.
Mr. Alan Herbert: Perhaps I may be allowed to detain the House for a few moments, because the first speech that I had the temerity to make in this House concerned a very similar question and nothing that has happened since then has altered my opinion of the value of private Members' time and, on the whole, the meritorious use they make of it. At the present time, at the beginning of the Session, we must all, as I am sure we all do, pay due attention to the advice of those organs of public opinion which, from time to time, instruct us in our duties. The hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Lewis) used the old phrase "rubber stamp." I saw that phrase last Sunday in the "Sunday Pictorial," against which I cannot be expected to have any prejudices, because I used to write for it, and my relations with it were, and continue to be, most friendly. But I was shocked and alarmed on Sunday on seeing an article headed, "Rubber-Stamp M.P's," which put a great many rhetorical questions about the future Session, to all of which unfavourable responses were given.
"How are the M.P's facing up to this gigantic task? With imagination? 'No.' With enthusiasm? 'No.' With energy? 'No.' They have fallen back on the automatic rubber stamp, of approval for each and every Government measure that is put before them. The 'Yes-men' are at their sorry task."
I was not only shocked and alarmed, but very surprised to see these observations, because, being a regular reader of that organ, I had seen only three weeks before another leading article by the young and vigorous editor which was headed, "The House of No-Men," with a not very flattering representation of the Prime Minister, and a rather more handsome silhouette of the Palace of Westminster at the top. The burden of this article is that Members do nothing but nag and attack

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the Government for their admirable schemes:
"That is why our M.P.s are wasting their time in these fractious debates… They are proud of saying 'No' to the Government's war-plan."
As I said, the editor of this paper is young, vigorous and patriotic, and no doubt he will learn. But it might seem that he was almost guilty of that kind of vagueness and vaccilation which he would so rightly deprecate in the Ministers. However, we have to pay attention to these pundits. And now I find myself in the situation of part "Yes-man" and part "No-man" I entirely support the Amendment and the terms in which it has been moved and supported by hon. Friends opposite. I say "Yes," rather reluctantly to the first part of the Motion which the Prime Minister has moved. I am not absolutely persuaded that we ought to give up all our time. It may be that the compromise suggested by the hon. Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams) would provide a solution. But it is one thing to take away private Members' time and a very different thing to take away their power to initiate or even suggest legislation. One is to put a decent check upon the too prolific fathers of Bills, and the other is an operation which would have to be described in much more drastic terms. After all, this power of initiative is based upon the assumption, agreeable, I think, to private Members and not, I hope, offensive to others, that the stock of creative legislative wisdom does not cease at the southern end of the Treasury Bench. I see no reason, however grave the war may be, why that assumption should be abrogated. But there is more. Ministers have frequently and handsomely admitted that the rights of private Members in regard to the initiation of legislation may be good not only for the nation but for the Government. There are important questions which private Members can bring forward which Governments, for one reason and another, cannot touch. I have one particular example in my mind.
The Prime Minister, quoting Mr. Asquith, spoke of "controversial matters of academic interest." There are many controversial matters which are not of academic interest. Take the subject of betting or of football pools. Those are controversial matters but by no means of academic interest. The football pools
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have come back—in a form which I believe to be illegal, although that, I know, is a matter of dispute; and they are not taxed. Betting is not taxed even now. These are matters which may well have to be faced before this Session is out. I introduced a Betting Bill, which I should like to introduce again, but it will not be possible to do that if the rights of private Members in regard to initiating legislation are taken away for this Session. The Prime Minister said rightly yesterday, and I think we all agreed with him, that we have generous opportunities for general discussion in debates on the Adjournment, but he knows very well that it is impossible to discuss matters involving legislation on a general debate on the Motion for the Adjournment.
Take the Betting Bill. I proposed to make cash betting lawful and to confine off the course pool betting to fixed odds. There are one or two other details of that Bill which if I approached more closely you, Mr. Speaker, would stop me. It is only by the power that we have of producing Bills that we can raise these subjects. I hope the Prime Minister will consider what has been said very carefully. By his Motion he seems to be taking away a right which is valued by the private Members and valuable to the nation. Moreover, I cannot see what harm would be done by allowing private Members to introduce Bills under the Ten-Minute Rule. What, after all, is ten minutes at the end of questions? If the House does not like a Bill, it can be thrown out, and in any case if the Government think it a nuisance the Whips know how to deal with matters of that sort. In conclusion, although it is irrelevant and perhaps out of order, I have just heard from an hon. Member sitting next to me that this is his last attendance in the House after 21 years' membership, and I at least should like to give him a cheer.
3.23 p.m.
Colonel Wedgwood: I wish this Debate had not turned so much on the question of private Members' rights. I do not think private Members' time is specially important as an opportunity for individual Members securing the distinction of passing a Bill. The real advantage of private Members' time is the public advantage it affords to our constituents and to the community as a whole. The time

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of the House is taken up between the Government and the public, and if the Government now take away private Members' time they will be taking away opportunities for discussing questions which are of interest to the public, and will be depriving us of the opportunity of ventilating those questions. I do not think it is very convenient to have too many of these questions raised when the Government are very busy, but it is not wise to use the emergency of the war for side-tracking political education on questions which we shall have to discuss when the war is over. The Conservative attitude towards political education is, I am afraid, always the same; they do not want these questions raised, but it is in the interests of the country as a whole that they should be raised, and that we should carry certain private Members' Bills into law.
The ventilation of grievances and the introduction of Measures to deal with specific grievances is an advantage to the country generally. It is not, therefore, a question simply of depriving private Members of their rights, but of depriving the public of rights with which we are now concerned. From that point of view I should think that everybody in the House ought to be anxious to see the Amendment carried, and still more anxious to bring pressure upon the Government to find some substitute for the public right to discuss questions not initiated by the Government. Personally, I have no love for private Members' Bills, which are mostly badly drafted, and often seek to put some perfectly innocent person in prison. It is valuable, however, to have these questions discussed, however much we may disagree with those who bring them forward.
What is far more valuable is that we should have more time in this House in which to discuss the different new Ministries that have been set up. I do not know whether the Government have arranged to give us more than the 20 days per Session for discussing the various Supply Votes. There are all these new Ministries, and I submit that if the Government are going to take away the right to initiate discussion of Bills and Motions, they might give us more opportunities of discussing some of the
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vagaries of new Ministries. There is a public impression that a great deal of money is being wasted and that a great deal of unnecessary interference with the people is taking place. If they gave us those opportunities we should get a quid pro quo for what are called Private Members' rights. I hope that, however the Division goes, the Government will give much larger opportunities for discussion of Supply, so that every one of the new Departments that have been set up may have at least one day for discussion of its affairs each year.
3.28 p.m.
Mr. Stephen: Under our Constitution and Standing Orders, private Members have very little opportunity of doing anything and of bringing forward matters in which they are keenly interested. In the particular circumstances in which we find ourselves now, with the Opposition in co-operation with the Government in regard to so much of its programme in the prosecution of the War, it is all the more important that the little rights that small minorities in the House have had of expressing their point of view, should be safeguarded. Those opportunities were little enough in the past, and I think the Prime Minister should seriously consider allowing private Members still to have the right to introduce Bills under the Ten-Minute Rule. I know that that arrangement does not permit of very much, but it does at least give an opportunity for a particular Measure having some consideration. Moreover, it has a certain propaganda value. Much of the most important legislation that has been passed ultimately by the House of Commons was initiated by Private Members, very often after the Government and the Opposition have been very contemptuous about it. Ultimately they found that the hon. Member had something which was really worth while considering. So many rights are going at the present time that it appears to me that Germany, even if she is defeated in the field, will have a fair chance of winning in the region of ideas. This Motion is in line with the development of totalitarian government in this country. I certainly object to filching away the small rights of Private Members, and I hope that the Prime Minister will seriously consider allowing them to be retained.
3.31 p.m.
Mr. Poole: I must apologise for inflicting myself on the House on this matter. I am a comparatively young Member and I have not had the good fortune to be successful in the Ballot and introduced a private Members Bill. I cannot understand the argument which is being advanced in support of the Motion. Time seems to be the factor. How often is this House sitting? At the present moment it is a half-time House. We are sitting only three days a week, and if time is the factor which prevents private Members promoting legislation, what is there to prevent this House sitting on an additional day each week? The time factor is not the real reason behind the argument. How much time does Private Bill legislation take up? It is remarkably small; and time is not the real argument. The word "freedom" is banded about in this struggle, but the only freedom which we are asked to support is freedom to acquiesce in everything which the Government want to do. That is not a function which I desire for myself, or which, I think, should be the desire of the Opposition.
We desire to retain our freedom to criticise and our freedom to initiate legislation. Many of the Bills which pass through this House are to correct anomalies which are not revealed in Government Acts of Parliament until they are put into effect. I despair of knowing how a private Member is going to deal with many of the difficulties which arise among his constituents unless he has the opportunity of promoting small amending Bills to remove the anomalies which are revealed. I know of many cases, through my own correspondence, in which a private Members' small Bill is needed in order to correct the great hardship which is entailed upon individuals through mistakes in the drafting of Government legislation, and I am not prepared to subscribe to taking away this right from private Members. I hope the Government will seriously reconsider this matter and endeavour to meet us either by extending the sittings of the House or by allowing us to retain the limited right to initiate legislation.
3.36 p.m.
The Prime Minister: I am sure that the House will understand that the Government in no way desire to limit the
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work of Parliament and the assistance which hon. Members in all parts of the House can give to the ťask of prosecuting the war with the utmost possible energy. I freely acknowledge that the Debates which we have had upon measures connected with the war have been very helpful, and in some cases have enabled us to make modifications or alterations in our proposals which have been for the general benefiť. Therefore, I do not disagree with the right hon. Member for Limehouse (Mr. Attlee) in the illustration he gave of work of that kind. But we are not talking of that sort of thing at the present ťime. We are talking of private Members' Bills, and what we have to remember is that the country is expecting this House to give its whole time to the prosecution of the war. When the whole ťime is being taken by the Government, private Members' Bills which are introduced under the Ten-Minute Rule and go no further, are not contributing to the prosecution of the war. It is merely taking up the time of Parliament and, what is of equal importance, the time of the officials in the Departments, which should be given to more important matters.
The right hon. Gentleman very lightly brushed aside the precedents which I quoted in the last War. Whatever hon. Members may think of the political opinions of the late Lord Asquith, everybody knows that he was, at any rate, a greať parliamentarian and a great House of Commons man. There is no one who had a greater regard and respect for the rights of Members of Parliament, and he would have been the last to attempt to curtail the rights of private Members in time of peace. But, as he poinťed out, the situation is entirely different in time of war. May I quoťe what he said on 16th February, 1916?:
"Listening to this discussion, some of my hon. Friends seem to me to be exceedingly wanting in perspective. They do not seem even now to realise the conditions under which we are living. If they did they would appreciate more clearly than some of them seem to do that the country does not want a mass of private Member's legislation put upon the Table, printed at the public expense, never to be discussed, and there for no useful purpose of any sort or kind. The Government are less disposed than ever to curtail the liberties and privileges of this House, but under pressure of public duty they feel that the legislation of the House ought to be confined, in the conditions under which we live, to matters which are urgently necessary and

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considered necessary by those responsible for the effective prosecution of the war."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th February, 1916; Col. 74, Vol. 80.]
That is precisely the position in which the Government find themselves to-day.
Mr. Foot: But Mr. Asquith accepted an Amendment.
The Prime Minister: The hon. Member said that Mr. Asquith at that time gave an assurance that the Government itself would not introduce partisan or contentious legislation, but would confine legislation to matters connected with the prosecution of the war, and the hon. Member also said that no such assurance had been given by the present Government. In my remarks I intended to convey that assurance, but if I did not make it clear I give it now. This is a case where everybody must surrender a little of their rights which they would claim in ordinary circumstances, and while the Government are asking private Members to give up their right to introduce private Members' Bills they are themselves willing to place themselves under the restriction which I have mentioned.
Mr. Foot: Is it not a fact that at the end of his speech on 16th February, 1916, Mr. Asquith accepted an Amendment limiting the operation of the Motion to six weeks?
The Prime Minister: He did limit the motion at that time but it was continued later. The hon. Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams) pointed out that there might be subjects which in the ordinary course had been embodid in private Members' Bills and which were generally agreed as being desirable in themselves, and he asked whether it was not possible to give some opportunity for the consideration of such Measures. I think it would, but not necessarily in the way he suggested. I think it is conceivable, although perhaps it would not occur very often, that there might be such subjects which private Members would desire to bring to the attention of the Government and which would receive general acceptance in all parts of the House. There is nothing to prevent the Government from taking up such a Measure and bringing it in themselves. I think I may say generally that the Government certainly would not desire to take up a non
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possumus attitude in regard to such a suggestion, and that if it were found that there were Measures which hon. Members generally would like to see passed, the Government certainly would give most favourable consideration to anything of the kind.
My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Mr. Lewis) complained that sufficient time had not been given between the moving of the Second Reading of Bills and subsequent debate on them. I recognise that under the pressure of the large amount of legislation we had to get through quickly, there was some ground for that complaint, but I hope that now we have got through the most urgent Measures, it will be possible in future to avoid bringing the various stages of Bills too close together, and that hon. Members may have an opportunity for consideration after the Second Reading of Bills and before they become the subject of further debate.
The right hon. Gentleman opposite said that I must give some reason for the proposal I was making. I think the reason is the same as that given by Mr. Asquith in the passages I have quoted. We want generally to let the country see that the war has to take precedence over everything else, that we are not going to spend time in academic discussions, in discussing legislation which cannot be brought to a conclusion, and that we have to allow the Departments and the Departmental officials to give their whole time to the Measures which are necessary for winning the war.
Mr. Attlee: I do not understand the Prime Minister's reference to the Departments, because unless a Bill is acceded to by the House and goes beyond Second Reading, the Departments have nothing to do with it.
The Prime Minister: That is not so. I should have thought that the right hon. Gentleman would have had sufficient experience when in office to know that if a Bill is drafted and published, it must be examined by the Departments.
Mr. Gordon Macdonald: Will the Prime Minister answer the question that was put by the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) as to whether members of another place have the right to initiate legislation?
The Prime Minister: We have no jurisdiction in this House over another place.
Miss Wilkinson: Is it not a fact that a Private Member's Bill reaches its Second Reading and is not touched by the Department, and that departmental work comes after that? It is not even proof-read by the Department, but by the Member himself, and the Department has nothing whatever to do with it until it goes beyond Second Reading?
The Prime Minister: The hon. Lady is mistaken. All Bills have to be examined by the Departments and this takes up a certain amount of time which in present circumstances ought not to be so taken.
Mr. G. Macdonald: If in another place a Bill obtained a Second Reading and eventually was passed, would it come to this House? Does the Prime Minister tell us that he has no jurisdiction to deal with such a situation?
The Prime Minister: We have no jurisdiction in this House as to what they should do in another place.
Mr. Herbert Morrison: Surely, the Prime Minister is under a misapprehension. Under the Ten-Minute Rule, there is a Motion asking for leave to bring in a Bill and the Bill qua Bill does not exist at that stage. It is a mere title. How can that involve work on the part of the Departments when they do not know the text of the Bill?
The Prime Minister: As soon as the text of the Bill is made public, of course the Department has to examine it.
Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
The House divided: Ayes, 213; Noes, 115.

Division No. 1.]

AYES.

[3.46 p.m.

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

Drewe, C.

Lambert, Rt. Hon. G.

Albery, Sir Irving

Duckworth, W. R. (Moss Side)

Lancaster, Lieut.-Colonel C. G.

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

Duncan, J. A. L.

Leigh, Sir J.

Anderson, Rt. Hn. Sir J. (Sc'h Univ's)

Eastwood, J. F.

Levy, T.

Aske, Sir R. W.

Eckersley, P. T.

Lewis, O.

Assheton, R.

Eden, Rt. Hon. A.

Liddall, W. S.

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

Edmondson, Major Sir J.

Lindsay, K. M.

Baillie, Sir A. W. M.

Elliot, Rt. Hon. W. E.

Lipson, D. L.

Balfour, G. (Hampstead)

Ellis, Sir G.

Little, Sir E. Graham-

Beauchamp, Sir B. C.

Elliston, Capt. G. S.

Little, Dr. J. (Down)

Beechman, N. A.

Emrys-Evans, P. V.

Lloyd, G. W.

Bird, Sir R. B.

Erskine-Hill, A. G.

Loftus, P. C.

Blair, Sir R.

Fildes, Sir H.

Lucas, Major Sir J. M.

Bossom, A. C.

Fremantle, Sir F. E.

Lyons, A. M.

Brass, Sir W.

George, Megan Lloyd (Anglesey)

Mabane, W. (Huddersfield)

Briscoe, Capt. R. G.

Gibson, Sir C. G. (Pudsey and Otley)

MacAndrew, Colonel Sir C. G.

Broadbridge, Sir G T.

Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir J.

M'Connell, Sir J.

Brocklebank, Sir Edmund

Glyn, Major Sir R. G. C.

McCorquodale, M. S.

Brown, Rt. Hon. E. (Leith)

Gowar, Sir R. V.

MacDonald, Rt. Hon. M. (Ross)

Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C. (Newbury)

Greene, W. P. C. (Worcester)

MacDonald, Sir Murdoch (Inverness)

Burgin, Rt. Hon. E. L.

Gretton, Col. Rt. Hon. J.

Macdonald, Capt. P. (Isle of Wight)

Butcher, H. W.

Gridley, Sir A. B.

McEwen, Capt. J. H. F.

Caine, G. R. Hall-

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

McKie, J. H.

Campbell, Sir E. T.

Grigg, Sir E. W. M.

Magnay, T.

Carver, Major W. H.

Grimston, R. V.

Maitland, Sir Adam

Cary, R. A.

Gritten, W. G. Howard

Makins, Brigadier-General Sir Ernest

Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.)

Hannah, I. C.

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

Cazalet, Major V. A. (Chippenham)

Hannon, Sir P. J. H.

Markham, S. F.

Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. N. (Edgb't'n)

Harris, Sir P. A.

Mayhew, Lt.-Col. J.

Channon, H.

Haslam, Henry (Horncastle)

Mills, Sir F. (Leyton, E.)

Chorlton, A. E. L.

Haslam, Sir J. (Bolton)

Mitchell, Col. H. (Brentf'd & Chisw'k)

Clarry, Sir Reginald

Hely-Hutchinson, M. R.

Molson, A. H. E.

Cobb, Captain E. C. (Preston)

Heneage, Lieut.-Colonel A. P.

Moore, Lieut.-Col. Sir T. C. R.

Colman, N. C. D.

Hepburn, P. G. T. Buchan-

Morgan, R. H. (Worcester, Stourbridge)

Colville, Rt. Hon. John

Hepworth, J.

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

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

Higgs, W. F.

Morris-Jones, Sir Henry

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

Hoare, Rt. Hon. Sir S.

Morrison, G. A. (Scottish Univ's.)

Craven-Ellis, W.

Holmes, J. S.

Nall, Sir J.

Croft, Brig.-Gen. Sir H. Page

Hopkinson, A.

Neven-Spence, Major B. H. H.

Crooke, Sir J. Smedley

Horsbrugh, Florence

Nicholson, G. (Farnham)

Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C.

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

Nicolson, Hen. H. G.

Cross, R. H.

Hudson, Rt. Hon. R. S. (Southport)

O'Connor, Sir Terence J.

Crowder, J. F. E.

Hume, Sir G. H.

O'Neill, Rt. Hon. Sir Hugh

Culverwell, C. T.

Hurd, Sir P. A.

Orr-Ewing, I. L.

Davidson, Viscountess

James, Wing-Commander A. W. H.

Palmer, G. E. H.

Davies, C. (Montgomery)

Jennings, R.

Peake, O.

Davies, Major Sir G. F. (Yeovil)

Kerr, Colonel C. I. (Montrose)

Peters, Dr. S. J.

Davison, Sir W. H.

Kerr, Sir John Graham (Sco'sh Univs.)

Pickthorn, K. W. M.

De la Bère, R.

Keyes, Admiral of the Fleet Sir R.

Plugge, Capt. L. F.

Denman, Hon. R. D.

King-Hall, Commander W. S. R.

Ponsonby, Col. C. E.

Doland, G. F.

Lamb, Sir J. Q.

Pownall, Lt.-Col. Sir Assheton

Purbrick, R.

Shaw, Captain W. T. (Forfar)

Taylor, C. S. (Eastbourne)

Pym, L. R.

Simmonds, O. E.

Taylor, Vice-Adm. E. A. (Padd., S.)

Radford, E. A.

Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir J. A

Thomas, J. P. L.

Ramsbotham, Rt. Hon. H.

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

Touche, G. C.

Ramsden, Sir E.

Smiles, Lieut.-Colonel Sir W. D.

Train, Sir J.

Reed, A. C. (Exeter)

Smith, Bracewell (Dulwich)

Tree, A. R. L. F.

Reed, Sir H. S. (Aylesbury)

Smithers, Sir W.

Tryon, Major Rt. Hon. G. C.

Reid. J. S. C. (Hillhead)

Snadden, W. McN.

Wakefield, W. W.

Rickards, G. W. (Skipton)

Somerset, T.

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

Ross, Lt.-Col. Sir R. D. (Londonderry)

Somerville, Sir A. A. (Windsor)

Ward, Irene M. B. (Wallsand)

Ross Taylor, W. (Woodbridge)

Southby, Commander Sir A. R. J.

Warrender, Sir V.

Royds, Admiral Sir P. M. R.

Stanley, Rt. Hon. Oliver (W'm'ld)

Wayland, Sir W. A.

Russell, Sir Alexander

Stewart, J. Henderson (Fife, E.)

Weston, W. G.

Salmon, Sir I.

Storey, S.

Wells, Sir Sydney

Salt, E. W.

Strauss, H. G. (Norwich)

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

Salter, Sir J. Arthur (Oxford U.)

Strickland, Captain W. F.

Williams, C. (Torquay)

Samuel, M. R. A.

Stuart, Rt. Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn)

Womersley, Sir W. J.

Sandeman, Sir N. S.

Sueter, Rear-Admiral Sir M. F.

Wright, Wing-Commander J. A. C.

Sanderson, Sir F. B.

Suteliffe, H.

Selley, H. R.

Tasker, Sir R. I.

TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

Shakespeare, G. H.

Tate, Mavis C.

Captain Dugdale and Mr. Munro.

NOES.

Acland, Sir R. T. D.

Greenwood, Rt. Hon. A.

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

Adams, D. (Consett)

Grenfell, D. R.

Muff, G.

Adams, D. M. (Poplar, S.)

Griffiths, J. (Llanelly)

Waylor, T. E.

Adamson, Jennie L. (Dartford)

Groves, T. E.

Oliver, G. H.

Adamson, W. M.

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

Paling, W.

Ammon, C. G.

Hall. G. H. (Aberdare)

Parker, J.

Anderson, F. (Whitehaven)

Hall, W. G. (Colne Valley)

Pearson, A.

Attlee, Rt. Hon. C. R.

Hardie, Agnes

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

Banfield, J. W.

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

Poole, C. C.

Barnes, A. J.

Hayday, A.

Price, M. P.

Barr, J.

Henderson, T. (Tradeston)

Quibell, D. J. K.

Batey, J.

Herbert, A. P. (Oxford U.)

Rathbone, Eleanor (English Univ's.)

Beaumont, H. (Batley)

Hills, A. (Pontefract)

Richards, R. (Wrexham)

Benn, Rt. Hon. W. W.

Horabin, T. L.

Riley, B.

Bromfield, W.

Isaacs, G. A.

Ritson, J.

Brown, C. (Mansfield)

Jackson, W. F.

Roberts, W. (Cumberland, N.)

Buchanan, G.

Jagger, J.

Robinson, W. A. (St. Helens)

Burke, W. A.

Jenkins, A. (Pontypool)

Sexton, T. M.

Charleton, H. C.

Jenkins, Sir W. (Neath)

Shinwell, E.

Cluse, W. S.

John, W.

Silkin, L.

Cocks, F. S.

Jones, A. C. (Shipley)

Smith, E. (Stoke)

Collindridge, F.

Jowitt, Rt. Hon. Sir W. A.

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

Cove, W. G.

Kennedy, Rt. Hon. T.

Smith, T. (Normanton)

Daggar, G.

Kirkwood, D.

Stephen, C

Dalton, H.

Lathan, G.

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

Davidson, J. J. (Maryhlll)

Lawson, J. J.

Summerskill, Dr. Edith

Davies, R. J. (Westhoughton)

Leach, W.

Taylor, R. J. (Morpeth)

Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)

Leonard, W.

Thorne, W.

Dobbie, W.

Leslie, J. R.

Tinker, J. J.

Dunn, E. (Rother Valley)

Logan, D. G.

Viant, S. P.

Ede, J. C.

Lunn, W.

Wedgwood, Rt. Hon. J. C.

Edwards, Sir C. (Bedwelty)

Macdonald, G. (Ince)

Wilkinson, Ellen

Edwards, N. (Caerphilly)

McGhee, H. G.

Williams, E. J. (Ogmare)

Evans, E. (Univ. of Wales)

McGovern, J.

Williams, T. (Don Valley)

Foot, D. M.

MacMillan, M. (Western Isles)

Woodburn, A.

Gallacher, W.

Maxton, J.

Woods, G. S. (Finsbury)

Gardner, B. W.

Montague, F.

Young, Sir R. (Newton)

Garro Jones, G. M.

Morgan, J. (York, W.R., Doncaster)

Gibson, R. (Greenock)

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

TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—

Mr. Mathers and Mr. Whiteley.

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Ordered,
"That, during the present Session,—

(1) Government Business do have precedence at every Sitting;

(2) no Public Bills other than Government Bills be introduced;

(3) whenever the House adjourns from Thursday to the following Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday Members desiring to give
116
Notice of Questions for Oral Answer on a Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday may send Notices of such Questions to the Clerks at the Table, and any Notices of Questions so received by them before Five of the Clock on a Friday or Monday or Tuesday can be accepted as Notices of Questions for Oral Answer on the following Monday or Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, respectively, and be printed and circulated with the Votes."

ORDERS OF THE DAY
  KING'S SPEECH.

    DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS.
    [SECOND DAY.]
    Order read for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [28 th November]:
    "That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty as followeth:
    Most Gracious Sovereign,
    We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament." —[Captain Marsden.]
    Question again proposed.
    3.55 p.m.
    Mr. George Hall: In continuing the Debate on the Gracious Speech, it is the intention of myself and my hon. Friends to confine ourselves largely to domestic problems or problems of the home front. We might well describe this as a Debate on the condition of the poorest of our fellow-subjects and the inadequacy of the amounts which are available to sustain many of the men, women and children who are the victims of our economic and social system. We were very disappointed with the speech of the Prime Minister yesterday, in that not a sentence of it was devoted to the problems with which the people of this country are confronted at the present time, with the exception, of course, of war problems. We realise that much of the Government's time must be taken up with the conduct of the war and that the war front is important, but who will deny the importance of maintaining the morale of the people at home? Both fronts are vital. There should be no conflict upon that point. That is why we warn the Government to-day that unless they tackle, with vigour and imagination, our domestic problems, this nation may be faced with an outburst of industrial unrest as a result, in the main, of rising prices, low wages for the industrial worker, and inadequate incomes for the old age pensioners, and unemployed, the injured workmen and the millions who are unable to maintain themselves.
    I do not intend to spend much time to-day in dealing with the conditions of
    118
    the industrial worker who is in employment. The trade unionist is protected by his trade union, and hardly a day passes without news of a rise in wages secured by one or other of the trade unions for its members. But for the trade union organisation the ordinary workers would have little or no hope of securing higher wages to compensate them for the increased cost of living. If I dismiss the employed industrial worker in a sentence or two on this occasion let it not be understood that we are satisfied with his conditions or that all is well with him. This afternoon, however, we propose to concern ourselves mainly with the sufferings of the people who are not in employment, and who have been driven below the poverty line as a result of the inadequacy of old-age pensions, widows' pensions, unemployment benefit or assistance, and workmen's compensation, as well as the operation of the means test. We desire to draw attention to the position of the injured industrial worker who is forced to live on the miserable amounts called workmen's compensation —amounts so inadequate that many are driven in despair to seek public assistance relief. We have also in mind the fact that many relatives of soldiers and others called on for service, are being refused allowances in respect of those on whom they were solely or partially dependent.
    We can rightly say that a recital of these grievances reveals a lack of initiative and imagination on the part of a Government which will not face up to those complaints until forced to do so by pressure. It indicates a state of mind in which, while money is being shovelled away in hundreds of millions of pounds for war purposes, when it comes to domestic problems the Government will pinch and save at the expense of the poorest of the people. Even before the war it was generally admitted that the penalties of poverty were terrible. In many homes the whole economic status of the family was imperilled. With the increased cost of living, as hon. Members can imagine, matters are very much worse. There are several millions of people who are not merely requesting the Government, but demanding that the Government should take action and give substantial increases.
    Take the question of old age pensions. It is not my intention to argue the case for an increased old age pension. No

    119
    subject has retained the attention of this House so much during the last two or three years as this subject of increasing the old age pension, and we know that there is a unanimous national demand that an increase in the pension is long overdue. Everyone admits it; there is no Member of this House who can justify the amount of pension which is at present paid. Even the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Debate just a month ago frankly admitted that 10s. a week is totally inadequate to maintain an old age pensioner. That being so, we ask why this delay? It is four months since the Prime Minister promised an inquiry into the question, not whether 10s. was sufficient to maintain a pensioner, but how to bring about an increase. It is a month since the Government obtained a majority in a Division in this House on the promise to expedite the inquiry. Let me ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that every day's delay in making the concession asked for is causing very great suffering to these millions of old people, many of them worn out in the service of the State. The Government should not delay one minute longer in taking action to mitigate the serious conditions under which these old and poor people unfortunately find themselves. At this minute in this country there are 2,000,000 people who are waiting to hear what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to say in reply to the demand.
    In exactly the same way we come to the question of workmen's compensation. This matter is being put off from week to week and we cannot get any definite declaration from the Government as to what its intentions are. A question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) to the Home Secretary only last week elicited the reply, "We are still considering what our action is to be." Let me again say that an increase in workmen's compensation is long overdue. The patience of the industrial worker is almost exhausted. We cannot go on week after week satisfying ourselves that everything is all right when we receive answers from the Home Secretary to the effect that the matter is still under consideration. There is nothing which is causing greater and more widespread dissatisfaction in industry, especially in the mining industry, than this question of workmen's compensation.
    120
    Is it realised that the maximum weekly amount of compensation paid to a man for an injury received is 30s. a week? The average works out at between 24s. and 25s. a week. There are tens of thousands of industrial workers, many disabled for life, whose compensation is fixed at between 20s. and 215. Workmen's compensation is so low that thousands of men have to seek public assistance to eke out a miserable existence.
    Let me give a few examples which were submitted to the Royal Commission which dealt with this question of workmen's compensation. The examples are drawn from all the coalfields of this country. In South Wales, in the cases submitted the lowest compensation paid was 22S. 6d. a week for a man who had suffered a very serious accident. His compensation was supplemented to the extent of 8s. a week, although he had another dependent upon him. The highest sum paid was 30s., and even this person had to seek public assistance. Take Somerset. There was not a single case submitted to the Royal Commission where the compensation exceeded or amounted to 25s. a week. Five of the cases dealt with that industrial disease called silicosis. One only wants to understand what silicosis is to realise the suffering of these people who, as a result of their employment, are unfortunately forced into that condition. Yet the employer and the Government by their inaction say that an average of 22s. for the five cases which were submitted to the Royal Commission is sufficient compensation per week for men who had given their lives to one of the most essential industries of the nation. In every case these persons had to seek public assistance relief.
    I could turn to Durham and tell the same story. There the highest compensation paid was 25s. 10d., and the interesting and most tragic thing is that in many cases the amount of public assistance paid to sustain these men suffering from injuries as a result of accidents exceeded the amount of the workmen's compensation. It is no wonder than hon. Members opposite, in the Debate on the last Workmen's Compensation Bill submitted to the House, stated that there is not a single Member of the House satisfied with workmen's compensation, not only because of the amount of the payments made, but also

    121
    because of the other conditions attached to payment. An hon. Member who represents one of the Birmingham Divisions—I think it was the Moseley Division—pressed the Government to get the work of the Royal Commission expedited so that legislation could be presented in this Session of Parliament. Is it realised that in the industry which I know best there are between 900 and 1,000 persons killed every year, and between 150,000 and 160,000 injured or disabled by industrial disease or accident every year? This matter is not the concern of the miners only; it is the concern of their relatives as well, the people who are dependent upon them, and it is the concern of the community. They all want to know, and we expect the Chancellor of the Exchequer to tell us, what the Government are doing about it.
    I wonder whether the Government are going to learn any lesson at all from the experience of the last war. In the early days of the last war the then Prime Minister was so concerned about industrial unrest that he appointed commissions to visit certain parts of the industrial areas of the country. They went, and one of their urgent recommendations was that there should be an immediate and substantial increase in workmen's compensation, as its inadequacy was one of the principal causes of unrest. Within a short time there was passed legislation which gave a substantial increase in workmen's compensation. Would it not he better for the present Government to show a little initiative in this matter and not to wait until trouble arises? I understand that some of the trouble is that negotiations with the employers are not proceeding as smoothly as they might do, that many of the employers will not go outside the Compensation Act. Let me warn the Chancellor of the Exchequer that something must be done, and done immediately, not merely as a war-time increase and not as an increase because of the higher cost of living. We maintain that the increase demanded in the memorandum which was submitted by the Royal Commission was an increase which was fully justified. Whatever may be said of some of the European countries, workmen's compensation is much more generous there than it is in this country. I ask the Government to consider this matter so that there may be no trouble in connection with it.
    122
    Then I come to deal with the question of the dissatisfaction which has arisen in connection with the so-called scheme of allowances which the Service Departments have submitted for dependants, other than wives, of men who are serving in the Forces. Let me at once say that it is a bad scheme. It is a scheme not so much for the purpose of granting allowances, as for withholding them. The factors attached to the scheme make it almost impossible for any but a very small percentage of those who are partially dependent or wholly dependent on soldiers—widowed mothers or females apart from wives—to get assistance from the scheme at all. First of all let me deal briefly with the conditions. A soldier must make a minimum allotment of 7s. a week out of his pay before an application can be made for an allowance, but the War Office or the Service Departments are very keen to indicate that any allowance which is paid must include the allotment or that the allowance paid by the Service will be in addition to the allotment which is made. These allowances or additional sums are very small sums indeed. The serving man or his relatives must prove that before he enlisted he made a contribution of not less than 9s. a week towards the support or maintenance of the home.
    I ask those who represent the Service Departments whether, in framing this scheme, they have taken into consideration the young man who is just out of his apprenticeship, or the young student who has just completed his course at college. A case was quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly of one young man living in his town whose parents had made considerable sacrifices to send him to a training college. That young man qualified as a teacher and had an appointment waiting for him. But he was called to the Service, and under the regulations, as he was not contributing 9s. a week towards the maintenance of his parents, he was ruled out. In exactly the same way an apprentice who has been trained and who in the course of a month or six weeks would be earning wages of £3, £4 or possibly £5 a week, has no allowance under these regulations. Indeed, unless the claimant is a widowed mother, no allowance is paid if the dependant is capable of maintaining himself, or herself, in the case of the mother, if the husband is capable of employment.

    123
    May I quote one case which has come to my notice and which has been refused an allowance under this regulation? It is the case of a man in my own Division, a miner, whose average wage is £2 £13s. per week. There are eight children of or under school age. The boy had enlisted as a Territorial. He was employed underground and getting a reasonable wage of between 35s. and £2 a week. All the other conditions were satisfied. He was making his contribution towards assisting to maintain the home, but the one thing which prevented his mother getting any allowance, in addition to the allotment of 7s. was that the father was not incapable of employment. That is a rigid, rigorous means test. Let me deal with the means test. If you first of all satisfy the fact that the son was making a contribution, if the father is incapable, if there is another brother at home working, and if the income into the home averages 15s. per head of the household, after rent and rates have been deducted, even then no allowance will be paid if the total income exceeds 18s. 6d. per week per head.
    Let me give the case of two sons living at home with a widowed mother? One son is injured and in receipt of workmen's compensation, a maximum of 30s. a week. The other son has been called up. He was earning £2 10s. or £3 a week, and it was upon him that the main maintenance of the mother depended. He could satisfy the condition that he was making the contribution, but the income into the home, including the allotment, was 37s. If the rent was 6s. per week he would be ruled out under the 15s. per week average income for the other two members of the family. On the other hand, he could have been ruled out if the 18s. 6d. average total income was taken into consideration. Even the Unemployment Assistance Board, much as we have complained about them, are more generous than are the Services in this scheme, and that is saying something. Let me compare the two schemes. If there is an unemployed father, and if there is a son living at home earning £3 a week, whether he contributes it or not, the Minister of Labour assumes that that young man has contributed 22s. per week towards the maintenance of the home. On the other hand, the Services say, "If this young man is paying into the domes-
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    tic pool £3 a week, that is a crime, and his father or his mother will not be given any allowance at all." I have not known of another scheme which is as shadowy and as miserable as that.
    At a time like this, when we are asking that the morale of the young men at the Front shall be maintained, that not only means giving them certain conditions and advantages while they are serving, but 99 or 100 per cent. of these men are concerned about conditions at home, and the one thing which will destroy the morale of these people is the niggardly way in which the Service Departments are dealing with these allowances. I will give the case of a widow's only son, who has been called up. The Government have recognised, in the Conscription Act, that domestic hardship is not to be a reason for exemption. That son of a widowed mother is called up, and the maximum amount of allowance which is paid under this scheme is 20S. 6d., which has to include the 7s. allotment of the soldier. If the soldier is a non-commissioned officer and the allotment is above 7s., then it relieves the Government of their responsibility. But let me take a case such as that of the son of a widowed mother earning £2 10s or £3 a week, living at home and the main support of his mother. The mother was in receipt of a widow's pension of 10s. a week. The Services come along and say, "The maximum that you can receive is 20s. 6d., but as you are receiving 10s. a week old age pension and your son is making an allotment of 7s., that is 17s. a week, and we will give you 3s. 6d. a week to make it up to 20s. 6d."
    Is that a scheme worthy of this House or of this Government? I do not know whether it is a subject for jest or laughter on the part of the Financial Secretary to the War Office, but I must say that I do not feel in a jocular mood myself. I have to deal with dozens of these cases every week, and I beg of the Government to treat this matter seriously. Let them look up and see what is now being done by the Minister of Pensions in respect of the last war, when the amount of dependency was very largely the deciding factor, and let the House remember that, as far as one can see, the experience of the last war was that not only was the amount of dependency the basis on

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    which allowances were paid, but in the event of a soldier, sailor, or airman sacrificing his life, the amount of dependency was the basis upon which a pension was paid. Without saying any more about this matter, I beg of the Government to take this scheme hack for reconsideration. I cannot conceive of a single hon. Member, wherever he sits in this House, who, after he has studied the scheme and understood its implications, can agree with it. If that be so, let the House understand and let the Government understand what the feelings of the country are in connection with this matter.
    There is only one more matter that I want to mention, and I do not want to deal with it fully. That is the question of an increase for the unemployed. Unfortunately, there are at the present time 1,400,000 persons unemployed. These people are dependent upon allowances which no one has justified in the sense of proving that they are sufficient for persons who have been unemployed for a long period. They were only intended to cover a short period of what might be regarded as in-and-out of an industry, and no one at this time, with the increased cost of living, can say that the benefits, even for men who are on short-time employment, are sufficient. I can see no justification at all for any refusal by the Ministry of Labour substantially to increase the amount of unemployment benefit. The latest return which one saw showed that the Minister is in the very happy position of having a surplus of something like £50,000,000 to £55,000,000 in the fund. He has already taken a very substantial proportion of the surplus and paid off a portion of the loan, and it is infinitely better to spend a portion of that money in increasing benefits than in allowing it to remain idly by. We would ask that allowances for the long-term unemployed, some of whom have had to exist on unemployment allowances for years, should be increased. In war time, with the increasing cost of living, the plight of these people is pitiable, with 27s. a week for husband, wife, and a child under five years of age with which to pay rent, fuel, light and clothes, and to find food for three persons.
    Empty stomachs cannot be fed by card indexes, and these people cannot be maintained upon the miserable amounts
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    which they are already receiving. I cannot conceive that the Minister of Labour, with his Statutory Committee, which can recommend increases, is not seized of the importance of this situation, and I cannot conceive of the Unemployment Assistance Board not being seized of the need for a substantial increase in the allowances which are now paid. The Ministry of Labour is far behind many of the progressive local authorities in the country. Take my own Glamorganshire County Council, and if ever there were local authorities faced with financial difficulties, it is these local authorities which have control in the Special Areas of this country. Here we are faced with a poor rate, in the Glamorgan County Council, of 10s. 7d. in the £, and I think the same thing, but perhaps the rate is not quite as high, obtains in Monmouthshire. They did not wait for pressure to be brought to bear upon them to give increases for the recipients of public assistance. They have already announced that there is to be an increase, not only for adults, but for children as well, and I hope that this will not escape the notice of the Minister of Labour and the Government.
    May I make one other plea? I have made several pleas with regard to the operation of the means test. I know of nothing which has caused greater bitterness among the industrial population of this country than the operation of the means test in relation to men who have been unemployed for a period of longer than six or 12 months. I wonder how many hon. and right hon. Members in this House fully understand the operation of this means test. I have complained about the inadequacy of old age pensions, of workmen's compensation, and of unemployment benefit, but is it realised that in old age pensions and unemployment benefit no less a sum than £3,000,000 was taken last year of those miserable sums into the household resources, and that the allowances of the unemployed men were reduced because there were members of the family in receipt of old age pensions or unemployment benefit? That cannot be justified. I do not think there is an industrial district where the right hon. Gentleman could justify the continued operation of the means test to an audience, not only of my own party, but of his own party as well.
    I have attempted to state a case for an immediate increase in the incomes of

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    the people who are living under the conditions I have described. Some hon. Members may regard this Debate as untimely and the matters raised as trifling in war-time. There are few persons, if any, who are unmindful of the fact that the nation is passing through serious times, but in the millions of homes of the people to whom I have referred it is not merely one war that is being waged. There are two wars —one a war against the enemy abroad, and the other a war against poverty at home. The Government have, during the last three months, received the unquestioned and unstinted support of Members on this side of the House, of the leaders of the trade union movement, of the workers and even of the people living in the homes whose conditions I have described. They have not impeded the work of the Government in the prosecution of the war. So far, however, it has been all take and no give. That must stop. We ask the Government, as once the Prime Minister asked Herr Hitler, to show sympathy not in words, but in deeds. Take action at once. Let hon. Members have fewer replies to questions stating, "The matter is being considered." Show to people at home that poverty and insecurity will be fought as vigorously as the enemy abroad. Otherwise, to many of the people of this country the victory when it comes—and we all hope and pray it will come soon—will be but an empty shell. Let me utter this word of warning —if Parliament cannot be persuaded to act, and to act quickly, in the matters to which I have referred, do not be surprised if others outside take a hand in it.
    4.34 P.m.
    Commander King-Hall: The dominant thought in the mind of any new Member who addresses the House for the first time must surely be immediately to put in a plea for indulgence. I do not know whether, as a result of the rigours of war, that precious commodity has been pooled, rationed or controlled in any way, but, if it has, may I immediately put in an application for the maximum ration to which a Member is entitled or may hope to have on making his maiden speech? During the few minutes I shall venture to detain the House I should like to follow the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. G. Hall) in mentioning a problem of the home front, although the problem to
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    which I wish to draw the attention of the House is slightly different in character from the one of which he spoke so eloquently. The problem I have in mind is that of the need of taking care that our people are kept continuously convinced of the fact that our war effort is measuring up to our war needs. If we can achieve that we shall automatically guard against another danger, the danger that our people may be deluded into supposing that this war can be won on a kind of hire instalment basis with the payments indefinitely deferred.
    It is important to keep in front of our people the fact that we have undertaken a very tough job which requires the maximum amount of war effort in the minimum amount of time. We are told that time in this war works for us. That is only true provided we work in time, too. Up to the present our war effort, with the exception of the events at sea, has been largely one of preparation. The public in one sense has been somewhat like an audience sitting waiting for the curtain to go up. As anyone knows who has had any practical experience of the theatre, this period on the first night is a very difficult time on a difficult day. I used to think of it until a few moments ago as one of the most difficult kind of days one can have, but I know better now. During this period of three months we have been engaged in the task of mobilising our human and economic resources for the terrible business of totalitarian war. In order to do that we have had to build, and we are having to build, an enormous war machine. In the building of this machine every individual has had to play a part. Some have been engaged in the construction of the machine, some have been operating that part of the machine which has already been constructed, and some, who have perhaps had the hardest task of all, have had to wait, and are still waiting, until the machine is ready to make use of their services. This machine has already grown to such an enormous size —we have recently been told that it is consuming £4,000 worth of wealth a minute —that it is impossible for the individual to appreciate the thing as a whole. It seems to me that the individual is rather like the coral mite which, presumably, is quite unconscious of the fact that it is due to its energy, multiplied many millions of times,

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    that the great Barrier Reef eventually comes into being.
    I have sketched out the nature of this problem, and I come to the two questions: What can we tell our people? and How can we tell it to our people? I realise that we are living under the shadow of the Official Secrets Act. At the same time, I wish to submit that there is still a great deal which can be told to the people, and that in every corner of our national life there is material lying for a wonderful story about our war effort. That material is to be found in every department of national life. We start with our own homes, and we find, as our people have made them splinter-proof, gas-proof and light-proof, that they have made a reality of words spoken over 300 years ago by Sir Edward Coke, who said,
    "The house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress."
    We may find material for our story in the factories and workshops; among transport workers, whose hazardous job has become especially so in the conditions of the black-out; we can find material in the work that is being carried on by our great A.R.P. civilian army, as it stands faithfully on guard against the menace from above; in the work of the Mercantile Marine and the Royal Navy guarding the sea communications of these islands and strangling the economic life of the enemy; and, last but not least, the work of the Air Force. The list is much too long for me to attempt to catalogue now, but what I feel is that this material at present is lying like stills in the family album, and we should send out cameramen and artists, writers and microphones to carry out a great reconnaissance on our home front. In that way we should be able to gather material for a tremendous living, flashing panorama of the war effort which this country is making in preparing to fight a totalitarian war.
    I come lastly to the question how such a process could be set in motion. Obviously, in the larger aspects it is a subject which belongs to the Ministry of Information. I feel, without wishing to go back on past history, that the Ministry of Information is rather an argument in favour of those who, like myself, do not approve of corporal punishment. It has been handled so roughly and flogged so hard that the spirit has almost been driven
    Vol. 355
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    out of its body; and it is now creeping about and whispering, hoping that the House of Commons will not discover that it is still alive because if they see or hear it stirring they will give it another wallop. I submit that, in the interests of our war effort, the time has come when this fallen Ministry should be lifted up, told to sin no more, and, donned in its battle-dress, thus to be raised up to the very important position which it should occupy among our war Ministries. It should be told to raise its voice and lift its head, and it should be given every encouragement by hon. Members on both sides of the House to do this.
    With that achieved, there are four Departments in which, I think, action could be taken. First, as regards the B.B.C., which I know technically does not belong to the Ministry of Information, but must be closely related to it. We should give serious consideration to the possibility of having alternative programmes. Again, I realise the nature of the defence problem, but all defence problems are a compromise, for one can be so strong in one direction that one becomes defenceless in another. Therefore, I urge that this question should be looked into again. One programme could be devoted more or less ťo entertainment, and the other programme could concentrate on the many aspects of our war effort which could be adequately dealt with through the microphone. The next point concerns films. I want lots of these documentary films for which this country has a high repuťation. A great many of them should be made and sent out into the country and shown by 500 cinema vans on village greens, at factories during the dinner hour and in canteens. They should tell the tremendous story of our war effort. The third question is that of meetings. I realise ťhe difficulty of having large meetings at the present time, but I would urge that consideration be given to having in provincial towns meetings of 20 or 3o key people who should be enabled to hear authoritative, and possibly semi-confidential, accounts of ťhe progress of our war effort.
    The last point is one to which I attach more importance than to all the others. I respectfully draw the attention of hon. Members to ťhe fact that since the war began they have, on both sides of the House, in their Questions and Debates,

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    been collaborating in the writing of the most complete and the only uncensored account of the British war effort which has yet appeared in ťhe English language.I refer to the OFFICIAL REPORT of our Debates. Every day on which this House meets, about 60,000 words are added to that extraordinarily interesting serial story which is so rich in facts about our war effort. If hon. Members will care to examine the matter, they will find that, even in those papers which are able to devote the greatest amount of space to Parliamentary reports, it is at the most about 5 per cenť. of this rich, varied and interesting material—rich and interesting especially when back bench Members speak from their personal experience on various problems—which reaches the public eye. In other papers, it is only 1 per cent. Therefore, we have 95 per cent. of the war story which actually exists on paper not getťing across to our people. It is tragic. I submit that we should consider whether, under proper all-party supervision, there should be a weekly edition of the OFFICIAL REPORT—perhaps I might alter the appearance of the cover a litťle—and that it should be distributed free to a number of key people in the country, or even put on sale ať a price of about 3d.
    I have confined my remarks to the home front, but I should like to say that if we tackle this question of keeping our people fully informed and inspired about their war effort on the home front we shall automatically have solved at least three-quarters of the problem of British information in neutral countries. I would add, in connection with my particular anxiety to have consideration given to my suggestion about the OFFICIAL REPORT, that if the OFFICIAL REPORT, or a weekly edition of it, were put into foreign languages it would have the immense advantage that the foreigner would know that he was reading something which had not been specially turned out for foreign consumption but that he was reading the records of this House—the free and uncensored records of this House, which is, after all, the expression and the symbol of everything which our enemies most hate and fear.
    4.46 p.m.
    Mr. Buchanan: I think my first duty is to congratulate the hon. and gallant
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    Member for Ormskirk (Commander King-Hall) on his maiden speech. He had an advantage over most of us in the fact that he made his maiden speech to a pretty full House. He had the advantage of being known before he came here; most of us have the advantage of becoming known after we get here. I liked the form of his speech and its matter, and I am certain that the House will look forward to his interventions in Debates not once or twice but on many occasions. He will be able to give us the value of his thoughts and his advice on many matters, and I am sure that his advice will be greatly valued. I would say one word in criticism of what he said. His Hansard idea does not appeal to me. I should not like to have the job of sub-editing the OFFICIAL REPORT. I should not like to be the person who left out, say, my speech. I might find that what I regarded as the best speech that I had made was left out, and that on another occasion when I had delivered the worst speech it was published. I should like to see the speech of my Welsh colleague who spoke from the Front Labour Bench published extensively. I am not too sure that it would render our country a service abroad when people there saw the figures he has given us set forth in all their nakedness. I have no particular objection to the Hansard idea other than that I am certain it would not make for unity in this House, whatever happened elsewhere.
    Then it was suggested that we should get artists, camera men and others and send them out all over the country, and hold public meetings. I have no objection to employing camera men or anybody else, except that I have the feeling that the Minister of Information has already spent too much, much of it riot too well, and I am not sure that I should care to entrust him with further wholesale expenditure. As to public meetings, I have no objection to them, and would suggest that the first one should be held in the Gorbals division, with the Minister of Labour addressing it on the value of the means test, the Under-Secretary of State for War telling the people how generous he is, and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury coming down, in his tall hat, and telling the old age pensioners how easy it is to live on 10s. a week. A meeting of that description in the Gorbals division would make for great unity; and if the Home Secretary could see his way

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    to be present I am sure that his Scottish tongue would add to the night's entertainment. We will offer no objection to these public meetings if they care to have them. An old Catholic priest whom I knew in my younger days used to say, "Read good books if you can, but I should prefer that you read even books that are not good than not read at all." Speaking for myself, I prefer good meetings, but if speakers from the Government Front Bench are the best we can get, then I would rather have them than nothing.
    Let me now come to the serious aspect of the situation raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. G. Hall), to whom we are indebted for his powerful speech to-day. I think his documentary evidence, his marshalling of facts, not only does his party credit but does credit above all to the miners who sent him here. I associate myself in full with what he said, and I am not going over in detail the case for increased allowances. I would enter with him a claim for an increase for our old age pensioners. Some time before the war started this House of Commons—not merely the Labour party but the House of Commons—asked that the Government should give urgent consideration to increasing old age pensions. When the war came the Government made it the excuse for saying that consideration of this matter should be set aside, but the force of the agitation in favour of an increase has been so great that the Government have been forced to make another decision. They have guaranteed that the matter shall be examined again. I confess that I do not like this proposal to re-examine all the facts. It reminds me too much of past Governments. Whenever they wanted to shuffle off a decision they said, "We will go into the facts." What are the facts which need this detailed consideration? These are the facts—that a man at 65 gets 10s. a week and that his wife, if she is not 65, gets nothing at all. If other facts are needed they are known to every Government official holding high office, and I venture to say that within one week the Government could marshal every fact that is of value in this matter.
    The treatment of the old age pensioners is a terrible disgrace to our population. I cannot follow all this argument about the cost, and that is the only defence which is put up. There is no suggestion that the allowance is sufficient. Nobody
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    says that 10s. a week is enough. The answer is twofold—that we agree that 10s. is not enough, but there are other means of adding to the income of these people, and that the cost of increasing the pensions is almost prohibitive. The present Secretary of State for War, when he was at the Treasury, treated us to a speech on the first Motion calling for an increase showing what the cost would be, and when the present Secretary of State for Scotland held office at the Treasury he also made a speech devoted to showing what the cost would be. Never did they say how the people could live on the allowance. All they did was to produce figures showing that in a particular year the cost would be so much and in a further year would rise still higher, and say that the charge was one which the nation could not meet.
    My first reply to that argument about the cost is that the nation is already bearing part of the cost. Every day the Poor Law authorities pay out large sums to these people, and the Poor Law payment is part of the national expenditure. The cost of a week of the war, even a few days of the war, would give more than all we have ever asked for the old age pensioners, and yet our request is still being refused. I try to balance the position in this way: while I do not deny that it will mean an added cost to the State, I would point out that when the old age pensioners get this extra sum they are the people above all who will spend it. The old age pensioner will not lock the money away in some place. He will start to spend it upon things he did not get before, and the nation will benefit from his increased purchasing power. I have never been able to follow this cost business, but I say to hon. Members opposite that they ought also to consider the cost in the misery suffered by the old age pensioners themselves. I ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to look at these facts. The old age pensioner is bearing the high taxation which the Chancellor has put on. The tea and the sugar which he has taxed go to the garret and the slum of the old age pensioner. That taxation is no respector of persons. The Chancellor has attacked these people with his increased taxation and when he is looking at the cost I ask him also to look at the homes of these people, in so far as one can call them homes, and

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    then I am certain he will devote his ingenuity and his great abilities to finding means of making life more tolerable for them.
    On the question of the unemployed, I fully agree with the hon. Member for Aberdare. I am not going over the speeches which I have' made on the subject time and time again, but I would put one economic argument to the Minister of Labour, sweeping aside any consideration of what some people call "sloppy sentiment," although I would say to my hon. Friends here that I hope they will never be ashamed of the sentiments they express. But let me meet the means test on a business footing. The unemployment figure stands at, roughly, 1,500,000. I understand that the numbers on unemployment assistance are now less than 500,000—one in three—and are decreasing, which is what one would normally expect in war-time.
    At the start of the means test the figure of the unemployed was about 2,000,000, with about 750,000 chargeable under the means test. You then erected an expensive machine, costing a large sum of money. You still have that machine to-day, and it costs almost as much. I put it to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as a business proposition, that if he swept away the Unemployment Assistance Board and its machinery, he would be sweeping away a cost, because, between abolishing the means test and the saving in the cost of the machine that is now running, there is not a difference that justifies the running of the means test. If you swept away the desirable things, to which the hon. Member for Aberdare properly referred, and if you put the matter on its meanest level, you would have to admit that you have a machine to-day which was erected for a 2,000,000 unemployment basis. To-day, this figure is going rapidly down, while you still have the terribly expensive machine to maintain. The Unemployment Assistance Board, must, in the nature of things, be expensive. It has to investigate every claim, not only when a man or woman makes it, but every month it has to go into the family circumstances and review the case. The additional cost, which you have also to take into account, is the terrible and needless irritation, not only to workpeople but to employers in their businesses. To the human aspect of the
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    matter so eloquently expressed by the hon. Member I would put the business reasons.
    Now I would say a word or two to the Financial Secretary to the War Office. I want to be frank with him. I do not know what has happened to the War Office. Leave out of account the fact that the allowances are shoddy and mean, and consider the business administration of the War Office in respect of those allowances. I want to take the hon. Gentleman into the details of this War Office business. What happens when a woman gets married and her husband is called up or joins up? She has to walk to the post office in order to get a form to fill up, if the post office happen to have it, which is frequently not the case. She also has to get from the post office a list of all the paymasters of all the regiments so that she can find out where to send the form. There were cases on Sunday where people could not get the form, and I had to phone on Monday and tell the people where the headquarters were of the H.L.I. and the Royal Scots Fusiliers. Why could not the War Office take particulars from the men themselves when they join up so that women did not have to fill in a form? Why should not the War Office have, as have the Ministry of Labour, a central office dealing with every regiment instead of 30 paymasters all over the place, such as in Perth and Aberdeen in the north, and Portsmouth and other place in the south?
    The Financial Secretary to the War Office (Sir Victor Warrender): Perhaps the hon. Member will pardon me for interrupting him at this point, but I think he is confusing the family allowance with the dependants' allowance. The soldier makes application for his family allowance whereas he makes no application at all for his dependants. The dependants have to apply for a form, which is available everywhere. That is the machinery, and I think the hon. Member is confusing the matter.
    Mr. Buchanan: The wife applies for her allowance, and the form has to be sent in to the regimental paymaster. Why should she have to do that?
    Sir V. Warrender: The wife does not do that.
    Mr. Buchanan: Yes, she does. I filled up forms on Sunday. The hon. Gentleman does not need to shake his head; I say that it happens. He makes the indictment stronger, because evidently he does not know what happens. I could take him and show him where it is done. I wrote to him on Sunday about a case exactly similar to that which I am now raising. What is the answer to the hon. Member for Aberdare? The only answer of the War Office and the Treasury is that they have appointed a committee, presided over by Mr. Doughty, K.C., to examine all the cases. Wherever the hon. Member for Aberdare produces these things the committee are to have the power to increase the amount.
    I want to try and get hon. Members to appreciate the tragic and ridiculous position that is created. We have an Army to-day approaching in number 2,000,000. Assume that one in four of the soldiers applies for an extra allowance because the sum is not sufficient. That would mean 500,000 applicants. Let us reduce it to one in eight and call the figure 250,000. One committee in London has to consider the applications. I understand that some kind of branch of the committee has now been set up in Wales. They have to examine all those 250,000 cases. All those cases have to go to one man. Talk about rubber stamps. Can you imagine one man considering 250,000 cases? That is what it is proposed to do. The committees meet. They never see the people concerned. I thought it was a principle of British justice that before you decided upon the amount of an allowance you should see the people concerned. The country is supposed to be fighting for liberty and yet when the soldier's wife or his mother applies for an allowance the committees who consider the applications do not see the applicants. I should think they ought to see and hear them in order to get at the facts. Even the Unemployment Assistance Appeals Board meet the men concerned and talk to them, but, in regard to the soldiers, one committee in London and the branch in Wales have full control of the decision, although they may know nothing about conditions in Scotland, Lancashire or elsewhere. I think this House would agree that these committees, no matter how capable they are, should be accessible to the individuals who are appealing.
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    The War Office certainly increased children's allowances recently, but the whole administration of their means test that is applied is shocking and disgraceful. It is even worse than the means test of the Unemployment Assistance Board. Under the ordinary means test, the persons concerned have the right, if their circumstances vary, to approach the local office quickly and get a redistribution. To the committee that deals with soldiers there is no easy and ready access. The allotment is made on the investigation and, so far as I know, there is no means by which the persons concerned can come back, if their circumstances have changed, and get their matter redistributed. I tell the War Office that I see nothing but mismanagement in the administration, quite apart from the amounts concerned, and in the handling of these affairs.
    When a person applies for an allowance, what does he get back? A mother, say, applies for an allowance from the son. Back from the regimental office in Aberdeen comes a miserable, typewritten thing, not even decently typed, but horribly. At the bottom, written badly in ink and without a signature, right down at the foot, are the words: "Owing to family income, no allowance paid." There is no appeal and no reason given. You write up, and very likely you get back a letter saying that the matter explains itself. That is what I got back from the hon. Gentleman. Do not try to say "No"; I got it from you, and it said that the thing explained itself. That was a document badly typed, and all that was written at the bottom of it was that she could not get it owing to family income. I got a letter saying that the thing explained itself because the family income did not allow it. What is this family income? What committee heard the matter and decided it? Was it the paymaster of the regiment sitting in Aberdeen? If not, who decided it? Does one man in Aberdeen decide according to his scale while another man in the Warwick Regiment decides in accordance with another scale applying to Warwick? There is no appeal. The applicants are just turned adrift.
    The essential characteristics about this war are said to be that it is a fight for liberty, freedom and equality. Yet the person who applies for an allowance cannot even get a hearing before the allowance is refused. Surely the War Office

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    are not without the capacity to set up a central board or a committee with branches in order to carry this thing on and allow the people to be heard. I do not like this war, and people who become disgruntled at their treatment may naturally turn to the views which I hold about it. I would not like to make progress in this agitation merely by means of the disgruntled parts of the population. In dealing with workmen's compensation and old age pensions the same thing applies. The treatment of the people in those matters is disgraceful. The Government are making no effort to meet their just claims. I say to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's deputy that his answer should not be the setting up of a commission to go into the matter and to inquire about the scales. It is years since the Holman Gregory Report was issued in favour of increasing this money. There is surely enough information to be going on with. In so far as the Government are responsible, I say that this is a criminal matter. I trust that my colleagues who sit here will continue this agitation until people affected under workmen's compensation, soldiers, pensioners and, above all, the old people of our country, who deserve so well of us, are having, if not just treatment, at least treatment much better than they are receiving at present.
    5.15 p.m.
    Wing-Commander James: I confess that I feel very much out of touch with this House. It has been my good fortune to have been mobilised since the first day of the war, and I have been living in a very different atmosphere to that which I find on the very rare occasions when I return to Westminster. I wish to express one or two views of one who admits that he is out of touch with this House.
    I do not believe that the people of this country want party politics from either side. This country wants peace, and it knows it will only get peace through the vigorous prosecution of the war, such as can only be hindered by party politics. The people realise that the war can be vigorously prosecuted only if they are prepared to accept bold and vigorous leadership and sacrifices. This is being hampered, I believe, by party considerations. I must confess on the rare occasions that I come to this House I sometimes feel slightly sick. Parliament, in
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    my opinion, has abundantly justified itself in so far it has acted as the guardian of the liberties of the public. It has stultified itself whenever it has played at party politics. I believe that both the Government and the Opposition have been elected to this House on a peacetime mandate. The outbreak of war has torn up that mandate and the House has got a different mandate —a mandate given to it by acclamation, namely, to conduct the war to a successful conclusion at the earliest posible moment. In those circumstances, personal antipathies, which we cherish in this House, should be set aside by the overwhelming antipathy which we all have for Nazi policy. When I hear people say, "So-and-so could not work with so-and-so," I think that is childishly out of perspective. The attitude taken up sometimes by the Opposition is not altogether justified by the funk and fumbling which is so very noticeable among three or four of the senior older and staler politicians who still decorate the Front Bench —[HON. MEMBERS: "Name them"] —men who in the present circumstances can only be a millstone round the neck of the Prime Minister, in whom we all have extreme confidence. I only deprive myself of the shallow and transitory pleasure of suggesting whom I mean, because it will make it more difficult for the Prime Minister when the time comes —and I hope it will come soon —to move them into other or higher spheres. Everyone knows to whom I am alluding: the Chief Whip knows and the public know.
    Mr. Buchanan: Some of us do not know. Let us all know.
    Wing-Commander James: I will not be led aside by the hon. Gentleman. The last war showed that different qualities are needed in peace to those needed in war. It is no discredit for a man who has served his country eminently in peace to be unfitted to share in leading it in war. They are two different things. It is true not only of politics, but also of the fighting Services. We have not yet under pressure of war, either in politics or in the Services, started to move square pegs from round holes. It is undeniable that the political executive has not clone well since the outbreak of war, because it has lacked the first great requisite for conducting a war-time policy, that of courage. Whatever the reasons may be,

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    the fact remains that the country has not been given the vigorous leaders it wants. For my part, I am out of touch with the House, but I should like to see a nonparty Government formed as soon as possible, and I would like to see party politics put right away into cold storage until the war is over. It is absurd to imagine or to delude ourselves that there will be enough left out of the wreckage of victory to carry on the sort of party politics in which we have been indulging.
    We shall have new problems; new problems at home and abroad. I would like to see a non-party Government formed, because it would be the most effectual method of prosecuting the war to a satisfactory conclusion. I would like particularly to see the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition in the War Cabinet, not because I like or respect or admire his peace-time politics, but because I believe with his very considerable military experience he would bring to the counsels of the Cabinet a breath of reality and knowledge which is, I cannot help thinking, somewhat lacking. Am I wrong in thinking that in the present inner Cabinet only one in three has ever heard a shot fired in anger? Is it not rather extra ordinary that 20 years after the last war we should be led in this war by a Cabinet of old gentlemen of whom, I think, only one in three has ever heard a shot fired in anger —I do not mean distinguished as visitors, but in the proper vernacular sense of the phrase? I should like to see the Prime Minister summon to his assistance such Members of the Opposition as are best qualified and able to help towards winning the war, because I believe that all vested interests, political and economic, have to be harnessed alike. It is undeniable that capital is harnessed; our taxation has seen to that. Profiteering, if not impossible, is extremely difficult. We have been promised the further check that at the end of the war there will be a survey of capital increases, and if it be found that any capitalist has, through the war, increased his wealth the matter will be dealt with. The country and Parliament will not forgive any failure to deal with this.
    I think the Opposition might, perhaps, be a little more generous and more fair in admitting that the well-to-do have accepted without a murmur the most crushing and annihilating taxation. I say this because we have had so much
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    emphasis this afternoon on the sufferings of the poor. I myself have not heard of one case of persons in the better-to-do classes failing to place their services as well as their wealth at the disposal of the country, be they men or women. I have heard of no conscientious objectors or shirkers here. But let it not be forgotten that labour is as powerful a vested interest as capital; indeed, by its voting strength more powerful. Labour can profiteer just as well as capitalism. Labour would be well advised to see from both the highest motives and from long-sighted self-interest they do not make undue demands on our not by any means unlimited national resources.
    In my daily life among those who have been mobilised I am more and more impressed by the unfairness of the present phase of our voluntary system. The men who have come forward from the most patriotic and self-sacrificing sections of all classes of the country are at a disadvantage compared with the men who have not come forward. We must have equality of effort and equality of sacrifice. The House will remember how frightened some Members of the Government were at the introduction of conscription. That fear was quite unjustified. The country knew it was necessary and that it was fair, and there was no difficulty at all. Are we less patriotic, less democratic or less radical than the French? They have managed things very much better, much more fairly and less wastefully. You have only to look at the relative rises in the cost of living in England and France to see one beneficial result that has accrued to the workers of France by the self-sacrifices which they have been prepared to make. The truth is that the French are not more patriotic, but a great deal more realistic. With great respect to the hon. Member opposite, I submit that the real question about the home front is not how many quarts you can get out of a pint pot, but how much you are going to save out of the wreckage of the home front. The greater the sacrifices which are made now the less we shall have to make after the war.
    We are pursuing a short-sighted policy. If we go on as we are now we shall inevitably be faced with inflation. Inflation will be a greater danger and a greater burden on the wage-earning classes than any sacrifice that the people might be prepared to face at the present

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    time. As Mr. Keynes pointed out in the "Times" yesterday, inflation from a political point of view has one great advantage in that no one person can be held to be responsible for it. It just comes. This is a consolation to cowardly Ministers.
    I believe that a non-party Government is essential to secure a fair and acceptable balance of interests in this country. I refuse to believe that the Opposition leaders lack courage to bear their responsibilities. Room for them in the Government might well be made by the removal of some of the people who are in the Government at the present moment. I do not feel myself bound by party ties. I would vote against the Government tomorrow on a three —line whip—and I have such great respect for our Parliamentary system that I have obtained a mandate from the executive of my association to do so —if I believed that in doing so I should be in any way helping the prosecution of the war. If the Government want to get in fresh blood to the House or to the administration, there must be many Members like myself, with full-time war jobs outside the House, who are ready to give up their seats to make way for others. I am sure there are many people on both side of the House ready to do that. I do not believe that the Opposition, any more than the people they represent, are unsporting and unfair. I do not believe that they would like to go into the Lobby and defeat the Government on a domestic issue when the Government are without many of their supporters, who are away as a result of mobilisation —and the time will come when many more will be away mobilised. I make this appeal to the Opposition. Do let those of us who come here very rarely come back to a Council of State, in which we are jealous of our liberties, prepared to oppose the Government on matters of detail, but united in the main consideration, which is to get on with the war.
    5.32 p.m.
    Mr. W. Roberts: I shall not attempt to follow the hon. and gallant Member for Wellingborough (Wing - Commander James) into his interesting speech, except to say that I hope he will realise that many of us are not anxious in these days to introduce a party spirit into Debates, but that, nevertheless, there are differ-
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    ences of opinion which very frequently do run, strangely enough, along party lines. In the past we on the Opposition side, both above and below the Gangway, have attached very great importance, for instance, to the question of old age pensions. Let me, in the same non-party spirit, now appeal to the Government, if they wish to act in a way fully representative of the whole country, to recognise that we think it is of vital importance that the old age pensioners should have a fuller recognition at this time. If the Government were able to meet the needs of the less well-to-do sections of the community, it would greatly tend towards national unity in the prosecution of the war, which I think all of us realise is the main purpose with which we must be concerned.
    I do not wish to follow the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. G. Hall) in detail, but I would express the general agreement of those of us who sit on this bench with what he said, especially in connection with the old age pensioners. I also want to look ahead in a non-party spirit, if I can, and remind the House that some of the greatest hardships that people had to suffer in the last war were due to the rise in the cost of living. It is all very well at this stage to ask for increased allowances, but we may very well find that, as the cost of living increases, the hardships of persons who are receiving old age pensions and other allowances will very greatly increase. There is a possibility that certain things which are happening now may lead to a very serious rise in the cost of living. I do not feel that the Government are fully alive to the situation. As has been pointed out, there has already been a rise greater in this country than in France. We want some explanation of that. The most important item in the cost of living is food. The Government had a very praiseworthy intention at the beginning of the war, to try to stabilise prices at the levels existing in August. But merely to issue edicts that prices shall not rise will never be found sufficient to prevent the cost of living rising. Something very much more definite must be done. I fully realise that the Government have plans, but they seem to be held up.
    Some of the things happening now lead me to think that unless prompt action is taken mistakes may occur, from which

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    it would be very difficult to recover later. This is a question which affects not one Ministry but a number of Ministries. I understand that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to reply. I am glad of that. This question of the cost of living affects several Ministers —the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of Food, the Minister of Shipping and the Minister of Supply. It is a question which I wish could have been under the control of one Minister. I should like to ask the Chancellor whether this question of food supplies has really been worked out in all its implications, and whether he is satisfied that proper steps have been taken to prevent a rise in the cost of living. It will be useless for Members of the Opposition to point out the hardships which people are suffering, because of the delay in obtaining their separation allowances or because of the inadequacy of those allowances, unless the lessons of the last war in regard to the control of the cost of living are learned.
    I do not want to go too far into the technical details of the agricultural position, but perhaps I might deal with some of the wider aspects. About half the food that we consume is imported. As one would expect, the Minister of Agriculture is trying to increase the proportion grown in this country, but I am doubtful whether the Minister's efforts are not going to be entirely checkmated by somebody else —I do not know whom; it may be the Minister of Food or the Minister of Shipping. My postbag nowadays is filled with letters protesting against the slaughter of dairy cows and pigs, because somebody —I do not know whom —has not provided the necessary feeding stuffs. That will mean that the bacon supplies, which I understand are only half what they were this time last year, are going to be very much less, so far as English production is concerned, in a few months' time, because pigs which would have been kept on for bacon will be slaughtered for pork.
    This shortage of imported feeding stuffs bears very directly on the standard of living of those whose case has been so ably put from the Opposition Front Bench to-day. There is a very great shortage of maize and barley. That, eventually, means a shortage of bacon, eggs, and milk. One had anticipated that the Government would have laid in supplies, just as the Germans have done;
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    but the war came upon us and we found, so far as I know, that there was no reserve whatever of imported animal feeding stuffs in this country. It is no use crying over that now, but the fact remains that if milk goes up 1d. a quart, as I understand it will, the lives of the children of this country will be materially affected, and that will be due to the shortage of imported feeding stuffs. The hon. and gallant Member for Wellingborough, who has gone now, said that he believed that the people of this country are prepared to make sacrifices. I believe they are, if they really understand that it is necessary. I wonder whether the present situation, which is giving the agricultural community a great deal of concern, is necessary, or whether it is due to the confusion between different Ministers. It may be that it is necessary to economise shipping space. If the Government want to maintain supplies of these foodstuffs, and if there is no shipping space available for raw materials and animal feeding stuffs, they will have to import the finished products. If they will not import maize, they must import bacon. Bacon will cost more. Have they the money to spend on it? Would it not be better to allocate shipping space so that we may produce in this country the food which we require?
    It is a fact, and I think people ought to know it, that feeding stuffs are at present being used for all sorts of other purposes which are not the most essential ones. Barley, which can make bacon, is at present making beer. Are we quite sure that we can afford to go on producing the same amount of beer as hitherto? It is either beer or bacon; you can make up your mind which you will have; you cannot get both. It is useles for the Government to produce pictures of Ministers eating their "macon" together. "Macon" will not replace bacon, but the barley which makes beer and whisky, can produce bacon. The position in some districts today is that the farmers are wondering how they are going to feed their stock over the next week. The Minister of Agriculture will provide feeding stuffs in f me by his ploughing campaign, but that campaign will not produce bacon or milk until very nearly this time next year. That will not feed livestock next week.

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    Take the question of milk, which enters very largely into the question of the cost of living. Purchased feeding-stuffs account for 30 per cent. of the cost of milk, and purchased feeding-stuffs have already gone up in price. At the same time, the distributors of milk have cut down their services tremendously. They have cut down their deliveries to one a day. The milk arrives at my home in North London at 11 o'clock, instead of at seven. There distributors have in fact made an economy which has always been supposed to amount to as much as 4d. per gallon or 1d. per quart. I believe that it is possible for the distributor at the present time to give a better price to the farmer without raising the price of milk to the consumer. The farmer is doing badly enough. He is getting less than he has been receiving during the last two years. I do not want to see the price of milk to the consumer go up because that is only one more step, which we want to avoid more than anything else, towards the inflation of the last war, and the vicious circle of increased wages, increased costs and increased prices. That must be avoided. The only way in which it was effectively avoided in the last war was by the control of sale, and, as far as the farmer was concerned, by a guaranteed price, not a maximum or a minimum price but a guaranteed price. I know that is what it is intended to introduce, and I ask, as far as livestock is concerned, that the scheme which is under preparation should be hurried forward as quickly as possible; otherwise I am afraid it may lead to a shortage in future, which will only be made up either by reducing consumption at higher prices or by rationing with lower rations than need have been.
    The situation in regard to animal feeding stuffs is sufficiently difficult at the moment for the introduction of a rationing system for farmers' animals to be necessary. You could, with proper control, keep the dairy farmers supplied with feeding-stuffs at pre-war prices, and that cannot be done unless you have a proper rationing scheme with all that it involves, registration with particular firms and so on if the agricultural community is to give of its best in this emergency —and I am convinced that it is anxious to provide all the food that can be provided—
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    the Chancellor of the Exchequer must help it, in my opinion, in one way, by providing more liquid capital for the farmer to use at the present time. I am not asking for more subsidies or for higher prices so much as for a better system of credit. The farmer has wanted it for a very long time, but it is urgent that he should have it now. I will quote from a letter from a very large farmer in the North of England which I received only two days ago. It refers to the specific problem of the shortage of credit, due to the fact that the Minister of Supply has held up his sales of wool. The Minister seemed to be unaware of it when I asked a question about the matter, but, nevertheless, his Department has held up sales of wool, and no farmer can sell wool at the present time in England. The writer of the letter, which I quote only because it illustrates the difficulty which this class of producer is having at the present time, is a big and very successful farmer. He says:
    "My 1939 clip of wool has been, since early July, at a Paisley warehouse. I cannot draw money anywhere on account of it. On my return home from business, I found letters awaiting me from two different firms of implement agents asking that I pay their account at the earliest possible date because, owing to war conditions, they themselves are compelled to pay cash before delivery for implements and machinery, and they must raise money somewhere."
    It may seem a long cry from a farmer's difficulty in selling his wool to the price of milk, mutton and bacon which the housewife has to pay to-day, but it is not. We must, during this war, become more dependent upon home-produced food. If the farmer is to produce more food economically and at prices which old age pensioners and the families of soldiers on the present standard of allowances can afford to pay, then the farmer must have the necessary credit in order to snake his production efficient. Farmers cannot afford to pay for the implements they need to enable them to grow more food because of the present credit system and the lack of credit in the industry. I would say to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that we are living in times of what almost might be called State Socialism, for the Government are very soon to buy practically everything the farmer produces. The Government have absolute security now in lending the farmer money because they are going to handle his produce. The Minister of Agriculture has

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    said that the farmer must go to the banks in order to get his credit. I can tell him that the farmer will not go to the banks. He had enough of that during the last war, when he had to borrow money from the banks at inflated prices, and he has not got over that yet. The State must advance the money if it wants the increased production of food.
    Finally, the news these days on the sea is not so good that we can afford to neglect this vital side of war effort, which is food production. I ask that this matter should have the fullest attention of the Government and that the work of the various Ministries affecting food production should be effectively co-ordinated, so that the work of the Ministry of Agriculture in trying to maintain the livestock industry should not be destroyed by the Ministry of Shipping failing to provide the feeding stuffs. The Chancellor of the Exchequer should not be too hard at this stage with finance but should make available the credit necessary to produce the food which I am quite certain will be very much needed in the end.
    5.53 p.m.
    Mr. Clement Davies: I had thought that I would have had to begin by apologising to the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. G. Hall) for not following him in the matter which he raised in this Debate. Since then the Debate has ranged over so wide an area that I understand such an apology is no longer necessary. Yesterday, the House was concerned with war aims and peace aims, and I would like to take this opportunity of congratulating the Prime Minister upon his speech on Sunday night and upon the distinction which he drew so clearly between war aims and peace aims. There is no division of opinion at any rate with regard to war aims, and there can be little, if any, division of opinion with regard to peace aims, but if we are agreed upon the expression of that opinion we are not necessarily agreed upon the manner in which the war policy is at the present moment being conducted. It does not necessarily follow that the welfare of this country and His Majesty's Government are synonymous terms. If we criticise the Government, do not let anyone think that we are weakening in our purpose or in our determination. We criticise them because we want to see evidence of more determina-
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    tion, energy and foresight. Yesterday in the gracious words uttered from the Throne, His Majesty made use of these rather striking words, addressing them to the Members of both Houses:
    "Grave responsibilities rest upon you. … You will, I am convinced, express the resolution of the Nation."
    It is upon that point that I should like further information. Are the Government expressing to-day the resolution of the nation? There is apparently a sluggishness and a want of drive and of urge, and people are not only getting impatient, but, up and down the country, are getting bored. There seems to be a lack of co-ordination and also contradictory advice. One says one thing and another says something else. There is a lack of co-ordination and coherence, and a lack of grip on a policy which ought to be well known and well understood and placed before the country as a whole. Each Department seems to have done its work separately, exactly as though it were a horse being driven in blinkers, seeing only right ahead of it —and not seeing very far ahead —its own particular task. It has been done, therefore, it looks to me, without consultation and without regard to the effect upon other Departments or upon other matters which arise out of it, merely because of the act which has been undertaken and done by that particular Department.
    It is so easy to disorganise trade, but it is difficult to reorganise it on a new basis. Centralisation can be justified only if it leads to greater efficiency. Trade in this country is highly organised. It is technical, intricate, the study of a lifetime and of generations. Therefore, do not interfere unless you are compelled to do so. Do not displace those who have spent their lives in the trade, and, if you have to interfere, take those men into the system, get them to work with you and direct their energies. Do not scrap the men who have produced, and are producing, the country's wealth. Do not assume that you know more than they do or adopt a superior attitude in regard to them, and finally do not content yourselves with a superficial and rather supercilious consultation. Do not limit their position to that of mere advisers. Give them work and a position to which they have been accustomed. Give them executive tasks. Let them be the executive officers, as they have been, and let

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    them put their experience at the active service of the State. They have taken risks in the past —and risks have to be taken to-day —and they have made a success of their lives. Without them, and without the work and energy they have put into their businesses, you would not have the resources that you have to-day. I ask the Government to direct them and not to destroy them; to encourage their work and their enthusiasm. Production in these circumstances would increase and not diminish.
    I would like to know how many people who had experience in the last war —and after all that war was won —have been asked to serve to-day and are giving their services? How many of them are being given executive tasks? How many of them have been consulted or have not been consulted but put on one side? The Prime Minister, in his speech the other day, said that time was on our side. That is the one phrase in that speech which I doubted. Be it long or be it short, of course we shall win, but the longer the time the greater the cost both in men, material and in money, and the greater the difficulty will be in the long run to get this country moving once again towards its proper destiny. We want to see everybody employed, everyone on his toes. We would like to see work and control co-ordinated so that we can make the best use of the country's strength and manhood. One could give instances of the lack of co-ordination. I mentioned one some months ago, that of the blackout. I wonder what the effect of the black-out has been in the last 12 weeks. Undoubtedly, the black-out was effectively done and was carried out through the Air Ministry or through a co-ordination of Services, but what has been the effect upon the spirits and the health of the people? There has been a loss of production. There has also been a loss of efficiency in transport. The last time I spoke on this subject I gave a figure which was given to me, to the effect that in the first fortnight there was a loss of transport efficiency amounting to 66 per cent. I am told, and I wonder whether this is right, that the loss of transport efficiency to-day because of the black-out is 20 per cent. In some depots it is as much as 33 per cent.
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    Take another matter, the question of licences. It was ordered that no goods were to be imported or exported unless licences were obtained. I suppose that in the mind of the Department that was to have produced a certain effect, but I wonder whether they considered the effect which the order would have upon the trade of the country? Another point. I suppose because of the experience of the last war the authorities dreaded that information might get to the enemy, and therefore they issued a general prohibition against the export from this country of printed matter. It even went so far that it led to the opening of parcels which contained tools, machinery, etc., and the taking out of printed matter which described the way in which the machinery was to be set up. Those were machines going to South America. Those documents gave to the men who received the machinery instructions how to set it up. The Department that was asked to deal with this matter did so by issuing this general order, and they did it so efficiently that it had the effect of putting a stop to exports. Not only had the manufacturer to go to the trouble of getting a licence, but, having got his licence and packed his goods, he had to unpack them in order to take out these documents. There has been relaxation since, but that relaxation was only obtained after weeks of protest.
    Take another instance. They said you must not use codes. The only use of a code is to save money, and at a time when money is short the authorities said: "You must not use a code." You must not even use a telegraphic address. What is the use of a telegraphic address unless there is a register, something like a telephone book, in which you can look up what the telegraphic address means? Here, again, I admit there has been relaxation. There has been relaxation in regard to the use of the telephone. You can now telephone to France, Belgium and Holland, but for a long time you could not do so. It took weeks of protest and begging before these matters were attended to. These are instances of Departments acting well and Efficiently in the performance of the duty they had undertaken, but they did it without taking account of the repercussions.
    Need I mention the difficulties that arose in regard to the control of fish and tea and the difficulties that are arising

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    to-day in regard to markets and slaughterhouses? These orders have been restricting, repressing and damping down the enthusiasm of the people. After 12 weeks of war, can anyone say that trade and business in this country are flourishing? Can anyone say that everyone is on his toes anxious to produce as much as he can? Twelve weeks ago men and women were anxious to help. They were darting hither and thither trying to find out where they could be of assistance. They had only one question: "Do you know of anything that I can do?" Man is really happiest when he is working full time. He becomes discouraged and unhappy when he is not working at full pressure. There seems to be a sort of melancholia and boredom creeping right over us. The fire is there but there does not seem to be anybody who can fan the flames. The "Times" said some time ago:
    "War is waged with economic and moral weapons as well as with military armaments."
    That is perfectly true. Great as are our economic resources they are not so great that we can afford to disregard any of the means, great or small, which contribute to them. We need every ounce of our strength, and we need to use it now. If I may use a phrase that was mentioned to me the other day, a shell to-day is Worth 150 at the end of the war. It seems to me that we are too much on the defensive. You cannot carry on a war underground or in perpetual gloom.
    What is our production to-day? That is a question I should like to put to His Majesty's Government. It is no use talking in large figures and saying: "We have given orders for millions of pounds worth of goods." It is no use saying that we are spending at the rate of £6,000,000 a day. What I want to know is, are the goods forthcoming? Are those orders being carried out? How are they being carried out? You may call spirits from the vasty deep, but will they come? We want ruthless energy, not only in Ministries, but in the factories, the fields and the workshops. The hon. Member who spoke last mentioned food production. With the farmers' help, what is our food production to-day? I say to the Government, do not damp down this enthusiasm; use it, and encourage it. The power to win is undoubtedly here and the will to win is here, so long as it
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    is used and directed effectively and property.
    I should like to call the attention of the House to what has happened in the last 12 weeks. On 3rd September Germany lost 46 per cent. of her exports. Twenty-three per cent. of her export trade was done with this country, France and our Dominions, and 23 per cent. with neutrals to whom she can no longer export—America, South America and so on. Her total export trade on the average for the last three years was £268,000,000. The average export trade of this country for the last three years was £478,000,000. Of her £268,000,000 of export trade, Germany lost £118,000,000 on the 3rd September—£6,000,000 worth of coal exports out of £18,000,000 worth; £6,000,000 worth of electric goods out of £16,000,000 worth; £4,500,000 worth of machine tools out of £10,000,000 worth; £13,000,000 worth of machinery out of £28,000,000 worth, and £12,000,000 worth of dyes and chemicals out of £24,000,000 worth.
    What I should like to ask, and I am sure the country would like to know is, what have we done in the meantime to capture that export trade lost by Germany? Have we done anything to increase our resources? Have we done anything to increase the exports which we need for our foreign exchange, which will have to buy the goods we must import, both in food and raw materials? When the figures of our exports came out the other day I am sure that there was not one man in this House or in the country who, on looking at them, did not get a shock. Germany had lost 46 per cent. of her exports. In the two months, September to October, we lost 42 per cent. of our export trade. It may be asked which country is besieged?
    Look at our exports. In September, 1938, our export figures were £39,809,000 and in 1939 £23,087,000. a drop of £16,722,000, if we compare the two Septembers of those years. Comparing October, in 1938 our exports were £42,560,000 and in 1939 £24,600.000. We had a loss in September as compared with September of the previous year of 42 per cent., and a loss in October compared with October of the previous year of 42 per cent. It is interesting to see where the loss happened. I can well understand that there has been a drop in

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    the export of food, drink and tobacco, in regard to which there was a drop of 37 per cent. There was a drop in the export of unrefined oils and fats of 76 per cent., in wool 74 per cent., and in raw materials 32 per cent. These can be explained, because these goods were needed. An embargo had been placed upon their export. But why has there been such a drop in the export of manufactured articles? In iron and steel, for instance, there has been a drop in exports of 45 per cent., in machinery 53 per cent., in cutlery and hardware 37 per cent., in cotton yarns 28 per cent. In electric goods, woollen goods, silk and so on there have been drops; I need not give the figures. The total loss for the two months is £34,659,000, equal to 42 per cent.
    Let me turn to imports. During September and October there have been drops in imports which I fail to understand, unless there is some explanation forthcoming. In September, 1938, we imported of grain, flour, feeding-stuffs, meat, dairy produce, etc., goods to the value of £77,057,000, and in September, 1939, we imported £52,795,000 worth. All these are essentials, in some of which there is a shortage. While we are talking of rations, there has been a fall in our imports of grain, foodstuffs and so forth of over £24,000,000, a drop of 32 per cent. as compared with September of the previous year. Take raw materials. In September, 1938, we imported £36,954,000 worth, in September, 1939, £29,425,000, a drop of £7,500,000, or 20 per cent. In articles mainly or wholly manufactured there has been a drop of 26 per cent. amounting to £10,217,000. The total loss in our imports amounts to £42,000,000 comparing the months of September and October, 1938, with the same months of 1939—a total loss in our exports of 27 per cent.
    I am justified in asking the Government, is our production greater or less to-day at the end of November than it was at the beginning of September? Is our output of war material satisfactory? Is it increasing? These are matters upon which I should like an answer. Have we got the necessary materials to-day? Have we got the necessary machine tools? Can the answer to these questions be really satisfactory when we consider the figures which I have given and also the figures
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    given in the Debate last week, and also remember that we have 1,430,000 unemployed—can the answer then be considered satisfactory? I listened to the Debate the other day and I must say that I thought the reply of the Minister of Labour was most unsatisfactory. He seemed to deal with figures much in the same way as a pert school boy, good at mental arithmetic, who gives the answer to any set of figures straight away. He does not seem to deal with them in the same way as I imagine a senior wrangler would deal with a mathematical problem.
    After 12 weeks of war we have 1,500,000 unemployed. Between the end of August and the end of Ocťober the figures are better; there were fewer unemployed in five callings. In coal mines there were fewer unemployed on the 31st October as compared with the 31st August by 30,700; but if you look at the previous year, 1938, you will find that there were fewer unemployed beťween August and September of 32,800; and it is just as well to bear in mind that there are seasonal differences. The figure for engineers is a little better, 7,000; for ship building 11,000, for cotton 11,O00, but the improvement in 1938 was as much as 24,000 for cotton, while in texťiles the improvement was 14,000. But the improvement in 1938 was as great as 38,900. In all other callings the figures are worse. At a time when we should be doing our utmost to produce it is extraordinary to find falling figures in mining—64,400—and mines which could be worked not being worked. In 133 mines work has been sťopped during the last two years. Everyone hears that there is a shortage of engineers, but the figures show that there are 32,500 engineers unemployed. When ships are being sunk, when some shipyards are still empty in Scotland and on the North-East Coast, there are 18,300 ship builders and ship repairers unemployed; in cotton 34,00o, in ťextiles 56,000—I need not go through the figures for the great army of 1,500,000 unemployed after 12 weeks of war. And I do not know what is the figure for those who have been absorbed into the Army or into the Navy.
    Are skilled craftsmen and artisans kept in ťhe Army or other Services to-day when they are wanted elsewhere? I can only answer for the agricultural community. The key men in the farms today in Montgomeryshire—and it is the

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    same throughout the country—are the young men of 19, 20 and 21. The eldest boy goes out to earn a better living, and the boy of 19 and 20 is the ploughman and the dairyman upon whom farming depends. His calling up has been postponed, but ultimately he is going to be called up when you want food production and when ships are going down. In the last war the Prime Minister himself was called upon to take charge of national service, to see how many men could be spared to go into the Army, to decide the priorities, to say who were to be left and who were so essential that they must be brought back to their work. What is the position to-day? In what way are we using our material?
    I was struck the other day by the distinction which was drawn between the methods of production to-day and the methods of production used with success towards the end of the last war. The experienced men who were describing it had occupied important positions. They say that to-clay policy is not effective, that personnel is not effective and that material is not coming forward. With regard to personnel, they said that in the last war the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) sent for them and described the position. He told them what was wanted, but that he did not know if the material would be forthcoming. He told them that he had sent for them because they ought to be in a position to supply the material. All he had been able to do was to divide the country into 41 districts and that he had sent for people from each district. He asked them to go back and to call up every man—he himself became the chairman of the Manchester district, not the biggest but a very important district. Every kind of manufacturer was called in, the whole thing was described and at once they were divided into two schools; one school saying that they could not produce until they got the machines which would do it automatically, and the other school who said that their machines were not fit for the work, that they had never done it before, but were perfectly sure that with the assistance of their men they could do it; and they started. The second school was producing shells six months before the first school got their machines.
    Much has been said about the cost and expenses of the last war. These men who
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    have never had experience of this work and whose workmen had been accustomed to deal only with textiles found, when they started, that the price of a shell was 23s. 6d. Within six months they turned them out at 8s. 6d. They said that in matters of production we are not number two in the world to America, that so far as craftsmanship, artisanship, and power of adaptation is concerned there was nothing in the world comparable to the British workman. And so not a single American plane crossed the line; they were all British, built by British workmen who had never produced one before. They pointed out that they spoke the language of their men, that they knew the men in charge of the shops, the foreman and the men. No wonder that the goods were forthcoming. They said "Your personnel is wrong, you are putting in engineer commanders, very excellent judges of a machine but who know nothing of production and do not speak the language of the factory." They were convinced that the material that is so necessary is not forthcoming. The country will want to know and this House wants to know the answer. Another complaint which one hears in so many branches is the lack of decision. You go from one Department to another and are told that they cannot decide the matter as it has to go to some other authority. You are passed on from one Department to another.
    I should like to impress upon the Government that export is our very life; if we cannot export we die. I wonder what can be done with regard to all this. We have combined buying in regard to raw materials, wheat, wool, oi1 seeds, and meat, which come to this country and are taken over by the Government and then distributed. Would it not be possible to get a combined effort to sell, to get new markets, and to do even a barter trade? Why cannot a Department be set up in neutral countries to find out what they want and what they can supply to us, to cancel imports by exports? Let there be a clearing-house in this country for contracts, made not merely between neutrals and ourselves but between neutrals. What happens now with regard to exports? Do conditions help the manufacturer and the exporter? He has to hunt for a permit and then for a licence, and then for tonnage. If half a dozen coal exporters met and asked each

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    other what they had been able to do, one would reply, "Not much." and another might say that he had been able to get three cargoes. The question would be, "How did you get hold of the tonnage, and where have you sent it?" Is it not possible to co-ordinate all this so that permits would be forthcoming and licences would be forthcoming, and exporters would know exactly where the tonnage was? I am anxious that these repressive measures should be stopped.
    Sir Patrick Hannon: May I say to the hon. and learned Member that at the present moment and for many weeks past the Department of Overseas Trade, under its present direction, is going everything possible to carry out everything that he is suggesting?
    Mr. Davies: Has the hon. Member experienced the difficulties of getting a permit and a licence, and the tonnage? Is it any use having a Ministry of Economic Warfare composed of a conglomeration of men drawn from all parts of the country, some of them very able, who are not in a position to decide? What I want is a small committee who can consider these matters and send representatives to all the neutral countries so as to form a liaison between the manufacturer and the exporter and the men who want the goods, and who can arrange for shipping and return cargoes, so that there shall be no loss of tonnage? Germany has long since passed the peak of her production, and to my mind, she has also passed the lowest point to which she can cut down consumption. Those two points are gradually approaching, and as they approach, Germany weakens. But look at the reserve which we have in this country. We have a reserve of 1,500,000 unemployed. We can increase our production. We have the most fertile land in the world, much of it not used at the present time. If necessary, we can multiply and re-multiply our production. As the hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) reminded us the other day, for 20 years one-seventh of our population has not been able to contribute towards production. Let hon. Members think of that reserve of power.
    I would also remind the House that in the last war, in spite of the losses which we suffered, and leaving out of account for the moment the enormous sums which
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    we lent to our Allies, the enormous sums that were lost in Russia, if one looks at our figures, and our figures alone, we paid for the foreign exchange which we required out of our own revenue, our exports, our invisible exports, our ships earning upon the seas, and the capital we had already placed out, which was earning revenue; and we were able to do this in spite of our having lost 9,000,000 tons of shipping, and France having lost 1,000,000 tons of shipping. The losses of shipping alone could be measured at a figure of £375,000,000, and we lost something like £350,000,000 in cargo. Having lost in ships and cargoes something in the neighbourhood of £700,000,000, nevertheless we were able to pay for all the foreign exchange that we wanted for the purchase of goods out of our own revenue. That is a tribute to the resiliency of this country. If we have done that once, we can do it again; but we must stop these repressive measures and help to put men to work, and encourage and enthuse them as much as we can. Do not let us repress them, and our triumph will be all the more complete. If I have criticised the Government this evening, it is a criticism asking for more energy, more drive, and a better grip of the situation.
    6.34 p.m.
    The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir John Simon): This day, on which we continue the general Debate on the Address, is, I suppose, one of the easiest days of the Parliamentary year for you, Mr. Speaker, because it is difficult to imagine anything that would be out of order. Although I do not intend to deal with the speech of the hon. Member for North Cumberland (Mr. W. Roberts), which dealt mainly with food questions, or the extremely comprehensive survey made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies), I think it is only right that I should address a few observations to some aspects of the matters raised in a very concrete form in the powerful speech of the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. George Hall), who opened the Debate. The hon. Member dealt with a list of social questions, and in conclusion, he said that he hoped no one would regard them as trifling or small compared with the great efforts we are making and the great sums we are spending. I am sure that must be the view of all of us. I am most deeply con-

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    cerned about the matters which he raised. I am concerned about them as a Member of the House and as a man who tries to comprehend and deal with these social questions as well as I can. I have also a very substantial concern with them now because nearly all of them touch very directly the special charge that is for the time being on my shoulders in the administration of our public funds. The hon. Member raised a large number of questions connected with assistance, relief, compensation and the like, and as far as I recall, the only question in the list with which he dealt which does not directly touch public funds is workmen's compensation, and that, of course, is necessarily a charge that has to be borne by the industry concerned.
    I want for a moment or two to put this matter in a rather larger framework, not because I want to overlay the subject or dismiss it, but because I really do not think that, in the third month of this tremendous war, which before we have finished with it may mean the most fearful sacrifices, some of which we have perhaps hardly begun to dream of as possible, I should be doing my duty if I did riot remind the House, in this Debate, of the larger financial setting, although I will in due course come to the specific questions which the hon. Member raised. I have noted down six simple propositions about our financial position which I would ask leave to state to the House. They are quite uncontroversial in substance, as far as I know, although perhaps there may be differences on the details.
    The first proposition is this. Before the war began, our public expenditure was already higher than it had ever been in peace time. We start with that. To be quite accurate, let me say that I cannot treat the year immediately after the war, the year 1919, as being a peace year. In that year, the figure was still enormous, and I exclude that year. Apart from 1919, it is true to say that before war broke out in September, we were this year already spending, not merely on one subject but on all subjects together, more than had ever been spent in a year in peace time. As hon. Members will recall, this was mainly due to the determination at which we had arrived, supported by opinion in all parties, that we must devote very great sums to rearmament. That was swelling the figure. It is some small
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    satisfaction in passing to remember that, in spite of all that, in that year we nevertheless provided £50,000,000 more out of revenue for the social services for the year than had been the case in 1931.
    The second proposition is that when the war came upon us in September, our rate of spending quickened enormously, as it was bound to do. To put it in its simplest form, for the remainder of the year, from September to the end of this financial year, as far as we can see, our rate of spending, on war services and other services together, has been so greatly increased that if one expressed it as spending for 12 months, it would be £2,400,000,000 per annum, an increase of about two-thirds on the rate at which we were previously spending. We started by spending at a greater rate than had ever before been carried by this country in peace-time; we ran into this war, and immediately and inevitably the pace quickened at the rate I have described.
    As against that—and here I come to my third proposition—we have struggled to get an enormous contribution towards this great expenditure from taxation. We have not said, "Let posterity pay." The House of Commons has never before imposed such tremendous burdens as were imposed by the emergency Budget. Again, let me make a comparison. It is true that at the very end of the last year of the Great War, and perhaps in the year 1919, too, the amounts that were coming in from the Excess Profits Duty were so enormous as to swell the revenue until it was quite an unnatural sum. There is no Excess Profits Tax that can be reaped this year, although there will be some return of that sort next year. If we exclude the receipts from the Excess Profits Duty during and after the last war, the revenue that is to be received this year from taxation represents the greatest tax burden that has ever been placed upon the people of this country.
    Sir P. Hannon: Or any other country.
    Sir J. Simon: I cannot think of a greater proof of the determination of the British people than that all classes in this country should have accepted those stupendous proposals, which it was my duty to make, so quietly and with such a general concurrence that it must be done.
    I come now to my fourth proposition. Although we accepted this taxation of

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    nearly £1,000,000,000 in a single year, it still leaves us to raise another £1,000,000,000 by borrowing in order to meet the expenditure of this first year, seven months of which are months of war. My fifth proposition is this: In a full year of war, and if this struggle develops with the frightful expenditure of munitions and human lives which we suffered in the last war, our total requirements in future years will be very considerably greater than this year. Looking at the matter altogether, I state as a sixth reflection that the present annual rate of expenditure to be met out of revenue and borrowing together approximates to one-half of the total income of the community spread in very different proportions, of course.
    I think those figures are not irrelevant to a consideration of what we can do. I do not quote them in order to divert attention from the immediate subjects raised in this Debate, but I do say that all kinds of people in this country, and perhaps most of all those who have most influence and leadership with our wage-earners, are bound to weigh that fact, which is quite uncontroversial and unchallengeable, when considering what is to be the nature of our economic life in this land in the next year or two.
    I know that there are some people who say that there is very great inequality in fortunes in this land, and that, while our main purpose is to win the war, cannot the expense be put in greater measure upon the very rich? I think I may claim that I, in the holding of my office, have not shown any unwillingness to put very great burdens on the very rich, and I would like hon. Members for a moment or two to consider how far this method of getting out of our troubles can really be applied. I have had one or two figures worked out for this purpose. It is all very well to talk about paying for the war by taxing the rich—and nobody is more conscious than the wealthy taxpayer of the fact that he is being called upon to pay—but take these simple figures. How many individuals are there in this country, all told, who have an income which exceeds £10,000 per annum? That is a very big income but it is a convenient figure to take, because it happens that the number of persons in this country who have that income or
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    more than that income is just about 10,000.
    What is happening to the people who have that income at present? Their aggregate income amounts to about £180,000,000. How much of that, under this very heavy taxation, does the State take? Out of that £180,000,00o, I take, by Income Tax and Super-tax, £120,000,000 straight off. If, instead of taking £120,000,000, you can imagine that the State by the Budget took the whole £180,000,000, well, that is £60,000,000 more than it takes at present. That is about 5 per cent, of the amount which I need to borrow this year. It would keep the country going, as we are going now, for about a week or 10 days. But that is not the whole of it, for in addition to Income Tax and Super-tax there are Death Duties and, naturally, those fortunate and wealthy people are the people on whom those duties fall very heavily. Every year a proportion of those people die, and their estates pay about £40,000,000 a year to the revenue. So that the fact of the matter is that in that sense we now take £160,000,000 a year from those persons who have a total income of £180,000,000 and the remaining £20,000,000, say what you like about it, is not going to pay for this or any other war.
    The short and simple answer to those who conceive that the problem of war finance can be solved by what is called "soaking the rich" is, first, that they are very severely soaked already and second that there are not enough of them to find the money or any considerable fraction of it. It is perfectly apparent that differential taxation on big incomes has been carried to a point which gravely interferes with the fulfilment of obligations and the continuance of a great deal of employment. Therefore, it follows that the only way in which a democracy can meet the terrible burdens of a great war is by a willingness to sacrifice on the part of the whole population, and by recognising that such sacrifice, difficult as it is to bear, is the price that must willingly be paid to secure and preserve freedom. The truth is that we cannot attain our war aim—and I know I am justified in assuming that the House is at one in being determined to attain it—without producing for the time being an adjustment in the standard of living, which touches people of all sorts and kinds

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    I have thought it right to make these observations on facts which cannot be challenged because it appears to me that we have to recognise that this is the world in which we are now living, and that we have to prepare ourselves, and prepare one another, to face all that is involved in this state of things. We have to see—and it may be said that it falls especially upon my shoulders to do so and it is a frightful responsibility—not merely that we provide the means for our naval, military and air forces, whose gallantry and sacrifice are certain enough, but that our economic resources are equally well-used.
    Mr. James Griffiths: And fully used—not wasted.
    Sir J. Simon: I fully realise what is the nature of the responsibility which falls upon me and upon all who have any share in the burden of government. Does the public which feels very keenly about it, quite realise what is being done in Germany at this time?
    Mr. Tinker: How do the rich fare in Gemany?
    Sir J. Simon: I do not want to give figures and this is a matter which may be gone into in greater detail on another day but I think we have to realise that we are dealing now not only with a ruthless enemy—and we know that it is with a ruthless enemy we are dealing—but also with an enemy which shows ruthlessness to his own people and to his own working-class. I am not proposing to claim any more credit than should be claimed for our own conditions though taking it broadly. our own social provision is better, I think, than that of any other country in the world.
    Mr. Leslie: Except the British Dominions.
    Sir J. Simon: But let us remind ourselves of the nature of the ruthlessness which our enemy exhibits in taxing, and in coercing the working classes of his own country by the concentration camp, by the labour camp, to work hours at wages and subject to contributions which make a very different picture from that which we have managed to preserve so far in this country. I do not suggest for a moment that we should follow that example. I do not think that any democracy is in the least likely to do so, and I am certainly not the person to
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    suggest it. But we must not, any of us, delude ourselves into thinking that we can wage a war of this fearful magnitude and cost, wage it, it may be, in times to come before we have finished, through the most fearful strain of trial and difficulty, and just assume that all our respective standards of living will be quite as easily maintained, as they might be in times of peace.
    Before turning to deal more particularly with some of the things which were mentioned by the hon. Member for Aberdare, may I make just one further observation? The figures which I gave when I began were figures of money and of taxation. It is convenient, perhaps, to measure these things in that way, but it is rather deceptive. Money, after all, is the means of buying and selling things, but the real problem is not a problem of money, it is a problem of things. The irresistible conclusion, I think, is that it is impossible for the country to go on living, with all the same standards as easily preserved in war time as in peace time. When we take it as a question of the supply of things and of commodities this fact becomes particularly plain. In time of peace, I suppose, the main object in this field of government is that the output should be as great as possible and that as large a part of the output as possible should be used to improve the standard of living, to improve certainly, as far as we can, the standard of living of the poorest members of the community.
    If you go back in our history, you will find that it is absolutely true to say that that has been the policy of Parliament for over a generation. I can remember when I, as a young man, first came into this House and heard Mr. Asquith at this Box unfold the plan of the first old age pensions scheme. It was only 5s., but it was a beginning. It was a big thing. I was a young Minister, a colleague of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), when the National Insurance scheme was introduced in 1911, and I took some subordinate share in expounding and upholding those Bills. That was a tremendous thing and it was not as universally approved then as it is now, but, as so often happens with any sort of good legislation, in time people began to see that this was a sound method and the system has been built up with help

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    from all parts. I am not claiming any credit for any particular set of people in connection with it, but undoubtedly it has been, on the whole, the greatest help in bringing the resources of the State to the aid of those who need help most which has ever been seen in the history of the world. What I would beg the House to do—solely out of a desire to look at the problem which is in front of us as a nation—is to recognise that it is far more difficult to deal with the defects and anomalies or shortcomings of that system in a time of war than it ever could be in times of peace.
    Mr. Woodburn: Would the Chancellor of the Exchequer agree that it would be desirable since the consumption of the people generally is reduced that luxuries should be dispensed with first. Secondly, would he agree that every effort should be made to increase the production of goods and the incomes of those people who are suffering, in order not to impair the efficiency of the nation as a whole and of the workers in particular.
    Sir J. Simon: That seems in principle a very admirable proposition, and I have no doubt the hon. Member will have an opportunity of developing it. I am merely saying that it is a very great mistake for any section of this House to discuss the particular subject which has been opened this afternoon, on the assumption that we are in a situation in which it is possible to contemplate improvements such as might readily be contemplated in quite different times. To say that we should put taxes on luxuries and that we should realise the necessity of drawing the sort of distinction which the hon. Gentleman has mentioned, is, I think, common ground. But when the country is at war the purposes which it has to serve are something rather different. The policy of the country is bound largely to be first to get the output of the essential goods to the highest conceivable maximum and at the same time to divert as large a proportion of the output as possible to war needs. It is the fact that there is this object, which we have to secure in order to protect ourselves, to save our lives, and to save the country which makes it necessary to take a different view in war-time.
    We must realise the nature of the struggle in which we are engaged. The expenditure of the Ministry of Supply,
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    for example, is an expenditure which calls upon the efforts and activities of the people. The Ministry of Supply will get an immense volume of things by means which in happier times one would hope to see used for more satisfactory purposes. At present they have to be used for purposes which are destructive, defensive, and terrible, and that makes it necessary to reduce the amount which is available for the purposes which are foremost in our minds this afternoon. I think that one of the chief contributions that we can all make here in our democracy towards winning the war is, within the limits that are possible, to do without rises of wages and not to assume that, if there should be, as world conditions may bring about, some rise in costs, therefore automatically our remunerations must all go up on a sliding scale. That is what I mean when I say that in this situation it is really essential for a democracy, if it is going to live, to be prepared to face the sacrifice to be made by each member of it. We in this House of Commons have a very great responsibility in that matter. I set that as the general framework in which we have to examine the questions raised by the hon. Gentleman opposite.
    Now I want to say one or two words about some of the things that he mentioned. Let us look at the specific parts of the case with which he dealt—dependants' allowances, workmen's compensation, old age pensions, unemployment benefit, and unemployment assistance. I cannot deal with all of them specifically—some of them require more detailed treatment, which is and must be a matter for the particular Ministers—but I would point out a distinction which is very present to my mind. There is a sense in which unemployment allowances provided under the regulations of the Unemployment Assistance Board stand in a rather special category. They are what we may call the last defence of the man concerned. It is that or nothing. The allowances, as we know, are paid from a central State fund by the Unemployment Assistance Board, and they are paid on a scale drawn up by the Board itself, a scale which is accepted by the Minister of Labour and endorsed by Parliament by affirmative Resolution. As a result, all of us here have a special responsibility.
    The allowances are designed to meet, as is absolutely necessary in the existing

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    circumstances, the immediate needs of the applicants. If, owing to change of circumstance, such as a rise in the cost of living, the old scale of the Unemployment Assistance Board is no longer appropriate, it is the business of the Board to propose a suitable alteration. That is what the Statute says it has got to do. If the Minister accepts the proposal, it conies before the House, and our own affirmative Resolution is needed. All that is an essential feature of the scheme itself, whether in war or in peace, for the recipient has to rely on this assistance for his maintenance, and he has nowhere else to go. It follows, therefore, that if the Unemployment Assistance Board consider that a revision of the scale is required, they must take these prescribed steps, and the financial problems of the war, the warnings of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and our appreciation of the financial difficulties make no difference to their action.
    I have to inform the House that, on the question of increasing unemployment allowances, having regard to the cost of living, it is anticipated that draft Regulations will be submitted by the Unemployment Assistance Board to the Minister of Labour and National Service within the next few days. I cannot give more information about the matter, but I thought it was right that the House should know this immediately. No doubt it will be a matter of great importance and very likely will mean that my right hon. Friend will have a statement to make or a question to answer very shortly.
    Mr. George Hall: May I ask whether, in the event of the draft Regulations being received by the right hon. Gentleman, he will bring them before the House so as to enable any increase to take place before Christmas?
    The Minister of Labour (Mr. Ernest Brown): That would be the intention.
    Sir J. Simon: My right hon. Friend authorises me to say that that would be his intention. Of course, something depends on the date when the communication is received. I understand that the actual situation is—and that is all I know about it—that there has been a communication from the Board that they are contemplating putting forward a new draft Regulation, and I thought that instead of keening that knowledge to ourselves, it would he a satisfaction to ťhe House to
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    know that that is the state of our information on the subject. I thoroughly understand that thať is only one matter, but I think it is important.
    I come now to unemployment benefit, and there we are dealing with a somewhat different situation. First of all, we are dealing with an insurance scheme—that has always been the basis from the beginning—which depends, of course, on contributions. No doubt it can be made a more abundant scheme by an increase in those contributions. All that I would like to say about it now is that the House is aware that there is every year a report made by the Statutory Committee, and, I think, on special occasions sometimes more often, in which Sir William Beveridge and his colleagues inform us what is actuarially the state of that fund. Such a report is to be expected early in the year. If the report shows that the fund has a surplus, then comes the question of how that surplus shall be used, and, of course, it might be used to improve benefits. If, on the other hand, the report shows that there is not a sufficient surplus for such a purpose, and none the less the situation is one that needs remedying, manifestly that remedy must take the form of revising the scales of contribution. That is a serious and a complicated matter.
    Now I will take, if I may, the matter which I think the hon. Gentleman mentioned first of all, that of allowances to the dependants of our fighting Forces. The hon. Gentleman made so powerful a case and spoke with so much plainness that I was a little surprised that he did not, as far as I could see, refer to the provisions that already exist for making special allowances to increase the flat rates to which he referred. Provision has already been made—I have an announcement to make about it—for cases of special hardship on the part of all serving men's dependants, including widowed mothers, by the setting up of what has been called, I think, the Military Service (Special Allowances) Advisory Committee. There is a change which I want to state to the House. Very careful consideration has been given to the possibility of simplifying and speeding-up the procedure in connection with this tribunal. I am inclined to think it is a reform which is needed, and I hope that what I am going to say will indicate that it will be a real improvement. We want to relieve ťhe

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    very severe strain which war conditions inevitably place, not only on those who are waiting to receive their extra grants, but on the pay organisations of the Service Departments.
    As the detailed work necessitated is already carried out by a staff attached to the Ministry of Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, in consultation with the other Ministers concerned, has invited the Minister of Pensions to undertake the entire responsibility for the award and issue of these allowances in future, and this proposal my hon. Friend has, I am glad to say, accepted. That change, we are quite confident, will greatly simplify the machinery of payment, will greatly hasten the decisions for which people are waiting, and the work following on the Committee's recommendation can be completed in one office. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Mr. C. Davies) spoke about the difficulty that arises in regard to matters passing from one office to another, and I want to give him any satisfaction that I can. He will be glad to know that the effect of this change is really to get the whole of this machinery into one office, so that there shall be the minimum of delay. The Committee, which thus becomes advisory to the Ministry of Pensions, will now be named the War Service Grants Advisory Committee.
    Mr. George Hall: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the Committee and the Minister of Pensions, who are now undertaking the responsibility for the administering of this scheme, can overhaul the existing scheme? I have not yet heard the Chancellor suggesting that the normal case to which I referred will be treated differently from the way in which it is treated at the present time, and unless power is given to the Minister of Pensions to overhaul the whole scheme, it is only the exceptional cases which will get any concession.
    Sir Henry Morris-Jones: Can my right hon. Friend tell the House whether this applies to the three Services—to all the Services?
    Sir J. Simon: It certainly refers to all the Services. The question of the hon.
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    Member for Aberdare (Mr. George Hall) is the important question of revision, but it is one that I had not thought could be included in my statement. It was a statement as to improvement of the machinery and I do no think the matter which the hon. Member has raised is one I can deal with in what I am saying now.
    Mr. Buchanan: Is it the intention that the Ministry of Pensions machinery should displace the special committee presided over by Mr. Doughty, K.C.?
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: Do we understand that this new committee will function in the same way as a similar committee functioned during the last war?
    Sir J. Simon: I cannot answer that question, because I have not the information regarding the last war clearly in my mind. In reply to the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan), the committee which is presided over by Mr. Charles Doughty has been taken over by the Ministry of Pensions, and I should like to take this opportunity of saying that we are grateful to Mr. Doughty for the very hard work he has done.
    I want to refer to the question of old age pensions. I told the House in the Debate we had on 1st November that, while it was true that at the first onset of the war, when there was a terrible lot to be arranged and considered, there had been a certain delay in the examination which the Prime Minister had promised into this question, we were at once taking it up again. I made it plain that there was no possibility of substantial improvement in contributory pensions unless the contributory scheme was further financed by the contributors themselves. I did not say that the Exchequer entirely refused any contribution, but I have always made it plain that so far as that scheme was concerned we were bound in the circumstances in which we found ourselves to ask that, if it was to be improved, it should be improved by the contributors. I have lost no time about it. I said that the Exchequer would see representatives of the parties and endeavour to make the most rapid progress possible. It is not quite as simple as has been suggested. The real truth of the matter is that the contributory pension of 10s. a week is a pension paid as of right to people who are in very different financial positions. They may have other

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    means and may even draw the salary of a Member of Parliament. They may be in ordinary employment, but they are entitled to get the pension. Side by side with them there are tragic cases which naturally come to mind. As regards the non-contributory pension, I have never denied that anything that can be done to improve the contributory pension must be done for the non-contributory pension; and the whole cost of such a corresponding increase in the rate of noncontributory pensions must be found out of public funds.
    That is the general position I have taken up throughout. I wish I could report more precise results than I am able to do, but following the last Debate I get into touch at once with the parties concerned. I had a meeting, which, perhaps, may be called a preliminary meeting, but it was a very thorough one, with the representatives of the Trades Union Congress and of the National Confederation of Employers' Organisations. The discussions were confidential and I cannot say more about them, but I can assure the House that we are doing our best to make progress and reach agreement. At the present moment, at the request of the parties, alternative facts and figures on an actuarial basis are being worked out. I am hoping that at what I call an early date, by which I mean, at any rate, before the end of the year, there will be a further meeting with the representatives of such a kind as may result in some suggestions being agreed to. I know that what I am saying cannot be regarded as completely satisfactory by those who are most concerned about this. I do not complain of that, but I ask them to believe that I am doing and have done the best I can to deal with this problem. If we do not produce proposals that are satisfactory it will not be for want of effort on my part.
    Mr. Lipson: Does my right hon. Friend take the view that there can only be an increase of the non-contributory pension if and when an increase is agreed to in the contributory pension?
    Sir J. Simon: I do not say that. I do not think it would necessarily follow. I think that what we ought to aim at is an improvement in both kinds of pension to the same amount, and it is the business of the country to find what is necessary for the non-contributory pension.
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    I have not yet mentioned workmen's compensation. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is behind me, so I must go carefully. The hon. Gentleman who raised this subject referred to the experience of the last war. I do not think he was right in saying that the change that was made then was made at the beginning of the war. There were two changes, one in 1917 and the other in 1920. In 1917, when the cost of living had risen 75 per cent. above pre-war, it was thought right and found possible to increase the rate of workmen's compensation by 25 per cent. Although the action was contemplated or promised when the increase over the pre-war cost of living was 75 per cent., the increase had actually reached 8o per cent. before it was made. The second change was made in 1920, when the cost of living was 125 per cent. above the pre-war figure. The workmen's compensation rate was then raised 75 per cent. above the pre-war figure.
    I do not wish to lay down any precise rule or law about this, but I think it illustrates what I have tried to urge upon the House, that when we are facing these perfectly tremendous burdens which we have to share it may well be that even where a change for the better in such things as workmen's compensation is within contemplation it has to lag behind the rate at which the cost of living is rising. I do not believe it is possible for this country to survey the whole industrial field of the workers—those injured or overtaken by old age and the active workers—and to urge that everything can be automatically raised, as though you were looking through a magnifying glass, merely because the cost of living has increased. We have got to face the fact that in such terribly difficult times it is not possible to do all that we might do in happier times. I was asked whether, at any rate, the Royal Commission appointed in, I think, 1938, could not be urged to get on with its work. I have consulted the Home Secretary about that. I know how keen he is about it and he is going to urge it in every way he can. What I am saying is not intended to rule out the possibility of considering the terribly distressing cases of sufferers from certain industrial diseases, silicosis and others, which were mentioned by the hon. Member, and it may be that there are points on which we can make progress, but I am bound to

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    give this answer as to the general review, disappointing as I realise that it may be to some, because these are the conditions under which we have to face the burdens of the war.
    I was sorry for one thing only in the hon. Gentleman's speech. He always speaks so frankly himself that I am sure that he will not mind my being frank in return. Just at the end of his speech he spoke as though, in certain circumstances, victory in this war might for some people be only an empty shell. What is defeat in this war going to mean? It is going to mean the triumph of a system which flourishes on the concentration camp, the system of the Gestapo, the system of the private informer. It is going to mean the triumph of the system where there is no free Press, where no man may say what he thinks or call his soul his own. Is anybody going to tell me that when these are the issues at stake there is a single man or woman in this country, poor, injured, destitute it may be, who does not know very well that the stake for which we are fighting is one which can be gained for the benefit of every citizen living in this country?
    7.29 p.m.
    Mr. T. Williams: While complimenting the right hon. Gentleman upon his moving peroration I am bound toò confess that the substance of his speech, apart from the financial review, is most disappointing indeed, and the suggested concession which he has announced means absolutely nothing at all for the dependants of those who have joined the armed forces. I took down carefully the points relating to expenditure, and I have no disagreement about them. All I would say to him about the financial review that he gave us is this: The cost of the last war was greater than the cost of this one so far, and the allowances provided for dependants were larger than those that t have been provided so far, and at the end of the last war a large number of individuals had gained colossal fortunes. Those statements are undeniable, and despite the fact that the right hon. Gentleman has imposed heavy burdens upon taxpayers, super-tax payers and the rest, it still remains true that what we could afford to do in the last war we certainly ought to be able to afford to do in this war. Our productive capacity in 1939 is
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    infinitely greater than it was either in 1904 or in 1919.
    I shall not detain the House to deal with the succession of questions so eloquently and effectively dealt with by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. G. Hall). All I would say is that, in the majority of cases, unemployment benefit was never intended to be as large as wages, and that therefore if the person unemployed becomes, through no fault of his own, the victim of some misfortune over which he had no control, and if circumstances arise to make his position worse than in a normal period, hon. Members of this House are entitled to raise the matter. Unemployment assistance allowances are understood by the Unemployment Assistance Board to be below wages. Therefore, if their value is reduced still further by some misfortune that has overtaken some person concerned, it is proper for hon. Members to raise even that question in this House. At best, compensation is only half wages. The unfortunate injured person suffers physical pain and agony and, at the same time, suffers a reduction of 50 per cent. in his income during his period of incapacity. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare made it very clear that, so far as compensation was concerned, he was not appealing for a special war addition. He stated clearly that before the war started an improvement in compensation was long overdue. I need not delay the House on the matter of old age pensions. The right hon. Gentleman stated on a previous occasion that the 10s. per week per person was not intended to be full maintenance for every man and woman. If circumstances reduce the relative value of that 10s. below what it was, again we are entitled to raise that question.
    I want to deal with one matter which the right hon. Gentleman very expertly ignored. None can ignore it so expertly as the right hon. Gentleman. It is the special question of dependants' allowances. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare made an unanswerable case for an instantaneous revision of the Royal Warrant that determines what allowances shall be made available to dependants of soldiers. I want to run over the Royal Warrant itself very briefly, to show the impossibility, almost, of any dependant securing any allowance at all under the

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    Royal Warrant. Perhaps I ought to say that in the last war the allowance was based upon the contribution of the individual to his home 12 months before August, 1914, and that the allowances ranged from 4s. 2d. per week to 18s. There was a flat rate of 5s. for every unmarried son under 26 years of age, whether that son contributed to his home or not. The allotment from the soldier was 3s. 6d. I am the first to appreciate the financial and other difficulties of the Chancellor of the Exchequer but, in this enlightened age, what is the sort of thing that this enlightened Government produce as allowances? The first thing is that the allotment of the soldier before arty claim can be made at all must be 7s. per week, or double the allotment of 1914–18, and still 50 per cent. of the income of the soldier.
    Sir J. Simon: Is not the soldier getting double the pay?
    Mr. Williams: I said that there was still remaining 50 per cent. of the income of the soldier.
    Sir J. Simon: I do not profess to know all the details, but I thought it was correct to say that the soldier is receiving double the pay.
    Mr. Williams: Exactly. Except that I used the words "per cent." I could have said that in the last war the allotment was 3s. 6d. and that since this war commenced, the soldier's pay has been increased; and that the allotment has also been increased to absorb that increase in pay. In other words, the soldier is in exactly the same position as he was between 1914 and 1918. The allowance under the terms of the Royal Warrant depends not upon the contribution of the son to his home before joining up, but upon the income of the household and a series of conditions laid down. Certain scales have been fixed whereby, if the contribution of the son to his home before joining up was 16s., or something beyond 22s., a theoretical allowance can be paid of 12s. or, including the son's allotment, 17s. This theoretical allowance is not being paid, and is not likely to be paid while the Royal Warrant remains the order of the day.
    Let us look at the Warrant and see exactly what it implies. The applicant
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    has so many beacons to pass that, long before he can qualify for a pension, he will be either dead or maimed. The first thing is that he must apply. Then the dependant must apply. Then the means test is applied. After passing through that Gethsemane, perhaps no allowance will be forthcoming; the end of applied science. Here are the conditions: No father, and no home where the father lives and where the father is under 65 years of age and is not incapable of self-support, can claim any allowance at all. No case where the father is younger than 65 years of age, unless he is incapable of self-support, can claim any allowance. If the young soldier is 19, 20, 21 or 22 years of age, it is fair to say that the majority of the fathers would be under 65 years and as applicants for allowances they are completely eliminated by that age limit. There are thousands of men especially between 55 and 65 who are out of work, in which case they are unable to claim an allowance. In other cases, where there are fairly large families, they are unable to claim an allowance.
    The next batch of male dependants are those over 65 years of age who are either working or not working. Should a person be working who has exceeded 65 years of age, the Government lay down a further condition. Even if the father over 65 is working and the income of the home amounts to 15s. per person, plus rent, that father cannot claim an allowance or, if he claims it, cannot get it. If the old man is working at all, it is clear that he or his wife would be obtaining 10s. a week pension, that is to say possibly £1 per week. It would be a very small wage that did not reach £1; so that the pension plus the wages—say £2, a week makes 30s. —and a rent of 10s. which completely rules him out for an allowance. So that now we have the position that, as a result of the conditions laid down as to wage and income, this Royal Warrant simply means that nobody, or very few, can claim any allowance at all.
    I can quote a case of a person under 65 years of age who is wholly incapable of self-support. It is a case of an ex-soldier who is bedridden, arising perhaps out of some physical disability which occurred in the last war, and he receives no pension. His only son, who has been contributing 30s. a week towards the maintenance of his bedridden father and mother, joined the Forces. He is not

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    called upon necessarily to make an allotment at all, but as he happens to be a tradesman his wages are 3s. a day and he forthwith makes an allotment to his parents. His parents made a claim for an allowance. It takes weeks before the allowance is forthcoming and when ultimately the case has been settled an allowance of 17s. per week is granted. In other words, they take 14s. a week from the son and the Government contribute 3s. a week. It is the most ridiculous, absurd and mean Royal Warrant that this or any other Government has produced. Here is an ex-soldier who has done his best and is bedridden in all probability as a result of his service, and he can get only 3s. allowance under this scheme. I do not know whether the Government have deliberately and with malice aforethought prepared this Warrant to minimise the number of successful applicants, but if this son made no allotment to the parents and the parents made an application to their particular public assistance committee they would receive more assistance from the public assistance committee than they are getting altogether, including the 14s. conceded by the son. The Financial Secretary, in a letter to me, said:
    "I hope, however, that in view of the explanation which I have given, you will agree with me that their interpretation is not unreasonable "—
    that is, that the Government contribute 3s. with the young man's 14s. What will happen is this. If that young man gets married, as he very likely will shortly, the Government will have to provide 17s. as an allowance for his wife. Then the parents will go to the public assistance committee and instead of getting 17s. a week they will probably receive 28s. I wonder whether the Government really understood what they were doing when they produced this Royal Warrant. I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it is possible for anybody to justify a Royal Warrant that is so mean as this. It has been said so many million times:
    "Oh God, our help in ages past,
    Our hope for years to come."
    That will still be the case for those who ought to be entitled to a decent allowance when the provider of the maintenance of the home—son or sons—has been taken into the Army.
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    With regard to the women, unless a woman exceeds 6o years of age no allowance is forthcoming unless she passes through a certain test. She has to show that she is physically incapable of self-support if she is below 60, or she has to be questioned as to how much she is earning and why she is not earning more, or else assistance is not available. Here is the type of case I have in mind with regard to a widow. Here is a widow with two sons who went into the Army and were sent to France, I believe some time in September. For three weeks preceding the 19th October, she had had no letter from her sons. She wanted to know where her sons were and how it was that no allowance had been received, because both the sons had signed to make their widowed mother an allotment. All she possesses is a 10s. widow's pension. Today, on the 25th November, I received a letter from the War Office, in reply to a letter sent to them on 20th September. Although these two sons, who provided the only source of income for the widow, and who have both joined the Forces and have been sent to France, both agreed to an allotment to their widowed mother, not one single penny piece has been paid to her yet; she is still existing on her widow's pension and on such sums as the public assistance committee are providing for her. Surely that is not the sort of thing which even the Financial Secretary would regard as reasonable. It certainly is not the sort of thing which this House would regard as reasonable, where a widow's only two sons join up and she can get neither the allotment of the sons nor an allowance for herself. It is fair to observe that if those two sons allowed their mother 7s. a week each, making 14s. between them, and this were added to her widow's pension, the Government would not allow a single penny piece to that widow, since the maximum that can be paid to a woman living in a house of her own is 23s. 6d. That widow cannot by any stretch of imagination obtain any allowance at all.
    Here is another case—I can quote a large number—which might be applicable. After all, the more that is known about this Royal Warrant and its implications the better. This case concerns a mother whose two sons, twins 21 years of age, have been called up; they were sent off to France and before they had been away seven days the father fell out of work.

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    His income for himself and his wife, therefore, is 23s. a week unemployment benefit. An application was made to the War Office by his mother for an allowance and, of course, it was rejected. They told this woman that if her two sons make an allotment they will see that that is sent on to the home but that no allowance from Government funds can be available. This woman's only two sons have been sent into the Army, and she has not the ghost of a chance of securing any sort of allowance at all.
    According to this Royal Warrant, in the case of a son receiving the lowest income of a soldier, namely 2S. a day, in the odd case where an allowance has been acquired—and they will be very few—the moment the son earns, deserves and is granted promotion and his income increases, his allowance is to decrease accordingly. That is the encouragement that the Government give to young men to try and gain promotion in His Majesty's Forces. They tell the dependants where they get a dependant's allowance that on the death of the person who was responsible for the allowance they will be kind and generous enough to continue the allowance for 13 weeks after death. I made some observations here on the allowances that were provided for wives and children. I thought those allowances were low enough, but I think this is the meanest and most disingenuous and despicable scheme of all schemes provided by the Government.
    Might we not hope that, at long last, the Government will see more reason than the Chancellor saw when he thought he was going to satisfy hon. Members on these benches by telling us that the Special Grants Committee are going to have their work speeded up? It is not the special cases we are concerned about; it is the average cases. The Army order is so hemmed in with conditions as to make it almost impossible for even a minimum number of parents to secure an allowance at all. I suggest that this insult should be taken back at once. The Government ought to make what is a natural move in their case, a step backwards, and if they cannot give anything better at least give what was given from 1914 to 1918. Nothing less than the conditions of the last war will satisfy hon. Members on these benches. I hope the Government will not imagine that we are being fobbed
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    off by the meaningless concession suggested by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
    7.52 p.m.
    Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes: I want to say a few words in support of the eloquent appeal made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. G. Hall) for more liberal family allowances for serving soldiers, sailors and airmen. The hon. Member mentioned several cases, and the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) mentioned a number of anomalies in the operation of this Royal Warrant, which certainly should be remedied. There are scores of people in my constituency suffering from the sort of hardships about which complaints have been made to-day. I will take just one example. I know of a young man and his wife. The wife is delicate. The man was getting £3 10s a week in steady, certain employment before the war. They are buying their house on the security of an insurance policy, and they make other provisions for their future. The man, being patriotic, joined the Territorials some time before the war. He is called up. He gets 14s. a week, of which 7s. goes to his wife; and she gets 17s. a week separation allowance, totalling 24s. a week. After she has paid her various contractual obligations she has just a penny a week on which to live. The various Measures passed at the beginning of the war certainly lightened her immediate anxieties, but there will be a day of reckoning when the war is over.
    I raised this question two months ago, and made a plea for real national service and equality of sacrifice. This young man comes back on leave, and he finds people living in the same street who are far better off. For example, he finds a young man and his wife, both engaged in A.R.P. work, drawing about £5 a week between them, while my friend gets 7s. a week and his wife 24s. What can their feelings be? I have always pleaded for real national service. On the previous occasion when I spoke on this matter I made a suggestion. I said:
    "Equality of sacrifice in relation to wages is a very difficult, but not an insoluble, question, and I suggest that, under a real system of national service, basic payments should be made at the same rate for each grade of employment during the war, and that there should be family and rent allowances and

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    arrangements to meet any contractual obligations undertaken prior to the war, so that those who have been thrifty and provident in peace time, should not be penalised by their war service.''—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th September, 1939; col. 1584, Vol. 351.]
    Take the case of a Fleet Reservist who left the Service some years ago, was earning a good living, and was then called up, to serve in the rank at which he left the Service. He has 2s. a day, and the same allowance for his wife as that which I have mentioned. Assume that, as one of the survivors of the "Royal Oak" or the "Gypsy," he comes ashore. He finds a number of people infinitely better off living around him—people in the dockyards who, by working overtime, can get two or three times as much in wages as he gets. But everybody serving afloat is working overtime without extra payment.
    I have discussed this question with my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare and many others of my friends on the opposite benches. I do not think we are very far apart in our views. Suppose there were a Socialist Government in office. I take it that if they had a sufficient majority they would nationalise the mines, transport, and the munition factories. Would they be prepared to allow the men working in those industries to get three or four times as much as the men who were fighting? It should not be impossible for the Government to bring in—with the support, I hope, of my hon. Friends on the opposite benches-some form of real national service and equality of sacrifice while the war lasts. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for War has gone, because there is one other plea that I wish to make to him.
    Mr. Kirkwood: If the hon. and gallant Member is in favour of national service on the lines that he suggests, is he in favour of conscripting all the wealth and taking over the land of the country from the landowners, so that it shall belong to the people?
    Sir R. Keyes: That is a very big question, but I will go as far as this. I am all for those men who have been exempted from the Militia and are working in the factories being paid at the same rates as the Militiamen, with due allowance for rent and other things. Here is a matter that came to my notice only today. There are a great many men who were in good employment, who have
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    been called up and are serving in the Territorials near London. Their families, with the present scale of allowances, are very hard up indeed. These men sometimes come home for, perhaps, 48 hours. Their wives or mothers are anxious to do their best for them during that period of leave, and the result is that the families have to go short during the next few days after the men have gone back. If the men go on leave for a week, I believe they are allowed to take their rations with them. I suggest that they should be allowed also to take their rations with them when they go on short leave, in order to help their families, who are suffering so much on account of the smallness of the family allowances. There is another matter about which I should like to speak. A great many youths are due to go up to Sandhurst or Woolwich at about this time. Their whole outlook was bound up in the prospect of joining the Services through Sandhurst and Woolwich. These youths are 18; although many are spoiling to join the Militia, they are not allowed to join until they are 19, and in consequence they are left on the hands of their parents. I am not suggesting that these youths should not go through the Militia, but the closing down of Woolwich and Sandhurst bears very hardly upon young men who are going to make the Service their career. I can give two or three cases in respect of my own family. My late brother had three sons. One joined the Service a short time before the war and is now in Palestine as a private in the Queen's Regiment. The eldest brother who had no intention of going into the Service, joined the Manchester Regiment as a private the day that war broke out. The third son who has always meant to make the Army his career—his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been soldiers—is kicking his heels and will not be able to join the Militia or to do anything. His mother is not well off, and he has a whole year to wait before he can serve. Surely, something might be done for the boys who would have gone to Woolwich or Sandhurst at this time and who now have to wait a year before they can enter the Militia.
    8.1 p.m.
    Mr. Batey: We have to continue this Debate in an empty House when most of

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    the interest seems to have gone out of the Debate. I sat here yesterday from four o'clock until half-past six, and today from a quarter to three until the Chancellor of the Exchequer rose, and so far there has been only one speaker on these back benches. We back benchers have a claim for a fair share in the Debate, and I am sorry that the Chancellor of the Exchequer got up so early. It would have been better if he had waited, because, having spoken, and the Labour Front Bench having replied, it seems that the Debate is practically at an end. I could understand the Chancellor of the Exchequer rising when he did for this reason. The two previous speakers on the Government side had both condemned and criticised the Government. I was interested when the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies), who spoke before the Chancellor of the Exchequer, turned upon the Minister of Labour, who was then in the House, and lectured him on the unemployment question. I was glad that he lectured the Minister of Labour, because we have been lecturing him for years without making very much impression.
    Since the war broke out the Government have had a mania for starting new Departments, and hundreds of men have been engaged for those Departments, and I have been at a loss to understand why the Ministry of Labour have not seen to it that some of the unemployed were not given employment in those Departments. No doubt the unemployed would not be able to fill some of the offices, but I cannot but believe that a lot of the posts in these new Departments might have been filled by the appointment of unemployed men. Instead, the Government have allowed men who already had well-paid posts to take up another post. They have allowed men in receipt of big pensions to take up posts in these Departments. I want to make my protest against the Government allowing these posts to be filled by men who did not need them instead of giving them to the unemployed.
    The question of dependants' allowances has occupied a good deal of the time in to-day's Debate. The Government are doing in this matter what one would expect them to do. An hon. Member opposite asked whether the
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    Opposition would go into the Division Lobby for the purpose of defeating the Government. Some of us would gladly go into the Division Lobby to-night if we thought we could defeat this Government, because we consider that there could not be a worse Government, and that the sooner we can get rid of it the better. The Government are dealing with the dependants' allowances and treating the soldiers in the same way as they treat the unemployed, namely, by paying as little as they possibly can to the dependants. We strongly condemn the Government. There is a duty resting upon the trade unions of this country at the present time to see that the soldiers are properly paid so that their dependants will not have to go before these tribunals and beg for relief. The trade union movement would not allow men to enter an industry unless they were paid the wages applicable to the particular industry.
    Somehow or other soldiers' allowances have got on to the wrong line, and the trade union movement ought to insist on the soldier being paid a decent wage irrespective of whether he is single or married. When a man is engaged in industry, it does not matter whether he is single or married, or, if married, whether he has one child or six children, the recognised wage has to be paid to him. That should be the case in regard to the soldiers. We should say to the Government, "You have treated these dependants very badly, and we will not allow it to continue. You will have to pay a decent wage for the job of soldiering." In this country men on A.R.P. work are paid £3 a week, and men overseas are prepared to risk their lives in fighting and we pay them a few shillings and leave their dependants to beg from these tribunals. One of the funniest things in this life is that the men who are engaged in the most dangerous jobs in this country are the men who are the worst paid. If there is a dangerous and a dirty job it is considered that the man employed in it should have a lower wage than the man who has a safe and clean job. We ought to insist that, instead of these tribunals to which the dependants of soldiers have to go and beg for relief, the soldier, whose job is so dangerous, should be paid a proper and decent wage which should not only be sufficient to maintain him, but his family as well.

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    I want to deal specially—and this is why I have been so anxious to take part in the Debate—with the means test. I had not been very long in the House yesterday afternoon before I heard the Prime Minister eulogising what the Government had done in regard to social matters since 1931. It nearly staggered me, because it reminded me that since 1931 the Government have been responsible for the means test. It is difficult to find anyone except the rabid Tories supporting the means test. The Prime Minister, when I mentioned the means test, said:
    "We were not the first to introduce the means test"
    That is not correct. The Prime Minister made a huge blunder when he made that statement. I know that it was not this Government that introduced the means test, but it was the National Government that came into existence in 1931, and the National Government since then, in spite of all our pleading, have continued it. The Prime Minister also said:
    "as the hon. Member knows well from his study of the history of trade unionism."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th November, 1939; col. 3o, Vol. 355.]
    I do not think there is any history in connection with trade unionism that I have not read, and I know of no history of trade unionism that reveals that trade unionists have been responsible for the means test. Long years before the Government brought in their unemployment schemes, trade unions were responsible for maintaining some of their members who were out of work, but no trade union in this country has ever been responsible for the means test. Therefore, I submit that the Government are responsible for it. Let me show how the means test applies. I received a letter last week from a woman in Spennymoor who said:
    "I have been made an allotment from my son of 14s. a week, and I thought the Unemployment Assistance Board would not take anything off us, but when my husband went for his money on Friday morning he was paid 7s. 6d. short. Instead of 30s. 6d. he got 23s."
    It is ridiculous and disgraceful that the Government should do that. No Government could be responsible for a meaner or more disgraceful thing than to permit such a thing, that where a lad
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    who is out in France sends 14s to his parents in order to help them, his father, being out of work, the Unemployment Assistance Board takes 7s. 6d. off the father's allowance. Not only does the means test affect soldiers' allotments and is being used in order to reduce the allowances to people who have been allotted money by their soldier sons, but we find it operating particularly now when the cost of living is increasing, and workmen have insisted upon advances of wages. What is the use of a workman, who lives in a household where there is somebody unemployed, getting an advance of wages if it is simply to relieve the Unemployment Assistance Board? However strong our case may have been in the past for the abolition of the means test, there is added argument in favour of its abolition to-day, when wages have been increased in order to meet the cost of living.
    When I came to the House yesterday and I read the King's Speech, I thought, on first reading it, that there was something in it, because it said:
    "The measures which will be submitted to you are such as seem necessary to My advisers for the welfare of My people."
    I liked that phrase "the welfare of My people," and I thought that at last the Government were going to take some interest in the welfare of the people, but I was disillusioned in the Debate, and also in the Prime Minister's speech. The right hon. Gentleman said to-day that the country expects this House to give its whole time to the prosecution of the war. We do not object to the House and the Government prosecuting the war, but we say: "While you are doing that, do not forget the people at home." Therefore, we hope that the Government will, in accordance with the King's Speech, bring forward measures for the welfare of the people. What had the Government in mind when they coined the phrase "measures for the welfare of My people"? One of the things that would be for the welfare of the people would be if the Government took steps to abolish the means test. Another measure for the welfare of the people would be if the Government prevented greedy, selfish men from taking two jobs while others are unemployed, and if they made it illegal for people to have big pensions until the unemployed get jobs.

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    One of the most useful measures that the Government could pass for the welfare of the people would be to deal with old age pensions. I did not hear what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said on that subject to-night, because having sat here from a quarter to three till 6.30 I went out to get a cup of tea. Some of my colleagues told me that the right hon. Gentleman had promised that there might be something, but it was indefinite. The Government seem to think that an increase in old age pensions must depend upon increased contributions from the employers and the employed to the contributory fund. We made a huge blunder in 1925 when we quietly agreed to the contributory scheme. There are 2,000,000 people receiving old age pensions under the contributory scheme and only 500,000 receiving old age pensions under the scheme with the means test, which is financed by the Government. The number of those in receipt of Government old age pensions over 70 is growing less and less, while the number of those in receipt of pensions contributed to by employers and employed is increasing.
    Workmen to-day are paying sufficient to the old age pensions and widows' and orphans' funds, at a rate of 1s. 7d. a week, without the Chancellor of the Exchequer going to ťhem and depending upon them to be willing to increase their contributions in order that there should be an increase in old age pensions. The Government ought to find the money to increase the pensions. They could easily do so. They can always find money if they want to find iť and they ought to find the money in this case and not depend on ťhe contributors to the fund. I hope the Government will go further than merely giving an advance to the old age pensioners. Some of us have for a long time been urging thať some of the anomalies in connection with widows' and orphans' pensions should be removed. It is a disgrace to-day that a wife should not have a pension at the same time as her husband, and that she should have to wait until she is 65 years old before she can get a pension. No one can justify ťhat.
    I remember the Debates in this House in 1925 when we were discussing the Widows' and Orphans' Old Age Contributory Pensions Act, and how we
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    thought that a woman should have a pension at the same time as her husband. The present Prime Minister was then Minisťer of Health and he seemed to be prejudiced against giving a woman a pension until she had reached the age of 65. Whatever may have influenced him then it is a fact that since 1925 thousands and thousands of wives of men who have reached the age of 65 have had to live upon 10s. per week. Nobody can justify that figure. I want ťo hear that the Government are going to give a substantial increase in old age pensions. There has been some talk that Bills which are brought in at this time should not be controversial. The Government cannot bring in a Bill dealing wiťh old age pensions which would not be controversial. We stand for a full 10s. a week extra. We believe that old age pensioners are entitled to £1 a week and we see no reason for saying that the country cannot afford it. I am hoping that the Government will not only give this increase in old age pensions but will also remove the anomaly which prevents a wife getting a pension before she is 65 and the anomaly which still exists in regard to a widow's pension and the allowances for children. When a child reaches the age of 16 years the pension is stopped. In the last eight years 150,000 widows have lost some of their pension because of a child reaching ťhe age of 16.
    We expect the Government to study these questions and to deal with them as they should be dealt with. It is no use the Government thinking that they can go along quietly by saying that they must prosecute the war. This party has helped the Government ever since the war broke out, but I hope we shall make it clear that unless the Government pay some attention to the claims of the people at home the time will come when we are bound to split with the Government and fight them on these issues. An hon. Member opposite said that he wanted to see an all-party government. I hope we shall never get an all-party government, and that this party will maintain its independence. To me it is as clear as noonday that this Government will not act in the interests of the poor people; it will be content to leave them just where they are, and it is essential that the Labour party should maintain its independence in order to fight the battle for the poor people of the country. During the last

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    war I was a member of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain. We fought to restore the standards of our people in the mines, and we thought those standards would never go back. The war was no sooner over than we were back in the same position as we were before it started. The same thing will happen now. If the Labour party are prepared to let the Government go along quietly when the war is over, the people of the country will be just where they were when it started. In order that the interests of the poor people should be voiced in this House and should be fought for in this House, I hope that this party will maintain its independence.
    8.26 p.m.
    Mr. Lipson: I hope that this very interesting Debate is not going to degenerate into a party dog-fight. If ever there was a time when all should be for the State and none for party, surely it is now. The hon. Member for Spennymoor (Mr. Batey) was very severe in his strictures on the Government, but I would remind him that his party at the beginning of the war was given the opportunity of strengthening and improving the Government when Members of the Opposition were invited to join it. It may be that if that offer had been accepted many of the criticisms which are now directed against the Government for the measures they have brought in would not have been necessary. I think that the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. George Hall) introduced not only an interesting Debate, but also a very useful and very necessary one. If there are things which are wrong on the home front it is right that we should know about them. The matters which have been discussed to-day affect the lives of a great many people. They are talked about in the country by the relatives of men who are serving in the Forces and, therefore, it is all to the good that they should be brought before the notice of this House, and if there are things that are wrong, the Government given an opportunity either of defending the actions which have been taken or, if unable to do that, of finding the proper remedy.
    We recognise, so far as the enemy is concerned, the importance of their home front, and we believe that if the home front in Germany will only crack, the war will very soon be over. It is just
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    as necessary for us to realise the importance of strengthening our own home front. I think that many hon. Members feel that some of the matters which have been brought before our notice to-day ought to have the serious concern of the Government. The spirit of the people is fine. I had an illustration of it only on Monday when a young married woman whose husband is serving in the Army came to see me about the financial difficulties which have been created for her by her husband's enlistment. Their position before the war was this. There were husband and wife and a young child, and the husband was earning £7 a week. Patriotically, he enlisted, and now his wife's income is 29s. a week, and she has to pay £1 a week in rent and rates. I told her that her difficulty could be met by the special allowances provision, and I was glad to hear from the Chancellor that action in this matter is to be speeded up so that these cases can be dealt with more promptly. This woman told me that she realised what was the financial position of the country. She said that she was not complaining, and that she was managing with one meal a day, but that she did not want the baby to go short. I pointed out to her that the country did not want anything of that sort to happen and that provision was being made. I am sure this case is typical of many. There is a fine spirit in the country, but I appeal to the Government not to trade on it or to take advantage of it.
    I think that a case has been made out for a reconsideration of the Royal Warrant as far as allowances to dependants other than wives are concerned. I cannot help feeling that in the matter of these allowances the Government are spoiling the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar. In many respects the Government have been very generous in regard to allowances and have shown that they are prepared to listen to criticism, as was evidenced by the increase that was made in the children's allowances as a result of representations in the House. Therefore, I hope that they will take into serious account the representations that have been made and supported by illustrations of hardships arising under the present system as far as dependants other than wives are concerned. I believe that, because there is dissatisfaction under this head, the Government are not at present

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    getting the full credit for all the good that they are doing in matters of this kind.
    I listened to-day, as I always do, with very great interest to the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I always admire the technique of my right hon. Friend's speeches. When he is asked to make some concession to a popular demand for increased help from the Treasury to relieve some kind of suffering, he begins by drawing a very alarming picture—as he did to-night—of our existing commitments, and our flesh begins to creep; and then we begin to feel that the position really is hopeless and that a country which already has such heavy financial responsibilities surely cannot face any more. But in the second half of the speech, my right hon. Friend makes one feel more grateful than one would have been otherwise for the concessions that he is able to make because they are made in such very difficult circumstances.
    Therefore, I was glad that he was able to announce that there is to be shortly an improvement in unemployment benefits and that the question of unemployment relief is under consideration. We know that throughout the country public assistance committees are increasing the amount of relief which they are giving. To-night we have been told that this is being done in Glamorgan, and I can add that in Gloucestershire also it has been decided that there shall be an increase on account of the rise in the cost of living. I think we may assume that that is a practice which will be followed all over the country, as indeed we hope it will be. When that increase is given in the case of unemployment benefits and public assistance, it seems to me that the case for an increase in old age pensions is overwhelmingly stronger even than it was before. I hope that the Chancellor will be able to announce such an increase, at any rate for those whose sole source of income is the old age pension, and if it were possible for the increase to become operative before Christmas, I am sure it would give still greater satisfaction.
    There are one or two other matters concerning the home front to which I should like to refer briefly, and one of them is the rather conflicting advice that has been given by Ministers on the matter of spending. Soon after the outbreak of
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    war, the President of the Board of Trade advised people to spend more or less normally, and that piece of advice certainly was welcomed by the trading community, because, although a great deal of money is being spent on armaments, there are large sections of the population which are not deriving any financial benefit from that increased expenditure, and in fact, many incomes have been considerably reduced. Therefore, when the President of the Board of Trade encourages the public to spend, the trading community, which has suffered from the black-out and the general disorganisation resulting from the war, welcomed it.
    In a broadcast speech last Wednesday night, however, the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave contrary advice, and urged people not to spend but to reserve all their resources for lending to the Government for war purposes. I hope that the Financial Secretary, if he is to reply to the Debate, will resolve that very real difficulty, and I hope that in this question there will be taken into account the plight of the ordinary trader and how he is likely to suffer, and also how the employment position will be worse if the public is discouraged from reasonable spending. Of course, nobody wants a wild orgy of spending, with people buying things which they do not require simply because they have the money; but I hope that, as far as people are in a position to spend, they will be encouraged to maintain a reasonable standard of spending. The trading communĩty would welcome some reassuring statement from the Government on this matter.
    I want, finally, to refer to the question of unemployment. Here again, we find that the position is very different from that which we were promised by the Lord Privy Seal in a broadcast speech soon after the outbreak of war. He said that although there was unfortunately a good deal of unemployment at that time and that unemployment had increased as a result of the war, that matter would soon be put right, and that in a very short time it would not be a case of men looking for jobs, but of looking for men to do the jobs. Since that statement, however, the number of unemployed has increased, and those who are unemployed are naturally asking themselves when we are likely to reach the position envisaged by

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    the Lord Privy Seal. At all times unemployment is very keenly felt by the unemployed, but it is felt most of all at a time of national emergency, when every decent citizen more than ever wants to pull his weight in the national effort. It is a very humiliating position to feel that at a time when the services of everybody ought to be called for, some 1,500,000 men and women are apparently not wanted, and have no contribution to make to the country in her hour of need.
    I would urge that more advantage should be taken of the opportunity to bring in small firms to help in armament work. I have had letters from small firms in my constituency who are very anxious to secure Government work. These are firms which have in the past employed a number of men and paid Income Tax and made their contribution to the State, and they assure me that unless work is forthcoming they will be compelled to dismiss their men. An hon. Member said recently that this country had a genius for improvisation. I think that genius could be shown now in adapting our small firms to the purposes of Government work. I hope that the Minister of Supply will not be content with saying that those firms should sub-contract to the larger firms. In practice they do not get the work in that way. I hope it will be borne in mind that if proper use were made, through local committees, of the available resources, these small firms could make a real contribution to the national effort. At a time when it is necessary to preserve, as far as we can, our foreign currency, it is a pity that we should be placing big orders in America when there are in our own workshops the material and the men which could produce a great many of the things we require.
    I make these points in no unfriendly spirit. All Members, I am sure, are anxious to do what they can to strengthen the hands of the Government. Many of us feel that in drawing attention to the weaknesses of the home front we are rendering a useful and patriotic service. I hope the Government will accept in that spirit whatever criticisms and suggestions have been offered in this Debate, so that we may be able to utilise to the fullest extent our resources and our man-power, to bring to a successful end the struggle in which we are engaged.
    8.44 p.m.
    Mr. McGovern: It has appeared from this Debate that unity among the parties in the nation is not now as complete as it was on 3rd September when war was declared. I have watched with interest the widening breach between the Government and the Opposition as the problems of the war have been thrown up from time to time. I see to-day not only Members of the Opposition critical of the Government and their actions, but Members on the Government side also taking part in very strong criticism of some of the niggardly actions of the Government.
    I listened with interest to the hon. and gallant Member for North Portsmouth (Sir R. Keyes) and with a certain amount of sympathy to his suggestion that the members of the fighting Services and their dependants were being treated rather badly. I would go a stage further than the hon. and gallant Member. He suggested that those in the fighting Services were being badly treated and that those engaged in A.R.P. and munition work were, by contrast, being well treated and he seemed also to suggest that there should be a levelling-up, or rather a levelling-down, as between these various sections of people. Even though I do not support the war, if it was the will of the nation that the war should be carried on by the Government, I would accept a common basis for all men in this country. While the hon. and gallant Member makes comparisons with the A.R.P. worker and the munition worker, I would go further and ask why should the Member of Parliament have £600 a year; why should a Member on the Front Bench have £5,000 a year; why should the Prime Minister have £10,000 a year; why should the Monarchy have £10,000 a week, at a time which is supposed to call for great national effort and sacrifice? We see on the hoardings,
    "Your liberty is in danger.Defend it with all your might"
    If liberty is in danger there should be, not only a common effort but a common level. When the Militia and Conscription Acts were being placed on the Statute Book, I said that any man taken from workshop, office or warehouse into the fighting Services and compelled to engage in the most dangerous occupation in the nation should be paid at least the ordinary trade union standard wages

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    which he received in civil life, and that even if it meant a special Income Tax, the nation was entitled to give that to the fighting Services. I do not understand the suggestion that this common level should apply only to the munition worker and the A.R.P. worker when we have people living in luxury in this country and men making fortunes out of the nation's necessity, while fighting men and their dependants are being treated in the scurvy manner in which they are being treated to-day.
    I take a serious view of this war. I have always taken a serious view of the war. I believed during the last 12 months that nothing could prevent war as long as the economic rivalries existed which are the cause of war. I believed that the great British and French Empires were an invitation to war, because we had cornered the best of the world's raw materials. We had cornered for ourselves and our French Allies hundreds of millions of human beings whom we exploited for the benefit of the bondholding investing class in France and Great Britain and, indeed, the working-classes of Britain and France had higher standards of life, out of the exploitation of black and yellow men. I did not believe that the war would be of short duration. I hoped that it would never take place, but my own judgment, from the knowledge I possessed, the training which I had in the Socialist movement, the observations which I had made throughout life and my travels on the Continent, was that we were heading straight for war.
    Not only did I believe that that war would be of long duration, but I had no faith in the stories that were circulated, born of the hopes of mankind, that the workers in Germany would revolt against their ruling class. I did not believe that the workers of Germany looked on Hitler with the loathing which most people in this country had for him. I believed that we had a wrong assessment of values, in relation to the rulers of Germany, an assessment which we were not entitled to make, from experience and knowledge and the evidence that could be obtained. Although I am not a pessimist by nature, I am pessimistic as to the outcome of this war. I intend to deal, time permitting, with certain other aspects before I sit down, with graver dangers that I
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    see at present. If this struggle were finished to-day without the overwhelming defeat of Hitler, I say frankly, as an antiwar supporter, that Hitler would win the war, because nothing short of the complete thrashing of Hitler and those who are behind him will give to this country and its French Allies the position that they desire to attain, namely, that of defeating Hitlerism and breaking what they term the power of aggression on the German front.
    The war has gone on for three months, and it has not taken the turn that most people in this country expected. On the Sunday that war was declared, I stated, from my observations in Italy and the knowledge that I gained there, that Hitler would man the Siegfried Line, that he would seize Poland, that he would fire no shot on the Western Front until attacked, that he would send no bombing planes to England or France, but that he would ask for an international conference to settle the outstanding grievances of Germany against Britain, France, and the rest of the world. Bombing has not taken place, and I do not anticipate that the bombing of civilians will take place now until there are large-scale clashes on the Western Front. It may be that Hitler will even march through Holland or Belgium, or simultaneously through both countries, because of the tremendous sacrifice that will be called for in any attempt to storm and smash the Maginot Line. Do not rule out the possibility of a simultaneous move being made through Holland and Belgium, because Hitler and those associated with him are fighting in what they regard as a desperate struggle for world supremacy, and that supremacy can only be attained by the smashing of the French and British Empires. They stand in the path of the rise to world power of Germany and the younger nations that have been creeping up.
    In this situation, I repeat that I cannot see this country winning in this struggle. That is said honestly, sincerely, and even, at the back of my mind, if it is the intention and will of the nation, to a certain extent with regret, but I cannot see this campaign winning out in the manner that people hope and expect it to win out. Field-Marshal Lord Milne said yesterday in London:
    "This was not going to be a war of a few months. We hope it may, but I do not

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    believe it. We are up against something that we have never been up against before in the history of the British Empire"
    I believe that that is a real statement of fact. Twelve months last September I stated in this House—and it gave rise to interruptions from certain Members on the Labour benches—that from my observation and evidence obtained in Prague, Austria, and Berlin, Russia desired world war and was playing for world war, and if hon. Members look at the events that have taken place since then, they will see that that assessment was not very wide of the mark. Why did I believe that? I met people in Prague, Communists, who were anxious to give me their views on the position of CzechoSlovakia at that time, and they insisted, at a meeting in a cafe in Prague, that the Comintern had ordered them to play for a war that would bring in France, Britain, and Germany as a weakening process, coupled with a war in the East between Japan and China, laying the world completely open to a protracted and lengthy war in which the world would be in a state that would be susceptible to the doctrines that were being enunciated in Moscow. That was a statement that I believed to be true.
    Further, let me say that during the Spanish struggle, when the Communists were taking out Socialists from their homes and murdering them, when the Communists were taking out anarchists, placing them in secret prisons, and murdering them, a stage was arrived at in Spain which is indisputable, at a very early stage in the civil war, when Moscow ordered the Spanish Communists to murder every German and Italian that could be found in order to try and bring in Germany and Italy, with France and Britain, as they said that world war in the Mediterranean would suit their purpose better than a war in Central Europe. We see to-day the technique of Hitler in regard to Finland. We see the proclamation, "Let us destroy the impudent bandits," being made from Moscow. "Cut off the hand that is threatening Leningrad, and unless the people of Finland change their Government, their scattered bones will be difficult to find." Those are the people who talk about a new Jerusalem, a new world, in which terror, murder, and brutality of the worst kind are to be engaged in. These are
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    the people who would try to make us believe to-day that they are the peace forces in this country, the people who can swing from war to peace just as "Moscow Joe" orders them to change their policy. Then they come out and say, as the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. Gallacher) said in this House the other week, "Have I not stood for peace all along?" He begged the question. Everybody knows that he stood for the bogus peace front that was proclaimed, when the Members marched up and down London proclaiming war on everybody who stood for peace, and they wanted to stand by every country that was being destroyed, until finally the bluff was called, and then they swung away rapidly from the war front to the peace front; and they are now engaged in fighting a by-election at Stretford with a peace candidate. If anybody is entitled to defend the liberty to be found in this country, it is the Communist pary, a party that is allowed to preach a doctrine dictated from a foreign country and to proclaim it in this House, not as a necessity for the people of Great Britain, but on the orders of Moscow. Surely that is an extreme liberty to be extended to any person in any country in the world. I know that we will be told that this is exaggeration.
    Mr. Gallacher: Oh, no.
    Mr. McGovern: I will give the exact words of the hon. Member for West Fife on 24th August, a week before the war:
    "The threat to Poland or to Polish independence is imminent. But Poland can be saved and peace maintained if an Anglo-Soviet Pact is signed and Poland changes her attitude towards Russia. … I declare that you can take any of the articles of that pact"—
    that was, the Soviet-German Pact—
    "and they do not affect in any way the situation in relation to the Franco-Soviet Pact. An attack on France by Germany would immediately bring the Franco-Soviet Pact into operation. … Russia has proved that she is ready to take a stand in defence of those nations whose independence is threatened."
    I suppose that means Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Norway and Sweden and then the Balkans.
    "If all the peace forces of Europe were brought together peace could still be saved, and the independence of Poland could be saved. … If we have to face Fascist aggression and the hazard of the war, we"—

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    that is, the Communist party—
    "are prepared to take a stand and play our part in defeating it." — [OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th August, 1939; cols. 28–32, Vol. 351.]
    Mr. Gallacher: But never with that gang on the Front Bench.
    Mr. McGovern: I admit that the hon. Gentleman wanted a popular front with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), the right hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) and the right hon. Member for St. George's, Westminster (Mr. Cooper) but they would be the most reactionary Tories in that front. I have here a pamphlet which was withdrawn two days after I denounced it in the House. It is called, "How to Win the War," by Harry Pollitt. It was withdrawn ten days after it had been on the market because Moscow ordered it to be withdrawn. What does Harry say in this pamphlet?
    "On 3rd September, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Since March, Britain has guaranteed Poland against aggression. The agreement to come to the aid of Poland if an act of aggression was committed against her came into force from Friday, 1st September, when German troops invaded Poland and German aeroplanes bombed Warsaw and other Polish cities.
    In a manifesto printed in the 'Daily Worker' of 2nd September, the Communist party clearly stated its policy in connection with the war: 'We are in support of all measure to secure the victory of democracy over Fascism.' The Communist party supports the war, believing it to be a just war which should he supported by the whole working class and all friends of democracy in Britain."
    Then they give reasons why the Communist party supported the war. This pamphlet of 34 pages was published at a penny. A penny did not print it, however. Out of the unpaid earnings of the Russian peasants and workers comes a subsidy for the publication of that pamphlet and of all the Communist party literature in this country. That is why the party must support Moscow Joe. They would be eliminated from the party in this country if they did not and perhaps have to face a Russian firing squad if they were in Russia. After the publication of that pamphlet a sort of sacking maťch was staged. Harry Pollitt was put out of his job, and we got in the "Daily Worker" of 23rd November two apologies for the pamphlet and for the declaration in the "Daily Worker" from
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    J. R. Campbell, the editor, and Harry Pollitt. I think that these are worth reading. Campbell said:
    "Having given careful consideration to the position since the last meeting of the central committee, I now completely accept the fact that the manifesto of 2nd September gave an entirely incorrect estimation of the position and misled the party as to the character of its tasks in this war.
    I declare my support for the resolution of the central committee and the manifestos on peace and on the character of the war, published after the last meeting of the central committee.
    I am in full agreement with the article of Comrade Dimitroff as published in the "Daily Worker" of 4th November.
    With regard to the mistakes which I committed, the central mistakes were, in my opinion, as follows:

    (1) The policy of the fight on two fronts, which would have been a correct policy (in peace or in war) with regard to an imperialist Government in alliance with the Soviet Union, was persisted in with regard to a war between two imperialist Governments.

    (2) It was persisted in because I narrowed the perspective in such a way as to concentrate on German Fascism as the main enemy of the British working class and failed to see that the way forward for the British, no less than for the German workers, lay in a struggle with the main enemy, i.e., their own imperialists. I thus slipped into a position of national defence in an imperialist war, involving objectively support for our own imperialism.

    The attitude to the peace proposals followed from this mistaken perspective.
    Undoubtedly the stubborn defence of this wrong position did harm to the party, when it had to make a sharp turn in a most difficult situation, and I must accept responsibility for resisting what has been proved to be the correct line.
    Yours fraternally,
    J. R. Campbell."
    Mr. Gallacher: That is a good, sound statement.
    Mr. McGovern: After J. R. Campbell, Harry Pollitt and you have sent many of the militiamen to the battlefields you had discovered your mistake—
    Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Dennis Herbert): I hope the hon. Member will continue to address me.
    Mr. McGovern: I am sorry, but I got rather enthusiastic. It is all very well for these people to swing round, not in demand to British public opinion, but in demand to those who are their paymasters

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    in Moscow when they call the tune. If these militiamen die on the battefield, they should have inscribed on their tombs "Victims of Comintern treachery, coupled with the slavish and stupid obedience of Gallacher and Pollitt." Harry Pollitt says in his apology:
    "As the responsible leader of our party in the period immediately before the outbreak of the present imperialist war, it was my special duty to have given more than ordinary consideration to the problems that were presented to us by the failure of the Anglo-Soviet negotiations, and the subsequent conclusion of the Soviet-German Pact of Non-aggression.
    This became more than necessary as the events in the latter days of August began to unfold themselves, when British imperialism began to take on a more aggressive attitude towards Germany that was in such marked contrast to anything that had characterised their policy since Hitler came into power in 1933.
    The principal reasons why I did not take up promptly and decisively the new questions of policy that the new situation placed before us was basically of a threefold character:

    (1) My doubts about our traditional policy in an imperialist war in which one of the belligerent Powers was German Fascism.

    (2) My hatred of Fascism had developed by five years' intensive anti-Fascist propaganda, which led to a position where I did not see in time the true role of British imperialism, and saw only German Fascism as the main enemy of the British working class movement.

    (3) The influence of the Fascist war of invasion on Republican Spain also affected my outlook, because of the strong personal feelings which had been aroused by what I had witnessed in Spain, and the responsibility I felt I had in regard to the sacrifices made by the British battalion of the International Brigade.

    After the most serious consideration of the whole situation I unreservedly accept the policy of the Communist party and the Communist International and pledge myself to support it, in explaining, popularising and helping to carry it forward to victory. I recognise my action in resisting the carrying out of the line of the Communist party and the Communist International represented an impermissible infraction of our Party discipline and played into the hands of the reactionary labour leaders, who saw in my action the justification of their own policy of supporting the Chamberlain Government. I request the Central Committee to accept this declaration and to give me facilities to prove in deeds that I know how to take my place in the front ranks of our party in fighting to win the masses for support of the Communist party of Great Britain and the Communist International—Yours fraternally, Harry Pollitt."
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    That leads us to the bogus peace party. We are now getting a drive throughout the trades councils and the Labour parties of this country by the same people, the Communists in this movement, who demanded that Chamberlain must either go or go to war. They are now demanding that we must have peace. They almost shed tears at the sufferings of these poor boys that are fighting for blatant Imperialism when they believed they were going to fight against the Fascist aggressor. So far as I am concerned as an individual I regard the Communist Party, the Communist International, the Russian bureaucracy, as being as great a menace as that of Hitler, Goebbels, Marshal Goering and others in Germany.
    Mr. Gallacher: And that gang over there.
    Mr. McGovern: They are the sort of gang that not many months ago down in one of the committee rooms of the Central Hall—the Communist party, with the Member for West Fife—gave us a picture advocating the popular front. It was a popular front with the right hon. Member for Caithness (Sir A. Sinclair), who has 23,000 acres of land in the North of Scotland, the present First Lord of the Admiralty, the right hon Member for St. George's, Westminster, and others that the Communist party would have selected. Of course they were prepared to take the Labour party in also. They wanted that popular front. M. Blum was a hero. After only a few months this wretched man Blum was spoken of as the man who had sold the pass in France. From the alliance with Stalin and Hitler, the breaking up of Poland, the blackmailing, brutal, terrorist tactics on Latvia and Estonia, and now upon Finland, I see how that process will go on. It does not suit Stalin to have peace now, because a policy has to be worked out under which the whole of the Balkans will also have to be brought under heel. A struggle may eventually take place between Italy and Russia over the domination of the Balkans. Every single nation in the Balkans and in the Baltic is to be placed under the heel of Stalinism.
    That was not the Socialism that I believed in. I was not coached to believe that it was by those methods we were

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    going to move forward to the enlightening of the people, the development of their mental powers, the rousing of them to a sense of indignation over their wrongs, and so bringing us forward by stages into a Socialist system of society. Now we have the open brutal rule of the gun. Those who are "quick on the draw" put it across their peaceful neighbours. Then they say, "But we liquidated the Polish landlords." It is no satisfaction to me to take landlords, or capitalists or bankers out to a firing squad. I cannot defend that, and hope that I can protest successfully in this country against brutality towards the working class. I must protest against brutality whether it is shown to the class enemy of the workers or to the workers themselves, because an injustice is an injustice no matter who the human being concerned may be.
    I refuse to subscribe to this theory enunciated from Moscow—Moscow that has debased, demoralised and corrupted every working-class movement throughout the world with gold wrung from the unpaid wages of the Russian peasants and workers. The hon. Member for West Fife and others, the supporters of the Communist party, would equally readily don the uniform of the Brown Shirt, the Black Shirt or the Red Shirt. It depends upon the price that has been paid to these parties. Many of those in Germany are serving to-day in the Brown Shirts who were formerly members of the Communist party and loudest in their denunciation of capitalism. The man who is prepared to be a time-server or a paid lackey is not concerned with ideals or principles. He is only concerned with that which can be given. I see this war lasting, Hitler holding out, Hitler determined to resist to the bitter end, supported by Stalin to the degree that will continue the war. Hitler is not going to be let down for lack of raw materials while Stalin has to get a protracted war in order to carry out his long-term policy of subjugation in the Baltic and in the Balkans.
    With the war going on as it is to-day, probably in the Spring will come a tremendous death roll. If the Government are wise they will try to develop every move to bring it successfully to a conclusion by some form of agreement. The outstanding feature of disagreement
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    to-day is that the raw materials of the earth are cornered by the few. Why not declare in this country for the internationalisation of the whole of the raw materials of the world? We should say that we are prepared to have an international conference to ration out those raw materials to all races, to all nations, and the only basis has got to be the liberation of the peoples, the setting of them up on a basis of civilisation, whether in Germany, in Africa, in India, in Britain, in France, in Australia or in America. We should say that we will seek by an international board of experts, if you like, to ration out those raw materials, to take them out of the hands of private enterprise, because there are the economic seeds of war. Then we can build up the standard of life of the people, giving them a decent standard of life, giving them a superior education, developing the culture of the black, the yellow and the white men throughout the world independently of race, colour or creed.
    If a proclamation went out from the Prime Minister on the wireless of this country that he was prepared to have an all-in international conference in order to declare for the internationalisation of the means of life, the raw materials throughout the world, and to co-operate in building up these civilised standards, it would appeal more to the heart of the German people than all the proclamations of fighting to the last man and the last shilling in order to down that nation.
    I warn the Government of this country that they are going along a dangerous course. It is a course that has been set not only by the bloodthirsty gunmen of the Kremlin but by many of those who are in association with them in Germany. The difference between Hitler and Stalin is not very great. Stalin and his bureaucracy have wiped out 10,000 men because these were suspected of having designs on his life or of co-operating with the Nazi leaders. Now he himself co-operates with Hitler openly. To-day they are engaged in a great world racket. I warn the Government that they are going on in this war along the path that Stalin and others want, towards a long-protracted war, a war of exhaustion in men, in means, and in life. In the end, Stalin, that evil genius of the East, will stand there prepared to use the position

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    in which there is a weakened world working class and a weakened world ruling class. He will be prepared for his final plans of Soviet tyranny. If not that, he will hope to become dominant by the weakening of those Powers throughout the world.
    Heavy civil war was proclaimed by the Communist party when it took shape in this country. It has never changed its belief, and has striven to work its way into every movement with the object of capturing it or destroying it, whether it was the Labour movement, the trade union movement, the co-operative movement, or the youth movement, or even the very churches. It has striven to get its hold in order to master and to strangle those movements. Those who did not submit had the Nazi-Stalinist tyranny imposed upon them. The technique was that they were blackmailed into submission. If they resisted because they had the power to do so, they were either clubbed into submission or clubbed to death. That is what we have against us to-day.
    I stand for peace. I oppose the war, but I see, if the war goes on in the spring, that we shall have men by the hundred thousand killed and maimed. They will be living in the trenches grubbing for food, with lice crawling over their bodies; tanks will be hurtling through the air and grinding into powder the bodies of those who are wounded. I can see bombing taking place and then an extension of the struggle by bombing behind the fronts. Then, upon the excuse that civilians have been destroyed, I see an extension of that horror, just as men are going down in ships to-day many mutilated and many dead, as has been taking place during the past week. I say to hon. Members here that, after that tremendous struggle has taken place, you will discover in the end that the world will be weakened in its moral and spiritual sense and in its ability to build a civilised system.
    Let us profit by the mistakes of the past. Let us try at the earliest possible moment to bring an end to this struggle. There are millions of human beings in Germany to-night who would be ready to respond if you could get away from your desire to crush Germany and could appeal to them on the basis of setting up a new
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    civilised order that would give to them an opportunity to build a life decently free from war and from the instruments of aggression and torture. In that order, neither Nazi Germany nor Nazi Russia would be able to place men under the heel. Men who want to be free can never be slaves; but the greatest slave is he who believes he is a free man.
    9.26 p.m.
    Mr. Isaacs: We have just listened to a very powerful and well-informed speech. The hon. Member has certainly opened our eyes to something that has been happening. He has expressed his idea of what may be the outcome of the war and his opinion in regard to our peace aims. We hope that he may be proved wrong in his feeling that the war will last for quite a long time. It is not my purpose to deal with foreign affairs. I would not endeavour to improve upon what has already been said, because I could not do so. There are matters relating to the home front which I should like to mention. We have covered a good deal of ground this afternoon, and my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) mentioned dependants' and widows' allowances. Perhaps all Members of this House can bring forward numerous examples of the tragedy and misery that have been experienced by people who have been unable to get allowances, or, having got them, have found them totally inadequate for their purpose.
    I have been examining the figures of unemployment published by the Ministry of Labour, and I have noticed the tremendous amount of unemployment in the building and allied trades. We think that if the building trades were encouraged and not discouraged as they have been, it would do good in many ways. In my constituency are blocks of houses which were condemned months ago as unfit for human habitation. Orders were given that they were to be demolished when the people living in the houses were given alternative accommodation. Then came the order that building work was to be stopped. There is no alternative accommodation for those people and they are compelled to remain in those premises, which are improperly designated houses. I have been in to see them. I saw things falling down. The plaster was falling from the walls and the houses were reeking with

    209
    dampness and water. In spite of those things, the courageous women who live in those houses are carrying on. The boards are scrubbed as white as driven snow. How they can keep up any pretence of cleanliness and decency passes the understanding, and yet they have to go on living in those houses. The landlord may be ordered to make good deficiencies and to make the houses habitable, and if he resists the orders prosecution will follow in the police court; but you may prosecute the landlord, fine him or punish him, yet that does not make the houses fit and decent for the people to live in. We suggest that the Government should encourage the building or workpeople's houses and the development and not the discouragement of housing plans. By so doing not only would the Government give these people better home conditions, but they would provide employment for the building industry and an opportunity for better conditions of life.
    Another point to which I desire to make passing reference is that of workmen's compensation. I will not venture far into that matter, because I am a Member of that Royal Commission, but I would like to say that day after day in my daily work dealing with claims for workmen's compensation and in my experience of dealing with these cases extending over 30 years, one comes across the tragedy of a man trying to live upon this inadequate weekly payment. I will say no more than express the hope that the Government will do something in the matter and endeavour to give some increase, because with prices going up a man who has been accustomed to earning £3 a week has a struggle when he has to pay anything from 15s. to 20s. a week' on rent, leaving about 10s. for his maintenance out of the maximum payment of 30s. It is not every man who, having been able to keep his head above water, is desirous or willing to go to the public assistance committee when the time comes.
    Another phase on the home front is the question of the services of our A.R.P. people. In the Borough, part of which it is my privilege to represent in this House, we have had a splendid response from the working people to the call for volunteers, but they are terribly disappointed. When they responded to the call they got on with the job, but found
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    that they had to share helmets. I do not mean that two of them have to wear the same helmet at the same time, but if five or six men turn up at the post and there are only two helmets, there is sometimes what the Cockneys call "a bull and a cow" as to who is to wear the helmet. The same applies to respirators, and although it is sometimes risky to wear a helmet that somebody else has worn, it is always risky to wear a respirator that has been worn by somebody else. The Home Secretary recently said that there was an adequate supply of respirators and helmets. There is, at any rate, one borough in London where there is not an adequate supply, and we hope this matter will receive attention. I was with the wardens in my division last Sunday, and I found there is tremendous discouragement in the fact that they feel they are being overlooked and are not being given the necessary equipment with which to carry on. Are the Government satisfied that they are really doing all they can to encourage what was the slogan in the last war—we do not hear it so much now —"Business as Usual"? I believe the President of the Board of Trade said that we should carry on as usual.
    I am a representative of an industry which is a protected industry—the printing and allied trades—which does not usually suffer very severely from unemployment, but at the present moment that industry, according to the Board of Trade figures, has no less than I2½ per cent. of its workers unemployed. But that is not the whole story, because in addition to that 12½ per cent. unemployed there are many thousands of the workers employed only two and three days a week but not registering at the exchange. On top of that roughly 7 per cent. of the insured workers in that industry are now either in A.R.P. services or in the Forces, so it is fair to say that the printing industry is turning over only one-half of the work that it was doing before. The printing industry is generally regarded as a barometer industry, and if the printing industry is doing well it is an indication that other industries are doing well. But the industry is suffering, first of all, because of the terrible confusion at the beginning of the war about the control of paper and pulp.
    Without going into details, we have heard some astonishing stories, one of

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    which was about pulp taken from a man who had it in store and which was sold back to him at an increased price. The result is that newspapers are smaller in size, and, while some people may say that is a good thing, so far as the people employed on them are concerned, it is not a good thing. There is a tremendous amount of unemployment there. The main reason is that the people in business and commerce are not advertising. There seems to be a fear that there is stagnation coming. If we can get an assurance from the Government that business people can expect ordinary facilities, confidence may return and advertising recover. People in industry do not know whether they can export or get materials to carry on their work. I put these points forward not as hostile criticism, because we realise that a country which is in a state of war cannot carry on as it would otherwise, but in the hope that they will be looked into and some remedy provided to enable us to overcome our problems.
    9.36 p.m.
    Mr. Woods: The hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern) was listened to by a much increased attendance on the Government benches, and I hope that one result will be a fuller realisation among the Government as to the area and possibilities of discontent. To me, one of the most disturbing aspects of this war is the apparent self-satisfaction which reigns on the Government Front Bench. The serenity which exists in the minds of Members of the Government by no means permeates the country, in which there is widespread, genuine, and justified dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction is not all within the ranks of the working-class people. There are in my constituency a considerable number of business houses from which I receive letters indicating that the business community are beginning to ask whether the Government have the capacity to organise the country for the efficient conduct of the war. Also, I get letters, of the type read by my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) and others, from widows who lost their husbands in the last war, whose only sons have been taken from them in this war, and who, as lone widows, are then expected to perform miracles and live on next to nothing, with the cost of living increasing every day.
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    Not only have they to exist on these pitiful amounts, but when they apply for additional relief, instead of being treated courteously and helpfully, they have to go through what one of my correspondents described as a "bitter means test," and another—a soldier of 50 years of age, describing the experience of his wife—called an "inquisition." In the latter case, the woman was asked all sorts of impertinent questions, such as, "Why did your husband enlist if he is 50?" The answer she gave was "Patriotism," and I hope they were satisfied. The fact that, after this inquisition, these people get nothing, only makes the bitterness worse. The question of old age pensions has been already covered. In addition to the people who have been mentioned in the Debate to-day, there is a considerable proportion of the population living on fixed incomes. In peace-time the standard of living of those people is commensurate with their incomes, and practically all of them are now finding themselves in increasing difficulties. Many of them, for the first time in their lives, are getting into debt; and they are utterly ashamed. It is an interesting commentary on this that the ratio of suicides in steadily increasing.
    A Government which is concerned to win this war must face the home situation. Various suggestions have been made to the Government with regard to some meagre increase, so as to make easier the lot of those who have lost their all or else have been left alone and are in constant danger. I suggest that at the present time the Government should face much more honestly than they have done, and tackle much more sincerely the problem of preventing further increases in the cost of living. Up to the present time, as far as I can gather—and my sources of information are not altogether restricted—where there has been definite Government interference ii has been just blundering and the very interference which has been contributory to an increase of the cost of living. Take the case of goods. Butter has been commandeered and sold back at a higher price to the very people from whom it has been commandeered. As the hon. Member for North Southwark (Mr. Isaacs) said, pulp has been bought at a certain figure and sold back to the same people at an enhanced price. If the Government are setting themselves to increase the cost of living in this way what do they expect

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    other people to do? These people say, "We must make hay while the sun shines. The Government are showing the way and giving a lead." They are justified by the Government example.
    We have under various schemes fixed prices, especially in agriculture. There is a fixed price for pigs of 15s. a score. There is hardly a pig sold in the markets of this country at that figure. Recently in York market, out of about 300 pigs that were sold, only two were sold at that figure. All the rest were described as store pigs and other subterfuges were adopted whereby enhanced prices up to 22s. a score were paid. Under this sort of administration the man or the woman who is a law-abiding citizen is the one who is penalised, while those who take the regulations as a joke and say, "We are going to get round this by any devious means available," break the law and "get away with it," and are looked upon as successful traders walking in the footsteps and emulating the example of the Government. The time has come when the Government can no longer take this as a complaint which the Opposition raise as a matter of duty and political tactics. The whole country is feeling the strain, and I suggest to the occupants of the Front Bench that they might try this economy. For a short time they should travel third-class. They would find the atmosphere of the third-class carriage for Cabinet Ministers at the present time a very helpful and healthy corrective. I recently travelled down from York in a third-class carriage, which was crowded. On the opposite side were a soldier's wife and three small children, and on my side of the carriage, wedged in, was another soldier's wife with one child, and I had the privilege of listening to their conversation. I notice that one of the right hon. Gentlemen opposite takes this as a joke. It was no joke to me.
    The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Captain Crookshank): Oh, no; I was only saying that I have already taken the hon. Gentleman's advice with the very purpose that he has in view.
    Mr. Woods: It has not profited the right hon. and gallant Gentleman very much, otherwise we would get some action. Let me tell him what I heard and what the feeling was as I sat in that train for five solid hours. Here was a
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    woman who had evidently to get some accommodation owing to the war-time emergency. She got furnished apartments at 25s. a week, which was really an impossible rent in view of the Government allowance, but there was nothing else available. It was not her choice. A woman and three children suddenly thrown on to the streets had to find accommodation and pay 25s. a week. She was unable to continue to pay that amount. According to her story—and I am prepared to believe her, as these women were comparing their experiences—she tramped a number of streets in an attempt to find better accommodation, and every time she said that there were three small children there was nothing doing.
    That is the experience of soldiers' wives, in addition to being concerned about their husbands. How did that woman solve her problem? In desperation, she sent a telegram to her old widowed mother, living on 10s. a week, telling her:" I am coming home and bringing the children." I felt ashamed of our country that I had to listen to such a story. That is the sort of thing that is taking place, and we are expecting in the community a fine spirit of patriotism and loyalty that will win the war. I suggest to the Government that the time has come when instead of complacency they should deal with these things. With regard to certain types of expense, money can be shovelled out, for camps and other things. They should give some thought to the mothers and children of the men serving in the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. The time has come when they should take this situation seriously and do something about it, instead of being so self-satisfied, as apparently they are.
    Motion made, and Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned," put, and agreed to. —[Sir Charles Edwards.]
    Debate to be resumed To-morrow.

ADJOURNMENT.
Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn." —[Major Sir James Edmondson.]
Adjourned accordingly at Fifteen Minutes before Ten o'Clock.

  COAL INDUSTRY (STATISTICS, WARWICKSHIRE).
  COAL INDUSTRY (STATISTICS, WARWICKSHIRE).
  BRITISH ARMY (NON- COMBATANTS' ENLISTMENT).
  BRITISH ARMY (NON- COMBATANTS' ENLISTMENT).
Preamble
The House met at half past three of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

WAR RESTRICTIONS.
LORD ADDISON LORD ADDISON rose to draw attention to the many interferences by Government Departments with the lives and business of citizens during the present war that are not necessary for the efficient prosecution of the war or for public safety; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, before referring to the Motion that is on the Paper in my name I am sure your Lordships will allow me, on behalf of my noble friends, to express our extreme regret at the absence to-day of the noble Earl, Lord Lucan. We all know how he helps us, regardless of Party, and one can truly say that he has the affection of every one of us. We are only too sorry to know how grave the accident is. We hope that, notwithstanding, he will very soon be here to help us again.
In the Motion that is on the Paper, I will ask your Lordships to observe that it is limited to matters which "are not necessary for the efficient prosecution of the war or for public safety." We all know that the war must of necessity cause widespread interference with the lives of all citizens, and I do not suppose that there is one of us here but whose home life and life in many other ways has been profoundly overturned by the war. Well, we accept that. We know also that the war must of necessity interfere with many departments of trade and industry, and I think all our citizens are willing to endure this gladly for the cause in which we are all unitedly embarked. I would like to add that I will endeavour to avoid saying anything, notwithstanding the critical form of my Motion, which will provide pabulum for the German broadcaster, who, I understand, makes use of our debates in various ways; although I do not expect that anything which any of us will say would interfere with his ingenuity of invention if he were so disposed. But the fact that the war
28
must of necessity interfere with the affairs of all business men and with the lives of all our citizens makes it the more necessary that the regulations and ordinances which accompany our war effort should have been thought out carefully beforehand and should be applied with discretion. It is because I feel that in many respects these essential safeguards—even the safeguard of what I might call ordinary common sense—have been lacking in some directions that I have put this Motion on the Paper.
I propose to refer to four different aspects of this subject—matters relating to the black-out, matters relating to the requisitioning of schools, hotels and other premises, and matters relating to what I might call the compulsory eclipse of business in some directions, and to certain of the Defence of the Realm Regulations. It did not need the warning of the Prime Minister at the Guildhall to induce me to refrain from blaming civil servants. It is quite unfair to blame them at any time, because they are not able to answer for themselves. It is the Ministers who are responsible, and whose actions we shall call in question. I can imagine that the civil servant who was inspired by the Minister who drafted the Regulation about the curfew, which I shall read later on, might well feel it his business to administer orders in such a way that if the people did not like it, well then, they must just lump it. That appears to be the spirit of that Regulation to which I shall refer.
It is a commonplace that the successful prosecution of the war depends not only upon the heroism and skill of our fighting Forces, upon which we can all confidently rely, but also upon the staying power of the people and upon the maintenance of trade and industry to such an extent that we shall be able to pay for the war. It is from these two points of view that I want to examine the case before us. The other day, I dare say in common with many of your Lordships, I had sent to me a copy of that entertaining little paper called Blighty, and there was a very striking cartoon in it. It pictured an A.R.P. warden sheltering more or less in the rain under the supports of a board upon which there was a placard, well-known to him and to all of us, to the effect that "Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution, will bring us victory"; and in the

29
cartoon the A.R.P. warden, getting what shelter he could from the slanting rain, and shivering in his coat, was made to observe: "I should like to meet the bloke wot wrote this poster." Well, it was a very significant cartoon.
I am sure we all have had more or less intimate experience of what this black-out means. It affects us all in our homes. We black out our windows every night before it becomes dark, I am sure with diligence, but it is a business getting back home, as we all know. I was talking to a workman the other day, and he said that he left work at seven o'clock. He told me where he lived, and said that in the ordinary way he got home at a quarter to eight but now, with rather more than a mile to find his way through the darkened streets, he gets home at half past eight. This black-out, as we know, has had very far-reaching effects on all sorts of businesses. It has caused widespread unemployment. The other night as I was thinking about this speech and groping my way along the street, a very dark street, and hoping that I should avoid a lamp post, a sentence from Byron's ode to "Darkness" came into my mind, in which he said:
"Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes, and their mountain torch."
I confess that that night I should have been glad even of that sort of torch to show me where the road was.
We are all willing to endure it—all the people are willing to endure it—so long as we are satisfied that it is administered sensibly and it is necessary. I feel sure that those who precipitated the black-out upon us—doubtless for good reasons from the point of view of preventing air raids—had not made any previous examination of the operation of the system, for example, in respect of deaths on the roads. I find that in September, 1939, there were more than twice as many people killed on the roads as in the corresponding month of the previous year. We have already lost more than a thousand people in excess of the number of those who were killed on the roads last year. I cannot but think that in this age of electricity and of the control of lighting, if sufficient forethought had been given to the matter, it would have been possible to illuminate a pile of sandbags in such a way as not to help
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aircraft overhead. It should have been possible, without helping the enemy, to show us a lamp-post or a kerbstone so that an ordinary citizen, anxiously listening in the dark, might be able to cross the road with reasonable safety. That is not the case at present, and that is why so many of our fellow citizens have been killed. It is due to lack of forethought, lack of experiment.
I wish I saw a more ready disposition than there is at present to improve upon it. The dreadful accident in Westminster Hall last night, which has deprived us of the services of Lord Lucan, surely brings home to us the proportions of the case. We can darken the windows. They come round darkening these windows long before it is dark. We can darken the windows of Westminster Hall. It is absurd to suggest that it is necessary to make Westminster Hall a dangerous sepulchre after five o'clock at night. I just do not believe it. It is because nobody has taken the trouble to make it otherwise. That is why I have no compunction at all in bringing this subject before your Lordships. A railway station in these days is the height of "dismality"—they are dreadful places. It is my business, as one who lives in the country, to have to go to them when I go home. There, again, one feels there has been the same kind of lack of fore-thought and the same kind of drive from the head. It is a dangerous business to get into, and a still more dangerous business sometimes to get out of, a train. One feels somehow that there has been a spirit abroad in the administration of this provision which has been too thoughtless of the convenience and safety of the people. I cannot but feel—good as their reputation is as a rule—that that spirit has filtered down to the railways in many respects.
I was interested some time ago, as an illustration of what I may call the careless disposition of which I am complaining, to find how the public had responded to the issue of cheap day tickets. These are the facts with regard to one particular station. After a considerable outcry on the part of people who wanted to go to town in the middle of the day for shopping and other reasons, it was decided to issue cheap day tickets after ten o'clock. There had been a train at ten minutes past ten, but that was taken off. The first train therefore is twenty-five

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minutes past eleven. The housewife, going to town under this dispensation, gets a cheap ticket at 3s. 7d. instead of 5s.; but having done the household shopping she gets to the station at, say, half-past five to go home in time to prepare her husband's supper, and is asked for 1s. 5d. extra at the barrier. In other words, the only condition on which the ticket can be used is that the housewife should be prepared to wander around the darkened streets long after the shops are shut and to go home at seven o'clock. It is quite absurd to administer this provision in this spirit.
Now I come to something which has had a grave effect on many industries—namely, the method of requisitioning hotels and schools. Let me say I do not wish to cast blame upon the First Commissioner of Works. I have no doubt he was doing what he was told to do, and it is those who told him who really are responsible for what has taken place. It is very easy to be wise after the event, we know, and I do not want to be told that one is taking advantage of talking after the event. It was no doubt necessary to make provision for the requisitioning of premises in the event of severe air raids and for other reasons, to be used when necessary. How extensive that ought to have been I cannot say, not having the facts before me. But at the same time the method and extent of this requisitioning have brought grievous hardships on a large number of prosperous hotels and other institutions. I have here a selection of cases culled from The Times of different dates, wherein we are told that the goods and chattels of thousands of people were seized at a few hours notice. Hotels have been put to enormous cost in removing and storing furniture and equipment; bedding, cutlery, and the like have been confiscated; and even invalids have been bustled out at a few hours notice to do the best they could.
That appears to have happened in quite a considerable number of prosperous towns. Their names have been mentioned in the papers, so I could read them if need be, but here is one which has been publicly mentioned in detail by Mr. Stuart Townend, Secretary of the Hotels and Restaurants Association—the town of Harrogate. Apparently, twenty-four hotels were requisitioned, and one of
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them, a very large one of which I have particulars, the Majestic Hotel, was emptied and 190 of the hotel staff were abruptly sent home. The place was cleared out and filled with desks, filing cabinets, and scores of office chairs, and some excellent cork lino was spread over the whole place nine weeks since; and nobody has ever gone into it. The same applies to several other places. This system was thought about, according to the statement in the Press, as far back as 1936.
I commend the Government for their foresight in thinking about it as far back as 1936, but if they have been thinking about it since 1936 surely it is reasonable that they should have consulted the Hotel Proprietors Association, and should have made provision for doing the thing sensibly, and giving a notice saying: "We may require your place at forty-eight hours notice, and if so, will you make such-and-such preparations beforehand?" Had this been done no doubt various and numerous adjustments could have been made by the hotel proprietors and their association, instead of which, although it has been discussed and thought about since 1936, they were suddenly descended upon and made to clear out in the way I have described at twelve and twenty-four hours notice. The same applies to a number of schools. I think the recent protest of Lord Lee of Fareham about what happened at Cheltenham is a fair sample of the kind of complaint which is justifiably made. That is all I shall say on that.
I will now turn to another point relating to the dispersal of businesses. I will cut out most of what I was proposing to say on this because I understand other noble Lords are going to speak about the effect of the numerous and bewildering Controls that have been established, and the obstacles that have been interposed in the way of business. We discussed this to some extent the other day in this House, and I will refrain from saying any more about it now except that I think it is impossible to imagine a scheme of control of materials more difficult for a trader to work than that established by the Ministry of Supply. It is scattered all over the country. Your right hand does not know what your left hand is doing. The man who is dealing with aluminium in one place does not know what the man who is dealing with brass

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somewhere else is doing, and so it is all over the country. There is not what there ought to be, a Central Control for Supplies, to which traders and industrialists could apply, and from which they could be informed reasonably quickly whether they could have their materials and how much and when. That is perfectly practicable, because we did it in the last war. If such a Central Control were established I do not think the difficulty would be greater than the occasion necessitates, but, as it is, applications have to go all over the country for all kinds of ingredients each one of which may be necessary for an efficient manufacture.
I said that this system is needlessly complicated and harassing to industry, and an obstacle to the provisions of those productions which the Chancellor of the Exchequer very rightly says are necessary for the maintenance of our economic power. Other noble Lords will say something about that aspect, but I must refer in a little detail to another aspect of the operations of the Ministry of Supply. I am now speaking of the disregard, or failure to make use, of industrial capacity. I have here an interview in the Sunday Times of last Sunday with the Minister of Supply. It is headed "Spending £2,000,000 a day." If spending were the same as obtaining supplies perhaps there would be a more justifiable heading, but I want to call attention to three sentences which, being in inverted commas, I take it the noble Earl's colleague is responsible for. Let me read them:
"One of my officers will tell me Minister, we need more x-pounder shells,' and he puts the figures before me—actual production, so many shells: estimated requirements, so many; deficiency, so many. We then get down immediately to the essential questions—where the shells can be manufactured, whether the firm to which the contract is to be given will buy the machinery, or whether the Department must supply it, if a new building is necessary and what sites are available, if machine-tools must be bought or if these can be assembled from our arsenals—to the last detail."
And the final sentence is:
"In a remarkably short time we are able to go to the Treasury with a complete scheme for a factory to make so many x-pounder shells, to be built on a site available in Blankshire, with every item of the cost set out."
That is what I suppose the Minister said,
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as it is in inverted commas. I confess I cannot remember in three short sentences ever to have found a greater amount of coagulated nonsence. That is the only way it can be described. As if the establishment of a factory somewhere in Blankshire was the point. We all know that the shell requires cartridge cases and fuses and a great array of material for filling—a vast programme of explosive materials and the filling and assembly of them is involved. That is entirely apart from this fairy factory, which in any case will not be turning anything out for from twelve to fifteen months at the best.
What do we find coincident with this? We find this, if noble Lords will bear with me for two or three minutes. Whilst this visionary factory is being projected the fact is that there is a great mass of industrial capacity not being used, that no official attempt is being made to use it, and that this scheme effectually has stopped its use. Let me give your Lordships one or two illustrations from quite recent records. This is a record reported in the Daily Telegraph of October 30, from a review by its industrial correspondent of the workshops of the London area. He says:
"I have just completed [a tour] of the small workshops and foundries in London in which manufacturers, capable of dealing with Government orders, are being overlooked and their machinery left idle. … Twenty-five years ago their lathes and benches were mobilised for the manufacture of the requirements of the lighting Services, but to-day few of them are doing Government work. … I came across not one single instance of an official of the Ministry having visited the premises to see what they were capable of."
That is a grievous omission, I suggest. The writer goes on:
"I did speak to the principals of a number of concerns who had, of their own accord, informed the Ministry of the facilities they could offer and whose letters have so far been ignored or, after long delay, acknowledged on a printed card…"
Some of us have raised this question before. The noble and gallant Lord opposite did his best to reply to me on this subject some little time ago, but since he did his best to defend the Ministry, I have had some later information, on the eighth of the present month. This relates to factories in London, the Home Counties and the Midlands:
"Some firms have failed completely to get rearmament orders … At one engineering works with a capacity of 3,000 tons of gravity die castings a year I found eight out

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of ten furnaces idle. The factory is producing one per cent. of its possible output. … Telegrams to the War Office and Air Ministry undertaking to produce up to ten tons of die castings per week…have not been acknowledged.… Plant which could be producing tons of munitions a week is lying idle, skilled labour is gradually having to be dismissed from our employ, and an organisation is being allowed to potter along to extinction at a fraction of its potential productive power. …"
I do not think those statements are in any way exaggerated. All the inquiries one has made and all the reports one has received show that this kind of thing is prevalent all over the country.
In a report only ten days ago, we got one of the explanations:
"Appeals have been made in vain to numerous Government Departments for the opportunity to adapt our craftsmen and workshops to work of national importance. He feels that the authorities…"
I am quoting a big employer—
"have come to the conclusion that it is better to build new works and to train new men than to utilise the space and labour which is available up and down the country."
That tallies exactly with the Minister's visionary factories and with his words about shells which I have already reported to your Lordships. And there is this other vice attaching to the present system—this is a good example of many others, from the Daily Telegraph of the 16th of the present month—
"it has been left to the small concerns to worry every available Government Department for such crumbs as the Ministry of Supply have left over from the feast so lavishly provided for the big manufacturers."
In other words, the Ministry have failed to make provision for the mobilisation of the productive capacity of hundreds of workshops and, judging by the statement of the Minister which was given such prominence in the Sunday Times, it is their policy to go on ignoring them. The noble Earl shakes his head; but if that is not their policy why do they adopt these methods? At present contracts appear to be given out in bulk or to be reserved for these ideal factories, and the smaller firms have to pick up what subcontracting they can from the larger groups.
I suggest to your Lordships that that is essentially wrong. You will not mobilise the engineering resources of this country in that way. However amiable
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and efficient may be the numerous Rear-Admirals and retired Majors whose life history was described to us the other day by the noble and gallant Earl opposite in picturesque language, you cannot possibly bring together the engineering resources of these hundreds of unused workshops in that way. It can only be done by having an organisation in the districts which will mobilise their resources through an agency they understand and know and can work with, and by providing them with the necessary supplies of drawings, specifications, and all the rest of it. The Minister said in a speech in the House of Commons that he was hoping that kind of thing would end. Well, I trust the noble Marquess who is going to reply will be able to assure us that we have got beyond the region of hope and that something is being realised. The description that I have given to your Lordships is strictly accurate. It is an understatement of the case, by far an understatement. The methods which are being adopted by the Minister are unsuitable in themselves and therefore inadequate in their results.
I am going to trouble your Lordships with one other illustration only of the kind of thing to which I am drawing attention and that is one of the Defence of the Realm Regulations. When these Regulations were announced they were—shall I say, referred back? They were referred to a Committee because of criticisms in another place of some of the Regulations which seemed to endanger the liberty of the subject and to place powers in the hands of the Executive which might be administered, perhaps unwittingly, to the hardship of the citizen. They have been drastically revised and the revision was published yesterday, but the Regulation to which I am going to refer has not been revised. It is No. 37 and I am quoting it as an illustration of the same temper as we have seen in the black-out, as we have seen in the requisitioning of hotels, as we have seen in the ignoring of these numerous small workshops. It shows, I was going to say a Hitlerian disposition, but that might be an objectionable adjective: I will say autocratic. This is the Regulation:
"The Secretary of State may, as respects any area in the United Kingdom, by order direct that, subject to any exemptions for which provision may be made by the order, no person in that area shall, between such hours as may be specified in the order, be

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out of doors except under the authority of a written permit granted by such authority or person as may be specified in the order."
There is no qualification, no question of an emergency, simply a blank cheque to the Secretary of State.
I hope that when the time comes we shall be able to frame a Motion and get some support in objecting to such a Regulation. Whether we shall do so effectively is another matter. I have never read a speech defending a Regulation which was more lukewarm in character than the speech of the Home Secretary in another place. It was said that there was such a Regulation in the last war. Well I did not know it and I am ashamed if there was one. It was said to be of a somewhat similar kind. Anyhow, thank goodness we had officers of State who were sufficiently sensible never to use it. Now that this proposal has been discovered I suggest to your Lordships that we ought to refuse to entertain it. The only possible emergencies which the Secretary of State contemplated in another place would make such a Regulation necessary were that there might be disturbances of a very extensive kind in a town, and that to safeguard public safety and order it might be necessary to issue a Curfew Order, or that there might be extensive bombing and in order to give the fire-fighting services and other services a chance a Curfew Order might have to be imposed. Well, in regard to the last suggestion, I think that however curious citizens may be to watch an enemy aeroplane, they will be just as anxious not to be blown to bits as the Secretary of State himself. They will take what cover they can.
So far as the second emergency is concerned, it is purely visionary. But with regard to the first, that there might be a likelihood of disturbance, there are plenty of powers in the law as it is. But even apart from that, I suggest that if a Regulation of this kind could be justified in certain circumstances, the Regulation should contain a statement of the conditions upon which it should be issued. That is to say, that the Secretary of State may, with respect to any area in the United Kingdom where so-and-so is likely to occur or has occurred, make such-and-such an order. You could state your conditions which would limit the circumstances in which the order could be issued. That, we will say, might be a justifiable
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order. The conditions could be so stated—I know they could be so stated—as to make it an order to which reasonable objection could not be taken. But as this order stands, it is a complete blank cheque.
There are no conditions. If you went out to post a letter you would be in danger of being hauled up. If a workman went and had a little refreshment with a neighbour in an adjoining "pub" he would commit an offence. That is true unless in the order all these things were excepted. Of course I shall be told—I am sure the noble Marquess will tell me—that we have most reasonable Ministers and that they will not do these foolish things. I have no doubt he will say that. I have no doubt that Sir John Anderson will not do foolish things; I can trust him. But that is no reason why the conditions under which this very drastic order should be issued should fail to be stated in the order. I confess I have not too much confidence in the discretion of people who can leave our place dark and dangerous at night, and who can propose orders of this kind without any qualification. Quite frankly, as an ordinary citizen, I am disposed to be extraordinarily friendly to every Minister, but I still think it is dangerous and not right that that power should be placed in anybody's hands. The conditions should be stated, and I hope your Lordships will agree that they should be stated, to this drastic curtailment which is threatened to the ordinary and reasonable liberties and movements of inoffensive citizens.
I suggest that we need all our resources at this critical time, and our resources consist not only of our trading and manufacturing capacity and skill, but also of the good will, co-operation and endurance of the mass of the people. It is necessary that the Government Departments concerned should bear in mind, more acutely than they appear to be bearing in mind at present, the necessity of obtaining and retaining the support and the good will of the ordinary citizen. They should refrain from going out of their way to interfere with the incentives to his cheerfulness so far as they safely can, and frame their methods to mobilise our industrial and trade resources and refrain from putting artificial barriers in their way. It is on this account, with these

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four groups of illustrations to support it, that I have brought this Motion before your Lordships. Many others could be brought forward, but I hope I have said enough to suffice for me to move the Motion that is in my name.
4.15 p.m.
LORD REA: My Lords, I hope I may be allowed to associate my friends and myself with the expression of regret and sympathy which was uttered by my noble friend Lord Addison in regard to the most unhappy accident which has befallen one whom I think we all like to call our friend, Lord Lucan. As a very junior member of this House and as one not belonging to his Party, I should nevertheless like to pay a tribute to the universal kindness which he shows to all the younger members of this House and which has so much endeared him to us. We are looking forward with great anxiety to news of his satisfactory progress, and we hope that it may be no very long time before we see him among us once more.
In supporting this Motion, I want to make it clear that we have no desire to attack or to embarrass the Government in the efforts they are making, and that we are only anxious to help them in those efforts. But even criticism can be helpful. Some of us who had experience in the last war remember how it was only public pressure which enabled willing Ministers to get rid, not only of many of the Regulations under D.O.R.A., but also of unreasonable restrictions and regulations which had outlived their usefulness. This Motion covers a very wide ground and I do not propose to traverse the whole of it, but with your Lordships' permission I should like just in a few minutes to say something about the interference which, perhaps necessarily but to some extent unfortunately, has been placed upon the trading community in this country.
The official mind, of course properly and indeed necessarily, works by means of orders and regulations, and I should like to begin by expressing our deep sense of obligation to the great body of civil servants who before the outbreak of war had worked out in such admirable detail the many difficulties that might arise and the methods of dealing with them. But in war it is always the unexpected that
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happens. Many of the contingencies foreseen have not in fact arisen, and this is a situation with which the civil servant is not quite so well able to cope. It requires more courage and initiative in a Government servant to take off one regulation than to put on ten, especially if in so doing there is even a slight element of risk. That is the real reason why Government control is so often slower and less efficient than commercial enterprise, where risk is a factor always to be taken into account. If this is so it is essential, if we are to maintain the foreign trade which is vital to our success, that we should without delay relax and if possible abolish all Controls which cannot be completely justified in the different circumstances of to-day.
There can be no question that there is a considerable feeling of uneasiness regarding the present position of our trade, which does not seem to be recovering as we had hoped from the shock of war—not as successfully as it did in 1914. I will not weary your Lordships with figures, but in the second month unemployment has actually increased, although in September, 1914, it went down. While, of course, imports have necessarily largely increased, exports have only gone up 6⅔ per cent. as against 24 per cent. in the corresponding period of 1914. This, of course, I agree is very largely due to to the more rapid imposition of a rigid system of Controls, many of which were and still are necessary. But we want to be assured that interference with business is kept down to the essential minimum, and it would increase public confidence if we could know just where we stand. I should like to ask if there is any reason why we should not be told just how many Controls there are and what are the names of the Controllers; and, if it would not be asking too great labour from the Departments, I think many of us would like to know the numbers of the staffs involved in these Controls. Public opinion secured the abandonment of the Fish Control and has gone very far towards getting rid of the Coal Control, but apart from these there are many Controls which could be worked with far less friction and delay at the present time.
I do not wish to weary your Lordships with many details, though I have been furnished with particulars of delay and

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obstruction in trade after trade. For example, to take something of not very great importance I wonder why it should be necessary to prohibit the importation into this country of Swiss watches, which have already been paid for and which can have no adverse effect on our foreign exchange, but would give employment to people in a perfectly legitimate business in this country. Then I am troubled, too, as to why the importation of a very small number of American books should be prohibited to a firm which imports a few books from America but which exports a very large number of English books to America and, which is much more important, gives occupation and fees to English writers to write for America. Because the importation of these few books from America has been made impossible, the overheads become so heavy that the firm is threatening to shut down business, with consequent loss of employment and of very necessary dollar exchange which would otherwise be earned by a large number of English writers. In both these cases we are throwing away these foreign credits which we badly need.
But there is one other foreign trade which really does give me very great concern indeed—I mean the very large and most important trade in both directions with our Ally, France. I can best summarise the position by quoting the very important letter published in the Press from the highest authorities to whom we could go, the Presidents of the Anglo-French Chamber of Commerce in Paris and of the French Chamber of Commerce in London. They wrote to The Times to say that
"Government Departments on both sides of the Channel have elaborated Regulations which impose serious restrictions on Franco-British trade, and our respective chambers of commerce are daily receiving complaints as to their severity. Indeed, we know that a good deal of bad feeling has been engendered, and this is harmful to unity and friendship as between Allies … We are being charitable in assuming that those responsible for drafting these Regulations had no opportunity of consulting interests on the opposite side of the Channel otherwise they would appear to be all the less intelligible."
Surely something ought to be done, and done at once, to put an end to a situation between us and our principal Ally such as is thus described by really responsible parties.
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Let me give just one more example of the way in which the rigidity of the official mind hampers us. I have been told of a considerable consignment of hams shipped before the war for re-export from this country; they could not be forwarded to their original destination owing to the war, and were held in a British port, but they could not be landed for consumption here because the method of curing failed in a quite minute degree to conform to our Regulations, which had only recently been put into force. Surely that is an example, when we are hearing of the shortage at least of bacon if not of ham, of short-sightedness in the official mind. Similar stories are told of difficulties in the textile and the timber trades, in machinery and electrical appliances—indeed, all through both our import as well as our export trade—and the complaint is so widespread as to be almost universal, of delays ruinous not alone in losing orders but even in the sacrifice of perishable goods.
In the early days compulsion and delay were inevitable, but I am really concerned to find some general remedy which can be applied to these troubles as a whole, and particularly one which will regain the confidence of the commercial classes, which has been so rudely shaken that they are hesitating to undertake fresh commitments. War must in any case make their business more hazardous, but they need to be encouraged rather than discouraged, and that, even if it be at the expense of some of our war effort, for if they cannot carry on we must lose the war; and indeed that is the only way in which we can lose it. It is the confidence of the business world both in itself and in the Government that I am anxious about, and I ought perhaps to mention one more reason for mistrust. It is well known that, in a great many trades, the Control, amounting to dictatorial power, is vested in the leading, that is to say, the largest operators, and there is grave suspicion, in some cases almost the certainty, that this Control is being exercised in the interests of the producers and of the big concerns. Consumers and small dealers believe not only that they are not getting a fair deal to-day, but that later they may be squeezed out altogether. These are not mere individual grievances incidental to a state of war; they are genuine obstacles to victory which have somehow got to be overcome.

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I began by saying we recognise that the Government have been doing all they can, but now that the first confusion is over they have got to do more. When the Board of Trade "decides to discuss with major exporting industries with a view to facilitating their operations" it merely shows its complete incapacity for the job. The merchants, not the industries, are the people who export, and the Board of Trade is really a quite unsuitable body to deal with these problems. So, too, when it takes a month to get a reply from the Ministry of Supply, business becomes impossible, as it does when a Government Department rules that "prices quoted are subject to their being adjusted to the prices ruling on the date of delivery." How is anybody to make a contract for delivery of stuff abroad, which we want to sell to neutral countries, with conditions like that imposed by the Government? The trouble is that the existing Departments are not only overworked but they are quite unsuited for this work, and nothing but a really drastic remedy will serve.
The Board of Trade, as I have said, is no use for this purpose, for its tradition is one almost wholly of restriction, and it is manned by officials, to whose capacity and public spirit I have already paid tribute, but who are quite unsuited to take the broad and sympathetic view which is required to command the confidence of the business world. I know we have a Department of Overseas Trade, the doubtful and not quite recognised offspring of what I believe is called a liaison between the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade, but its powers are very small and it can deal with only a section of the trade. Other Departments interfere, and no doubt necessarily, with trade, but there is no authority on the other side to see, not fair play, for that perhaps is a minor matter to-day, but that the balance of advantage is kept in view, and that the national interest is not sacrificed to the Departmental.
The only remedy which will command public confidence is to set up a special body to deal with these problems with knowledge and sympathy, and with a predisposition to decontrol rather than to control. A Special Committee has been suggested, but I would submit that something much more drastic is required. In
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the last war there was no hesitation in setting up new ad hoc Ministries to deal with fresh problems as they arose. What I should wish to see is a real Ministry of Commerce, with at its head a Minister of sufficient standing to hold his own with the other Departments and with access, in case of real need, to the War Cabinet for decision. Such a Ministry, staffed, like those in the last war, largely by business men, and under the guidance of a really eminent figure in the commercial world—I would suggest somebody of the standing of, say, Lord Stamp, Lord Perry or Sir John Reith, a great outstanding figure in the commercial world—would command universal confidence and occupy a totally different position from the Board of Trade or the Department of Overseas Trade. It would have as its first duty the removal of all unnecessary shackles on trade, and then its active encouragement by negotiation on business rather than official lines; for example, it could not only deal with the complaints of the British and French Chambers of Commerce, but it might very well arrange, as we did in the last war, for the dropping by France of all her protective tariffs on food, and in return we might very well abandon all the vexatious pre-war quotas which are still in existence.
Instead of regarding every complaint as a tiresome interference with its own urgent job, which is the natural, and indeed the proper, attitude of the existing Departments, its main object would be to help the merchants and the manufacturers. Its business would be to lend a sympathetic ear not to the complaints but to the difficulties which traders would bring to it; and that sympathetic hearing would produce far better results than the somewhat perfunctory and official attention which is all the existing overworked Departments can spare. Most of the difficulties can be solved by the expenditure of a little time and good will, and the commercial community, which really does understand its own business, can often—indeed generally—suggest a solution acceptable to both sides. I am sure the business world would welcome such an organisation, and would give it its confidence, especially if it felt that in the last resort the Ministry could carry its case to an authority higher than the departmental official who to-day has the last word. I do not suppose the need for such an appeal would occur save in the rarest instances,

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but the tact that it was possible would restore that confidence the lack of which is hampering so much of our private enterprise to-day.
I would urge, too, the creation of a Ministry of Commerce for another and perhaps equally important purpose. Commerce is being dislocated, if not indeed destroyed, in a completely haphazard manner; decisions are taken, perhaps necessarily, in haste, with no appreciation of their ultimate effect; and in particular I have yet to learn that it has been made the duty of anyone or any organisation to plan ahead with especial regard to what in the last war were called "priorities." That is to say, to make sure that permits are arranged and tonnage reserved far enough ahead to ensure the due arrival of necessities such as feeding stuffs and raw materials rather than non-essentials and luxuries. An instance which I have particularly in my mind is the unforeseen shortage of certain feeding stuffs which, I am told, may bring about the premature slaughter of our valuable reserves of poultry, pigs, and even cattle. I have no doubt the Ministry of Supply is doing all this within the limits of its own requirements, but it is concerned with pig-iron, not pig food, with explosives, not with exports, and yet in the long run they are of equal importance. Indeed, now that the machine has been set to work it is probably true that it is only on the civilian side that we can be beaten. "Pourvu que les civiles tiennent" was the phrase last time, and it is just as true to-day. I am not afraid of the civilian morale, but the creation by the civilians of the wealth, and especially the foreign exchange, needed to pay for the war on its present scale is scarcely less important than the output of the Ministry of Supply.
This I know is perhaps opening up a subject rather beyond the Motion on the Paper, but it is of such importance that it might well form the subject of a special debate in your Lordships' House. The Motion before us to-day, however, is of sufficient importance in itself, and all I wish to do at this moment is to impress on the Government the need, not of abandoning the Controls, but of taking the quite simple and obvious step of setting up an authority which will lend a sympathetic ear to grievances many of which are both genuine and curable, which will regain the confidence of the commercial
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classes, and take every possible step, just as Germany is doing on her side, to ensure that our trade is restored as nearly as may be to its peace-time level.
4.34 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR: My Lords, I want to say a very few words on this Motion. I think we must all admit that control in some form or other is absolutely essential in the times through which we are passing, but the control must be efficient, it must be knowledgeable, and it must be intelligent. Those who control must know how the controlled article is produced; they must know the technicalities of production; they must know the difficulties of the producer; they must know the customs of the trade which deals with its distribution; and they must also know the principles of marketing the actual article or articles. In this connection, the present Government have been very much to the fore in producing marketing schemes, and therefore when I urge that those who control should understand the marketing, that consideration should appeal to the Government, who have done all they can to help the marketing of produce in this country.
Those who control, as I have said, must know the business, and I would refer more particularly to agricultural produce. There is no doubt that agriculture is not receiving the help it might, and as the result of unintelligent management of agricultural control, the produce is not coming forward as it otherwise would, because those who control do not understand agriculture. I presume nobody would dispute the fact that it is very desirable that the home production of food should be as great as it possibly can be, more especially in view of the German Government's treatment of ships at sea, in consequence of which we are more dependent upon our own home produce. My argument of course applies not only to agriculture but to all home production. Every trade has its own organisation. The producers, the wholesalers and the retailers are generally included in that organisation, and it seems to me that the easiest way to control the production of an article so that it shall reach everybody who wants it, is for the Government to ask the organisation which knows all about the production of that particular article to undertake the management

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on their behalf, instead of setting up a whole lot of Controllers who know nothing whatever about the actual article under consideration.
The announcement yesterday in another place that certain articles of food are to be rationed as from January 8 is a very good case in point. Take butter. Not long ago certain district milk marketing boards were informed that they were not to make any more butter. It sounds rather a strange statement, but if the people who get the milk from the milk producer are not allowed to make butter obviously the butter will not be forthcoming, and obviously the Ministry of Food has a very good argument to the effect, "There is no butter, therefore we must ration it." If, by order, you take away from the people who produce the butter the authority to make that butter, then obviously the butter will not be there.
I know what I am talking about because it actually happened to myself. I am the fortunate possessor of a house, the greater portion of which I have given up for the accommodation of expectant mothers from Glasgow. Expectant mothers and other mothers and babies require milk, and the mothers are better off with butter on these occasions than with margarine. A tenant of mine offered to supply the butter for the hospital. Suddenly he informed me he would not be able to go on bringing his butter because the milk marketing board, from whom he got it, were not allowed to produce the butter. He was in the habit of taking milk in to the milk marketing board—the balance, after supplying the hospital—and he brought back the butter. When that ceased, the matron of the hospital came to me and said: "Mr. So-and-so is unable any longer to supply us with butter. Can you do so?" I said: "I will do my best, but if you have a great many more mothers coming in suddenly, I shall not be able to do it." I do not know whether this is really the reason for the rationing of butter, but, if it is, I do not think it is a very good way to encourage home producers to do the very best they can to produce as much as they can for the population of this country.
I hope the Government will be able to answer this question, although I shall not be able to be here to hear the answer as I have to catch a train for Scotland.
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I hope the Government will be able to give some reason why organisations which are composed of producers who understand their job should not be entrusted by the Government with the management of the control which the Government desires. In other words, let the Government say to the organisations concerned: "We want you to do this, that, and the other. Will you undertake it for us?" I am sure, from my knowledge of two organisations with which I am connected, they would be only too willing to do anything they can to help the Government. May I also suggest that the management of an article is very much cheaper if it is undertaken by those who understand it rather than by those who know nothing about it at all? We were reminded the other day by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that we are spending the appalling sum of £6,000,000 per day. I cannot help thinking that some of this control is an extremely expensive item in this £6,000,000. I am not saying the Government should not control, but I am asking them to use people who actually know the job to carry out the control on their behalf. In the long run the producers, the wholesalers, and the retailers would do the job far better and far more cheaply for the Government, for the country, and therefore for the taxpayer. Not only that, but they would all be able to feel they were doing their bit in the great national emergency.
4.45 p.m.
LORD BROCKET: My Lords, first of all, if I may be allowed, I should like to join in the expression of sympathy by the noble Lords opposite with the noble Earl, Lord Lucan, on his accident. I am sure we all wish him a speedy and safe recovery. While I was listening to Lord Addison I could not help being struck by the wonderfully efficacious arguments he used against what I consider are the first experiments in State Socialism in this country. We are very pleased indeed that we should have such good arguments put forward by somebody belonging to a Party which has sometimes in the past advocated such policies, although I am sure it will not do so in the future. If I may detain your Lordships for a few moments, it is rather an interesting fact that the hotelkeepers at Harrogate first heard that their hotels were going to be commandeered on the Berlin wireless. I

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believe very great inconvenience was caused not only to these hotels, but to the hotels all over the country. Now I read in the papers that hutments are going to be built, but it might be better, as the inconvenience has already been caused, if some of the hotels were occupied if air raids start in this country. Another peculiar instance is that of a big girls' school which was moved to another house to make way, perhaps, for some Government Department. I cannot understand why the Government Department should not have gone to the second house rather than to the first, and thus left the girls' school where it was.
The noble Marquess, Lord Aberdeen, has mentioned his experience in the matter of expectant mothers. I am not going to relate my own experiences except to say that several of the people in my house wanted wool for knitting. They sent to the shop in the village to get wool and were told there was such a shortage of wool in the country that they could not have any. At that same time I received a letter from my factor in Scotland telling me that the wool clip from 4,000 sheep in Scotland which I have been keeping was not allowed to be sold by the Wool Controller. I believe that in this respect I am not the only owner of wool who is not allowed to sell it.
Our export trade is probably the most important part of our trade which is suffering at present from control. I met a man the other day who is the export agent of a big firm of motor car manufacturers in this country. He went to Holland to try and sell cars, but found that these English cars in Holland were so difficult to sell, owing to the controls which had to be gone through, that it was impossible for him to promise delivery to the Dutch. At the same time he met the export agent of the same firm from Germany. He was also visiting Holland, and he told him he was doing wonderful business selling this same variety of car manufactured in Germany to Holland at a time when cars manufactured in this country could not be sold there.
The same thing is happening with aeroplanes A great aeroplane manufacturer told me the other day that he could, if it were possible, export aeroplanes to other countries and get in foreign currency to help us to pay for
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this war. He said at the same time that Germany was exporting many aeroplanes to other European countries and getting in by their export trade currencies to help to pay for the war. Now we have at the present time a very large number of unemployed—between 1,400,000 and 1,500,000—and I feel sure that the Government will devote their energies to try and give work to these unemployed, which may take time, rather than buy large quantities of, say, armaments and other materials from foreign countries, which would add to the difficulty of paying for the war.
The noble Lord, Lord Addison, mentioned the question of personal liberty. I feel that your Lordships will excuse me if I read a letter which my agent received. It arose out of a shoot which took place on some land belonging to me, and at this partridge drive the head keeper sounded his whistle. This letter is headed "Air Raid Precautions: Hunting." Of course we have heard that experts must look after control, but the clerk of this rural council apparently does not know the difference between partridge driving and hunting. The letter says:
"At a recent hunt held on hunting ground leased by Lord Brocket the blowing of whistles by the heaters caused the local inhabitants to consider that an air raid was in progress. I should be obliged if you would have it brought to the notice of the proper quarters—I presume the head keeper—that in future this whistling be reduced to the minimum."
4.52 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA): My Lords, I personally would like to associate myself, as well as all those who sit behind me on this Bench, with the very kind words in which Lord Addison referred to the accident to Lord Lucan. I can speak with special sincerity on this matter, because I came into this House as a very young member, and Lord Lucan took me under his wing. If your Lordships do not like the product I can assure you it is not his fault or the lack of consideration and of care and thoughtfulness by him on every occasion. I would like to join with all those behind me in wishing the noble Earl a very speedy recovery.
When I was asked by my noble friend who sits behind me to reply on occasions

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for the Home Office I knew that the briefs I would receive would very seldom have very much to do with the Home Office, and that they would consist of a number of briefs of varying lengths from a great number of other Departments. But I have never had so many briefs of such length or of such complexity as have poured in to me since this Motion was first placed on the Paper. No doubt that has been caused by the fact, as has already been noticed by my noble friend Lord Brocket, that this Motion apparently is so geographically contradictory considering the place where the noble Lord sits who put it on the Paper; but when my noble friend has spent a little longer time in this House he will know that much of our wisdom comes from poachers who have turned gamekeepers.
I know that Lord Addison speaks with unrivalled authority in this House as to Government control and how it should best be exercised. He has of course safeguarded himself very carefully. The words of the Motion are:
"To draw attention to the many interferences by Government Departments with the lives and business of citizens during the present war that are not necessary for the efficient prosecution of the war or for public safety."
It is perfectly obvious, and indeed the noble Lord admitted it, that those words beg the whole question. There is not a single person in this House who desires any Regulation imposed on the lives of citizens during the present time that will not help the successful prosecution of the war, and therefore it all comes down in the long run to what Regulations are necessary for the safeguarding of this country and for the successful continuance of hostilities. He would be a bold man, I think, who would take it upon himself individually to declare upon these very issues which have been raised of control of supplies, of exports and imports, of lighting in our great cities and the rest, whatever may be the minor deficiencies in the organizations taken as a whole, that they are not merely necessary but essential if this war is to be carried through to a victorious conclusion as quickly as possible.
I could not help feeling, as I was listening to the speeches, that, considering that the Government have taken upon themselves responsibilities which hitherto they
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had not done, and have had to interfere in the private lives of citizens, it is very remarkable that practically every complaint was of an individual character; that it was one particular thing that had gone wrong; that it was a whistle that had been blown at a partridge shoot, and a number of other things of that kind. But, taken as a whole, the grievances are small, whereas the powers that the Government have taken have been very large, and no one would be more pleased than I to feel assured that at the conclusion of the war all those powers would automatically disappear. At any rate nothing has emerged in the course of this debate, I suggest, that really shows that the Government have not exercised those powers with the greatest discrimination, and have not used the greatest forethought in taking them.
Let me take the point about the blackout mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Addison. He said that had not been thought out, and the only argument he produced for that, as far as I could see, was that the deaths on the road have increased——
LORD ADDISON: Doubled.
THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA:—have very largely increased; and that on some occasions some of the sandbags were not clearly visible to pedestrians. When you consider the immensity of the issues involved in the black-out, the possibility of the destruction not merely of the capital city of this country but of the destruction of the whole industrial network of this country; when you consider the thing that the black-out was designed to prevent, are you really going to suggest, whatever modifications might be necessary or possible in it, that it was not thought out merely because a few motorists—and I admit motorists have come out of this business extremely badly—refused to drive more carefully nowadays than they did under proper lighting conditions? Surely the argument is too trivial to upset the poise of the Government case. Another argument was that the railway stations of this country were beastly in the black-out. They are. So is war. Furthermore, it was said that it is now a dangerous business getting into or out of a train. But so is war a dangerous business. So is an air raid a dangerous business. I do urge the noble Lord to retain his sense of proportion in these

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matters and not to confuse personal inconvenience with a dastardly attempt to impose Socialism by a back door. That is not the Government's intention. Nor is it our intention to impose bureaucracy by a back door. No one is more alive than we are to the dangers inherent in back doors and in bureaucracy and in Socialism.
The Government are blamed because in the matter of requisitioning hotels and schools they did not give enough warning. So far as schools are concerned, the noble Lord is misinformed. The schools did have ample warning many months before of what was intended for them. So far as the warning to hotels was concerned, I admit that they were given very short notice indeed. But after all, there is not very much point in trying to evacuate Government Departments or portions of Government Departments with the strictest secrecy, if at the same time you tell every hotelkeeper in the country where you are going and what you are going to do. It really is necessary to try to keep your intentions as secret—as "hush hush," as it is now called—as possible. That being so, although the danger in fact has not eventuated, and although it is easy for those who so much hate being wise after the event to criticise the Government for having taken these precautions, I wonder what would have been our fate here on the Government Benches if we had not taken the precautions. There would not have been an Under-Secretary put up to answer criticisms. The biggest guns we have would have had to be employed if, having taken no precautions, London had been seriously bombed and the whole nervous system of our Civil Service and our Government impaired.
LORD STRABOLGI: The noble Marquess misses the point we are making about hotels and schools. It is not that longer notice should have been given, but that the Government took over full hotels and working schools when they could have taken empty hotels and when there were empty mansions which should have been taken.
THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA: The noble Lord will forgive me if I again rather fail to follow his point. He says there were many empty hotels which could have been taken over. Does that mean hotels which happened to be empty at the period when the Government inspector went round? There are not
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many empty buildings suitable for conversion into offices. The criticism is made that schools were moved to another place to make room for Government Departments and it is asked why the Government Departments could not have been moved to where the schools were sent. I think I can resolve the noble Lord's perplexity in regard to that. Government Departments naturally need, first of all, the best protection against aircraft attack that can be afforded to them. That is the first essential. The second is that they should have very good telephonic communication all over the country. That is to say, they have to be near large cables. The third consideration is that Government Departments do not move as separate entities, although some of your Lordships sometimes seem to think they do. In fact they interlock and have to work together. Therefore it was essential to find areas where many Departments could more or less keep together and do their day-to-day business in close proximity. That is the reason why some areas were chosen and others rejected, and that is another reason why it was not as easy as my noble friend thinks to take over hotels just because they happened to be empty at the time.
Now I come to the question which the noble Lord raised about the Ministry of Supply. On that matter I do not think that I can say very much to help. The noble Lord must remember that there are technical diffiulties in giving contracts to small firms. It is not as easy as it sounds to hand out contracts to the first little man who comes along. Small firms have not got the specialised machine tools, they cannot in many cases make the larger armaments, and therefore it has not been easy to bring them fully into the picture. I admit that. At the same time, we have tried to meet the noble Lord's difficulty as far as we can. My right honourable friend has insisted on sub-contracting wherever possible. One large firm has no fewer than 400 sub-contractors on its list. Furthermore, it is hoped that when the area organisations of industry are set up the smaller man will be used more freely. We hope to do that very soon, and I hope that the difficulties I have mentioned—which my noble friend will probably appreciate from his experience in the last war—will explain to him why some of the incidents he has mentioned have occurred.

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Finally, the noble Lord who opened this discussion dealt with the Curfew Order and raised the question whether that Regulation was necessary. Here again it is easy to be wise after the event, I suppose, but in this case it is better to be wise before it. Surely it is obvious that there are dangers, and must be dangers, in a sudden air raid accompanied by panic, possibly by fire, by looting and other things. Surely in such circumstances it is necessary to take powers in advance. Otherwise you are going to put your local authorities in a very awkward dilemma. You might have a situation arising when a local authority might have to take action which it was not legally empowered to take, and your Lordships might have to be asked to pass an Indemnity Act afterwards to protect those affected thereby. I have no doubt such an Act would be passed if the circumstances deserved it, but surely it is better to have powers available, although I agree that powers which are to be held in reserve are sometimes used on most unexpected and unfortunate occasions. Nevertheless, I feel that this is a power which should be in reserve, and I can assure the noble Lord that it will not be used unless circumstances absolutely force us to use it. He has asked for specific conditions to be laid down as to how it should be used. I can only say that I will report the suggestion to my right honourable friend in another place, that it might be possible to confine still more strictly the possible exercise of curfew; but as a general power I believe firmly that it is essential.
So much for the opener's speech. I come to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, who seemed to have a dislike of almost everything that this Government have done in the economic sphere for a considerable time. I was glad that he paid a tribute to the civil servants who have prepared these schemes in the past so completely, which on the whole already have worked extremely well. I am not pretending for a moment that all these schemes are working perfectly, or that there have not been delays and even muddles during the last two months; but, taking by and large the great change that has come over the economic face of the country through these various Controls, I suggest that the schemes must have been remarkably well thought out; and
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that is not so remarkable as it may appear, because they were thought out in close consultation with the business men of this country. The Controllers whom Lord Rea regards with such distrust and doubt are, in fact, if you analyse them—the noble Lord asked for a list, and I have a complete list here—the leading men in each individual industry which they control. People have said that the Controllers are men who have too large a stake in the business. That is one argument; it is not a good argument. Surely it is better to have someone who knows a great deal about a business than to put in as Controller a civil servant who knows nothing about it whatsoever.
LORD REA: Did I understand the noble Marquess to say that he had the list of the Controls, the Controllers and the members of the staff for which I asked? If so, may we have it published?
THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA: I have not got a list of staff; I did not say I had, but I said I had a list of Controllers which has been supplied to me. I imagine it to be a full one; it is quite long.
LORD REA: Can it be published?
THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA: I see no reason myself why it should not be, but the noble Lord will understand that I should like a little notice of that question. Perhaps we could consider that. I must say I cannot imagine why it should not be published.
LORD REA: Will the noble Lord consider publishing the list not only of the Controls and the Controllers, but also of the numbers concerned?
THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA: My Lords, I have just heard a thing that I should have known, and so should my noble friend; that this list has already been in the Commons OFFICIAL REPORT.
LORD ADDISON: No; may I interrupt the noble Marquess? The list in the OFFICIAL REPORT was a list of Controllers given by the Minister of Supply. As far as his Department was concerned it is complete, but it does not relate to ever so many more Controllers in other Departments.
THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA: But my noble friend Lord Rea was talking entirely about the Ministry of Supply.
LORD REA: No, indeed; I was talking about all the Controllers. Many of the Controllers of whom we have to complain most severely are not under the Ministry of Supply. Imports and exports have nothing to do with the Ministry of Supply, nor have the others with whom we are chiefly concerned.
LORD ADDISON: Many of them are under the Board of Trade.
THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA: Then I must withdraw, and apologise for saying I had a complete list, because I have not.
LORD REA: Then would the noble Marquess inquire and consider, and if possible let us have an answer and the list for which I ask?
THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA: I will certainly make the inquiries and discover whether that information may be made available. As for this export and import control of which, again, the noble Lord complained, I am happy to say that it is improving already. After the preliminary dislocation, which we must have expected anyway, it is getting back perhaps not quite to normal, but it is greatly improving. I believe that to be due to the fact that there is not this lack of confidence of the commercial classes, to which Lord Rea referred on several occasions, in the Government's control policy. I do not believe that that lack of confidence exists at all. On the contrary, all the evidence seems to be that the Government have consulted them on every possible occasion. The Government have in fact been criticised for taking their advice and their criticism too much to heart. I do not see any sign at all that the commercial classes of this country, as a whole, lack confidence either in the Controllers or in the system of control.
Finally, so far as my noble friend is concerned, he did not seem to be aware, when he complained that there was lack of cohesion in all these matters, particularly between exporters and control of exports, that a special section of the Department of Overseas Trade has been set up to enable exporters to get together as far as they can through one channel and to get advice and information as to
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the various problems with which the war has faced them. If the industrialists would play their part, on the other hand, and get together as much as they can in their chambers of commerce and the like, then I see no reason at all to anticipate any difficulty in working the new system successfully.
I think that covers the points raised by Lord Rea. As far as my noble friend Lord Aberdeen is concerned, and the control of agriculture, I confess I have no answer immediately to give him; but again I would draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that it is an individual case; it is not a question of a great principle being involved. There may have been a bit of stupidity outside Glasgow—there often has been in the past—but that does not invalidate the main principle of the system of butter control and agricultural control. He referred to the great expense of these control schemes. Well, I am perfectly certain that if we were to cast up a balance-sheet as to what money we have saved by these schemes and the cost of working them, he would be quite astonished at the amount we have saved. The Daily Herald the other day estimated the saving in non-ferrous metals alone by the Control at £7,000,000 a year on prewar buying—which of course in itself is fantastic, because our buying is now very much greater. If all the Controllers can do as well, I think your Lordships will agree that it would pay for a good many clerks and for a good many salaries.
I have tried as best I can to cover this very wide ground. I know perfectly well that this system has brought discomfort to many people, has upset business on occasion, and has been irritating to the public at large. All I will say is that, taking the picture as a whole, the system has worked rather well when it has been cutting its baby teeth. We can honestly hope that it is going to work really well now that we have had a little experience of it. We must really remember that war is not a pleasant thing, that we do have restrictions, and that we do have to make the best of them. As our Aryan poet said, "To win a war you have got to be not merely bloody and bold but also resolute"—to bear the unpleasant little inconveniences which often upset people more than the greater sorrows which war brings.
5.20 p.m.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: My Lords, I think there has been an over-emphasis on the question of the black-out. We who live in the country have been used to walking about in a black-out; it means another shilling on the rates when you have street lights. It is a simple matter to take a torch, although it is an inconvenience. What remedies have we for this black-out? We might increase the street lighting. That would help the pedestrians, but could it be increased to the extent of making it really worth while without invalidating the whole purpose of the black-out? Again, to consider the case of the motorists, those of you who are motorists will know that it is a great help not to have any lights near the road. It is easier to see without lights, except those on obstructions in the road, which are helpful. If you are going to put up street lights all round, you will make it more difficult for the motorists and will therefore be liable to cause more accidents. Again, taking the case of a town, in a town many motorists use sidelights only, and from the point of view of the pedestrians it is much easier to see sidelights if there is not street lighting round about.
To refer to another point, in this Defence Act—I am not quite certain what the correct term for it is—it seems to me that one can draw a parallel with the case of various sentences possible under the law. You will find that for quite a trivial offence a heavy sentence can be given. In fact it is not given, but it is possible to give it; that is left to the discretion of the Judge. I remember that when I was a small boy, passing along a street, I put tar on a pillar box and covered up the lock. Each day I came back and found that it had been taken off, so I did it again two of three times. Ultimately I saw a notice to the effect that I was liable to two months' imprisonment. That seems to me a very large sentence for a trivial offence. So it seems to me that giving the Army powers to enforce that Act is giving them powers which they are never lively to use, but that it is useful for them to have an unspecified power or a blank cheque.
5.23 p.m.
LORD ADDISON: My Lords, I am sure we all welcome the intervention of the
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noble Viscount who has just spoken. Like him, I am used to country lanes and have found my way about them many hundreds of times in the dark. For all that, I am somewhat unrepentant. But I will not trouble your Lordships with a long speech. I was a little confused, I confess, as to what the noble Marquess said about our front-door Socialism or backdoor bureaucracy. It was rather a mixture; but still, being an incurable optimist myself, I live in hope that the noble Lord will in time come to understand what we Socialists really do want. It is not control of which I am complaining; it is not the necessity for control that I was questioning at all; it is the lack of good sense and of a sense of proportion and of good management in administration to which I was calling the attention of the House.
I think we have had in that respect a very useful debate. It is not trivial and it is not small. I felt a little sad when I heard the noble Marquess use those terms, because it suggests to my mind that the Government do not quite appreciate the extent of the unnecessary interference that there has been, and is, with the lives and industries of the people—widespread and unnecessary interference, in many respects, in my opinion. I was sorry to hear the noble Marquess belittle it. But I hope that this debate will have had the result of inducing him and his colleagues to give more thought to this side of the question. I believe the management of some of these Controls is a serious handicap on the industrial and trade life of the country, unnecessarily imposed, and for that reason one felt justified in calling attention to it. The noble Marquess tried to find comfort, in reply to what I said about the Ministry of Supply, by saying that these small firms could get a large amount of sub-contracting. That is one's very grievance. That is not the way to use them. The way to use them is, I think, the way which I suggested in my speech: have your local organisation competent to supply them with drawings and all the rest of it, and find out what their machinery is and what it can do. I suggest that that is not being done.
May I finally refer him to a speech of one of his colleagues on the subject of the curfew to which I drew your Lordships attention? I am not quite sure what the order is about reading extracts from the

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proceedings in another place, but it seems to be more noteworthy in the breach rather than in the observance, and so I will pursue precedent. This is what the noble Lord's colleague said about this Curfew Order:
"The question of omitting it and introducing it if circumstances should arise in which it might be thought necessary was duly considered, but it was thought by those responsible"—
not "by ourselves," your Lordships will notice—
"for the drafting of the regulations better that it should be included so that the House might have an opportunity of criticising it"—
Not because it was good, not because it was required, but so that the House might have an opportunity of criticising it.
"I do not wish to offer any very spirited criticism of it. I confess that I should not shed tears if it dropped out …"
That is the Home Secretary. I think it is an adequate reply. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

NEWCASTLE-UNDER-LYME GAS ORDER, 1939.
Special Order proposed to be made on the application of the Mayor, aldermen and burgesses of the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme:
Laid before the House (pursuant to Act) for affirmative Resolution, and referred to the special Orders Committee.

HOUSE OF LAITY (POSTPONEMENT OF ELECTION) MEASURE, 1939.
Text of the Measure: Laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and to be printed.

ECCLESIASTICAL COMMITTEE.
Eighty-first Report, being the Report by the Ecclesiastical Committee upon the House of Laity (Postponement of Election) Measure, 1939: Laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and to be printed.
House adjourned at twenty-seven minutes past five o'clock.